Knowing a Psychopath

I wrote an article here about psychopaths, took the test.  I was talking about it with an old friend when she called a name of someone we had known all our lives.

“You know Ginny (not her real name) is a psychopath?”

At first I made that face, but then it changed to shock, then recognition.  My friend reminded of some of Ginny’s antics.

Ginny was always believed.  She could tell you that your mother threw your cookies in the garbage and you would believe her.  And if your mother denied it, you would not believe her.

Ginny was capable of getting people to believe whatever she wanted, and there were so many incidents in which Ginny would say that you said…. or tell you that this person didn’t like you… and you would believe her.

I shared something that happened to me.

Many years ago Ginny had a friend called Margie.  That was her best friend.  We all knew Margie and she became our friend.

I was living three blocks from Margie and used to visit often as she visited me.  I had no telephone.

I was the talking point because in those days, the only phones were land lines and I was not planning on living at the address very long so didn’t have one.  No one could call me.

I actually lived without a phone at that flat for two years, but Margie had moved thousands of miles away after I’d lived there only one.

Margie used to phone up Ginny and Ginny would relay info to us if/when.

I moved a few thousand miles in the other direction and would write Ginny once or twice a month as I did others.

Then one day Ginny wrote me a vituperative letter and I never answered.  Years passed and the Internet became available and one day, just for fun, I looked up Ginny and I found her.

I wrote an email.  She answered.  She seemed normal. Then she advised me that Margie had been trying to contact me.  She’d left messages for me on a particular site.

I went to the particular site and found the messages Margie had left for me.

I think there were about five different messages over a period of time.   Each one begging me to contact her, telling me about her life.

I wrote to Margie.

I received an angry response in which she told me that she will never forgive me for phoning her mother those years ago and telling her mother what she had told me in secret on the phone.

I never had a phone.  The only person Margie had called was Ginny.  If anyone had called Margie’s mother it would be Ginny.

Yet Ginny was such a successful psychopath that she was able to tell Margie pure rubbish, and Margie believed her.

Margie, who had been searching for me for months, going to a site I didn’t visit, leaving messages I would never have seen had Ginny not directed me.

I received an email from Ginny asking; “Margie contact you?” and a smiley face.

Yes, Ginny is a psychopath.