I really don’t know where else I can try to explain this. I feel like I’m going crazy, or maybe I’m losing my mind or memory (no, dementia doesn’t run in my family) because what other explanation is there?
I (32F) have been having multiple instances where people tell me they talked to me when I can’t remember that ever happening.
At first my husband (35M) and I thought I was just forgetting little things, because it started with one of the other moms in the neighborhood asking me why I didn’t bring any cups and napkins for the monthly get together our neighbors have. I told her I didn’t know I was supposed to bring cups, just that my husband was told to bring sodas, and we did. She said that we had seen each other at the grocery store and she mentioned it to me, but I honestly didn’t remember that conversation at all. My husband and I sheepishly apologized and we figured I just didn’t listen well enough and it was my own fault. Not a big deal. People forget things.
Then at work (I’m a teacher at our town’s only middle school), one of my students asked me why there weren’t any pizzas when the class arrived for 4th period. I thought he was just being silly, so I said “because lunch isn’t until 6th period.” But the whole class was starting to get antsy when I just continued with the lesson. I finally asked why no one was paying attention and another student of mine said they were waiting for the pizza. I asked what pizza, because this was the first I was hearing about it. The class told me that on Monday I had promised a pizza party for them on Friday if they all turned in their notebooks, which they did.
Now this is what really confused me because that Monday, I had missed 4th and 5th period due to a mess in the teacher’s lounge (coffee was spilled and I had to quickly rush home to clean up and change, which my principal allowed), and my boss told me he’d send a substitute to cover for me for the moment. I was never in my classroom that 4th period, so how did all my students remember that I promised a party? I told the kids the sub might have said it and not me, and I wasn’t aware. This really upset them all, but what else could I do? I never said that, but all the students swore I was in the class that day and I had, in fact, promised.
More situations like this kept happening, but I really didn’t take it too seriously until it started getting weirder, and more personal. It didn’t stop at conversations I was never part of either.
One night my husband was grumbling about cold water in the shower and hair in the drain, so I asked him why he showered in cold water. This really seemed to annoy him.
“Like it was a choice. You spent like an hour in the shower, and you didn’t pull your hair from the drain when you got out,” he snapped at me.
“What are you talking about? I haven’t showered yet,” I said, because I really hadn’t, I was going to shower in the morning.
“Well the hair in the drain was yours, and I heard the water running for an hour when I passed by the restroom. I know it wasn’t Charlie.”
“Of course it wasn’t Charlie, I was downstairs with him this whole afternoon.” Charlie (5M) is our only son.
He didn’t really say anything else, but I could tell he wasn’t satisfied with my answer. In hindsight, this should have been a much bigger red flag to me about this whole situation, but I chalked it up to my husband just being a little distracted.
Another time, I woke up on Saturday and went to the kitchen to make my morning coffee, but there was already a pot that had been made. My husband doesn’t drink coffee, and obviously my 5 year old didn’t make it. Maybe I had made it last night and forgot to throw out the leftovers, right?
The coffee was still hot.
It made me feel very concerned, but I stamped down any alarms going off in my head and made my toast. Now, I make toast in a specific way, where I make 3 pieces with butter, and one smear of peanut butter, one of strawberry jam, and one of Nutella all on the side of the plate so I can dip my toast. I know, it’s not practical, but I like it this way, and my husband has always found it a bit strange. Whenever I’ve asked him to make my toast, he puts the condiments on the bread which doesn’t bother me. Well, I took my toast upstairs to my room so I could watch the morning news in my bedroom and there was already a plate of half eaten toast on my nightstand. I felt sick seeing it. I knew for a fact my husband didn’t make it, nor did he make the coffee, because he was still sleeping.
I had to be losing my memory, and it terrified me.
I started writing down my daily activities so I could keep better track of what was going on, and aside from a few people in my life claiming to have conversations with me I wasn’t able to remember, things seemed to get a little better.
Until two weeks ago.
My husband got home from work and I was on the couch watching TV.
“You guys back already?”
“Back from what?” I asked. When I had gotten home, I fed Charlie and played with him for a bit until he fell asleep. I left his room, went to the restroom, and went to the living room to watch TV.
“The park. You told me last night you were taking Charlie.”
I sighed, frustrated that my memory kept slipping. I must have promised to take Charlie and forgot.
“No, we didn’t go to the park, he’s sleeping right now.”
My husband went to check on Charlie, but he immediately came back. “Where’s he sleeping?”
“His room.”
“No. No, Charlie isn’t in there.”
My blood turned cold. I never heard him get up, and I knew for a fact I had put him to sleep in there an hour ago. We both started screaming his name and searching the entire house for him, but we couldn’t find him. I started crying as I looked for him because we had never had a situation where we lost our son. My husband, in a panicked voice, said that maybe Charlie had gone to the park without me. The park was right next to our neighborhood, only a ten minute walk, so it wasn’t impossible.
We took off running towards the park and I cried harder when I saw Charlie waiting for his turn on the slide. My husband grabbed him and started inspecting him for any harm and asking him why he left the house by himself.
“I didn’t, mommy brought me. There mommy is,” he said innocently, waving at me with a small smile.
I shook my head. “No baby, I put you down for a nap. You came by yourself.”
“No, I was gonna sleep, but you came back from going pee and we walked.” Charlie explained this like it was obvious, like I should have known.
A neighbor of mine must have overheard and joined in the conversation with, “yeah, I saw you guys walking over and I decided to bring my girls over, too. We were chatting on the bench a little while ago.”
“What,” I breathed, my mind racing. I hadn’t been to the park all day, and yet my own son was claiming we walked over together?
This was really the first time the thought that there was someone else pretending to be me, someone acting in my place in town and at my job came to my mind, and if that wasn’t scary enough, that means whoever it was was in my house. With my son. She had taken my son.
Either I was actually losing my mind, or someone else was living as me.
Later that night, I told my husband my thoughts after we had calmed down over the park incident, and he didn’t know what to think. In a quiet voice he mentioned that some of his coworkers had said they thought they had seen me at a bar close to where they worked, it was the bar where their company would go to after work to unwind. He said they saw me drinking and having a good time, even getting a little flirty with some of the patrons there. He told me he knew it wasn’t me (I had a drinking problem in my twenties, I’ve been sober for nine years) and he figured it was just someone with a similar face.
I cried again. I couldn’t help it. This wasn’t normal. It wasn’t like people around town were seeing someone who looked very similar to me, this was someone else pretending to be me.
“What do you want,” I remember gasping out between my sobs. My husband just held me, but I don’t think he could understand what it felt like.
The next day, he installed cameras in and out of the house, and I was obsessed the second I had access to footage. I stayed in my room for three days, missing work, just to stare down the grainy footage for a glimpse of the other… person. I didn’t see much except for my husband and son continuing life as normally, so on day four I finally showered and got ready for work.
I kissed my husband goodbye and went to work. Since I had been gone without even calling in (my bad), I had a lot of work to catch up once the students went home so I didn’t finish until about 6:30pm, usually I get home at 4:00pm.
When I did get home, Charlie was watching TV and having a snack.
“Hey buddy, where’s daddy?” I asked as I set my stuff down.
“Upstairs,” he said absentmindedly, his eyes still glued to the TV.
I locked the door and went up to our room, wondering why my husband left Charlie all alone. He was fine, but still, he’s only 5 and I didn’t like leaving him all by himself for too long. When I opened the door, my husband was naked on the bed, his eyes closed and a blissful smile on his face. I quickly closed the door behind me and walked up to him.
“What’s with the birthday suit, stud?” I joked, lightly poking him on his stomach. His skin felt flushed.
Sleepily, he opened his eyes to smile at me. “Don’t act coy, babe. Why’d you get all dressed, are we going somewhere?”
I blinked. “Huh? I didn’t just get dressed, I just got home.”
At this, my husband sat up a bit straighter, his eyes flittering from me to the closed restroom door.
“N-No, no you’re joking, right? Babe, you’ve been here since four.”
The pit in my stomach was growing, and growing fast. I shook my head slowly, my breathing becoming a bit more jagged. I started feeling lightheaded. My husband was getting pale.
“Babe. I got home and you were here. You put Charlie to watch some cartoons and we started fooling around, you said you were sorry for being so paranoid lately.” He sounded like he was begging me to confirm with his words, but I couldn’t.
We both looked to the restroom door. After sex, I always went to freshen up first in our restroom. She was in there. I stumbled back, my hand reaching out for my husband, and he held it. The tight feeling in my chest started to burn, my whole body felt overstimulated and I couldn’t breathe.
“How… How long ago did she go in there?” I whispered.
“Fifteen minutes.”
Finally, on shaky feet, my husband stood and urged me to hand him the bat under our bed. He inched towards the door, his shaky breathing the only sound in the room. I could barely hear it over my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
He swung the door open and I screamed.
It was empty.
I panted heavily, my blood feeling like acid inside me. Everything hurt when we looked around inside. There was some water on the counter, like she had been washing her face. The hand towel was damp, and my lotion bottle was open. I felt cold air on my back and I turned to see our restroom window open. It was a small one, usually only opened when one of us needed to let some of the air out when we went number two. She would have had to shimmy her way out, and if she was my exact double, it would have been a tight squeeze.
Sure enough, when my husband got closer to close the window and lock it, he said the paneling felt loose, like she had busted it in her escape.
I held my husband while he cried, and I couldn’t imagine how violated he felt. This was so much to take in. We checked the cameras that night, Charlie sleeping between us on our bed. I didn’t feel safe without him in our sight.
The footage was horrible. I saw myself come through the door, but it obviously wasn’t me. She put her fucking hands on my son and I had to clap a hand over my mouth to keep myself quiet, to avoid waking Charlie. She held him in the living room, on her hip, and kissed his sweet little face. Even writing this now, my hands are shaking thinking about this imposter in my house, with my baby.
We quickly fast forwarded through the footage of her in bed with my husband. He cried a little more watching it, and I felt sick.
“She was just like you. She felt just like you. I couldn’t tell a difference,” he whispered in a broken voice.
There was no camera in the bathroom.
I wish I could say that there was something I saw in the footage that showed me that this woman was clearly an imposter, but the fact is, there wasn’t. She moved with my exact same mannerisms, she comforted my son exactly how I did, and she looked exactly like me. Clearly, down to my exact body and voice since my husband couldn’t tell a difference. She had to have been watching me for a long time to be able to mimic me to a T.
This week, I haven’t left the house. My husband goes to work and he tells me how unsafe he feels. He can’t leave the house without looking over his shoulder. We tried filing a police report, but with no “evidence” they didn’t do much. They took the footage and our statements, but we haven’t heard back. I wouldn’t be surprised if they think it’s a joke since “the woman” looked exactly like me.
My husband was at work, and I was on the couch downstairs typing up a lesson plan for my substitute. I can’t go back to work. I can’t do anything without feeling like that other woman was going to do something sinister now that she knows I know for sure now.
Charlie came running down the stairs, a big smile on his face. I smiled back at him and he immediately froze, his joy sliding right off his expression, replacing it with confusion. He looked at me with these big, glossy green eyes before he squinted suspiciously.
“How did you beat me?”
“What do you mean, baby?” I asked, tilting my head to a side.
“We’re playing upstairs, you told me I can getta juice. How did you beat me here?”
I had to fight the bile that rose in my throat. It felt like gravity had just stopped working and everything was weighing down on my shoulders. I realized I was shaking.
“Charlie, baby, come here. Sit with mommy,” I heard myself say. My voice was rough in my mouth, like sandpaper, and I didn’t even feel Charlie as he bundled over. My body was numb.
I typed this all out so fast, so ignore any spelling mistakes. I wanted to flee, to call 911, but my purse is upstairs and my keys are inside. My phone is charging too. I am begging you guys for help, please. I don’t know what to do, and I can hear her now. She’s calling for Charlie, asking him to come back upstairs. She sounds just like me. I’m so so scared shitless right now, I’m still shaking like a fucking chihuahua.
I hear her footsteps up there. She’s definitely in the house. Please fucking help us.