The Photograph

When Lisa developed her vacation photos, a blurred figure appeared in the background of every single shot, and with each successive photo, the figure was getting closer to her.

Lisa Henderson considered herself a serious amateur photographer and still preferred shooting with film rather than digital cameras, enjoying the deliberate process of composition and exposure and the anticipation of waiting to see developed images rather than instantly reviewing them on screens. She had spent a week hiking and photographing in the remote wilderness of Montana's Glacier National Park, capturing stunning landscapes and wildlife, and she was excited to develop the five rolls of film she had shot during the trip when she returned to her darkroom in Seattle. The development process was meditative and familiar, and as the first images began to appear in the developing tray, Lisa noticed something unexpected in the background of a shot she had taken of a mountain lake, a blurred human-shaped figure standing among the trees perhaps fifty yards behind where her focus had been, and she did not remember seeing anyone in that location when she took the photo.

The figure appeared in the next photo as well, this one taken several hours later at a completely different location miles from the first, and again it was blurred and indistinct but definitely human-shaped, and it appeared to be closer, perhaps thirty yards from where Lisa had been standing when she composed the shot. A creeping unease began to build as Lisa continued developing the roll, and the figure appeared in every subsequent image, always in the background, always slightly closer than in the previous photo, and by the final image on the first roll, the figure was clearly visible only about fifteen feet behind where Lisa had been standing, though it was facing away from the camera and she could not see any features or details that would allow identification.

Lisa's hands were shaking as she developed the second roll of film, hoping that whatever had caused the anomaly in the first roll would not appear in these images taken on different days with different lighting conditions, but the figure was there in the very first frame, and it was even closer, no more than ten feet from where she had been standing when she pressed the shutter, and it was beginning to turn toward the camera. The progression continued through the second and third rolls with the figure appearing consistently closer and more turned toward the camera with each successive image, and by the fourth roll Lisa could see that the figure was definitely facing her direction though the face remained obscured by blur or shadow or some quality of the image that prevented clear resolution.

The final roll of film contained the last photos Lisa had taken on her trip, casual shots of her camp and gear before packing up to return home, and when these images appeared in the developing tray, Lisa actually gasped and stepped backward because the figure was right behind her in every shot, standing close enough that it should have been touching her, and in the final image of the entire trip, the figure's face was visible for the first time, pale and wrong and twisted into an expression that was not quite a smile but suggested malevolent awareness. Lisa recognized the face with a shock that made her dizzy because it was her own face, or a distorted version of it, and the eyes were completely black without whites or pupils, just solid darkness staring directly into the camera lens.

Lisa destroyed all the negatives and prints, burning them in her sink and washing the ashes down the drain, and she never used that camera again, selling it online without mentioning the images it had captured. She researched doppelgangers and bilocation and shadow selves, finding folklore and legends from many cultures about encountering your double as an omen of death or about dark versions of yourself that exist in parallel to your conscious life, but nothing she read provided explanation or comfort. Several weeks after returning from Montana, Lisa was walking through downtown Seattle and happened to glance at a security camera monitor in a shop she was passing, and in the black and white feed showing the street behind her, she saw the blurred figure standing approximately twenty feet away facing her direction, but when she spun around to look directly, nothing was there, just normal pedestrians and traffic, and when she looked back at the monitor, the figure had moved closer, now only ten feet from her position.

Lisa runs now whenever she sees cameras or reflective surfaces, changing her route and doubling back and taking taxis even for short distances, living in constant fear that the figure from her photographs is still approaching, getting closer with each day, and that eventually it will reach her and she will discover what happens when your dark double finally catches up with the original.