Yes, a shapeshifting entity wore her face and prowled her street at 3 a.m. She would still like to address the glass bottles.

At 3:14 a.m. on a Thursday, nine residents of a quiet street in Portland’s Woodstock neighbourhood watched something wearing Dara Okonkwo’s face, Dara Okonkwo’s bathrobe, and what Ms. Okonkwo describes as ‘a very convincing version of my posture, actually’ open the communal recycling area beside her building and sort through three separate bins before depositing four glass olive jars directly into the organics collection. Ms. Okonkwo, watching from her second-floor window, reports that she did not scream, as she had already spent her emergency adrenaline on the initial discovery of the thing standing in her kitchen at 2:58 a.m., apparently staring at the recycling schedule on her fridge.

I will not diminish what happened to Ms. Okonkwo. A Navajo Skinwalker assuming someone’s form is not a minor event, and the psychological weight of watching your own face move through your neighbourhood in the small hours of the morning is not something I am qualified to compress into a lifestyle column and move on from. There are protocols. There are specialists. Ms. Okonkwo has since been in contact with the relevant parties, the building super has been informed that the recycling misdemeanour was not her fault, and the situation is ongoing in ways I am not at liberty to elaborate on at this stage.

Community Notice

What I am at liberty to note is that the entity had access to Ms. Okonkwo’s memory, her kitchen, her physical form, and her robe — and it still put glass in with the organics. The recycling schedule was on the fridge. It was looking at the fridge. Glass has its own bin. It is the blue one. It is labelled. The building has maintained a 94% composting accuracy rate for two consecutive quarters, and Ms. Okonkwo, who chairs the building’s waste reduction committee, would like that noted in the record alongside whatever else WTC is planning to note in the record.

It had my face. It had my robe. It had two full minutes with the recycling schedule and it still — I just need someone to write it down. Officially.

— Dara Okonkwo, Portland resident and waste reduction committee chair

In twenty-two years of covering incidents of this nature, I have rarely been asked to file a piece in which the existential horror and the recycling infraction are weighted so evenly by the person most directly affected. I respect it. The filing cabinet stays locked; the composting record should not have to suffer. WTC will continue to monitor developments and will update readers if the entity is identified, located, or, in what I consider an outside possibility, issued a formal citation by Portland Public Works.