Close Encounters?

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Yesterday evening at twilight, expecting a delivery of a small leather pen case to safely house my Parker Duofold Maxima fountain pen [blog posts passim], I twice wandered into the conservatory/wintergarten/lean-to that fronts our place, to see if anyone was on their way down the lane. On both occasions I imagined that I could see someone approaching our gate, only to discover that the figure had vanished into immateriality before I could open the door. This happened twice, and I simply put it down to my next door neighbour returning from unloading his car. The delivery duly turned up after dark, and so I forgot about the false starts, but when I woke this morning, the incident was still lodged in my mind; and after the lucid dream I had just awoken from - twice - I wondered what exactly was it that I had I seen the previous evening: a ghost? A glimpse into an adjacent dimension? Dementia?

Anyhow, the memory of the manifestation faded during the day's machinations and I little considered it until this evening; when again waiting for a delivery, I decided to revisit the site of yesterday's putative visitation for further evidence of said manifestation. At first, I was taken quite aback by an identical spectral and evanescent embodiment, that I yet again encountered moving towards our threshold. At least, that is, until I retraced my steps and repeated the move towards the door, to be again faced with the exact same phenomenon in forward and reverse; realising at last, that the lighting conditions - half-light both inside and out - were perfect for the portrayal of that well-known theatrical effect, Pepper's Ghost: a pellicle mirror, in effect.

It was my own lower self that I saw, projected equidistant beyond the veranda window and that I could see, quite clearly apparently coming towards me as if outside of the house, and then disappearing as soon as I reached and opened the door. Easy, when you know how and what, but quite discombobulating in the moment, especially in its repetitive, almost cinematic ghost-story form, to which we are now so conditioned. Comforting to know I'm not yet going mad, but in a way kind of disappointing. My paternal grandmother was a Spiritualist and supposedly had 'the sight' and believed firmly in the 'other realm', a notion I felt quite comforting in a weird way when growing up; and so this cold water realisation that it was simply an optical illusion is a bit of an anticlimax, but there you go...

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