Do I Have a Spooky Baby?

Staring at empty space, handing toys to nobody, growling: Is this normal?

My daughter was born a week into November last year, but her due date was Halloween, my favorite holiday.

In retrospect, her decision to stick around for a week after her due date was a blessing, because it meant that I was able to fully enjoy the holiday one last time without having to look after a baby and tend to a leaky childbirth-ravaged body. But at the time, I was disappointed when Halloween came and went and I was still the shape of a state fair-winning pumpkin.

I had hoped she’d be a kid who loved spooky things. One of my favorite TikToks of all time stars a little girl, barely bigger than a toddler, who loves horror. In the short video, she’s walking through a theme park full of cast members in grotesque makeup brandishing prop weapons and oozing fake blood. She waves at an evil clown like she’s seeing Mickey Mouse. The cast members love her. She’s a spooky little star. There’s another TikTok of another little girl practically skipping through a Halloween store, as delighted with the fake severed hands and creepy plastic demon babies as some kids would be in the Barbie aisle.

So far, there’s been no indication that Juniper will turn out like either of those kids. My husband took her to Spirit Halloween yesterday, and while none of the giant skeletons or animatronic zombies made her cry, she found them more fascinating than delightful. We’ll work on it. We'll work our way up to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights.

Juniper has demonstrated other types of spookiness that are less fun and more unsettling. Once when she was only a few weeks old and fussing in the middle of the night, she burped so loudly that my husband and I exchanged a look of alarm. It was not the kind of sound that should come from a seven-pound human. I remember thinking that perhaps my baby was possessed.

She’d also sometimes seem disoriented or frightened when she’d wake up from naps when she was really small, something I attributed to the fact that babies are essentially larvae that have no idea what’s going on. She would look at the area over my shoulder and scream, or reach for things that weren’t there. But that’s normal, right?

As she’s developed the ability to communicate, there have been more moments when she’s acted in ways that are a little creepy. I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in God or the devil. I’m fascinated by folklore and ghost stories and religious myths, but I don’t believe in them in any real way. But sometimes the way this kid acts makes me wonder, for the smallest of split seconds, if she can see something that I can’t.

Sometimes when I’m sitting next to her at the table helping her eat, she’ll take her spoon and offer me a bite. I will pretend to take a bite of her food. She’ll laugh. Then she sometimes turns to her other side, offering somebody invisible a bite. And laugh. Excuse me? Who’s joining us for dinner?

And then there was last night. I was sitting on my bed getting her settled before it was time for her to go down, when she kept twisting her head around to look at an empty corner of the room next to the door and saying “Ti-ta!” in the particular intonation she usually reserves for when she sees my cat, Eleanor. But there was no cat. Eleanor was sleeping in another room. The corner was empty. As I moved Juniper to her crib, she started reaching in the direction of the empty spot, like there was something there she wanted, and repeating “Ti-ta!” Still nothing there.

There are other times she’ll stare at empty space and laugh or cry out in distress, or move her limbs in a manner that looks unnatural. She’ll sing songs without melodies, repeat syllables over and over, offer toys to nobody. And sometimes, when she’s on the changing table, she’ll cover her ears and close her eyes like she’s trying to shut something out.

She recently started growling. Sometimes she smiles and makes eye contact when she does it.

I’ve never spent this much time directly caring for a baby before, so I have no idea if this is normal. I’m choosing to believe that kids are just spooky sometimes, and that my long-held non-belief in the supernatural is durable enough to withstand my own child focusing on a dark corner of the bedroom and giggling like she sees something.

If you've got stories of kids or babies acting spooky (or if you were a spooky kid), I'm collecting them for a future post. Form here.

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