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It's Simon! The Day I Was Recognised By A Stranger

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Anonymous

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IT'S SIMON!

Simon Garlick

I'm looking for some answers to something strange that occurred to me in 1998.

I was working at a tourist attraction in Manchester, England when at the end of a long Thursday I was getting ready to go to a works party. It was about mid June and it was a sunny evening. Myself and a colleague went into the centre of town to get some cash from a machine. We were walking along Deansgate past Demitries when a young boy around 10 years old ran past myself and my colleague Chris. He then turned round and looked for his Mum who was some way behind us. In doing this he looked straight at my face and screamed with a look of complete terror on his face "Its Simon!" and shot past us back to his Mum.

As you could probably imagine, this was quite a shock to myself and Chris also and Chris turned to me and said "bloody Hell, mate! What was that about?"

I was speechless, and simply laughed the incident off. You see, my name IS Simon. I had never seen the child before, and couldn't possibly imagine where he would know me.

Chris and myself both have a laugh about this still, but recently it has been troubling me. Why would I scare him so? How did he know my name? What on earth was going on?

At the time I remember saying that he had probably met me at the attraction,
but I was an actor, my own name was never used, I had no close contact with
visitors, and had only been working there for a few weeks. Thinking hard about it this probably wasn't the case. That is why the incident has unnerved me. So if anyone has any ideas, I would love to be able to put my mind at ease.

Text Recovered From Archived Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050209130048/http://www.forteantimes.com/happened/simon.shtml
 
Well you should have asked him. Looks like you'll just have to wonder.
:D
 
A few years ago my elder daughter, then about 18, was standing on a street in a town very far from home, on a hot summer day. A woman walked slowly along the pavement toward her carrying a baby. Daughter smiled at it as it babbled happily as babies do. But when it was next to her, it turned, looked her full in the face and said her name, perfectly clearly!
She nearly jumped out of her skin.

(My other daughter had a slightly similar fright: at an outdoor event, a little kid of about barely 3 rushed up to her and grabbed her legs, shouting 'Mummy! Mummy!' She was 14 at the time, and looked it! The kid's Da came and peeled him off very apologetically. Wonder what that was about?)
 
Isn't there a theory that we all have a double out there somewhere. For example I vaguely remember a story about a waiter that was the spitting image of a prince, or someone of importance. This was in France I think, a long time ago. Anyway these two men had the same names, were born on the same day, and had very similar events happen to them during their lives (e.g. I think they both married women that shared the same name). They also both died on the same day (I believe the Prince (?) was assasinated. If anyone else has heard this story and would care to elaborate on my badly remembered account I would be grateful :) Another minor example happened to my mother. She ran into her best friend from childhood who she hadn't seen for years and they got talking. Anyway if turns out they both had a son in November 1956, and they both named him Steven James! Okay my mum and her friend didn't resemble each other-but I wonder if the two Stevens did :D
 
Ron,
The doubles thing has happened twice in my family!
Once it wasn't confirmed: my dad went into a shop and the shopkeeper started talking to him like he knew him, and my dad eventually figured out the guy thought he was someone else, and explained, and the shopkeeping insisted he'd been in there before and they'd spoken. So we guessed there was someone who looked a lot like my dad walking around...

The other time was on the beach in Clacton. I was about 5 years old. There was another little girl there who looked exactly like me. Our parents were very confused and amazed.
I don't remember this so I guess I'll have to take my parents word for it!!

The thing with names...I have a theory! I once used to talk to a cat (ok, so I'm odd) that I saw on the way home from school. I was friends with all the cats on the street, they'd all come up and say hello. This one was really pretty with multicoloured fur. For some reason I started calling it Shelley. I can't even remember why. I'd always seen it outside a particular house, but if anyone was there I wouldn't talk to it.
Then one day I was walking past and it's owners were outside, calling it in...yes you can guess what they were saying!
"Shelley! Shelley! Come here!"


I checked when I saw it next, and it didn't have a tag or anything with it's name on.
I always thought that maybe the cat had told me it's name, psychicly or something.
Maybe I had some kind of ability to pick up on that subconciously. I've always heard that children are more prone to ESP type experiences and are more open to these things.

So basically maybe my theory is that the boy and the baby received the names somehow.
As for why the boy looked terrified...kids do weird things. I recall a kid at school who thought it was funny to run up to people and scream in terror. This was pre-home alone as well.

Ok....rambled enough.
I love the IHTM pages, by the way!!

Pinkle
 
The "Simon" thing is weird... maybe something horrible had happened to someone the kid knew called Simon? Or maybe Simon's one of the fearsome Mancunian dog-headed men mentioned on one of the other "IHTM" thread!

Doppelgangers are a crazy thing... my Dad has one in Penistone, which is confusing as the town is only ten minutes from where we live. It's quite uncanny... my brother saw him once at a distance actually and thought it was Dad. (And one of the blokes in an old Pukka Sauce advert looked EXACTLY like my dad, only an Indian version!).

My mum's often recognised by strangers too, and I once saw someone who looked so much like my brother in my old college that I would have thought it was him, if I didn't know he was elsewhere in building wearing completely different clothes.

My only doppelganger, on the other hand, is [insert male Hollywood sex symbol here].
 
Not THE Simon Garlick?!

Aaaaargh!

Just kidding!


Anyway, I was reading the Manchester Evening News once and some kid was knocked down and killed by a hit and run driver. The boy's photo they put in the paper was the spitting image of me. Freaked me out big time.
 
i once shouted hello ugly what are you doing in this part of town to my step sister only to find out it wasnt her, i swear to this day she was so alike i would make the same mistake again.
 
If I says it's related, it's related.

For an undefined period of time a couplea years ago, now, it seemed every other day a complete stranger would walk up and greet me by name, ask what was going on, talk about themselves for a while...

I don't know if they thought I was someone else, if I had met them and forgotten who they were (this does happen often, but not that often), or if I had a fan club or something.

Actually, somewhat related, someone told me I had a fan club, once, didn't quite believe it, though...

I thought this was pretty cool.


Looking back, there's been a couplea odd happenings somethin' like this... once as a wee elementary school student, I was getting on a bus when a high schooler spit right in my face, then recognised me an' started acting all apologetic an' even scared... them what spit at people don't typically feel bad when they hit.
Looking back, that too seems pretty cool, 'specially sicne I don't have spit on my face at the moment.

Well, not that much.
 
:confused:
I've had something similar happen to me,
I was minding my own business in our shopping centre, when a woman come up to me, gave me a huge hug, a kiss on the cheek, asked how Tom? was and to give her regards to my mum! Then off she went on her merry way.

Haven't a clue who she was but I wasn't going to complain about strange women coming up up and kissing me!!!:D
 
Evilsprout said:
Doppelgangers are a crazy thing... my Dad has one in Penistone, which is confusing as the town is only ten minutes from where we live.

That's quite a name for a town, really, doppelgangers aside.
 
me too

I was once on a cruise with my dad and a lady came up to me and said 'how are you doing, didn't expect too see you here? Wheres your dad.'
My dad then told her that he was my dad. The lady told me I was the spitting image of her nephew.
 
You know, I often forget what strangers to Sheffield read Penistone (that's Pe-niss-tun) as. I always thought it would be a fantastic name for a record company, in the style of Movietone.

I've been stopped by people saying 'Pete! Haven't seen you for years' a few times (they don't say anything else. I think it's a masonic thing).

Simon...have you considered the possibility of a time slip? I only suggest it, as it could be the case that you're going to become some kind of internation super-villain in the Doctor Doom league. Parents in the 2050s could be using you to frighten their children. There you go, mystery solved.
 
Mister Ed said:
.....................there's a tourist attraction in manchester?

There WAS a tourist attraction in Manchester. Granada Studio Tours closed down just over 2 years ago. Its all part of the breaking down of Granada Group to allow it to be taken over.


I thought about the time slip thing, I would hate to be a bastard in the future. Its not bad being one now, but I'd quite like to be seen as being a bit of a good egg in the future. Oh well, another mystery still unsolved.
 
More of a coincidence, but;

My cousins name is Michael Shaun, his fathers name is Sam, his mothers name is Ludmilla, and our grandfathers name was J.D His ex-roommate's name is Michael Shawn, his fathers name is Sam, his mothers name is Ludine, and his granfather's name was J.D.
 
Manchester - strange place!

Pretty much ANYTHING can happen in Manchester!

Kids freaking people out shouting their name, Giant Spiders, Ghosts, UFO's and Dog-headed Men! All in Manchester - how cool is that?! You can take your street crime, drug abuse and rain soaked litter-strewn streets and shove 'em!

I was born, live and work in Manchester and have often suspected that there was a sort of "Eerie Indiana" vibe around here. I can't really think of anything that I'VE seen personally but there's definately something going down round here...

Maybe when URBIS opens it'll tell us Manchester was a pre-historic UFO landing site where thousands of Dog-headed Men lie dormant...
 
I'm from Middle Tennessee and this is supposed to be one of the wierdest places in America. When the white man came to this land the native Indians called it "The Dark and Bloody Grounds". They wouldn't live here, although for some reason they didn't seem to mind hunting in the vicinity.
 
Shane said:
I'm from Middle Tennessee and this is supposed to be one of the wierdest places in America.

My "vote" is for Wisconsin -- swamp monsters,
UFO "launch pads", Ed Gein and the ELF installation.

TVgeek
 
england=

warminster and the surrounding county?
 
I was in Pennsylvania driving in a car, we had a cherry red dodge caravan at the time. We'd stopped at a red light, and in front of us was a dodge caravan of the same make, model, and year, but dark green. In the back seat, was a carbon copy of myself, staring back at me. I asked my family to look, but they didn't see him--the light'd changed, and he'd sped off in the opposite direction. :eek!!!!:
Thanks,
 
Re: england=

Faggus said:
warminster and the surrounding county?


Well, Warminster's certainly got a lot of strange people in it. ;)

I think I'm allowed to say this as my other half hails from those parts. Personally I think Mr 'Warminster Thing' Shuttlewood just had rather an active imagination, combined with the fact that Warminster is right on the edge of Salisbury Plain, home to the Ministry of Defence and goodness knows what of their hi-tech invention.
 
At an open-air event recently I heard a little lad of about 4 say my elder son's slightly unusual first name. I turned around to look at him and then heard him clearly say the whole name, which consists of three words. I stared after him and his parents, open-mouthed, but they didn't even glance at me. Mad.
 
My "vote" is for Wisconsin -- swamp monsters,
UFO "launch pads", Ed Gein and the ELF installation.

TVgeek


Well, we had a senator lobby for a UFO landing field, so there:confused: :confused: Okay maybe I shouldn't be bragging about that.
 
Shane said:
Well, we had a senator lobby for a UFO landing field, so there:confused: :confused: Okay maybe I shouldn't be bragging about that.

Don't worry about it --
we've got Jesse (The Body) Ventura as a governor! ;)

TVgeek
 
Re: "You must have a double!" "OK, large scot

garrick92 said:
I do like the idea that, in the last weeks of his life, Lee Harvey Oswald kept being spooked by people mistaking him for someone else (and vice-versa, I suppose). The "double-Oswald" incidents were simply the largest-ever recorded sightings of a 'death-watch doppelganger'! Obvious, isn't it! :madeyes:

Even weirder is that one of them was Billy Lovelady, who actually worked with Oswald at the book depository.

Photo comparison:
http://www.jfkresearch.com/images/lho_lovelady.jpg
 
Simple

As Simon isn't an uncommon name, it may have been coincidence. The child may not even have been looking directly at you, or speaking to or about you.

He may also have overheard your friend use your name and decided to play a rather childish prank, too.

Also, he may have known you tangentially while you never noticed him. You may have dated his sister's friend or something and not realized.
 
Re: Simple

FraterLibre said:
As Simon isn't an uncommon name, it may have been coincidence. The child may not even have been looking directly at you, or speaking to or about you.

He may also have overheard your friend use your name and decided to play a rather childish prank, too.

Also, he may have known you tangentially while you never noticed him. You may have dated his sister's friend or something and not realized.

True, True.... But not quite correct. I have only ever had One Girlfriend and met all her family.

The kid was too young to come up with the idea as a prank.
The kid looked straight into my eyes. And his reaction was unbelieveable. It was like an explosion of fear with tears streaming, load crying/wailing and the fasted run (away) I have ever seen a child do. He shot past us in the first instance too quickly to pick up on anything my friend or I were saying.

All in all.... it shat me up..... shat my friend up...... and most of all, and perhaps a bit obvious, shat the kid up.
 
Maybe "Simon" was a scary and violent ex of the little boy's Mum who looks a lot like you (sorry) and they'd moved from another town to avoid him - hence the shocked reaction.
 
More Coincidence

You may closely resemble someone he's afraid of who coincidentally is named Simon, hm?

Or perhaps he knows YOUR SECRET IDENTITY....
 
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