Deja Vu

One day, after taking a nap in the afternoon, my mom and I went out to downtown Lima; we stopped at a bakery store like some other times. Since I stepped in, I saw this girl with long, straight, black hair resting over her shoulders; her pretty brown eyes stood out from her face like two flash lights in the darkness. The same pose she had, leaning over the counter, was the same as I remembered. Behind, there were the same persons walking in and out through the swinging kitchen’s doors with trays and just baked bread. The worn, visible stained and played white and green floors contrasted sharply with the girl’s outfit; red shoes, blue pants and a pink blouse. Immediately, I could not take my eyes off the girl. I stared at this girl at the counter with persistence; somehow I knew her. My mom interrupted me asking what I wanted from the store and suddenly everything turned so odd. Up to that point, since we entered in the bakery everything was normally familiar. After my mom asked me something, I noticed that what seemed a coincidence of familiarity turned out to be creepily accurate in the way every second lived in the store were previously experienced by me.

For several seconds, I was reliving an episode of my own life that I did not even know I had already lived. I still do not know what happened, but I swear to God, that right moment was in my memory! The weirdest thing is that I could remember the girl as if I would have met her before, I could remember when my mom asked what I wanted and I even could remember the last time my mom told me to leave and the girl starring at me while I walked away. I have thought of this episode many times and sometimes I believe that the girl from the bakery recognized me somehow because she stared at me with interest too. I still do not know if what I lived that afternoon was the future that I saw in the past as a form of a dream while I was taking a nap, or a premonitory dream or just a coincidence, but it really got me thinking about it for a while.

Many years later, I kept thinking of that time when I had this experience. I still did not know that the phenomenon had a name. I did not know that this kind of experiences is more common than I thought. Dйjа vu is the term that defines the episode that took place that afternoon. The term Dйjа vu (“already seen”) describes the experience of a feeling that a person has experienced or witnessed a new situation previously. This term was coined by the French psychic researcher Emile Boirac in his book L’Avenir des science psychiques (The Future of the Psychic Science).

There are several kinds of Dйjа vu: the Dйjа vecu (already seen or already lived through), the Dйjа senti (already felt), and the Dйjа visite (already visited). Some have tried to explain Dйjа vu from a scientific perspective, but nothing or little has been found in the labs. The ephemeral characteristic of the phenomenon of Dйjа vu is without a doubt an obstacle for its study.

Some scientists relate Dйjа vu with Epilepsy, since it is very common to find patients that suffer of Dйjа vu