Imaginary Companions: Not Just for Kids

I began this series by suggesting that young children, whose brains are not yet mature, may be able to gather the information that passes the rest of us by as a matter of course. Since they have more plentiful neural connections, they might well see or otherwise sense more of what's available to take in.

Furthermore, the younger the child, the less likely he or she is to impose interpretations on what they're perceiving. Hence the folkloric wisdom of the boy who calls out that the emperor is indeed naked. The default mode for the rest of us tends to be deciphering sensory stimuli through the lens of what we've come to expect. In this way, young children are similar to people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. By processing perceptions concretely, they're apt to see multiple shades of a color (for instance), where a neurotypical adult will just see blue.

We all know that children traffic vividly in images. In their minds, sensations, imaginings, desires, anticipations, and fables all mingle. So, children often see what they wish for, or what they imagine, instead of what is manifestly there. This is certainly a possibility in the case of Kadyn, the boy who reportedly saw a deceased woman matching the description of a hiker who'd gone missing. If Kadyn had heard anything about her beforehand, he might have seen what he earnestly wished to see.

The process is likely on display in the fascinating phenomenon of imaginary companions (ICs). Up to two-thirds of children may have an IC around them at some point growing up; the prevalence seems to be at least 10%, with most surveys gauging anywhere from 20% to 50%.

ICs appear (in both senses of that word) to help young children with the challenges of socializing – such as making new friends and getting along with others – as well as working out their feelings about thorny problems such as a family relocation or divorce.

Contrary to an old stereotype, kids who experience ICs aren't troubled loners; in fact, they tend to be less shy and somewhat brighter than their peers, not to mention being better at regulating their emotions. They're also good at understanding the perspective of others.

This ability to take another's perspective – and to find it compelling and involving – may explain why adults and children can have the equivalent of ICs. While most children ultimately forget their imaginary friends, they're quite present for many creative adults.

Novelists, for example, often state that their characters become real and have minds of their own. One writer commented that his characters would "do things in the story that I did not intend, and even wish they wouldn't do, but they did them anyway." He gives the example of a main character named Tony, who would say things that his author disapproved of in a given situation. "I would think to myself, 'Oh no, don't say that you don't mean it,' but he would say it anyway. Heartbreaking. He wouldn't listen to me." This parallels children's testimony that their ICs are sometimes disobedient or unpredictable.

It's not just writers who commonly experience ICs; readers do, too. A survey of more than 1500 readers, conducted at Durham University in the UK, found that nearly 1 in 5 said fictional characters stayed with them when they weren't reading, influencing their thoughts and reactions. Additionally, 1 in 7 readers even heard characters' voices "as clearly as if there was someone in the room with them."

Evidence suggests that the people most likely to experience an IC are those with thin boundaries and high transliminality, i.e., those whose mental and emotional life fluidly mixes what is conscious with what is unconscious and internal with what is external.

One might conclude that the kind of ghostly report presented by Kadyn – if not contrived by his parents – reflects such a blurring. What he's said to have perceived could reflect something genuinely anomalous.

A leading researcher in imaginary companions found that children specifically describe 5% of their ICs as ghosts. I'll explore the implications of this minority report in my next post.