Is your childhood imaginary friend coming back to haunt you? People who had a pretend companion are more likely to feel a mysterious presence, study finds

Published: 08:52 EDT, 30 October 2026 | Updated: 08:52 EDT, 30 October 2026 Have you ever felt a mysterious presence around you? If so, you may have had an imaginary friend as a child. That's according to scientists from İzmir University of Economics in Türkiye, who have discovered that people who had an imaginary friend are more likely to feel an uncanny presence later in life. In their study, the team recruited 185 adults and asked them about their memories of imaginary friends in their childhood.Forty–five said that they had had an imaginary companion – mostly resembling smaller children, but also animals and sometimes even monsters.The researchers then asked how often the participants felt another person's presence when there was no one else nearby over the course of a month.Strangely, on a scale ranging from 15 to 75 – with a higher score meaning more frequent experiences – people who had imaginary friends scored 25.51, compared with just 20.07 in those who didn't. Have you ever felt a mysterious presence around you? If so, you may have had an imaginary friend as a child (stock image) The researchers found that the imaginary friends came in a wide range of shapes and sizes, but were most commonly described as childlike and smaller than the participant. Pictured: Bing Bong from Inside Out The researchers found that the imaginary friends came in a wide range of shapes and sizes, but were most commonly described as childlike and smaller than the participant.Most participants recalled talking with their companion, with a few even using a 'special language' to do so, while only one in 10 reported having tactile interactions.The team also asked the participants about where their fantastical playmate would appear, and found that more than half of appearances were less than 28in (70cm) away – within the 'peripersonal space'.In their paper, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, the researchers describe this as 'the near–body zone within which the brain integrates multisensory information for action and body–schema maintenance'.This bubble of space immediately around our bodies plays an essential role in building our sense of bodily awareness, interacting with others, and navigating our surroundings.Interestingly, previous studies have shown that this area is also important in generating the strange feeling that someone is nearby. Researchers asked adults who had imaginary friends where they remember their friends standing, revealing that they were largely experienced within a critical zone extending 70cm from the body People reported seeing their imaginary friends in front of or to the side of themselves. But these people were also more prone to feeling an unexplained presence behind them as adultsTo test if the participants could then feel a mysterious presence as an adult, the researchers carried out an experiment using two robotic arms. Participants moved one robotic arm in front of them while the other copied their actions, tracing out a pattern on their back.When the robots were completely in sync, the brain was able to sense the inputs, and people felt as if they were touching their own backs.But when the researchers added a small delay between the two robots, people suddenly reported feeling a ghostly presence, even counting up to four presences.In some cases, the feeling that someone was looming nearby was so strong that participants asked to stop the experiment.The fact that both imaginary friends and so–called 'felt presences' occur in the same critical space around the body could mean they are produced by the same underlying mechanisms, according to the researchers. The only difference was that people typically said their imaginary friends were in front of them or beside them, while felt presences usually appear from behind.