As I have mentioned in other submissions, I have experienced paranormal encounters most of my life from the time I was quite young. There is one experience / memory that still has me confused from a paranormal context and I can't decide whether it was actually paranormal or just a confused memory.
Until I was three, we lived in an old Victorian style house in Teaneck, NJ. The house had been built around 1900. None of my surviving sisters has ever talked about any unusual experiences in the house. I have very vivid memories of the house and the rooms and could probably draw a reasonable floor map of the layout to this day, even though its over 40 years since I lived there.
The house itself was quite small for a Victorian and with six children in household, sharing bedrooms was a given. The bedroom where my crib/bed was located was shared with two of my older sisters, both of who were over 10 years older than I was. From the crib, I could easily see out the bedroom window and see the tree and the yard outside. The bedrooms were all on the second floor of the house.
I have always had this very vivid memory of looking out the window and seeing what I thought to be a monkey or ape swinging or crawling up the side of the house near the window. I don't remember any specific details about the creature, except that it had long dark hair and moved quickly up the side of the house. However, the memory is very vivid and I can still see the bedroom layout and the windows, and know it was summer because the trees had leaves on them. I can see the old fashioned latch screen on the window and the blue colour of the shingles on the outside of the house.
I mentioned this to my sister recently and she remembers me always talking about "the monkey" when I was little. Sometimes it made me laugh but very often it was something that frightened me into tears. I don't have any other memories of the creature other than the one I described above. When we moved to our new house, my sister says that I stopped talking about "the monkey" creature.
What puzzles me is that if it was an "imaginary friend", why the memories are so distinct and vivid to this day. Does anyone have any insight or similar experiences?