As adults, we usually think before we speak, but kids have no filters. They share their thoughts and feelings openly, without fear. This can lead to funny or embarrassing confessions that make parents blush, or unsettling comments that leave them wondering if what they heard was real or just a child’s imagination. The stories below reveal some of the most startling things children have said—moments that deeply unsettled their parents.

One night, while reading my four-year-old a bedtime story, he suddenly asked, “Is he bothering you?” When I asked who, he pointed to the empty corner behind me and said, “HIM, of course!” There was no one there, but that moment still gives me chills.

Another mother discovered her husband’s affair because of her son. She usually worked mornings while her husband dropped off their six-year-old at his sitter’s house. One day, when she did the drop-off herself, her son hesitated and said, “Dad always comes up with me. He stays with the sitter for a while.” That night, she confronted her husband—who admitted he’d been having an affair. She filed for divorce the next day.

During a routine check-up, a nine-year-old told the doctor, “Mommy says she can’t take it anymore.” Her mother, who had been secretly struggling with depression, realized how much her daughter had noticed. That honesty led to therapy and helped their family heal.

Some children’s words are haunting in other ways. A six-year-old told her mom she was “coloring with black because that’s how I feel.” A three-year-old in a new house talked about “friends who live in a hole in the ground behind our house” and said they were “in the room with us.”

Others have said things that sparked family drama. One little boy proudly told the neighbors, “Grandpa says Daddy is lazy and doesn’t work hard.” That one sentence led to a heated argument and a much-needed family reckoning.

Some stories feel straight out of a horror movie. A two-and-a-half-year-old counted the people in her house and included “the girl who lives in my closet.” Another child woke her mother in the night and, as she climbed into bed, asked, “Mama, who was that man in the living room?” And one little girl pointed behind her mother and said, “I want to play with the baby.” They were alone in the driveway.

Finally, a boy once told his mother, “When you were a little girl and I was a man, we danced behind the white tree.” The only person she’d ever danced with there was her late uncle Toni—someone she had never mentioned to her son.

If you enjoy eerie stories like these, this collection of children’s chilling confessions will haunt you just as much as it haunted their parents.