Been here, done that…
Have you ever had Deja Vu? The odd and unsettling sensation that the moment you are experiencing is something you have experienced before? It has happened to me twice this week. Now, as the parent of two teenagers I find that I do and say the same things over and over ad nauseum. But this, this was different.
I am a huge fan of audio true crime and real life mystery series and my absolute favourite is Danny Robins’ podcast Uncanny on BBC Sounds. I love to listen with my headphones on whilst I am cleaning the bathrooms or kitchen. I tell myself it is research and in many ways it is. I had been trying to work out how a my character in Project Copper might describe the strange experiences she is having to her friend. What tone of voice and choice of words would she use? How would her friend react? So I had pressed play on an episode called Double Trouble (S3 E5 in case you are interested). Whilst listening to Jen’s story of an encounter with an older version of herself I wondered what that would be like and as I moved across the room I caught my reflection in the mirror. The sensation of deja vu was really powerful and made my heart rate race.
The second time was whilst driving to collect my daughter from football training when I passed two broken down transit vans within half a mile of each other. Again I had that odd feeling of having been here before and it left me feeling slightly out of time and place. I have to admit I was relived when we passed the vans coming home and my daughter also commented on how odd it was. She then followed it up with asking if I was being witchy again and causing a glitch in the matrix*. I wasn’t imagining the vans at least but deja vu twice in a week was definitely spooky! Naturally the first thing I did when I got home was write down both these experiences in my ideas notes as little nuggets of inspiration.
Now for the sceptics amongst us I know that it is hardly surprising that I am experiencing these things given how much time I spend reading, listening to and writing spooky stories. I’m also highly imaginative and therefore probably more susceptible to the these stories replaying through my subconscious. For those in #team_believer there are many other possible ways to explain my experience. Bit of a time slip, perhaps due to quantum physics and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey (my favourite Dr Who quote and an excellent example of assonance)? Or maybe it is precognition? So off I went down the paranormal rabbit hole where I have spent several happy hours discovering the theories around deja vu and now have an outline for another story in the Project Copper series.
My husband in his trademark no-nonsense view of the world has informed me that I have now reached new levels of ridiculousness. Not content with conjuring ghosts to freak out my readers I am now haunting myself. He may well have a point.
*A running joke in our family after I lit a candle to mediate and all the power on our estate went off**
** I swear it wasn’t me!
