I want to share my strange experience: “The person who was supposed to be dead was alive.”

I woke up, so I want to share this. It’s a pretty old and unsettling story, and it’s also a bit insensitive, so I’ve never told my family about it. To put it simply, it’s about how someone who was supposed to be dead turned out to be alive.

• Morning, tell me about it. Hurry up and write it down.

This was about 15 years ago, on a Friday night. I was living with my parents at the time, and my grandmother told me that she was expecting a visitor. The visitor was a distant relative of my grandmother, a woman who had lost her husband in the war shortly after they got married. She never remarried and didn’t have any children, and she had been living far away from my house until recently. She was getting weaker, and she wanted to spend her last days in a place that reminded her of her husband. So, she decided to stop by my house on the way to say hello. It was kind of on the way anyway.

• You should write it all out first and then re-post it.

Sorry, I just woke up and I’m typing this, so it’s slow. My grandmother said that this woman (hereinafter referred to as “aunt”) was still pretty energetic for her age, and that she would probably live longer than me. I didn’t really care too much because it was just a visitor for my grandmother, but my grandmother kept telling me to say hello. Then on Saturday, I think it was around noon, my mother woke me up. I had stayed up late after my grandmother told me about the visitor on Friday night, so I slept in until that time. My mother told me to come and say hello to the guest, so apparently the aunt had arrived. I quickly fixed my bedhead and changed my clothes upstairs, and then went down to the Japanese-style room. When I opened the sliding door of the Japanese-style room, it moved with a light touch, unlike how heavy it usually was. Apparently, my grandmother had put a lot of effort into cleaning the room for the visitor, and she had even applied wax to the grooves of the sliding door. But I didn’t know about that, so I tried to open the door with my usual amount of force. Basically, I used too much force and opened the door with a BANG!! The aunt and my grandmother, who were in the Japanese-style room, looked at me with surprised expressions. I felt embarrassed and apologetic, but I laughed a little and said something like, “Hello, you’ve come a long way.”

In traditional Japanese houses, there are paper sliding doors called “fusuma” between Japanese-style rooms. This is a scene where a fusuma, carefully maintained for a guest, is unexpectedly opened with great force.

• Nice.
• I’m reading.

The aunt certainly looked younger than her age. She was sitting in a perfect formal posture on a cushion in the Japanese-style room. And she was looking at me with a very surprised face. I mean, I guess I startled her, but it seemed like an overreaction. Her eyes were wide open, and her mouth was kind of half-open, like she was seeing something unbelievable. I couldn’t move either, and about 10 seconds passed after I said hello. Then the aunt collapsed.

• Huh?
• What happened to the aunt?

It might sound strange to say that she collapsed since she was sitting in a formal posture, but it was like her body lost all its strength and she slumped down. My grandmother, surprised, approached the aunt, and my mother rushed up from behind me. I was thinking, “Huh? Is it my fault?” as I approached the aunt. The aunt didn’t even look at my grandmother or mother, who were worried about her. Even after collapsing, she just stared at me, and then she started crying. When I squatted down within the aunt’s reach, she suddenly grabbed my hands with both of hers. She sobbed as she stroked my hands, as if to confirm my existence. I couldn’t hear her clearly because she was crying so hard, but it sounded like she was calling someone’s name.

The elderly woman, who is supposed to be meeting the young protagonist for the first time, suddenly breaks down in tears. Something is wrong. The atmosphere in the room is frozen.

• Oh.

After the aunt collapsed (or slumped?), my parents and grandmother decided that she might not be feeling well, so they decided to take her to the hospital. I didn’t know much about it, but apparently the aunt had a heart condition. Maybe they thought that it was because her body was under too much stress. I was kept out of the loop, and the aunt was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. I remember that the ambulance didn’t have its siren on. A little more time passed after the aunt was taken away. I was stunned because the aunt had suddenly collapsed and been taken away, and also because I thought that maybe it was my fault that she had collapsed. My parents and grandmother told me that it wasn’t my fault, and my grandmother apologized to me for not telling me about the sliding door. The three of them immediately went to the hospital, and I stayed home.

• Good parents. My parents would have been furious and said it was your fault.

Around evening, only my father came home. My father said that the aunt was okay, and that she wanted to see me. I didn’t know why she wanted to see me, but I thought that I should go if I could visit her, so I went to the hospital too. I think it was around the time when the sun was starting to set when I arrived at the hospital. I wondered if I could visit her on the same day that she had been taken to the hospital, but I was led to the hospital room. I’m not sure if it was a private room, but the aunt was lying in bed alone. When the aunt saw me, she called my name, “○○-chan?” It was the first time I had heard the aunt’s normal voice.

• I’m reading.

When I replied that it was me, she said, “Oh, it is ○○-chan, isn’t it? I’m sorry.” The aunt tried to sit up, so I helped her by raising half of the bed. Thinking about it now, it was just me and the aunt in that room. The aunt started talking. – I looked exactly like her deceased husband. – The first time she met her husband, he had accidentally opened a sliding door with a lot of force too. – The greeting that I said while trying to hide my embarrassment was exactly the same as her husband’s at the time. – It was like the person she had loved in the past had reappeared in front of her, and she panicked. And she realized that she couldn’t stop crying, she said as she shed a few tears.

Here, the core of the story is revealed. The protagonist looks exactly like the man who was supposed to have died in the war. It’s not just a resemblance in appearance, but even his gestures and words coincidentally match.

• Wait, the mystery just increased all of a sudden.

The aunt apologized many times as she spoke. I’m sorry for the strange story, it’s weird, isn’t it? It’s creepy, isn’t it? I’m sorry, she said. I could only say that it wasn’t weird. The aunt looked into my eyes and smiled at me. Before I knew it, my parents had come in, and they said that the aunt was going to stay in the hospital overnight just to be safe. They said.

• Hmm.

My parents suggested that I go to visit her again tomorrow, and I agreed. I thought that if I looked like her husband, maybe it would cheer the aunt up? Before I left the hospital room, the aunt asked me for something. The aunt held out her hands, so I approached her. The aunt put her hands on my face with a gentle smile. It was like she was seeing my husband again. After returning home, I felt lost because so many things had happened. I’m sure I ate dinner and watched TV, but it’s all kind of vague. Anyway, I’m going to visit her again tomorrow, I’m going to cancel my plans for tomorrow… I took a bath and went to bed pretty early. This is where the story gets even stranger. I was walking in a forest. I didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t know why I was walking. But there were many people in front of and behind me, and everyone was walking. As I was walking, a sudden roar echoed and I ducked. I didn’t know why I had to duck, but my body moved as if I had to!! When I looked behind me, I saw that someone behind me had fallen. I instinctively rushed to that person and dragged them forward, almost carrying them. I kept talking to that person, yelling at them, even though I didn’t know who that person was. As if I knew who they were, I shouted, “You can’t die here! You can’t die!!” “△△△ is waiting for you!!” I shouted, but I don’t remember the details very well. The sound of explosions and roars, which seemed to drown out my own voice, echoed around me.

The scene suddenly changes, and the protagonist is having a dream in a place that looks like a battlefield. Memories that he doesn’t recognize, unfamiliar people, and the roar of explosions. An experience separate from his own will was dominating his consciousness.

After I don’t know how long I walked, the explosions stopped. I was still dragging that person along. Then, I came to a place that was somewhat flat and I was able to calm down, or rather, I wanted to calm down. When I looked at that person’s body, there were no particular injuries and they didn’t seem to be dead. A man in the same uniform crawled up from behind and spoke to me. “××, are you alive?” he asked. “I’m okay, how about him?” I replied. “He’s alive too, oh well,” he replied. But immediately after that, the man looked closely at my face, and then checked that person’s face. After checking that person’s chest? or clothes, the man shouted with a shocked expression. “Who are you?!” At that moment, I was sure that I was having an abnormal experience. I live in Japan and I don’t know this place, and my name isn’t ××. I wondered if this was a dream, and then I felt like my back exploded. I was flying through the air, and the man was on the ground looking at me, and I never got a good look at that person’s face. I flew for a while, and then I fell to the ground, and that’s where I woke up.

• Hmm.

To put it simply, it was a dream. The time was around noon, and I was drenched in sweat. I had heard about the person who died in the war, so I had a dream like that, I thought as I slumped down. Then, I heard a voice calling me from outside the door. My mother was calling me, and I replied as I opened the door, thinking that it was about visiting the aunt. But my mother made a confused face and asked, “Visiting? Who?” When I said, “The aunt who came from far away as a guest yesterday, right?” my mother made a strange face and said that the guest was coming today, and that she was already here? I didn’t understand what she meant. I gave her a vague reply and closed the door, and then I looked at the clock with a calendar function. It was indeed Saturday, and the time was noon. I was really confused, but I got dressed anyway and went downstairs. My mother urged me to open the sliding door. This time too, I used too much force and opened the sliding door with a lot of force. There were three people in the Japanese-style room. My grandmother, the aunt I remembered, and an unfamiliar man.

The story takes a sudden turn. When the protagonist wakes up, reality has changed as if yesterday’s events never happened. The aunt, who was supposed to have visited alone the day before, is now sitting with an unfamiliar man.

• Oh??
• Did she leave the hospital??

The three of them were looking at me with surprised faces. The aunt was sitting in a perfect formal posture, just as I remembered her. The man was sitting cross-legged, looking a bit more relaxed. I felt a strong sense of deja vu as I said, “Hello, you’ve come a long way…” In my memory, the aunt collapsed in tears after this, but the aunt and the man looked at each other, and then started laughing merrily.

• Is it almost over? I might be sleepy soon. It’s strange, what is it?
• Before the dream, the man was dead. After waking up from the dream, the man was alive, right?

My grandmother said, “See, they look alike.” The man laughed and said, “I’m amazed, he looks just like me when I was young!” The aunt covered her mouth with her hand and said, “That’s not true, you look just like you when you were younger.” “You, I remember, you opened the sliding door like that at first too.” “Then you said the same thing as this child… I’m so surprised!” The man was playing dumb, but he and the aunt were talking happily.

The aunt, who was supposed to have been a widow who lost her husband in the war yesterday, is now sitting with her husband. Furthermore, the two are surprised by the strange coincidence that the protagonist and the husband’s younger self look and act so alike.

• Could it be that the protagonist is in a vegetative state and all of this is a delusion…?

After that, I talked to the aunt and the man and heard the following. – The man went to war, but he was taken prisoner and returned safely. – After returning home, the couple lived together and had children. – The man’s job required them to live far away, but they wanted to live in their hometown in their later years. – And they came to this house on the way to moving. My grandmother also said that she had told me on Friday night that the couple was coming as guests. I was already overwhelmed by the strange feeling. But I couldn’t possibly say, “The man died in the war and only the aunt came to the house and collapsed.” The aunt and the man stayed at the house as normal guests until late afternoon, and then they went home normally.

Two realities collide. In the protagonist’s memory, the man died in the war and the aunt lived alone. But in the reality before his eyes, the man returned from being a prisoner of war, and the couple lived happily together. It was no longer possible to judge which was the true history.

• This might be a strange phenomenon.

That’s the end of the story. The aunt and the man have already passed away, and I had almost forgotten about it without being able to tell anyone. I just had the same dream as above and jumped out of bed, started up my PC and wrote this. I’m sorry for writing so much. This is a strange story that I, who have lived a normal life, have experienced. Now that I think about it, the name ×× that the man called out in the dream might have been the man’s name. I feel like I’ve gotten it off my chest by writing this. I wonder if I wanted someone to listen to me? Thank you, ID:8/yRPEWT0, for always supporting me.

15 years later, the protagonist has the same dream again and confides this strange experience to someone else for the first time. Reality or dream, past and present, and another timeline? The truth of this bizarre experience remains unknown to anyone.

• Hmm, that’s an amazing story. Is it like a parallel world? Maybe there are many different worlds.
• It’s like the world line changed. Maybe the man was reincarnated.
• Thanks for sharing. It was interesting.