It started when Bill Findley invited me to tour the Chollar Mine, where he worked as a tour guide. Readily accepting, he led me to the farthest end of the shaft.
“Wanna see how dark it is down here?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
He disappeared back the way we had come. I heard him trip the power, pulling down on the handle at the side of the electrical box as the lights disappeared and darkness filled the void.
About fifteen seconds later, I heard him push the handle up into the on position, but nothing happened. For about a minute, I heard him flip the handle several times, trying to turn the lights on.
As I stood there, I saw an orb rise from the floor. As it glowed white, it expanded, first lengthening, then widening, eventually becoming a transparent figure of a young woman.
She had blonde hair and sad green eyes. Seeing her left me speechless and sweaty.
Suddenly, Bill rounded the corner. “Sorry, but I can’t get the lights to come back on.”
Together, we walked to the surface and the sunlight. I said nothing about the apparition.
At home and in bed that night, trying to fall asleep, I couldn’t help thinking about her and her sad eyes. Finally, surrendering, I got up and decided to record a podcast about what had happened.
As I opened the podcasting app on my computer, the screen came to life with the syne wave of a recording, though I had yet to say anything. Then it showed the same thing, showing the same pattern.
Playing it back, I listened to a muffled female voice whisper, “504 F Street.” Instead of recording, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a tumbler of whiskey.
The following week, I drove F Street in Virginia City until I found what I believed to be 504, a dilapidated wooden structure with a sagging front porch. The front door opened as I got out of my truck.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked as she stood in the darkened doorway.
Stuttering, I explained why and how I came to find her house. She listened impassively, never hinting at an emotion.
After telling me her name was Maggie, she said, “You met my twin sister, Marie.”
I suddenly realized how much the apparition and the woman in the doorway did look alike.
Maggie explained that Marie had suffered an allergy attack while visiting the Chollar Mine and had died as a result. “Now she contacts random people. I think it’s for attention.”
Feeling foolish, I said I was sorry about her sister and apologized for wasting her time. Without responding, she stepped inside and closed the door.
After a thorough search of Storey County records, I found nothing to indicate anyone had died from an acute asthma attack in or at the mine. That evening, I called my former editor, Angela Mann, and asked if she had ever heard of an asthma-related death at the Chollar.
“No, but it could have happened before Richard and I bought the newspaper,” she said.
“I checked as far back as the mid-60s and found nothing,” I replied.
“Then, I don’t know what to tell you,” she said.
Three days later, I drove to the house on F Street again. I wanted to ask Maggie when her sister died.
The house was deserted, the sagging porch worse than before and lacking a set of steps to ascend it, had I wished to risk collapsing the entire collapse.
“Perhaps I ought to go back in the mine and see if I can make contact with Marie again,” I thought.
My better judgment prevailed, and instead, I asked around about Maggie. No one knew who I was talking about. Furthermore, I learned no one lived in the old house.
Wanting a drink to steady my nerves, I sat at the bar in the Tahoe House, where I concluded I had almost fallen victim to a Doppelgänger as it attempted to lure me either back to the mine or inside the building.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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