Sort of the opposite of ancestor ghosts. My mother told me that as a young child she had two "invisible playmates. She described them to her mother, who responded that they might be the ghosts of her twin sisters who had died shortly after birth and that my mother hadn't known about (People weren't as open to telling children about family secrets and tragedies in that generation). After they were identified she never saw them again. She always felt that they just wanted to be recognized and remembered. My grandmother told me that as she recovered from the birth she saw Jesus with the babies in his arms and knew that they were alright. My grandmother was never a churchgoing woman. When I read Cardinal Newman's summation of the religion of ordinary English as "read the Bible and trust in God" I thought, that was my grandmother's religion as well.

Rita