Endless Thread - Encore: Imaginary Friend

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

When Kellie's 3 year-old daughter told her about her new imaginary friend, Kellum, she didn't think too much of it. But gradually, Kellum started to feel less and less... imaginary. Kellie and her daughter, Madison, tell us everything. This episode was originally released on October 30, 2019. 

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I love a good jump scare. I don't love a good jump scare. No. But I do love a scary story. And I love doing live events, and we have a live event this Friday in Boston at WBUR's City Space. Candy, scary robot films, real discussion of artificial intelligence.

You should come. You should. If you're in the area, come say hello. We'd love it. You can register for free at wbUR.org slash events. You can watch the event online as well. And if you come in person, we will personally hand you candy. Yes, come play with us.

Seriously, it's going to be fun. You like my creepy voice? Yeah, that's pretty good. Thank you. Also, every year people ask us about our scary series, Endless Dread, Scream Time. At this point, we've got a pretty long list of scary stories that we've told that still hold up. They still slap. So this week, like your favorite cable channel or streaming service, we're rolling out the fake blood red carpet

and giving you a back-to-back three-part replay of some of our favorites. Today, an oldie but a goodie from our extensive back catalog, Imaginary Friend. Do you remember the first time you saw Kellam? I don't remember seeing him for the first time. All I can remember is just him being there. This is Madison. She's from Macon, Georgia. She's 15 years old now.

But when she was little, she had imaginary friends. I had Dana and Steve, Fragha and Kinga and boyfriend and girlfriend. Always in pairs. Always in pairs. One day, Along came a new imaginary friend who was not part of a pair. Kellam first started visiting Madison when she was three years old.

I thought, well, that's new. This one's, you know, there's only one. Of this one, he's kind of flying solo. This is Madison's mom, Kelly. My Reddit handle is Who Farted? And it's spelled H-O-O-F- underscore H-A-R-D-E-D. That is genius. I did not pick up on that.

I can feel. You didn't pick. Of course you didn't. And Kelly didn't pick up on any weird vibes around her daughter's new imaginary friend at first. He's not disturbing anything at the house. He seems to be a good playmate. She played with him. When she was small, she enjoyed his company.

I remember one time, like I had a little table and chairs sitting in my room and I would make Plato sandwiches for me and him. or I would build towers and knock them down because he thought it was funny. I remember him being tall. He kind of felt like a father figure to me. He kind of, he felt like my dad. He had like a beard. How old was he? He wasn't that old.

He was like in his 40s. He was always wearing like work clothes. Like he would be outside, like outside clothes. Ben, you have young children. If one of them told you that they had an imaginary friend who was a middle-aged man, Man, would that ring any alarm bells? I mean, if he's teaching them how to skateboard or something, I'd be in favor of that. Okay.

But, yeah, no, in general, I think it might ring a couple of alarm bells. But Kelly was still trying to play it cool. So I just kind of let it be, and then we found out about the song. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Severson, and you're listening to Endless Dread. The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online. communities called Reddit. Yes, this month we are featuring scary stories in a series we are calling Endless Dread. And we're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today's episode,

Imaginary Friend. So this three-year-old, Madison, has a new imaginary friend named Kellam. And her mother, Kelly, is intrigued, especially since Madison is spending a lot of time with Kellam. He had taught me a song. It was an older song. I can't remember it now, but it was an older song. And I would sing it all the time. Oh, I remember it. Kelly, what was the song?

It's called Daisy Bell. And I found it years and years later when a co-worker told me about it. So I know it by the title, and this might be a more modern title, of Bicycle Built for Two. Oh, that's it. I wish you could see her face right now. What's your face doing? Her mouth is hanging wide open. She's like, oh, my God.

I think that really triggered something for her. Maddie, what does this song trigger for you? I don't know. It just brings back a lot. Like, I just remember knowing this song. I had never heard the song before. This thing apparently dates back to the turn of the century. And one day she just started to sit.

it and she was so little that I couldn't make out like a melody to it. It was just words. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. And so as she would sing it, I'd try to catch on to what she was saying, but she really couldn't talk all that well. She's barely three years old. And so she had a babysitter. And I asked the babysitter one day I was like, hey, can you give me the words of this song? You know, is it on a CD? How is she hearing this so that I can help her sing it?

And we can sing it together. She's like, no, I thought you guys taught her that song. I've never taught her that song. I don't know what she's saying either. And so I went home that day later on that night, and she started it again. And I said, Maddie, you know, where are you hearing the song from? Where did you hear it? She's like, oh, Kellam taught it to me.

He sings it to his baby. Kellam would sing it to his baby. An imaginary friend teaching your child a song that he taught to his imaginary baby, a song that Madison had no way of learning otherwise, this is where the story gets a big nope from me. Nope, nope, nope. Kelly was a little surprised by her daughter's new imaginary friend and the fact that he had apparently taught Madison a whole song.

But she wasn't spooked yet. Maybe because Kelly has her own stories about growing up around some paranormal activity. Knowing what I went through as a child, I didn't want to project anything onto her when it could have been an imaginary friend. Kelly had some experiences as a little girl that were feeling hauntingly familiar to her daughters. But she wanted to approach things differently with Madison than her mother had with her. My mother just did not believe in anything at all paranormal. So when I would try to tell her about these things, I would pretty much get in trouble. It started when Kelly was eight years old.

She'd be trying to fall asleep when she'd hear something brush up against her backpack on the floor of her bedroom. But when she turned on the light, there was nothing there. She started sleeping with the light on, which caused the light to burn out. So my mom took the globe off of my light to change the light, and she didn't put it back up. and that was when I started noticing the tapping. I could hear something tapping on the light bulb at night. In the room, just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Just over and over and over again.

And then there was the TV, one of the old school ones that had a button you had to pull out to turn on. Kelly had one of these in her bedroom. And the TV would literally turn on in the middle of the night. The power button would be pulled out. It would be engaged. What was on the TV when the TV would turn on? It was either static or it was the star spangled banner.

This is very poltergeist here. Yeah, it is. It really, really is. It wasn't until I was older and saw that movie that I was like, oh, gosh, I know what's about happened. Kelly did not get pulled into the TV by a ghost like Carol Ann in the movie Poltergeist, but she was thoroughly freaked out. I remember telling trying to explain it to my mom, and she just, kept dismissing it. She was like, you're just

your sleepwalking. You don't know what you're talking about. Stop making up stories. You're scaring your cousins. Nobody's going to want to come play with you because you're weird. Clearly, talking to creepy imaginary friends runs in the family. Meanwhile, back to Madison and her imaginary friend

Kellam. Was he kind of a comforting presence to you or was there anything ever unsettling about him? No, he was always really comforting to me. He was always nice. I mean, at first at least. As time passed, he wasn't so nice anymore.

He would start to yell at me and keep me up all night. He would tap on my windows. I started to notice that she was really, really irritable all day. And I finally asked her one day, I was like, what is the matter? What's wrong? I mean, it was just throwing temper tantrums, just tired all the time. And she said that Killam was keeping her up at night when she wanted to sleep. He would always want to play.

He would always want to talk. He just never wanted me to go to bed. I still had her baby monitor, and I decided I would get it out and put it in her room just so I could hear when she was up so I could make sure that she went back to bed, and I could hear her having conversations, and they were definite conversations.

She would speak for a while, and then she'd be quiet, and then she'd speak again. She would answer somebody. somebody was talking to her, but you could only hear her voice. I don't want to play with you anymore. The longer it went on, the more afraid she got of him. She just really got to a point where she didn't like him. And the thing that really unsettled me was she kept telling me his face doesn't look the same.

He doesn't look the same as he used to look. I just remember his face would just get dirty like he had been working, and he looked. sick. His eyes would be really sunken in and his face looked skinnier. It was just, for me, as a child, really scary. And it, it stayed that way until Kellam was no longer in our lives. This is where the story ends. At least, this is how Kelly's Reddit post ends. Eventually, Kellum faded away, she wrote. But here on Endless Dread, there is so much more. I guess I don't make this part of the story well known just because of the connotation that it could have. But I will tell you guys the full story.

We'll get that full story in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew.

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leadership, well-being, and career advancement, virtually on December 1st. If you could use some inspiration and insights into how to boost your personal and professional well-being, register at ma-conference for women.org. There's a reason Kelly didn't post the full story about Kellum on Reddit, the story of where he went. We live in the deep south. We live in the deep south. We live in the Bible Belt. You start talking about this kind of stuff and the wrong people over here. You're a pagan and you're full of witchcraft and you're living in sin. And if you didn't invite sin into your house, now this would happen.

It's just a, I've been through it. Madison's imaginary friend, Kellam, turns into a little bit of a creeper, tapping on her window, yelling at her, making her stay up all night. to talk to him and play with him around the house, which if your daughter is wandering around the house in the dark with an imaginary friend, yikes. But one night, things really escalate to a new level. Kelly's home alone with Madison, and she wakes up to the sound of her daughter screaming.

And not like a bad dream scream or I need you to come here scream. This was a terrified scream. I can remember him getting very upset with me that night. He was being really aggressive. He walked up to me and grabbed me by my wrist. And then that's when I tried to get away and tried to make it over the baby gate. I heard her screaming. I jumped up.

I opened my bedroom door. She is hanging over the baby gate, trying to get over it as fast as she could. Screaming for me, Mommy help me. Mommy come help me. I run through the house. I go to pick her up. I pick her up over the baby gate, and she's just, she's insolable, she's screaming, I'm scared.

I look, and the curtains in her room are blowing. And when I say blowing, I don't mean like they're just kind of like drifting in the breeze from maybe the heater or the AC. They were blowing as if the window were open and a big gust of wind were blowing through the window. But the window in Madison's room wasn't open. She was scared. I was scared.

This is not okay. This is wrong. We need to get out here. So I grabbed her. I'm in my pajamas. I have bare feet. She's in a nightgown. We leave the house.

It was freezing cold outside. And we had no coats. We had no shoes. It was just that scary. Kelly high-tailed it out to her best friend's house. but she wasn't sure what to do from there. Kelly needed someone who could confront Kellam. Who are you going to call?

Your father-in-law, who is not a believer in ghosts. Unless you count the Holy Ghost. My father-in-law at the time was a pastor of the church. This goes back to me not really wanting to say very much because I was in the Pentecostal church. My father-in-law was the pastor. He didn't agree with any of that kind of. kind of stuff. They preached against it at church. It was just one of those things. So I finally just

broke down and called them. And I said, I don't know what to do. I need your help. Kelly's then father-in-law told her he was on his way to her house. Don't go back there, he said. Not until you hear from me. So it's probably about an hour, maybe two hours later. He calls me. He says, you can go home now. You don't have to worry about anything else. It's taken care of, but we need to talk tomorrow. And I was like, oh, man, I'm in trouble. You know, he's probably going to read me the ride act tomorrow. Well, I get home and over the front door, he was very big into anointing things with oil. Down here in the South, they will actually make crosses with oil. They'll annoy people's foreheads. They'll anoint cars if you get a new car, anything. They love to annoy things with oil

down here. So I come home and over my front door is a cross in oil. He's oiled across over my front door. And then we go inside and over the windows, walls, bathroom mirrors all through the house are these crosses in oil, which is a little freaky. It kind of unnerved me still coming home, but it almost felt peaceful. When I walked back in, I could tell that the house was it felt peaceful the way it had always felt before things went crazy with bad Killam, I guess you could call him. We never had another issue with Killam. As a matter of fact, after that happened, I don't recall her ever telling me that Killam came to play with her again.

But the loss of Kellam also meant a loss of innocence in a way for Madison. I never had another imaginary friend again. it was just kind of all over from there. Of course, I got a good preaching, too, the next day about how, you know, I watched trash television and listened to secular music and I'd invited the devil into the home and all this kind of stuff. So it really made me feel like crap because it was, well, you did it. You brought this thing into your house, but I got rid of it for you.

Do you actually believe that, Kelly? Do you believe that you somehow invited a spirit into your house? I don't know. I can't imagine that the things that I'd gone through as a kid, the things that I knew would deter a spirit from coming around us. But I also don't believe that it was my fault that something was absolutely terrifying my child that night. I don't believe that, no.

But Kelly has never stopped wondering about who Kellam was and why he came to her house to play with her three-year-old, Madison. She's told the story to friends over the years, and it turns out that the co-worker, the one who finally identified the song Daisy Bell, this coworker had something else to offer Kelly, access to her ancestry.com account.

I only thought you could look up like family names on ancestry.com, but you can actually do property searches on that thing too. And so we put in my property, and we also put in property around probably with then I would say a good half a mile of my home. And what we found out was that the property that was adjacent to ours, in 1941, it was bought by the Beasley family. The thing that just absolutely made by blood run cold

was when we pulled up the property history and we found out that the man who bought the property in 1941, his name was Callum Beasley. C-A-L-L-U-M, I just got Joel once. His name was Callum Beasley. Callum sounds a lot like Kellam. Probably even more so to a three-year-old. Is Kellum like a common name in that region?

No, because when she first said Killam, I was thinking, okay, this is another weird imaginary friend name. Yeah, like Frogger and Kinga, boyfriend and girlfriend. I just thought it was an odd name. So then when I saw that actual name come up on the search for the property, I'd swear I felt every bit of the blood drain out of my face. It also sounds a little bit like kill them. Kill them. Kill them.

Oh, my gosh. Oh. Oh. Oh. I never thought about that. I didn't either. Well, thanks for giving me a nightmare. Yeah.

Oh, my God. But there's something even more chilling. about Callum Beasley. Kelly says the records she found on Ancestry.com showed that he had five children. The youngest was named Madeline. She died when she was three years old. The same age Madison was when Kellam showed up.

And it almost makes me wonder, was this his way of connecting to something? Did he think this was his kid? It just, there was just too much of a coincidence for us to not sit up and take notice. It's like, okay, this is a little more than a coincidence at this point. Kelly and Madison moved out almost three years ago. But they remember the Beasley property. It was behind their house.

What did it look like? Just a big open field. Just literally a big open field. There were no buildings. There were no houses. Not at the time that I knew it. Did you guys ever go over there? I can recall one night, or I think it was after school one day,

I had walked to the back of the property where that area was, and I saw dairy cows. Black and white cows with tags on their ears, they were healthy. But after that day, I'd never seen them again. Madison never saw them again because, according to her mom, there weren't cows on that property. Maybe they were imaginary? imaginary cows. But here's the thing. Decades ago, Callum Beasley's family had run a dairy farm.

Kelly needed to know more. She started looking for contact information for any living members of the Beasley family to find out more about the land and, of course, about Callum. I did reach out to one of the women in the family. At the time, she was a little older than I was. And she just seemed really hesitant about. I wanted to give me any information, and I would try to explain to her, you know, my daughter had this imaginary friend, and he seemed to be about the same age as your uncle was. I understand that he might have had a daughter, and she was like, you know, you guys are crazy, you people, you make up stories. And it almost made me feel almost ashamed of even asking the question like that. Like, why are you talking such nonsense? That doesn't happen. You're crazy.

The only member of the Beasley family that Kelly could find didn't want to hear the story. Just like her mother had never wanted to hear the story. Her ex-husband, Madison's father, didn't want to hear the story, and her Pentecostal church definitely didn't want to hear the story. I was like, okay, all right, if nobody wants to talk about it, if nobody wants to acknowledge it, we won't. We'll just act like it didn't happen. Okay, we'll just pretend it didn't happen, and I'll go about my business knowing that it did.

You know, you can't make believers out of skeptics. You just absolutely can't. So the question is, are you a believer? Kelly, Madison, thank you very much for telling us your story. Thank you. Thanks for creeping us out. But also making us laugh. Oh, well, we try.

Oh, that wasn't creepy at all. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's. NPR station in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer, and he never had any imaginary friends. They were more like... Imaginary Monsters. Iris Adler is our executive producer who knows the trick to keeping imaginary friends on good behavior.

It's all about... Clever comebacks. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus, and he'd be curious to look up his ancestry and find any long-lost relatives, as he says... My people need me! Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit who always rides a tanning. bicycle to work. So when he heard the song on a bicycle built for two, he was just like... Me in real life.

Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Our intern is Magdeaella Mata. Maggie's fine. Special thanks to Nicholas Silber, who played Young Madison in our episode today. Thanks to Redditor Terry Colbart. For this week's artwork, it is called Imaginary Friend, and you can see it in all of its creepiness on our website, WBUR.org slash endless thread. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today,

hit us up there. Also, by the way, we have an official subreddit now. You can find that at Reddit.com slash R slash endless thread. My co-host and producer is Amory Sieverts. I'm senior producer and co-host, Ben Brock Johnson. Now let myself out.