Mysterious Photograph

My family lived in the house I grew up in for over twenty years. I was seventeen when we sold the house and moved away.

On our last day there, after the movers had taken everything away, my mom told me to do a scan of every nook and cranny to make sure we weren’t accidentally leaving anything behind. The last place I checked was the upstairs hallway closet. There was a high shelf only inches from the ceiling, and I had to stretch my whole body to reach it.

When I reached my hand up, my fingers touched something. I brought it down and saw it was an old photo. It was a color photo of a guy dressed in shorts and a tank top with a thick mustache and curly dark hair. He was nobody I’d ever seen before, so I assumed it was some cousin of my mom or dad’s—but when I showed it to them, they had no idea who it was.

From the looks of it, the photo had been up there for ages. It was old and faded, and had that sort of 1960s or 70s quality to it with the washed-out colors and slightly blurry focus. We figured the only explanation was that it had belonged to the previous owners of the house. I’m not sure why, but the idea that a photograph of a complete stranger had been living in our closet for more than twenty years really creeped me out. We didn’t know what to do with the picture, so I put it back where I found it.

Several years later, I was back visiting my best friend from high school. She still lived in the same neighborhood where we’d grown up, and one day when we were leaving her house to meet up with some old friends for dinner, we happened to drive past my old house.

I took a long look as we went by. The way the property’s laid out, you can see the backyard from the street, and from the passenger seat of my friend’s car, I saw a man standing in the backyard watering the lawn with a hose. He was dressed in shorts and a tank top. His hair was dark and curly, and he had a thick mustache. I literally gasped when I saw him. He didn’t just look like the man from the picture. He WAS the man from the picture. Right down to the clothes he wore.

When I asked my friend who he was, she said she didn’t know. The only thing she did know was that he’d been living there with his wife and young child for some time. She asked me why I was so curious, but I didn’t volunteer anything. I just said he looked familiar and left it at that.

To this day, it haunts me. How is it possible that a photo of that man wound up in a closet of my parents’ house years before he ever even moved in? Even stranger was that the picture had to have been taken decades before, so it couldn’t have been the same person. Was this just some strange coincidence? I’ve read about doppelgangers and shapeshifters who can assume anyone’s identity. I’ve also read about immortals and vampires who live for centuries but never age. Could any of these explain it, or is there a more simple answer? I don’t know, and I’m honestly not sure I ever want to.