THE RANDOMISER
THIS ISSUE: DOPPELGANGERS
DoctorWho is chockful of sinister duplicates. What is it, wonders Gary Gillatt, that makes them so unsettling?
What’s the scariest book ever written? Stephen King claimed his 1983 novel Pet Sematary traumatised even him – and one imagines the King of Horror doesn’t scare easily. Well, I’ll tell you this… It’s Bluey at the Beach compared to the gruesome grimoire that is 1977’s Usborne ‘Book of Ghosts’. A compendium of ‘real’ spooky encounters for children, this slender tome traumatised a generation with tales of the Screaming Man of Pluckley and Gef the Talking Mongoose. One entry in particular scared the willies out of this young reader: “The Doppelganger: also known as a fetch, this ghost is the double of a human being. If someone is unfortunate enough to see their own doppelganger, they will soon die.” For years I lived in fear of meeting my own double.