My own paranormal experience #3

It's been a while since I related any of the weird experiences I've had in my life. As with the other experiences I've written about - I'd like to hear from anyone who can offer me a rational explanation for the following events.

I forget the precise date, other than it being the end of 1989, or possibly early 1990. I know it was a winter month, with short days and long nights. I lived in a shared house in an area popular with students. The two lads who lived upstairs were students, and they will play a role later in this story. I've changed all the names in this account, out of respect for the privacy of the others involved. This next story is very strange - but it is exactly how I remember it occurring.

One of my best friends at the time was an artist - I'll call him Joe. He started dating a girl, who I'll assign the pseudonym Heather. She was initially quite hostile to me, because she was mistrustful of my friendship with Joe. But I managed to assure her pretty quickly that I had no romantic interest in Joe, so she and I became quite friendly.

Heather, sadly, was quite a disturbed young woman. She would frequently cut herself, usually for attention. I found her behaviour disturbing, not just because of the self-harm, but because she would do it so openly. I'd known other self-harmers, who would take great trouble to hide their self-inflicted wounds from others. Needless to say, Heather's self-injuries were never very serious, although Joe and I, on more than one occasion, had to hide all sharp implements, or anything that could be fashioned into a sharp implement, where she couldn't get at them. We literally had to fight with her to stop her hurting herself.

At the time, I was concerned for Heather, as she was only seventeen. Although I was disturbed by her behaviour, my concern for her well-being, plus her relationship with one of my closest friends, meant I became quite close to her. It wasn't unusual, if she had a row with Joe, or her family, for her to turn up at my house very late at night.

At 3 AM one morning, my doorbell rang. I was annoyed, not just at being woken up, but the fact that the bell had gone. I was a nocturnal creature in those days, as were most of my friends. But we were always respectful of others, so my late-night visitors never rang the bell, throwing small pieces of gravel at my window instead, so as not to wake my house mates. I looked out of the window right next to my bed, but saw nothing, as the front porch blocked my view of whoever was there. So I headed for the big bay window, and looked out of the side window overlooking the front door. I saw Heather smiling, waving, and gesturing to me to let her in. But something was wrong, very wrong. I knew instinctively, that the figure at my door was not Heather, however much it looked like her.

The first thing I noticed was that she was wearing a tatty old pair of boots that I knew her mother had tossed into the garbage when she wasn't looking. Heather loved the boots, but her mother was embarrassed to see her wearing them. So she binned them and gave Heather a brand new, shiny pair. I also noticed that Heather's face was a very strange colour. It was a bluey-grey colour. She was a pale-complexioned girl, but I'd seen her many times at that location, from that angle, at night. I can promise you she was never blue-grey. There was also a strange sheen to her face. Her actions were weird too. Her gesticulations seemed speeded up and jerky, and there was something almost frantic about her grin.

At that moment, a very strange feeling came over me. Think of the way your mouth feels if your dentist gives you an injection. Well, my whole body felt like that, slowly freezing. The more the Heather thing tried to get me to open the door, the more the alarm bells went off in my head, telling me I shouldn't. I started to back away from my window, shaking my head. But every effort I made to move, felt very peculiar, like I was trying to manoeuvre through very thick, stodgy jelly. I tried to speak, but I had difficulty forming the words. I finally managed to say 'No. You're not Heather. F*** off'.

The thing at my door fell still for a second or two. Then to my utter horror, it began to spin, very rapidly, resembling a slightly glowing, silvery-blue vortex, and shot straight across the road, until it reached the garden wall of the house opposite. It then shot straight up the road, at a 90° angle. I lived close to a junction with another road, so when it reached that junction, it took another 90° turn and headed out of sight, obscured by the houses that lined the neighbouring street.

My immediate reaction was to turn on all my lights and close my curtains. As you can imagine, I was pretty freaked out, but after pondering for a while, decided it must have been some kind of bizarre, sleep-walking dream. At this point, I'd like to point out that I've never been a sleep-walker, but when I look for explanations, I look for logical ones, especially when experiencing something which, quite frankly, sounds insane. I eventually fell asleep, when daylight came. When I awoke, although I still felt very unsettled, I started to accept my visitation was nothing more than a peculiar and unpleasant dream.

Joe paid me a visit that afternoon, and from our conversation, it was obvious Heather had been with him all night. I was a little relieved, as at one point, I feared I may have refused to let her in, whilst in some kind of weird, soporific fugue. I dreaded to think what might have happened to her, had she been trying to seek sanctuary from some kind of danger. I had finally dismissed the whole episode as a dream, when the two students arrived home from college. They glared at me, and one of them, puffed up with indignation, said 'would you please tell your friends not to ring the bell at three o'clock in the morning? It's not fair. We have to be up for early lectures'. I could have dropped on the spot, when the student confirmed the time of the doorbell ringing, as the same time I was woken.

A couple of months later, despite being engaged to Joe, Heather suddenly ditched him for another guy. She'd been cheating on Joe for a while, and broke his heart. He attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of painkillers. He damn near succeeded. She had the cheek to try to justify her actions to me, and condemn Joe as a sad attention-seeker, for his suicide attempt. But his actions were no cry for help - he fully intended to succeed. She and I haven't spoken since, for obvious reasons, and she caused a whole heap of trouble for me afterwards, by spreading malicious lies about me.

So what was that Heather thing at my door that night? Her nasty side manifesting itself as some kind of apparition? Was it something masquerading as a friend, trying to lure me out into goodness knows what? Did something try to warn me of her duplicity, by showing me a fake Heather? Or did I really just dream the whole thing, despite independent corroboration of the doorbell ringing? And if it was a dream, was it a prophetic warning about a false friend? I honestly don't know ...