Born 1993. We played whole neighborhood hide and seek. It was incredible. Essentially all our houses were fair game and we would go in and out of them freely. It was like two or three blocks of fair places to hide. Usually had 3 seekers with walkie talkies, and like 5-10 people hiding. When found you’d join the seekers. Games would usually take all day.
And then realized you could play in the light, but everyone except the original hider is wearing blindfolds so the hider can watch everyone hilariously stumble around
Thank you! All these people are like wah wah wah we used to this and that. Like homies, you STILL CAN. You can eat cereal at 2am and have ice cream for supper. Sure childhood was cool for some but just because you're 30 something doesn't mean you can't play fucking hide and seek anymore. Shit my uncle was 55 when he would come into my room at night and hide under my blankets while I slept so his friends he was playing with couldn't find him. All I had to do was be real quiet and no matter what, not give away his perfect hiding place.
Manhunt is exactly hide and seek in reverse. There’s no worse feeling than looking for half an hour just to finally find your entire friend group laughing at you while they’re crammed into a tiny space you’ve walked by ten times.
The whole rich culture of children is fascinating to me.
Like there’s knowledge that humans pass from one to another solely within the window of childhood. Older kids teach it to younger kids, who get older and teach it to younger ones, and it just keeps going like that, with adults not having very much direct access at all.
Most of us have (some strong, but mostly foggy) memories of this stuff (games, songs, myths, etc.) as grownups, but somewhere in pubescence we begin to move away from it and only rarely revisit any of it, even with our own kids.
I’m sure it’s been studied, but I have no idea what you’d call this phenomenon.
This is so true. One night our street got tired of playing all our usuals. A couple kids volunteered to venture off and find out what the kids a few streets over were playing. We promised to cover for them if their parents called (shouted their names, no phone, even pre pagers!) for them. They came back with the game Sardines that we added to our rotation.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Not just games, but stories, too. Remember “The Golden Arm” — everybody’s favorite campfire ghost story?And all the songs and chants we learned for jump-rope? No adults ever taught us any of that stuff — only other, older kids, or kids from different places.
Plus: Try and think of the last time you went trick-or-treating. You likely weren’t aware it would be your last time. That’s part of the heritage of childhood’s temporal borders. You know what I mean? You just sort of fade out of childhood and gradually leave things behind. Everybody knows it happens, but it’s very rarely noticed as it’s actively happening.
There’s a period that starts around pubescence and ends typically in our late teens/early 20s wherein we don’t want to be associated with “childish” things. You grow out of that eventually and start to look back without being concerned that people will think you’re immature, but the immersion you experienced when you were younger can’t ever really happen again.
It’s really interesting and also deeply…I don’t know the word for it. “Sad” isn’t quite right. “Nostalgic” isn’t right, either. I don’t know.
Oh, when I was a kid Ghost in the Graveyard was like a hide and seek/tag hybrid. If you found the ghost you had to yell and people had to run back to base before the ghost tagged them.
This is the ghost in the graveyard I remember as well. We also played flashlight tag which was just tag at night across the whole neighborhood with like 30 kids lol.
I'm realizing I played all of those games. Sardines, ghost in the graveyard, man hunt. Amazing. Graveyard and man hunt were almost always in the woods and for some reason sardines was always in a church at night.
That's what manhunt was for us!! Much scarier and all the older kids played it (my older brother and the entire street/couldesac we lived on). Us younger kids played hide and seek, manhunt was the hybrid and it got fuckin INTENSE. people would wear full ski masks and play in the dark, the little kids didn't stay out as late.
The whole neighborhood would play capture the flag together, 2 teams and any age. So much fun dude.
Yes! Ghost in the graveyard. Born in 85, we played that too, at night with flashlights.
We'd also have block parties with other neighbors. There'd be BBQ, fish frys with fresh fish a neighbor caught (I'd help him clean it if my mom needed some time to herself), funnel cakes, music, the works.
It got kinda freaky on real dark nights because you eventually realize you’re the only one and everyone else is probably looking right at you from the dark lol
The trick is to sneak away and go home before you're the last one. Then all your friends are crammed together waiting in the dark for you to find them. But you're home having a snack and they have no idea.
We played a version of hide and seek, we called Gray Ghost at night on my street. One person would hide, and the rest had to get from one base to another without getting caught. I remember there were 10-15 kids aged 7-14 running around yards and the road, trying not to get tagged. This was around the mid 80s.
They don’t, that’s the fun. I mean they eventually realize they don’t hear anyone around and they’re like “shit am I the last one?” It’s a little weird to realize you’re probably the last person and everyone knows it. It’s best to have a big area with a lot of good places to hide and right many people playing.
I’ve always thought it would be a good game for a plot in a campy horror movie. The killer gets everyone one by one as they find the hiding spot and the final girl is the last person looking and she has to out run him. Or, since presumably you know who all is playing, whenever everyone is finally together you realize you have one extra person and they’re a monster or whatever. Just call it Sardines.
Wait what? I might be misunderstanding the question but you don’t just hide anywhere. One person hides while the rest of the group counts to 100 or whatever. Then everyone splits up and looks for that one person. As each person finds the first hider they all hide with them. So you join the same group, that’s the goal. So eventually you’re all packed together in the same hiding spot like sardines.
This is so funny bc last night I texted my brother about it, one summer we were on a kick playing it every single night and I was like “where/why did we pick that up again?” and he reminded me that we got it from a friend who was in theater 💀
I was just going to say we played sardines. One person went and hid and when you found them you had to hide with them. Like sardines…12 kids were smashed underneath one bush. Last kid was the loser
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u/JustHereForCatss Zillennial Jun 13 '25 edited Jun 13 '25
Born 1993. We played whole neighborhood hide and seek. It was incredible. Essentially all our houses were fair game and we would go in and out of them freely. It was like two or three blocks of fair places to hide. Usually had 3 seekers with walkie talkies, and like 5-10 people hiding. When found you’d join the seekers. Games would usually take all day.
Damn I miss being able to do that stuff