So, any explanation for the events in the story I’m about to tell you has already crossed my mind. I’ve had a good couple of years to dig around and try to debunk it all. Everything from hallucinations, a very realistic dream, and even the possibility of a very peculiar stray have all already been thought of and inspected by yours truly. I’m also not here to tell you that any of those aren’t exactly what happened. I have a laundry list of mental health issues, including Bipolar type 1 which can cause psychotic symptoms. I dream nightly and strays are not unheard of in the area. I’m positive that most of you can rationalize what happened with any number of explanations, and you might even be right. But let me tell you the story anyway. If for no other reason that it must have stuck with me this long for a reason.
It happened in my parent’s house in North West Pennsylvania. I was staying with them while taking a semester-long break from college back in 2014. This was, mostly, because of the whole Bipolar issue that I mentioned earlier. I had been doing better than the previous year but trying a new cocktail of drugs on for size while also getting used to the swing of campus life was turning out to be a bad combination. So I ran home and tried to get my brain and life back in order.
I’d also brought my dog, Blue, home with me. He was a big tan retired racing greyhound who I had adopted the year before. He was an ESA (Emotional Support Animal) and, for that reason, I had been allowed to keep him on campus. Now that he was at my parent’s house, though, he was doing well with all the wide-open spaces. He spent most of his time out in their huge backyard outrunning my parent’s black labradoodle Nelly. They had a near free run of the property save for the invisible fence that kept them from running too far afield. I should note here that greyhounds really shouldn’t be kept in only by an invisible fence as they tend to be really prey driven and do better with a physical barrier. But it was my mom and dad’s house, it’s not like I had many options, and Blue never strayed.
On the night in question, my parents were out and I was hanging out down in the basement with the dogs. Don’t think of the dreary kind of basement, this was furnished and cozy, complete with a couch, carpet, and a television set up with Direct TV. So you can probably imagine why this is where I made my little college kid nest.
Sometime after the sun went down I got the unmistakable stare from the dogs. That look that says, “We must piss human! Free us,” even if they just want to go out and watch for passing neighbors. Well, I wasn’t about to make them wait, so I popped up from my seat and let them outside without a second thought. Both of them were outfitted with collars designed to warn them where the property edge was, so I just let them run out the door to do their business on their own. With that, I sat back down and got back to the important work of catching back up with the next episode of Chopped.
After that, I remember it being a long time before I started to wonder why I hasn’t heard the dog’s asking to be let back in. Twenty minutes had gone by at least and this happened in the middle of fall. Meaning that there was a chill in the air and Blue had barely any fur on him and no jacket on (Yes, you do have to put jackets on greyhounds. Yes, it is adorable). Usually, once they got tired of roughing it outside, they would line up at the door and Nelly would let out her deep, “Boof,” to let me know I was taking too long. But I hadn’t heard anything. Not even the sound of them tearing around the house, ripping up grass as they raced each other like sugared-up kids.
If any of you have animals you know that complete silence and conspicuously absent pets are not good signs. So I got up and opened the door. They weren’t lined up to come in as I had hoped they would be. Nothing out there but blackness and crickets.
Next, I tried calling them inside. I started yelling their names in the long, drawn-out, sing-song way they were used to hearing.
“Blueeeee! Neeeeelly!” I sang.
Nothing.
So I called again. I didn’t see anything, but I started to hear something. It was the sound of dead leaves being trampled.
Relieved, I stepped back out of the doorway, knowing that they were going to come thundering inside and would knock me over if I was in the way. I held the door open and waited.
The light from the basement didn’t illuminate much beyond the door. I could see a small semicircle of grass just outside and then blackness beyond that. So when Nelly’s fluffy black body loped inside it looked more like she’d just materialized out of the dark itself. A few seconds passed by before Blue’s lanky body trotted inside. At that point, I began to close the door when Blue came inside…again.
I looked at him and jumped, thinking I’d just spotted a dang glitch in the matrix, when I made eye contact with the other Blue that had already come in. Two of them. Two Blues. Looking right back at me.
Now greyhounds are not common dogs. I think the only other ones I’d met were at meetups specifically for retired racers. They have a very particular look. Think either a shaved Borzoi or a shrink-wrapped Afgan hound. My point is, you know a greyhound when you’re looking at it and we knew nearly everyone in the immediate area. No other greyhounds. Especially no other greyhounds that looked identical to my dog. Same tan fur (red fawn if you want to be specific), same little white bib, same white toes, and the same white on his snout. The two Blues’ were also missing collars. Neither the purple shock collar nor his special bowtie collar was anywhere in sight.
I just kind of stared at them for a long moment. None of the dogs seemed to be reacting either. All three of them were looking right back at me and I felt an oppressive cloud of anxiety settle over me. Not one of them seemed stressed or even surprised at the other dog. If we had a doggy visitor, I would usually expect them to be playing or at least playing the butt-smelling getting to know you game. But they just looked at me in a kind of calm acknowledgment that felt so strange for dogs.
As we existed in that uneasy stalemate, I started to notice that the dog was not completely identical to Blue. A relief, right? Well, it was, until I realized that it wasn’t so much a copy of him, but a mirror image.
The white spot on Blue’s nose isn’t a uniform shape, it tapers up in a long line to one side. Looking between the two greyhounds, they each had this line, one running up to the right and the other to the left. But, the most nauseating, was their feet. You see, Blue is missing a toe. A single toe on the inside of one of his front legs. We aren’t sure how he lost it. It could have been a racing accident or even bone cancer, but that toe was amputated. On each Blue, an inner toe was gone. One on the right. One on the left.
I felt ice settle in my stomach as I made this realization. This wasn’t a coincidence of a similar-looking dog. It couldn’t be. It was too much to have in common and have each on exactly the opposite side.
I looked between them with rising terror as I tried to remember which leg the toe was missing on MY Blue. But, either because I was just too scared to think or I truly am that dense, at the moment I couldn’t for the life of me remember. I couldn’t even grab my phone to look up pictures. If I did, I would have to pass the dogs and go back to my spot near the television. These pups, who I adored, were now confusing, terrifying creatures that felt so very, deeply wrong.
I felt my knees start to shake as I became more and more frantic in trying to tell my dog apart from this impostor. Every second felt more and more like my brain was cracking in two. Then one of the Blue dogs walked forward and sniffed at my hand. I felt my body lock in place except for my knocking knees as the familiar dog looked up at me with his huge doe-like eyes. Then, with no hesitation, he turned around and leaned his hindquarters against my leg.
I felt an instant flood of relief as I felt his warm body press against my thigh. He wasn’t a ghost or a specter. This Blue was MY Blue. While he wasn’t a full-fledged service dog, he was home trained to know an anxiety attack when he saw one. He was acting exactly as he was trained. This was my boy. I gave his butt a quick pat and felt the trembling die down thanks to his help.
That left the other dog, the impostor. It continued to stare up at me, the things huge bug-like eyes staring right at me. It knew I knew. It had to. I had my dog and figuring it out was just the process of elimination. But what to do about it?
“You have to leave,” I said to the thing.
It didn’t budge, but Nelly, apparently bored by this traumatic incident, plopped down on the carpet. She let out a long sigh and settled in like nothing was wrong at all.
It seemed so deeply odd. I was the only one in the room losing it over this. Real Blue was calm, Nelly looked like she was ready to have a nap, and the impostor just looked at me.
I couldn’t help but think that, whatever this thing was, if the dogs were calm then I probably should be too. And, after all, weren’t animals supposed to be sensitive to dangerous situations? The dog hadn’t done anything aside from existing, strange as it was. Nothing about this situation screamed that I was about to die so, maybe, I wasn’t in danger at all. It seemed to make logical sense.
I decided that I should go back into the couch and try to calm down. Maybe even shoot an email to the local shelter to see if anyone was missing a clone of my greyhound. So I did. I went back to the couch where Chopped had already ended and sat down. The dogs followed me, my Blue making sure to hop up on the couch with me as soon as I was settled and Nelly flopped again on the carpet with the standard amount of sighing and drama.
The mirror dog, however, didn’t get comfy. I looked down to pick up the remote and as soon as I moved my gaze up I saw the thing had appeared right in front of the couch. I screamed bloody murder and made the dogs practically jump out of their skin. The not-dog didn’t jump though, I don’t think I even saw the thing breathe. It wasn’t even trying to pretend to be a normal dog at this point. It just stared at me with its huge black eyes, drinking me in.
This time, I didn’t take my eyes off it, I just looked back. I was high on adrenaline and in the world’s most bizarre staring match with a god damn ghost dog.
And that’s exactly what I did for the rest of the night as far as I can remember. But, the next thing I knew, it was morning. I don’t remember falling asleep, I just remember waking up, groggy and covered in dog hair from laying on my Blue. I don’t know how you fall asleep in the middle of something like that, but I did.
For about a minute, it was fairly relieving. No one could have fallen asleep with a doppelganger of their dog staring them down, it had to have had a dream. Of course, then I saw that Blue didn’t have either of his collars on. Confirming that, him losing his collar at least, had been real. And later when I let them out again, I found each of the collars neatly folded with their buckles clasped, sitting right in front of the basement door. It might have been a kind neighbor who found them, but it was enough to make me doubt.
Blue passed in 2019 at the age of 10 and Nelly is still running wild at 13 in North Carolina with my parents. Blue was my best friend, my perfect dog, and I still miss him terribly after all this time. But I won’t pretend that I didn’t sometimes look at him and feel mild doubt that he wasn’t an impostor. Especially when I would drive with him in the backseat, catch his reflection in the rearview mirror, and see his white blaze trailing up the wrong side of his face.