Okay, this is a crazy one! When I was little, I had MANY MANY MANY imaginary friends. So many, that I didn't even know them all. I had a place inside my brain called 'Imaginary Land' and when I closed my eyes I could see it. There was a short skinny man dressed like a doctor with glasses, who was balding. He was called 'Professor'. He stood oustide Imaginary land and held my key to the gates for me when I came and went. With my eyes closed, I saw myself talking to Professor, taking my key and opening the half-gold, half-silver gates to my land of imaginary friends. Then I would pick 1 or 2 or 3 of my friends and take them out, open my eyes and they would be in the real world with me. To name the only ones I ever played with: A monkey that jumped all over everything (I sat in school and glanced all over the room watching him do silly things that no one else could see, like sitting on peoples' heads), a tiny baby panda bear, 2 GIANT german shepherd with giant puppies (The mom was Midnight, the dad was Demon), A cool roller-skating girl (when I was in the car she would be outside of the window following us and keeping up, and she could skate up trees and along power lines!), my imaginary boyfriend with an australian accent names Killer (???), and an Eagle that could fly anywhere and bring me back anything.
Oh...boy.

Where did you keep YOUR friends?

When I was in first grade, all my friends made up imaginary friends. I thought everybody had an imaginary friend and they were invisible and only the person whose friend they were could see them. I spent all day in the bathroom crying because I thought God had forgotten to give me an imaginary friend.

Waaahhh---I STILL don't have one!

I used to believe that there were two evil people in my house who continually planted bombs to blow up my home. They would peek at me when I took a shower. If I washed in a particular fashion (e.g. shampoo, face, feet, left arm, stomach, shampoo again, etc.) the bomb would be diffused and I would spoil their plan once again. If I thought I did it wrong, I would stay in the shower extra long to redu the process until I got it right. The order would change everyday (except for special days when they would try to fool me and do the same order twice in a row). One of the guys was short, bozoo bald, and chubby, the other was a little dumber and taller and skinnier.

james

I was the baby in my family and my siblings were all much older. I had an imaginary friend named Pukka. Pukka and I played together every single day and he kept me from being lonely. Pukka also went with us everywhere and I would sometimes say (as in throw a fit) that we "forgot" him in the house as we were leaving and we had to go back and get him. My family always indulged me and this went on for years. I am now 44 and lo and behold I am getting mail from Pukka. It appears he is a world wide traveler who has been "friends" with many small chidren who needed him through the years. (I suspect my older brother is up to this, but who knows? Maybe my "imaginary" friend was more real than I thought!)

Lisa

When I was little I had an imaginary friend named Raki.He was a guy who wore all black and had black dragon wings.He and I would play for HOURS!Pretending to fight each other and he would give me powers!One day he had to go to war with evil mole men.

Anon

when i was about 5, i didn't have many friends.
so i made one up. his name was sonic. (saw a videogame with his name + picture) he looks exactly like what he does now (ex. Sonic advunture battle 2) so i had him for a couple of years until 4th grade. last christmas (2005) igot Sonic Heroes and he came back only when i played the game on my gamecube. now that the disk broke thanks to a certian sister, my only memory of him is the instruction manuel :;(

misses sonic

My little sister used to have an imaginary friend called Jason Emmiel. She never got to meet him, but she used to talk to him on the phone (dunno what she heard?) and send him faxes by putting notes under the phone.

Mat

I used to have an imaginary friend who would only come out after it rained, i would imaging a puddle would turn in to blob with a smileyface. His name was puddle man, and we would go swimming in my pool and wade in puddles all day. My mother asked me what i was doing and i said " Not now mom i have to catch up to puddleman!!!" Wow i was weird lol

[Enter Clever Name Here]

I was very lonely when I was little, so I used to make-believe myself a lot of friends.
I used to stare up into the sun or lightbulbs to get the colorful splotches in my eyes. I thought this was them. At first I thought they chased me around, even wearing sunglasses didn't get them away, but we became friends.
when they faded away, I was sad.
I had imaginary friends until I was about 11-12?

Nitori

So I'm the youngest in my family and when we were younger my sister and brother would play together but exclude me. So I made up an imaginary friend named Kathy at the time I was two. I started to tell everyone about Kathy who's mom was in jail, her brother named Dayeco (day-echo) drowned in dirty water, kathy lived in a swear at one point in her life and also she didn't have a dad because I didn't think she needed one. I also used to believe that I could "turn her off and on" so if I didn't feel like playing with her then she would just disappear and when I felt like playing with her then she would come out of the swear and play with me. I also used to believe that she lived in the swear close to my house. Lol I was a weird child with a huge imagination.

Haley

When i was a little kid i had an imaginary shark/whale friend who made videogames out of malls and cows etc. just by pointing some invention in that direction and push a button, he lived in the clouds and put a banana on the sky when the moon came up
and an orange when the sun came up.
he had over 200 children and was really good at surfing
(he's norwegian name was Ola Bonga)

Weird imagination, huh?

LH from norway

We all believed in guardian angels and so my dad told us to name them. I named mine Danny (after a boy I liked) and my sister named hers Peanut Butter. We thought they would do things for us like be an alarm clock in the morning or find parking spots for us. My dad still believes it works.

Anon

I used to pretend that I was a twin named Patricia and my twin sister was named Beatrice (these were the names of two twin girls who went to my school.) In my imaginary family I had lots of younger siblings, including: Emily, the baby, Polly, Jonathan, Mary, who was a girl from school, and Dan, my real brother. I had two older siblings, Susan and Michael. I would always pretend that I had long golden hair and I was the prettiest one in the family and, well, you get the picture.

Meee

when I was seven i thought that that tingling feeling when the skin on your face tightens was my imaginary friend. I called it spirit and used to talk to it when i was at school. (I'd seen the tempest on tv and thought i had an aerial like that).

dolly

my imaginary friend was the cheshire cat (as in from Alice in Wonderland). He always used to pop up and give me riddles, an tell me to do stuff (which i always did, even if it was naughty....i mean would you argue with a cat with a mouth that size??) When people asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up, i always said the cheshire cat...he was my inspiration :P

Bexy

When I was four, I had an imaginary friend. Naturally, it was a purple cow that looked (ironically) like the calf on the milk cartons.

One day, my mother--who was totally unaware of my dealings with THE cow--came and sat down in my room while I was chatting away. I turned around when she said something and was extremely shocked to find that she had sat on my purple cow, and, in effect, had deflated her. You can only imagine how angry I was with my mother.

Things did pan out though. After all, purple cows come back to life, and mine did an hour later.

leliathomas

Ok, this is *really* weird. I used to go to my grandmas instead of daycare. Before she lived there, a young boy called Mark took his own life in there. I would constantly sit on the stairs and jabber to no-one. Then my gran asked me would I like a drink. Response? "Yeah, can Mark have one too?" From then on I had an invisible friend named Mark, who lived on my gran's stairs. How weird is that o_O

P@r@norm@l

I used to love the TV show "Punky Brewster" and I wanted a dog exactly like Punky's, the golden retreiver. Well, I was at the age where children start developing invisible friends and such. ...Well, my imaginary friend happened to have been a dog named "Brandon". He was exactly like the dog on Punky Brewster, except he was all white and he could talk. He went to preschool with me, slept in the same bed as me, and even ran beside us while we were driving in a car (on the freeway?). Mind you, no one knew this imaginary friend/dog existed except myself. Sooo, one day, my mother was getting ready to sit down on the couch and I started screaming. Crying hysterically, and she was like "WHAT?>!?! WHAT?!?!" and I go, "YOU'RE GONNA SIT ON BRANDON!!!!!!!!" ...she looked at the couch, looked back at me and goes, "Oh, sorry, I didn't see 'Brandon' sitting there......" and she sat down at the other end of the couch. I don't think she has thought I was very "sane" since that day...

Jennifer.

I didn't so much as have an imaginary friend, more an imaginary fox. It was just a mornal fox which slept under my bed. But thats nothing, my mum had an imaginary horse.

Ana

When my five year old neice was going through the gibberish stage in her language development, a certain phrase, "Ponzi Wonzie," kept recurring. It didn't take long for her to develop the words that she needed to communicate, but Ponzi remained.

By the time she was two she was drawing pictures of Ponzi on the wall; a circle with a face inside it and lines radiating from it. "Ponzi is a boy, but he's a spider today."

After a while we didn't hear from Ponzi any more. Then one day last year we saw a commercial for a new cartoon on the Cartoon Network called "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends." After seeing that, Marie announced that that is where Ponzi was staying.

Since then Ponzi has been back in our lives full force. Usually he is a boy, but sometimes he is a grown up or even a spider. He has a whole changing ensemble of family and friends, and even his back story changes frequently. (She told me recently that Ponzi was Jewish and that he lived in Africa.) But Ponzi is consistently with us.

Sometimes Ponzi does things that Marie wishes she could do, like drive a car, and sometimes he does things that she does, like take swim lessons. He also does things that get Marie into trouble like making messes.

Occasionally the wind will blow open the front door and she will run to it shouting, "Ponzi! Shut the door when you come in! You'll let the dogs out!" Or if the dogs bark at nothing, she tells Ponzi to quit teasing them.

To me the most fascinating thing about Ponzi is that Marie sometimes uses him as an ice breaker. Whenever she meets some one new, particularly new adults (teachers, etc.) she opens with a Ponzi story. And when they ask who Ponzi is, she says, "Well, he's my imaginary friend."

Now when I run into people who have met Marie and Ponzi, they ask about both of them. In fact, some teenagers who work with my mother are even blaming Ponzi when they get into trouble now.

Aunt Marie