Papa?

Ok....I had a very strange experience this past weekend. My wife, myself and my youngest daughter (17 months) went to visit my Nanu (grandmother) at her assisted living home. My daughter is at the point now where she knows words and people by name. We were sitting down in my nanu's room and my daughter was walking around doing her usual, picking up books and opening and closing them and waving and saying nanu and mommy and daddy.

Well, she calls my father, her grandfather, Papa. This is also what I called my grandfather. He passed in 2000 from complications from Alzheimer's. So the layout of the place is this, there is an entry that leads to a small sitting area attached to the bedroom, which is where we were all sitting. Off the side of the bedroom is a double door closet and through the closet is the bathroom. In the closet there are just clothes hanging and a simple folding chair for my nanu to use when changing since she has a bad back and knees.

Now my daughter is only 17 months old and has no clue who my Papa was and this is where is gets strange. She would walk all around the room EXCEPT for close to the closet. She would lean, almost to the point of falling, from around the corner and look into the closet and say Papa. She did this at least a dozen times and even pointed into the closet a few of the times she did it, but absolutely would NOT go near the closet. This is HIGHLY unusual as she is super curious and always wanders into open rooms. The lights were on in the closet and the bathroom so it was not dark at all either.

After the 4th or 5th time she did this I got up and looked in the closet to see if there was a picture of my dad, her Papa, somewhere in there and there were no pictures at all. So my wife looks at me kinda quirky like and decides to walk over to our daughter and hold her hand and walk with her into the closet. When she did, my daughter would not go and was pulling her back, the whole time saying "Papa" and pointing into the closet. Almost like she could see him sitting in the chair in there. What is also odd is that my dad looks very much like his father but has a mustache and she was saying Papa, but she knew he did not come there with us. So I am wondering if she did see the spirit of her great grandfather and it looked enough like my dad for her to say Papa, but strange enough that he wasn't "real" or he was kind of ghost like maybe which was what made her hesitant to go in.

So, I have always heard that kids can "see" things we can't. Has anyone else had a child do something similar? I like to think it may have been my Papa keeping an eye on my Nanu and being with her even though he has been gone for 14 years now.

Anywho....thought I would share.

I will also add that I am really not a believer in paranormal stuff at all, but this has me wondering. You can see from my history here I do not often post in this forum and when I do it is usually to point out that what someone is saying doesn't exist. I guess I can try it out again in a couple weekends and video her doing it this time if it happens again.

Interesting experience. Has your daughter seen photo albums or pics of him before?

It brings to memory something I thought amusing at the time but did not question, namely that the first sounds coming from my son's mouth at the age of three months and ones he kept repeating were both syllables of my grandmother's first name. He was acting quite pleased with himself and his little arms and legs would flail in excitement as he said them.

originally posted by: aboutface
Interesting experience. Has your daughter seen photo albums or pics of him before?

It brings to memory something I thought amusing at the time but did not question, namely that the first sounds coming from my son's mouth at the age of three months and ones he kept repeating were both syllables of my grandmother's first name. He was acting quite pleased with himself and his little arms and legs would flail in excitement as he said them.

Not that I know of...I mean she has seen pictures of him around my parents house but I don't think has ever had anyone point out that it was her great grandfather, Papa. Just a really odd experience for me.

She sounds adorable.

That is an interesting experience, thanks for sharing it here. It's hard to know what was really going through her mind since she is so young. It might be interesting to play a little game of "who is that?" with her while looking at family pictures. See if she labels pictures of your grandfather as "papa".

originally posted by: VegHead
She sounds adorable.

That is an interesting experience, thanks for sharing it here. It's hard to know what was really going through her mind since she is so young. It might be interesting to play a little game of "who is that?" with her while looking at family pictures. See if she labels pictures of your grandfather as "papa".

Ooooo....that is actually a GREAT idea. I can pull a picture down and ask her who everyone in it is. If she points papa out that would be really strange.

My daughter ( when she was three or four ) had a conversation with my deceased mother for over fifteen minutes as my wife and I lay in bed pretending to be asleep.
One morning she wandered into our bedroom chatting to herself, or so we thought.
I lightly kicked my wife's leg under the cover and whispered that it sounded like our little girl was talking to someone.
We listened as she asked AND answered questions.
She'd speak and then sit quiet as if listening, then she'd give an answer.

Thing was, judging by the conversation, the only person she could have been speaking to was my mum, who she'd never met !
My mum passed away three months before our little girl was born.
When my wife later asked her who she had been talking to. She pointed up to the photo of my mum which was hanging on the living room wall and said " that lady "..........

That sealed it for both of us !

When my daughter was about 18 months old, she told me once that she liked the "lady up high". I asked if she was talking about me, and she said no. I asked about pictures on the wall, people on the tv - everything I could think of -- she said no, none of them were the lady. I never did find out what she was talking about. When she was 2 or 2 1/2, I asked her about the lady up high, and she had no recollection of it. I always thought it was kind of weird, but have no idea if it was related to anything paranormal.

I did almost this same thing when I was about the same age as your daughter. I was mostly at the "babble" stage, not knowing many words and just learning names. My grandfather died eleven months before I was born, his name was Bill but my sister knew him as Granddad. It was still painful for my family to talk about, so I didn't know about him yet.
Anyway, I was standing in the living room of Grandma's house, looking into the sewing room (visible through the sewing room door is the door to the master bedroom- the sewing room used to be a nursery). I stood on the couch and babbled away as if having a conversation with some unseen person. My aunt and grandmother watched for a bit, and after a minute I said "Bill. Oh. Granddad." and went on with my business. I knew nothing of my granddad, and certainly not his real name. If I had heard it in passing, why would I have associated that spot in the room with someone I had never met? To this day, that spot in the house makes my hair stand up when I go near it.

originally posted by: lambros56
My daughter ( when she was three or four ) had a conversation with my deceased mother for over fifteen minutes as my wife and I lay in bed pretending to be asleep.
One morning she wandered into our bedroom chatting to herself, or so we thought.
I lightly kicked my wife's leg under the cover and whispered that it sounded like our little girl was talking to someone.
We listened as she asked AND answered questions.
She'd speak and then sit quiet as if listening, then she'd give an answer.

Thing was, judging by the conversation, the only person she could have been speaking to was my mum, who she'd never met !
My mum passed away three months before our little girl was born.
When my wife later asked her who she had been talking to. She pointed up to the photo of my mum which was hanging on the living room wall and said " that lady "..........

That sealed it for both of us !

Just got the chills reading that. I did not get in until she was in bed last night and will be the same tonight but will see if my wife can get her to look at some pictures today with my Papa in them. Funny thing is, her room is right on the other side of the wall of our room so we can hear her pretty well when she is up. She sits in her room and babbles for 20-30 minutes when she wakes up most mornings then whines a little to let us know she is ready to come out. It is making me wonder now if she is really talking to someone.

An eyebrow raising tale... and some of the others here are pretty fascinating.

How can one frequent this site and/or look at the mountain of data and still not accept that paranormal stuff at least happens (tho doesn't mean we know what it really is)? I get the cognitive dissonance ... the common meme, especially since the last century, is that ghosts and related stuff is poppy-cock for fools and ignoramuses... but it ain't... heh.

When I was little... too little to remember... apparently I said things to my mother that absolutely convinced her that either I was her mother (my grandmother) re-incarnated, or I had somehow gotten very private, grown up information about a woman who'd been dead decades before my birth. Even odder since I am male.

I wish I had more details... but my mom was stricken and wouldn't talk to me about it... even as an adult. My aunt told me about it...my mom confirmed it... but was still too scared to clarify. It had something to do with knowledge about my mom's childhood and one incident in particular, apparently, that nobody but my mom and grandma knew about. Not very interesting or even evidential... but it happened.

I DO remember a talk radio show on esp when I was 4 or so where the radio announcer asked the audience to conduct tests with people around them and I read my mom's mind several times... seemed absolutely natural at the time. Guessed what she had written. Guess I was a creepy kid.

My son was around that age when his great grandma passed away. She used to love to play with him and doted on her great-grandchild, and he loved to visit and play with her, but she became very ill with cancer and after most of her stomach was removed, went into hospice. We continued to visit a lot, and I remember the hospice workers commenting on how unusual it was for family members to bring such a young child to visit, but how great they thought it was - she loved to have my son sit by her on the bed and play little games, like "itsy bitsy spider" and "here is the church, here is the steeple" and so on, and the two of them seemed to have a tight bond.

After she passed, for months, my son would "talk to the wall" and whenever we asked who he was talking to, he always said it was "Grandma Bernice" (our name for his great grandma). He would look up at the wall, or the corner of the room, and quietly "talk" for 10-15 minutes or so at a time. Eventually, he stopped having these conversations, it petered out over time. I never saw anything, but he sure appeared to.