Mental Condition, or Something Else?

Last year I met a girl, a new student at my school, who as a child suffered from psychosis and hallucinations. She had a difficult childhood, and saw therapists who helped with her problem, but hearing the stories led me to remember experiences from my childhood. This girl told stories of going to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and ending up in some complicated, imagined plot with monsters and made-up characters. It got better over time, but she still wakes up in cold sweats, seeing things walking around her room.

It happened for the first time when I very young, no older than four or fve. My younger brother had not been born yet, and my younger sister slept in my parents' room. I shared a room with my older sister, Susie. She was a hard sleeper, and reacted with nonchalance to my waking dreams, as did my parents. I would not call them nightmares, as I was only scared a handful of times, but these visions were certainly weird. One Christmas Eve, I talked extensively with a giant penguin who stood at my bedside. He told me that he was friends with some dinosaurs, and I should meet them. Later in that same year, I sat up in bed and watched as little squirrel-sized dinosaurs walked around my room and climbed up onto my bed. One night I lifted up my sheets and saw a little knight in armor fighting a fiery dragon. On another occasion I woke early in the morning to see spiders spinning webs all over my room, over my head and up in the corners and across my sister's bed. I got scared and woke up Susie, who got mad and shouted at me, saying she didn't see any spiders and I was crazy. But they stayed there, even after I fell asleep again and woke up later in the morning. I was six or seven by this point, and we moved not long afterward, but I clearly remember one night before we left, when I laid in bed looking up at a little girl who lived in our ceiling. Her name was Julia and she was an angel. She told me that my sisters were nuisances, and that I would one day have a little brother (I did only a year later).

As soon as we moved, the visions and the strange creatures stopped. There was no more Julia, no more dinosaurs, no more floating packages of Bubble-Yum chewing gum over my head. I think sometimes that it was all in my head. Maybe I had psychosis as a child, like my friend. But then, just this past fall, I heard a story from a friend at church, whose mother had grown up in a distinctly haunted house. The mother's bedroom as a child had been inhabited by four ghosts, one in each corner, who had separate personalities and talked to the girl at night, asking about her day and such. There are many similarities between our experiences. Debbie's ghosts sent her mini fireworks that spelled out her name; maybe mine sent me visions of dinosaurs and penguins. What do you think? Psychosis, or a friendly spirit?