Yet again I've been trawling though my collection of stories to post, but yet again I find that I've already posted all the really juicy ones on here!
So, in the grand tradition of Christmas TV, I will repeat it!!
This is an allegedly true story, but I cannot comment on it's authenticity, as anecdotal stories are just that - anecdotes. However, it's a proper freaky and creepy story ~
The following weird incident happened in London in the 1980s, and was mentioned in a magazine and several newspapers but it has never been explained.
In October 1987, at 1.30 in the morning, a divorced 39-year-old woman named Rita Carson was awakened by a frantic hammering on the front door of her home in Wimbledon. Rita lived alone with her dog, a podgy old Labrador named Cally, and she was naturally nervous when she heard the knocking at that hour in the morning. She went downstairs, put on a coat, picked up a poker from the parlour, then peeped through the curtains of the bay window to see who was knocking at the door. It was a man, but because his back was turned, she couldn't see his face. Rita went to the hall and shouted, "Who is it?"
"It's me - Alan." said the stranger on the doorstep.
Cally started barking when she heard the voice. Rita calmed the dog down and said, "Alan who?"
"Your cousin Alan. Alan Warner." said the man.
Rita suddenly realised it was her cousin Alan, who lived in the Muswell Hill district of the capital, just ten miles away. She hadn't seen him since his father's funeral two years ago. "Hang on." Rita undid the bolts and took the chain off the lock. She opened the door and Alan stood there with his distinctive goofy grin.
"It's twenty-five to two in the morning." Rita. complained She was bleary-eyed and naturally wanted an explanation.
"She threw me out because I found out she was having an affair." said Alan, and he practically shoved his way into the house. Cally growled at him and then howled. Rita left the dog in the hall and made Alan and herself a cup of tea.
"Will you be all right down here if I go back to bed?" Rita asked her cousin. "I've got to get up at eight for work you see." she explained.
"Yes, of course." said Alan, and for some reason, he kept going to the parlour where he peeped out the window, as if he was looking out for someone.
"Are you on the run or something? Sit down and stop making me nervous." said Rita, and she asked him to go through his story once more. Alan said he had found a gold cigarette lighter in the bedroom of his home, and that it had started an argument between him and his young 25-year-old common-law wife. She had taunted him by saying that she was having an affair with a man her own age who was better between the sheets than Alan, who was forty-five. As Alan's partner owned the house, she had decided to throw him out. Alan said he had walked almost ten miles from Muswell Hill to his cousin's Wimbledon home, yet he didn't seem fatigued and remained on his feet, pacing and behaving edgy.
Rita said things would look better in the morning, and urged Alan to sleep on the settee. She brought a duvet down to him and two pillows, and even tucked him in. As Rita was leaving the living room, Alan said, "Thanks Rita. I'm sorry about calling on you all hours in the morning."
"It's okay. Get some shut eye eh?" Rita replied, and she turned out the living-room light and retired to her bedroom.
At about 3 a.m., Rita awoke to the sound of a dog barking. It was her Labrador, Cally. The barking was coming from somewhere in the distance outside the house. Rita jumped up out the bed and opened the curtains. She saw to her horror that Cally was running down the end of the street, chasing a cat. She wondered how the dog had got out, then remembered that Alan was downstairs. She turned to switch on the bedside lamp - and there was Alan, lying on the bed wearing only a pair of underpants. He smiled at Rita in a sinister way, and said, "Come back to bed love."
Rita was puzzled, then frightened. She ran out the room and Alan ran after her, saying, "What's the matter love? Don't you like men?"
And he grabbed at Rita's long hair as she ran down the stairs. There was a struggle in the hall, and Alan forced kisses on the terrified woman and ran his hands all over Rita's body. Rita let out a scream and Alan rushed into the living room and grabbed his jeans. As he struggled to put them on, he gritted his teeth and shouted to Rita, "I'm going to kill you now!"
Rita ran out the house and down the street. She turned a corner and ran into a public phone box. She dialled the police and as she was put through to them, Alan came running down the street towards her. Rita screamed and blurted out where she lived and what was happening, just seconds before the enraged Alan arrived at the phone box. He pulled Rita out the telephone box then grabbed the receiver and tried to smash it against the perspex panels of the box. Rita ran off again and hid behind a grass hedge further up the street. Alan walked off, and the police quickly turned up, thinking a so-called domestic incident was in progress. Rita came out of hiding with tears streaming from her eyes and told the police officers what had happened. "Which way did he go?" asked one of the officers, and Rita just pointed to the end of the street. Two officers ran in that direction and a patrol car followed them. A police woman escorted Rita back to her home. The police never found a trace of Alan.
Then there was a mysterious twist in the proceedings. It transpired that Rita's cousin - Alan Warner - could not have attacked her, because he had been in Coppetts Wood Hospital recovering from open heart surgery, and had been in the hospital hovering on the brink of death for over a week because of complications. Stranger still, on the night Rita was allegedly visited by her cousin, Alan had been saying some strange things while he was in a semiconscious state. Nurses told police that Alan had kept mumbling something about his wife having an affair and of a journey he was making to a cousin in Wimbledon named Rita.
Another strange incident also came to light which only served to deepen the mystery even more. A charity worker who was a close friend of Alan Warner said he had spoken to his friend outside a public house in Highgate - at the very hour when Alan was in fact being operated on. The strange case attracted the attention of the Psychical Research Society in London, and investigators from this organisation theorised that through some bizarre biological process, Alan Warner somehow projected an etheric double of himself as his body was being subjected to the trauma of being operated on. But how would a projection be solid enough to attack Rita? Rita said she thought that there was something evil about the impostor who assaulted her, and she also said she regretted not taking notice of her dog Cally, who had reacted with such unusual hostility towards the night-caller, as if she had known there was something sinister about the man.'
(This was taken from one of wonderful Tom Slemens' book - but I can't recall which - sorry
)So..what on earth happened?
Did Alan have a crush on his cousin, and did he astrally travel to attack her?
Was it a doppelganger?
Was it just some random spirit who chose to impersonate Alan to attack Rita?
Was it all hysteria??
Would love to hear your thoughts
Hammy x x x
