CREEPYPASTA: Doppelgänger / The Mimicker
My name is Zacharias W. Redmond. I was fourteen when it happened.
My mom and I were on the Big Island — Hilo — for a week. My dad wasn’t with us; he lived a complicated, polyamorous life, but he always made sure Mom and I were taken care of. This trip should have been full of beaches and shave-ice and nothing heavy. It wasn’t.
One afternoon my mom left the hotel room to get a wrap and a strawberry smoothie. Before she shut the door she knelt down, looked me in the eye and said, flat and serious, “Zach, if anyone knocks, do not open the door. Not for anyone. Not if they say they’re me. Promise me.”
I promised.
About forty-five minutes later there was a polite knock. I went to the peephole and heard my mother’s voice — the exact cadence, the little lift on my name. “Zach? It’s me. The line was long; my purse was stolen and my key is gone. Can you let me in?”
My thumb hovered over the deadbolt. For a second the world softened: it sounded like her. But I’d been told not to open, so I said, “Okay, Mom. I was just about to use the bathroom.”
The voice answered with that warm note she uses: “That’s fine, sweetie. I’ll give you a few minutes.”
Those few minutes were all I needed. I eased the window latch, climbed onto the narrow ledge, and slid along the drainpipe in the rain up to the roof. My hands were cold. My sneakers slipped on wet metal. I forced myself to keep moving, found the maintenance hatch and the elevator there, and rode down to the lobby.
Marta — the manager — saw me run in and didn’t laugh. She came with me straight to the security room. The monitors were grainy but clear enough to show the woman at my door: hair like my mother’s, a gray hoodie pulled up, red sweatpants, her face shadowed. At first her voice through the camera speaker was sweet: “Come on, sweetie — what’s taking you so long?”
Then, after I was safe in the security room, the tone snapped. The woman at the door started swearing. “Open the door now, you little shit!” she spat. When nobody answered, it dropped into something cruel: “You worthless bastard — unlock the door!”
That was the instant I knew with absolute certainty it wasn’t Mom. My mother had never used that language — not once, not even when she was mad. It wasn’t only the words; it was the tone. There was no warmth behind them, no care, just hunger. The voice had been loving and then became vicious. That flicker saved me.
Marta didn’t hesitate. Her face went hard and cold; she stepped to the intercom and said, with a voice that left no room for argument, “Leave immediately. You are being watched on our security cameras. The boy you’re trying to reach is safe with me. We both know you are not his mother — his mother would never speak to him that way. Leave now.”
The woman at the door froze as if she’d been caught, then turned and ran. She didn’t get into a car. She bolted down the back stairs and vanished into the trees beyond the lot; the parking cameras only showed footprints that faded at the treeline. Marta later told me the camera should have captured a face, but in the footage the edges of her face blurred — like the pixels refused to hold it. The hoodie was clear. The body was clear. The face would not focus.
I hugged Marta then, hard, because I was shaking so badly my legs felt like jelly. She held me until I stopped trembling. She didn’t act like I was ridiculous. She looked at the monitors again and said she’d call the police.
My mother called on her cell a few minutes later. She sounded exactly like herself — apologetic about the long line, frustrated about the traffic. Marta put the phone on speaker and explained what the camera had shown. My mother’s voice went thin; she came straight back and did not let me out of her sight for the rest of the trip. At the pool, in the lobby, outside the bathroom door — wherever I went, she was there. I don’t blame her.
I still replay that night. I never looked through the peephole properly, and that gnaws at me. Maybe I was afraid to see a face I loved twisted into something else. Maybe I was afraid of seeing nothing at all. The other part of me thinks if Mom had ever used that kind of language at home — if I’d been used to being yelled at like that — I might have believed the voice and opened the door. The possibility that conditioning could have made me open it terrifies me more than anything else.
If the woman was a human scammer she fled because the con failed. If she was something else — a doppelgänger, a mimic — she fled because being caught on camera, on hotel property, would have exposed her to the world. Either way, losing the element of surprise saved me. Marta says the mimic’s method is deception: it learns warmth and then twists it. That’s why she acted quickly and coldly — to deny it the thing it feeds on.
It wasn’t only the profanity that gave it away. It was the tone — that hollow cruelty layered under familiar words. For a little while while I was still in the room, the voice had sounded warm and coaxing, and I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if I’d believed that warmth and opened the door.
That thought keeps me awake sometimes. I carry it like a small, cold stone in my pocket. If you ever hear someone at your door who sounds like someone you love, check the face in the peephole. Don’t give a promise to a voice.
— Zacharias W. Redmond
My mom and I were on the Big Island — Hilo — for a week. My dad wasn’t with us; he lived a complicated, polyamorous life, but he always made sure Mom and I were taken care of. This trip should have been full of beaches and shave-ice and nothing heavy. It wasn’t.
One afternoon my mom left the hotel room to get a wrap and a strawberry smoothie. Before she shut the door she knelt down, looked me in the eye and said, flat and serious, “Zach, if anyone knocks, do not open the door. Not for anyone. Not if they say they’re me. Promise me.”
I promised.
About forty-five minutes later there was a polite knock. I went to the peephole and heard my mother’s voice — the exact cadence, the little lift on my name. “Zach? It’s me. The line was long; my purse was stolen and my key is gone. Can you let me in?”
My thumb hovered over the deadbolt. For a second the world softened: it sounded like her. But I’d been told not to open, so I said, “Okay, Mom. I was just about to use the bathroom.”
The voice answered with that warm note she uses: “That’s fine, sweetie. I’ll give you a few minutes.”
Those few minutes were all I needed. I eased the window latch, climbed onto the narrow ledge, and slid along the drainpipe in the rain up to the roof. My hands were cold. My sneakers slipped on wet metal. I forced myself to keep moving, found the maintenance hatch and the elevator there, and rode down to the lobby.
Marta — the manager — saw me run in and didn’t laugh. She came with me straight to the security room. The monitors were grainy but clear enough to show the woman at my door: hair like my mother’s, a gray hoodie pulled up, red sweatpants, her face shadowed. At first her voice through the camera speaker was sweet: “Come on, sweetie — what’s taking you so long?”
Then, after I was safe in the security room, the tone snapped. The woman at the door started swearing. “Open the door now, you little shit!” she spat. When nobody answered, it dropped into something cruel: “You worthless bastard — unlock the door!”
That was the instant I knew with absolute certainty it wasn’t Mom. My mother had never used that language — not once, not even when she was mad. It wasn’t only the words; it was the tone. There was no warmth behind them, no care, just hunger. The voice had been loving and then became vicious. That flicker saved me.
Marta didn’t hesitate. Her face went hard and cold; she stepped to the intercom and said, with a voice that left no room for argument, “Leave immediately. You are being watched on our security cameras. The boy you’re trying to reach is safe with me. We both know you are not his mother — his mother would never speak to him that way. Leave now.”
The woman at the door froze as if she’d been caught, then turned and ran. She didn’t get into a car. She bolted down the back stairs and vanished into the trees beyond the lot; the parking cameras only showed footprints that faded at the treeline. Marta later told me the camera should have captured a face, but in the footage the edges of her face blurred — like the pixels refused to hold it. The hoodie was clear. The body was clear. The face would not focus.
I hugged Marta then, hard, because I was shaking so badly my legs felt like jelly. She held me until I stopped trembling. She didn’t act like I was ridiculous. She looked at the monitors again and said she’d call the police.
My mother called on her cell a few minutes later. She sounded exactly like herself — apologetic about the long line, frustrated about the traffic. Marta put the phone on speaker and explained what the camera had shown. My mother’s voice went thin; she came straight back and did not let me out of her sight for the rest of the trip. At the pool, in the lobby, outside the bathroom door — wherever I went, she was there. I don’t blame her.
I still replay that night. I never looked through the peephole properly, and that gnaws at me. Maybe I was afraid to see a face I loved twisted into something else. Maybe I was afraid of seeing nothing at all. The other part of me thinks if Mom had ever used that kind of language at home — if I’d been used to being yelled at like that — I might have believed the voice and opened the door. The possibility that conditioning could have made me open it terrifies me more than anything else.
If the woman was a human scammer she fled because the con failed. If she was something else — a doppelgänger, a mimic — she fled because being caught on camera, on hotel property, would have exposed her to the world. Either way, losing the element of surprise saved me. Marta says the mimic’s method is deception: it learns warmth and then twists it. That’s why she acted quickly and coldly — to deny it the thing it feeds on.
It wasn’t only the profanity that gave it away. It was the tone — that hollow cruelty layered under familiar words. For a little while while I was still in the room, the voice had sounded warm and coaxing, and I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if I’d believed that warmth and opened the door.
That thought keeps me awake sometimes. I carry it like a small, cold stone in my pocket. If you ever hear someone at your door who sounds like someone you love, check the face in the peephole. Don’t give a promise to a voice.
— Zacharias W. Redmond
31-35, M