Sometimes the real world can be more unsettling than any fictional work. You may be surprised by the real-life stories in this collection.

My 5-year-old stepson enjoys sharing stories with me about his past life, when he lived away from us and had a different name. I’m always uneasy when he sporadically shares details about this previous life, especially when the names of the people or places are ones we’ve never discussed or used around him.

In California, he told me, he lived in a city that had an A at the end and a T at the beginning (I looked it up; there are like two). He has expressed on multiple occasions that he misses taking his red sports car to the beach. We’re from the East Coast, so we’ve never taken him to a beach or traveled to California.

He has also mentioned returning home to discover his new kitten had gotten out of his apartment. He gave me her name, described her, and said that it still makes him sad sometimes. © Reddit/AnxiousOwlette