Childhood imaginary friends... or enemies

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One of the trademark features of weird children is having imaginary friends - invisible people that you talk to, play wirth and so on. Most people perceive it as a phase. Some even believe that children can see ghosts and they are their imaginary buddies.

My experience was a bit different. Instead of a friend, I made up my own imaginary nemesis - a creepy-looking immortal girl, dressed in unbreakable armor, armed with a nasty sword, and travelling from one Universe to another with only one goal: to find me and kill me. And that would be just a prelude to wiping out the rest of humanity as well (but she specifically wants to destroy me first, for reasons unknown).

Of course, there were ways to throw her off the track and hide Earth's whereabouts. These were the various games I liked to play or the little rituals I had as a kid. They confused her sense of direction and made her go farther, rather than closer to us.

From today's perspective, it seems that I had made up my imaginary nemesis to justify some of my weird behaviours. They don't seem so pointless when they keep me (and the rest of humanity) safe from her, right?


Has anyone else had similar experiences?

No never had any of those. Mostly spoke to myself and didn't see the point in making up a friend or enemy.

I still have imaginary friends and enemies to this day. The friends I have change with my interests (my interests always revolve around different fictional characters, and I take on those characters as imaginary friends), but the enemies have always been the same, because they represent internal struggles that have never stopped.

One enemy is based on a former real-life friend who turned into a bully. Like in real life, she is elegant, successful and looks like a model. Basically everything I am not. Unlike in real life, she is a ninja assassin with remarkable speed, stealth and precision. Though she sometimes fights my imaginary friends, her true mortal enemy is me. Most of the reason she hates me is because I'm in love with her but she never felt the same.

The other enemy is a fearsome dragon named Caesar (though in retrospect Caligula would have better suited him). He is the embodiment of my mental illnesses, and basically anytime my mental health starts to decline, he's responsible. For example, last year I struggled really hard over whether to keep my imaginary friends, get new ones, or stop having them altogether. Nothing about my imagination felt good anymore. When I did go into my imaginary world, everything was in chaos and ruin, and I couldn't be with my imaginary friends anymore. I had eventually become so frustrated over it that got to the point where I had the urge to self-harm. Finally, my mom asked me: "Do you think it's Caesar?" I said yes, and she told me to do whatever it took to rid me of his grip on my mind. I wound up physically acting out a story where I banded together with some lesser imaginary friends in a fight to free the main ones. At the story's climax, I sketched a picture of Caesar and tore it up, symbolically vanquishing him. After I did that, I stopped being upset over the state of my imagination and everything reverted back to normal.

No, sorry. I had legions of imaginary friends, but I never had any enemies. I used my imagination to escape being around people that made me feel negative, so I never created anyone I didn't like!

I had sort of a different incarnation of the common 'imaginary friends'. I had two, i'll call them characters, that always played a role in my imaginary scenarios with toys. So, if I happened to be playing with matchbox cars or tonka tractors or something these two characters would always been involved. They had names and extensive backstories. I never considered them as anything other than my own fictional characters though. I never spoke to them.

Up until I was about seven, I had an imaginary friend named Nibble, who was a kid that had the ability to climb up walls. No, I wasn't on anything back then. I've made up large amounts of fictional characters since then, but I've never pretended to interact with them.

I had an imaginary horse. He was a brown horse and his name was Buster. I used to walk him around the stable (my father's tool shed). I never rode him though, it's not easy to ride an imaginary horse.