In the flickering black-and-white glow of 1970s TV sets, Circle of Fear (originally Ghost Story) delivered pure dread straight into living rooms. One episode from 1972, called “Alter Ego”, still chills people today. It is simple, quiet, and terrifying. It proves one horrifying truth: The monsters we invent in our minds can step into the real world and destroy everything.

This is the story of a lonely boy named Robert.

Robert’s parents barely noticed him. They worked long hours and left him alone with his thoughts. So Robert did what any bored, sad child might do—he made up a friend. Not just any friend. A perfect double of himself. They sat together, played chess for hours, and whispered secrets. At first it felt harmless. Fun, even.

But the double was the opposite of Robert.
It hated cats.
It loved smashing things.
And when Robert stayed home sick, the double went to school instead.

No one suspected a thing.

Robert’s kind teacher, Miss Gilden, saw the darkness first. In class one day, Robert drew a horrible picture: the teacher hanging from the ceiling with her own favorite pencil stabbed through her head. The drawing was so detailed it made her blood run cold.

She tried to help. She sat with him and said, “Friends can talk about anything.” She wanted to be his friend. She told him what was okay and what was not.

Robert looked her straight in the eyes and said, “I would like to kill you.”

The teacher took him to the principal. But Robert turned the tables. With a sweet smile he told the principal, “My teacher said she wants to see me dead.”

The other kids still loved Robert. They voted him onto the baseball team. They needed him. But at school, his double ignored them all and kept causing trouble.

Miss Gilden tried to defend the boy to the other teachers. “He’s a good student going through a bad phase,” she said. She believed it. She was probably right… at first.

The episode quietly shows how real evil starts. Serial killers often begin the same way: first they hurt insects, then small animals, then… people. Robert’s double followed that path exactly.

One morning the family cat was found dead inside the house.

Robert’s parents finally noticed something was very wrong. But they did nothing. They bought him violent horror comics and scary movies instead. A doctor warned them Robert needed real psychiatric help. They shrugged it off. “The doctor is wrong,” they said. Everything got swept under the rug.

Meanwhile, the imaginary double grew stronger. It no longer needed Robert to act. It walked the halls of the 1970s school on its own—kids in Sunday-best clothes, bright posters on the walls, everything looking normal on the surface. But something evil was loose.

Because the double didn’t really exist, it could do anything. Break rules. Hurt people. Kill animals. And every time, the blame landed on Robert.

Robert once told his double, “You know what I am thinking, but you can block me out.”
The double laughed. “You got an imagination as bad as that teacher.”
Later it sneered, “She’s not nice, and I don’t have to give this pencil back to her.”

The scariest moment comes when Robert flips his teacher’s huge wooden desk—300 pounds of solid oak—clean over like it weighs nothing. A five-year-old boy should only lift 10 to 30 pounds. Robert had super strength that day. The double was feeding on him.

His parents finally whispered the word: schizophrenia—two identities in one body. In older times the Bible called it demonic possession. The episode hints the double is exactly that: a demon wearing Robert’s face. It can even teleport, appearing wherever it wants while Robert sits helpless at home.

The teacher tried to fight back. She reported the horror, but a smug adult told her in a condescending voice, “You have a right to report it.” The system failed her. The episode also quietly shows how some teachers get bullied and destroyed—just like in real-life lawsuits we still see today.

In the end, the double murdered Miss Gilden.

But death did not stop her.

The ghost of the gentle teacher returned one last time. She sat across the chessboard from the double. “Your imaginary friend doesn’t know what I’m thinking,” she told Robert. “So we can beat him.”

They played for Robert’s soul. Whoever lost would keep the boy forever.

Move by move, with the dead teacher whispering the right plays, Robert won the game.

The double vanished.

Robert received one last gift from Miss Gilden’s ghost: her golden pencil. And finally—finally—his parents got him the psychiatric help he needed.

“Alter Ego” is only 50 minutes long, but it leaves a scar. It whispers that every child who feels invisible might create something that grows teeth. It shows parents who look away, schools that fail to protect, and the thin line between imagination and nightmare.

Watch it once… and you will never look at a quiet child playing alone the same way again.

Because sometimes the friend staring back from the mirror isn’t really you.
And sometimes it wants you gone.