Doppelgänger

Dear readers: I am taking a quick vaycay & visiting my mom & going to a knitting conference (no really) & all sorts of groovy stuff in the Greater Hartford area. When I get back, I will return to the usual rant format but until then a seasonal tale that happens to be true....

I have been plagued by doppelgangers all of my life & so have you. Officially they are those things that look just like a person, a person you know, maybe even you but it is not that person (or you), it is an evil spirit.

I used to think I saw them because of my very poor vision. That is I would think I saw someone I knew do something they would never do & then I would tell myself that I must have mistaken another person who looked a bit like that someone I knew doing something in character for themselves just not for the person I thought they were. I had a vague sense this was not strictly correct, but if you tell your teachers there are evil spirits impersonating your classmates, they call your mom.

I finally had to accept they were doppelgangers in October 1988. I was walking with my roommate J*** & her friend D***** through the woods. We had left the path quite by accident, but there were a lot of leaves on the ground & it had become obscured. None of us worried much; we were on a slope & could tell which way was up, which way was down. All three of us could find north any day & on all but the cloudiest of nights & it was the middle of a clear afternoon. Besides, both J*** & I were familiar enough with the area that we knew wherever we emerged we could find our way. They were having a conversation about another high-school friend & I wandered off, not really interested.

I was a few yards behind & up the slope when I saw it. It was tall, taller than any of us, thin, & blurry. It had a vague, blueish quality & it was moving fast, closing the distance behind the two of them. I shouted. They both turned & suddenly there was nothing there. We laughed, I said it must have been a shadow, admitted it creeped me out & moved closer in.

We finally reached the bottom, the trees were not as dense & we could hear distant traffic sounds. I stopped to look around, see which way our car was likely to be & I saw it again. It was shorter now, had long dark hair & was wearing the same blue shirt as D*****. We got the h*ll out of the woods.

Nowadays, I do not worry too much about the doppelgangers I can see. After all, if I can see them, they are not coming for me (the rest of you are on your own). What does freak me out are the ones I cannot see but my dogs can. As I type this, Farley-Boy is sitting on the rug in front of the back door staring out the window behind me. He keeps turning his head to the side, looking at me & then looking back out the window. I really really really hope there are squirrels hanging from my new window screens.