In the late 1940s, a young family moved into a modest house on Canmore Street, just off Belfast’s Shankill Road. Before long, their little daughter began to behave in a way that puzzled her parents. She was often overheard speaking to someone in various rooms of the house, yet whenever her parents went to check, they found her entirely alone.

At first, they dismissed the behaviour as nothing more than a harmless phase—a child inventing an imaginary playmate to pass the time. But as the weeks went on, their daughter began to provide unsettling details about this “friend,” whom she called Old Tom.

According to her, Tom was an elderly man with a bad leg that gave him a noticeable limp. She also told her parents that his wife had died some years earlier, and that his son had been killed during the war. The idea that their child’s imaginary companion was not another child but an elderly widower with such specific life experiences was troubling enough. Yet worse was still to come.

One evening, while sharing a drink in a local pub, the girl’s father mentioned Old Tom to a few of his neighbours. Their faces grew grave. They explained that before his family had moved in, the house had indeed belonged to an elderly gentleman named Tom. He had walked with a limp, his wife had passed away, and his only son had been killed in the war. Crushed by grief, Tom grew increasingly withdrawn, rarely leaving the house. Eventually, when neighbours realised they had not seen him in some time, they forced entry—only to discover that Tom had taken his own life, hanging himself in the back bedroom.

The chilling details passed from neighbour to father, and from father to child, suggested that what the little girl called an “imaginary friend” may not have been imaginary at all.