At the Coffin

My mother told me this story. After medical school, she went to work in a morgue, was on first-name terms with the dead, and didn't believe in any afterlife. Until the incident described below.

The day came, my mother's grandmother died. The body was washed, dressed, and placed in a coffin, leaving it in one of the empty rooms, after curtaining off all the mirrors and other objects. During the wake, my mother's parents sent her to sit in that room with my grandmother (I don't know if this was a custom or something else). She was chosen because she was the only relative who dealt with the dead and saw them every day.

My mother entered the room and sat down on a chair next to the body. About twenty minutes passed. During this time, my mother, idly looking around the room, noticed a cabinet among the furniture. The cabinet's surface was varnished and polished, so it reflected the room well (apparently, they forgot to hang the curtains). And in the reflection, my mother noticed a figure resembling my grandmother—standing at the head of the coffin, looking down at the deceased.

At first, my mother wasn't at all disturbed or frightened—she says, at the time, it seemed to her simply a play of light and shadow. She stood up, walked around the room, sat back down on the chair, and looked at the cabinet. The figure was still reflected there, looking down at my grandmother's body. My mother decided to take a closer look, and then she felt uneasy—the figure resembled my grandmother exactly, from her clothes to her facial features.

Suddenly, the figure turned its head and stared at my mother. That's when my mother went into shock. She couldn't even move from terror. My grandmother stared at her in the reflection for a few seconds, then turned her attention back to her body. Mom rushed out of the room screaming, frightening all the relatives. For two weeks after that, she slept with the light on.