Doppelganger (2)

Everyone starts their story with "I'm a believer", or "I never used to believe in this junk but...". It's a good way to start because if I tell you I have always had an unhealthy interest in the Paranormal, something in you is going to disbelieve what I am about to say. I ask you to trust in me, although you don't and will never know me - this is true.

I saw my first ghost aged 5 in Bothwell Castle in Scotland, my next was at my childhood home in Motherwell (also Scotland) - I got used to him. I called him Abraham because he looked like old woodcut's of Abraham Lincoln. I believe he was merely a recording locked in the walls of our Victorian villa. Neither of these Ghosts were malicious.

I moved with my mother, after my parents divorce, to Glasgow. A superb city which I would entreat anyone to visit. The city has a pulse, it breathes and energises all who come here. It also has it's dark corners. One of these is to be found in the centre of the leafy, arty West End of my beautiful City. My mothers home is a flat (Apartment) in a cinverted Georgian Mansion. It has a huge ornate and heavy black door. The windows are tall as well as the ceilings. Even in the dead of night, it feels light and airy. This is because what lives there lives not in front but behind our eyes.

I knew there was a presence. He was a tall, broad, absence of light that would suck the air from my room from his place at the end of the bed. After a while I got used to him - he only wanted to watch. But when my friends inevitably came to visit - things started happening.

"Gil, why did you wake me up in the middle of the night?", "I didn't hon, I was fast asleep". I had woken Anna from a violent dream to tell her everything was okay, only I'd been at the other side of the house and I don't sleep walk.

Stu and Lori woke me screaming in the night, they had both been sleeping in the living room, sharing the self same dream about death, they felt someone was watching them from the cupboard, someone who was flashing violent and hideous images at them. When I went in to see if they were okay, they were white and trembling with terror. They couldn't believe they'd had the same dream .

I myself dreamed that I could float and I was flying through the mirrors of the house, floating up behind whoever was looking at themselves and slitting their throats. It was horrendous and still frightens me to this day.

But it is, once again, my twin, my Doppelganger that scares me most. As I said Anna said she woke her to tell her not to be scared. Another time Mick, a good friend was sitting babbling away in the back room - my old bedroom (I no longer live at my mums). I went in to ask who he was speaking to - he said I'd walked into the room and gone into the walk in closet. Of course I wasn't there. Nicola also had the same experience. I was in the kitchen when she walked past the kitchen door from my old room to the living room, chatting away. Only when she got to the living room I was gone. I had never been there - I was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Mick, Anna and Nicola refuse to sleep there now - all three having had their waking dream of my Doppelganger went on to have a nightmare where I was screaming at them from the closet that something was attacking me. My answer to this? I had a nervous breakdown in that room after my parents divorce - I think that all that is bad in me is trapped in there, and she comes out sometimes, walks around - like a recording - she won't hurt you but she'll disturb your sleep. I have exorcised the room - performed water, air, earth and fire cleansings but she's hanging around. Maybe she's my madness and if that's the case perhaps i'm glad she's not in me. Perhaps the man at the end of the bed, the absense of light took my form from all the fear and hurt that I was experiencing there. Either way she terrifies my friends (to the extent that mick went into shock and had to be calmed for hours with endless cups of hot sweet tea). Maybe I have a more forceful (dual) personality than I thought I did.