Midnight Stories:  The doppelganger

When I was in prep, we used to reside in a bungalow in a village in Marikina.

We had a few neighbors, so we weren’t isolated from people. Because of my schedule, I would come home after lunch with just my mom in the house.

We didn't have a maid at the time and I was very sure that when the incident happened, we had no visitors.

After I removed my shoes by the doorstep I didn’t see my mom in our living room. But when I removed my ID lace in front of our full-body mirror, I saw mom from behind in her floral blue and white house dress. I smiled at her, but after I took off my uniform, I looked again and my mom was no longer there.

And then I realized that the full-body mirror was very near the door that led to the bedroom — the door that didn’t make that usual creaky sound when it should have because that's where my mom was supposed to come from.

With chills traveling through my fingertips, I tried to open the door but couldn't. I just froze there until my came out of the room moments later.

“O, dumating ka na pala. Kumain ka na?” She asked. I told her: “Ma, akala ko nandito ka. Nakita pa kita sa salamin, Ma...”

We weren’t really sure what I saw. But a few years later it happened again in a rented house in Bulacan.

I was in third grade at the time, and one night, I was left alone in the bedroom watching the news. There were three sets of jalousie windows by the right side of the bedroom wall, two of them were open and the set nearest me was closed.

When I opened the jalousie beside me to let some air in, I freaked out. It was worse than my experience in Marikina.

There was my “mom” again as I opened the window, but missing her head. She wore the pink shirt my mom was wearing that night. It would be impossible for a real person to appear beside the window, as there’s almost no space for someone to put him or herself there.

I have since learned that I’m not the only one who experiences things like this. People call these “doppelgangers”, a German term for the look-alike or double of a living person. Seeing one is often regarded as a sign of bad luck.

When I was in first year, a classmate of mine told me that in order to get rid of the bad luck, I must not tell the person that I saw his or her double and that I should ask someone to lightly slap me.

However, that was the last time I saw a doppelganger, surely one of my eerie experiences back when I still didn’t know how to control my otherworldly senses. — JDS/GMA News