people can imagine anything with very little evidence.

Years ago I was asked by a woman friend to speak to a male about him stalking her.

I listened to what she said but I was not convinced of his guilt at all.
Her main claim was that he had make a play for her years ago at some social occasion and he was upset that she turned him down, and now when she was walking home from town every afternoon from work she would often see him somewhere behind her down the street and she was sure that the reason was that he was after her, to seduce her or something. She was at the stage where she was becoming hysterical because it had happened often according to her and she was now anxious and panicky, yet felt that she did not have enough evidence to take to the Police for an official complaint.

Still not convinced I agreed to talk to him.

So one day at the time that she walked home I waited on the street and sure enough he appeared.
I reluctantly confronted him and he told me that he had lost his car license and that this was the time he walked home from work everyday.
I asked him to avoid her if he could and then she would calm down.
He was surprised, confused and readily agreed to avoid her. After that she never saw him behind her again.
I think he was just terrified of some fanatical female claim of stalking and he either went another way or got a ride home in a car with someone else.
[The interesting this is that year later he married a local woman who became a school Principal who is now my friend – 16-12-2021]

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I remember at home as a boy my mother getting upset about something that to me was completely imaginary.
My sisters were brought into mothers hysteria/excitement and they would also get caught up in it, with me watching on thinking, “There is nothing to this!” and staring in wonder how something could be made into something and then a group of blondes losing the plot over it. Instead of mother controlling the situation she tended to cause it or accelerate it, and of course her daughters would follow mothers call, behaviour.
All it takes in a family ifs for one person to be mentally struggling for the rest to catch on and they will all start seeing things that don’t exist as well.

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Through these kinds of experiences I discovered to my amazement that people can imagine anything with very little evidence, and then the rest of the “evidence” is their own imaginations going overtime and causing fear, worries, anxiety etc to feed on itself escalating the situation into something that it never was. Frightfully amazing to watch.

We should be mindful of what we think, what others think, do and say, and be careful because we don’t want to be shoved around mentally like a wave on the ocean by every strange thing told to us until what once seemed strange has now in our mind become a reality. The mind is mighty powerful and convincing when it becomes afraid, anxious etc.

All the best from

James M Sandbrook.
16th of December, 2018.