Doppelgänger
Pronunciation /ˈdäpəlˌɡaNGər/ /ˈdɑpəlˌɡæŋər/
noun
An apparition or double of a living person.
‘He has been replaced by an evil doppelgänger’ ~ Oxford Dictionary
Pronunciation /ˈdäpəlˌɡaNGər/ /ˈdɑpəlˌɡæŋər/
noun
An apparition or double of a living person.
‘He has been replaced by an evil doppelgänger’ ~ Oxford Dictionary
The following is a true story ...
Michael burst through the backdoor, snow swirling in after him. He slammed the door shut, threw his book bag on the mudroom floor and pried off his snow-caked sneakers, losing one soggy sock in the process. He pulled off the other drenched sock and threw both on top of his book bag, then threw his wet jacket on top of the pile. ‘I’ll pick that stuff up later,’ he thought; but in reality, he knew that his mother would pick up after him like she always did.
Music was blasting in Michael’s headphones as he headed to the kitchen to grab a snack. School was let out early because of the snow, and with more than a foot predicted by morning, it looked like tomorrow would definitely be a snow day. ‘Yes!’ he thought, ‘one less day of 11th grade!’ He riffled through the junk food cabinet and settled on something he considered to be highly nutritious--Strawberry Pop-tarts. His reasoning? They’re made with real fruit.
He tore open the two-pack of Pop-Tarts and said in his best announcer voice: “Jump-start your day with a blast of gooey, strawberry-flavored filling!” Taking a bite, Michael headed out into the living room and made for the staircase. When he was half-way across the room he slowed, took another bite of his Pop-Tart, then stopped and looked at the crucifixes that hung on all four walls of the room and thought, ‘Christ, dad, What the hell did you get us into?’
Three months ago, crazy things started happening in the house after Michael’s father bought an antique pump-organ he saw while doing a job at a house in Elmsford. His father was an electrician, and a musician on the side. So, when he saw the organ he bought it from the guy, even though it came with a warning. The guy told his father that that organ was ... Michael shook the thought away and started walking to the staircase, then he slowed and eyed the big wooden crucifix that hung above the front door. To the right of the door hung a string of rosary beads, and on the door itself was a picture of Jesus, his eyes lifted to heaven. Michael shook his head and said out loud, “I don’t believe any of this crap,” and turned up the volume on his headphones. ‘Haunted my ass,’ he thought as he turned the corner and headed upstairs.
Michael was on the third step when he looked up, then quickly pulled the headphones off of his ears and turned off the music. His mother was standing at the top of the stairs. She was looking down at him, and she didn’t seem very happy. ‘Christ,’ he thought. ‘What did I do wrong now?’
“Hey mom! I didn’t know you were home. What’s up?” he asked, making his voice sound just a tad too cheerful. His mother just stood there looking at him. Michael smiled up at her and climbed a few more steps until he was just eight steps down from her. “We got let out early because of the snow. Kelly should be home soon too. They let the middle school out a half-hour after the high school. I bet we’ll be off tomorrow. We’re supposed to get a foot of snow!” His mother stared.
“Mom? What’s up?” he said as she continued her accusatory stare. “Oh, sorry I didn’t clean my room this morning. I’ll do it now,” he said and started to climb the rest of the stairs. But she just stood there on the landing at the top of the stairs looking down at him as if she wanted to confront him about something. She was holding a dish towel, so he guessed she had just come up from the kitchen for something. But what was her problem? She was literally blocking his way, but she wasn’t saying anything; just holding the towel in one hand, twisting it with the other, and staring at him.
“Mom, what’s the matter?” Michael asked. He was genuinely beginning to get concerned. ‘Oh Christ, maybe she had a stroke or something’, he thought. Then, as he looked up at her, the corners of her mouth turned up slightly, and she shifted the weight off of one foot and took a step back as if she was about to let him pass. But just as Michael started to climb the stairs again, she slowly took a step forward and twisted the towel tighter.
“Mom? What’s the matter? Did I do something wrong? Talk to me!” he yelled. Then, the corners of her mouth slowly turned upward into a big grin, as if she had just been playing some kind of a joke on him. He sighed with relief and smiled back at her. He laughed, “Mom, you really had me fooled there for a minute,” he said.
From downstairs, he heard someone walk in from the kitchen and through the living room. “There’s Kelly now,” he said. “Her school bus must have just dropped her off.”
Suddenly, a voice called to him from the bottom of the stairs, “Michael, who are you talking to honey? I could hear your voice from all the way in the basement.” Michael turned around quickly and stared down the stairs in total disbelief. The skin on his scalp crawled, and he began to shake. His mother was standing at the bottom of the stairs smiling up at him. She was holding a roll of paper towels in one hand and a spray bottle of cleaner in the other. “Who are you talking to up there?” she asked again.
Michael’s head jerked around back to the top of the stairs. There was no one there, just a twisted dish towel laying limp on the top step.
“Michael? Michael? What’s wrong honey? Michael?”
The story you just read isn’t fiction. It comes from a paranormal investigation I conducted in Weschester County, New York. The family had a number of bizarre experiences after the father brought the haunted organ home, but Michael coming face-to-face with his doppelgänger-mother was by far the strangest.
Almost everyone has heard the term “Doppelgänger”. It’s a German word that means “double-walker” or “double-goer”. Basically, a doppelgänger is someone who looks, acts, and sounds exactly like another person. Stories of doppelgängers have been around for literally thousands of years, and many theories surround these mysterious doubles.
One theory is that a doppelgänger is a duplicate version of ourselves from an alternate reality or from another dimension; that they actually are our double, but in their reality, they are living an entirely different life than the one we live in this reality. We’ve all pondered the question of what our life would be like today if we had taken a different path--gone to a different college, taken a different job, met and married someone else. In the alternate reality theory, there are multitudinous ‘versions’ of ourselves who did all of those things, each living an entirely different life than the one we’re living. And when both realities line-up in one way or another, one of us ‘bleeds over’ into the other’s world and we end up seeing each other. In this scenario, the sightings are usually brief, and the doppelgängers usually vanish when sighted.
Another theory is that a doppelgänger is our exact double, a cell-for-cell duplicate living in the same reality. Some think that it’s impossible for two of the same person to live in the same reality or in the same dimension, so when the two meet up, one must die. If this is true, then, seeing your own doppelgänger is never a good thing. Take Abraham Lincoln, for example. In 1860, Lincoln had an eerie vision of his own double while looking into a mirror. One of Lincoln’s friends, Noah Brooks, remembered the story as Lincoln told it to him on November 9, 1864. Recalling Lincoln’s words as best as he remembered them, he remembered him saying:
“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day ... so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber.
Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it, and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler--say five shades--than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away, and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it--nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened.
When I went home again that night, I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again when, sure enough the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a “sign” that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”
Critics of Lincoln’s story argue that what he saw was nothing more than a defect in the mirror. But those who believe that Lincoln saw his double point out that he saw himself “reflected nearly at full length”, yet he only reported seeing a pale, double-image of his face floating about three inches above his actual face. Had this been a problem with the mirror, his entire image would have been shown as double, not just the pale phantom face.
Did Lincoln’s doppelgänger vision actually foretell his death? We’ll never know for sure. What we do know is that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, three months into his second term, just as Mary Todd Lincoln predicted, and just five months after sharing his doppelgänger story with his friend.
Lincoln wasn’t the only historic figure to die after seeing his doppelgänger. A number of famous people have reported seeing their double shortly before they died.
Catherine the Great, the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, reported seeing her doppelgänger just a few months before she died. According to the account, Catherine was in her bedroom when two of her servants knocked on her door in a panic. They said that they had just seen the Empress entering the throne room, even though they knew she had been lying in bed at the time. Catherine called her guards, then went to the throne room to investigate the servants’ claims. Once inside the room, she was shocked to see a duplicate version of herself seated calmly on the throne. The guards saw this mysterious figure as well, and Catherine wasted no time in ordering them to fire at the woman--but the bullets seemed to go right through the spectral queen. The queen’s doppelgänger slowly vanished and was never seen again. Not long after, Catherine suffered a stroke. She fell into a coma and died.
It seems that royalty is no stranger to doppelgängers. Elizabeth I ruled England from 1558 until 1603. According to historians, Elizabeth is said to have seen a deathly pale version of herself lying in her chambers like a corpse. She described the doppelgänger as “pallid, shivered, and bloodless”.
The story of Queen Elizabeth’s death is an interesting one. In 1563, the queen was stricken with smallpox. She made a full recovery, but her face was left with disfiguring scars. The queen believed that her beauty was part of her power, so she wore thick, white makeup to cover the scars. Unfortunately, the main ingredient of the makeup she wore was lead. It was this foundational mask of lead that, over time, most likely poisoned the Queen to death. Near the end of her life she suffered extensive hair loss, mental disorientation, memory loss, fatigue, and digestive problems. All of these are symptoms of lead toxicity. Soon after seeing her doppelgänger, Queen Elizabeth I died.
Of course, it’s possible that the doppelgänger Queen Elizabeth saw could have been just another symptom of lead poison. But then again, one can make a case that she didn’t die until right after seeing her ‘evil twin’, so the jury is still out.
The English Romantic poet, Percy Shelley, had a short life filled with tragedy. When he was 19-years-old he eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, whom his father had forbidden him to see. After three years, he abandoned Harriet and started living with another woman. Two years later, Harriet committed suicide by drowning herself in a lake. He had several other failed love affairs before marrying Mary Shelley, author of the novel Frankenstein. But tragedy was to mar their marriage as well. The couple lost three of their four children, and Mary’s sister, Fanny, committed suicide.
Shortly before he died, Percy confessed to his wife that he had seen his doppelgänger many times. Once, Percy was walking on the terrace of his house when he came face-to-face with his exact double. Not only that, the phantom actually spoke to him and asked him the curious question, “How long do you mean to be content?”
Other people also reported seeing Percy’s doppelgänger. One day, his friend Jane Williams saw his spectral twin walking on the terrace of his home. Mary Shelley recounted the story after Percy’s death. She said:
“Now Jane, though a woman of sensibility, has not much imagination and is not in the slightest degree nervous, neither in dreams nor otherwise. One day she and Edward Trelawny were standing at a window that looked onto the terrace. It was daytime, and Jane saw Percy pass by the window. As he often was then, he was without a coat or jacket. Soon after, he passed by the window again. Now, as he passed both times from the same direction, and as there was no way to get back from the side towards which he went each time except past the window again--or over a wall twenty feet from the ground--she was struck at seeing him pass twice thus.
Looking out and seeing him no more, Jane cried, ‘Good God! Can Percy have leapt from the wall? Where can he have gone?’ Edward Trelawny replied, ‘What do you mean? Percy hasn’t passed.’ When she heard this, Jane trembled exceedingly; and it proved indeed that Percy had never been on the terrace. He was, in fact, far off at the time she saw him.”
Percy Shelley’s last encounter with his doppelgänger was when he saw himself on a beach pointing out at the sea. He ran towards the mysterious figure, but it vanished as he approached it. Not long afterward, Percy drowned in a sailing accident in 1812 at the age of 29.
One of the most fascinating reports of a doppelganger comes from writer Robert Dale Owen, who recounted the tale of a French woman named Emilie Sagée. In 1845, Emilie was a teacher at an exclusive girls' school, and one day while she was writing on the blackboard, her exact double appeared beside her. The doppelgänger copied the teacher's every move as she wrote, except that it was not holding any chalk. Thirteen students in the classroom witnessed the event and were understandably frightened.
Another time, Emilie’s doppelgänger appeared next to her in the dining hall. As Emilie ate her dinner, her phantom twin was seen sitting next to her mimicking her every move.
During the next year, Emilie’s doppelgänger was seen several times. The most amazing instance of this took place in full view of the entire student body of 42 students.
One afternoon, Emilie gave sewing assignments to her class and then went out in the garden outside to pick some flowers while the girls were working on the assignment. While she was in the garden, her students looked on in amazement as ‘another’ Emilie was nonchalantly sitting in her seat looking out the window at the real Emilie. Most of the students were so frightened that they ran from the class. A few, however, were brave enough to go and touch the doppelgänger. They later reported that their hands went right through it, and that it felt as if they were going through cobwebs. By the time the real Emilie came back, the mysterious twin had gone.
While Emilie apparently never saw her doppelgänger, it was reported that when the entity was present "the color would drain from her face and, overcome with fatigue, her movements would become listless."
Eventually, Emilie was let go from her teaching position due to the disturbing presence of her double. If the school had looked into her background before hiring her, they would have noticed something strange about her employment record. In the eighteen years that Emilie had been teaching, she had been hired and let go from sixteen different schools. Apparently, her mysterious double had been around for a very long time.
So far, the stories we’ve heard happened a long time ago, but sightings of doppelgängers isn’t just a thing of the past. There are many current reports of the sighting of mysterious doubles.
Susan from Texas reported encountering the doppelgängers of various family members in her childhood home. One night, she was in her parent’s bedroom talking to her mother on her bed. The girl fell asleep, but she woke up when she heard the bedroom door slam. When she woke up, her mother was sitting on the bed drinking a cup of milk. When Susan asked what the loud slamming sound was, her mother said that the girl’s sister, Amy, had just brought her a cup of warm milk. But she must have been mad or something because after handing her mother the milk, Amy walked away without saying a word and slammed the door.
The next morning the mother asked Amy if she was angry about something, and she told her the story about how she had slammed the door after handing her the cup of milk. Amy looked at her mother and said, “What are you talking about? I didn’t bring you a cup of milk last night. I know I usually do, but I was tired so I went straight to bed. I heard a door slam really loud too, though. I thought that maybe you and dad had a fight or something, and that one of you slammed the door.”
Another time, Amy was making dinner with her mother. She had to go upstairs to get something from her room, and when she got to the top of the stairs she saw her sister Susan coming out of the bathroom. She told her that dinner was almost ready, and to come down to eat, but her sister just ignored her. Amy went down to the kitchen and said to her mom, “What’s up with Susan? I just told her that dinner was ready, but she just ignored me and walked into her room.” Her mother said, “What do you mean? Susan isn’t here. She went out to a friend’s house a few hours ago.”
Amy was so sure that she had seen her sister coming out of the bathroom that she drove over to the friend’s house to ask her if she had gone home briefly, then left to go back to her friend’s house. But Susan said that she had been at her friend’s house the whole time.
Doppelgänger are often silent, and they often behave in a way that is uncharacteristic of their double. One day, a young man was sitting in the kitchen with his mother drinking coffee while his father was outside in the driveway working on his truck. His father came in to get a drink of water, then said, “I’m going to take out the trash, then take a shower. After that we can go out for dinner.” He grabbed the trash bag from the kitchen, then went out the back door to put it in the trash can at the end of the driveway. About 10 seconds later, he came storming back into the house. He walked into the bedroom and slammed the door.
The young man and his mother called out to him asking what he was mad about. They thought his behavior was odd because he was in such a good mood when he left to empty the garbage a few seconds earlier, and because he came back so quickly. A few seconds later, the father came in again through the same door they had just seen him come through. The mother and son were shocked, and the father swore that it was the first time he had come into the house since he went out to empty the trash.
There is a strange audio doppelgänger phenomenon common to hauntings whereby people living in haunted houses have reported hearing their family members calling their names, asking them questions, or even having full conversations with them, only to discover that the person was either not at home, or that they weren’t talking at all. I call these doppelgänger voices Spookpraat, which is Dutch for “Ghost Talk”
A perfect example of spookpraat comes from an investigation I conducted at a home in Oxford, Connecticut. The family reported seeing the ghost of a dark-haired girl around eight-years-old, and an amazingly clear video of this little ghost girl was captured on the family’s home security camera.
In addition to the sightings of this mysterious child, the family reported hearing voices in the house. But it wasn’t the voice of the little girl they heard--the voices sounded exactly like members of the family.
These spookpraat voices were heard by several family members. During the investigation, the homeowner explained, “My husband had a job videotaping weddings, and he would often get home late at night. Before coming up to our bedroom, he would sometimes hear me calling for him very loudly at the top of the stairs. He would hear me calling his name, and then he would go upstairs only to find that I was asleep in bed. He said it sounded just like me. I don’t have a history of talking in my sleep, so we don’t have any explanation for this.
I’ve also heard someone who sounds like my daughter calling ‘Mom! Mom!’, and several times I’ve heard someone calling my name. To me it always sounds like it’s one of my kids calling to me or talking. My husband swears that the voice that he hears sounds just like me
One time our family friend Jack came to visit. My sons, Jake and Spencer, were upstairs, and Jack and I both heard one of the boys calling loudly from upstairs, ‘Mom! Mom! Mom!’ All I could think was, ‘My husband is upstairs with them, what could they want?’ A few minutes later, Jack and I heard the voice calling me again, so I excused myself and went upstairs to see what the problem was. When I got up there, everyone was asleep!”
Another woman shared a story with me about the mysterious spookpraat voices heard in her Connecticut home. She said, "My husband was away on business and the kids were in the family room. All of a sudden, they came running in and said, “Oh my God mommy, did you hear that?” I’m like, “What, what did you hear.” They said, “We heard daddy’s chair pull away from the desk upstairs, and we heard his voice say, “Hey ... bed!” as if he was telling them to come upstairs to go to bed. The thing is, my husband wasn’t home, and I reminded them of this. The kids were so positive that they heard his voice that they didn’t believe me. They thought that maybe he came home and went upstairs without telling anyone. So, I walked them upstairs to show them that he wasn’t there, but they still didn’t believe me. I actually had to call my husband and put them on the phone with him to assure them that he wasn’t in the house.
About three weeks later I came home and I heard my daughter in our family room call out to me, ‘Hi Mommy! How are you? Did you have a good morning?’ It was like a sing-songy way that she talks sometimes, and I called out to her, ‘Oh, I’m doing good honey,’ and I started having a conversation with her about my morning. I went around the corner to the family room, and all of a sudden I realized that something just wasn't right. Then I’m like, wait a minute, I’m still talking to her, but she’s not talking back. I said, ‘Samantha, are you there?’ Dead silence. I walked into the family room, and the room was empty. I ran upstairs and found my daughter fast asleep in her bed.”
Another Connecticut resident reported that her husband heard a spookpraat voice in their apartment through the baby monitor. She said, “We moved into the apartment on Christian Street when my son Logan was about four months old. During the time we lived there we experienced a number of strange things, like lights turned on and off, and sometimes it felt like somebody was watching you, especially in the bathroom.
Logan had his own room, and we installed a baby monitor so we could hear him if he woke up. One night after I put him to bed, I was in the living room folding clothes watching TV, and my husband was in our bedroom. All of a sudden he comes out of the bedroom yelling, ‘What is the matter with you? Why would you say that? Why would you talk to Logan like that?’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? I’m here folding clothes?’ He said, ‘You didn’t say anything?’ I said, ‘No!’ He goes, ‘I just heard your voice over the monitor yelling ‘Shut the F_ _ _ up Logan’.’ I actually had trouble convincing my husband that it wasn’t me that he heard on the baby monitor because he said that it sounded exactly like my voice.”
Sometimes, sightings of a doppelgänger are accompanied by voices other than family members. And it seems that some spirits have the ability not only to imitate anyone’s voice, but they can also take on the appearance of anyone they want.
A woman from Newtown, Connecticut who lives next to an old abandoned mental institution reported hearing the voice of a little girl in her house. Her father heard the voice as well. “Sometimes I would be in one room,” she said, “and I would hear her talking in another room. One time my brother was getting off the bus and I heard downstairs, as clear as day, a little girl saying, ‘Is he getting off the bus?’.
Another time I was down in the basement when I heard footsteps on the wood floors above me, and the sound of a little girl giggling. My dad heard her too, and came down and screamed at the ghost!
I’m sure that this girl’s spirit came from Fairfield hills, but I think there was another spirit with her; a non-human spirit that would act as a doppelgänger. My brother said that he would often see me wandering around the yard when I wasn’t even home. One time I was in the basement and I suddenly saw my brother running at me from across the room. Right as he was about to hit me, he vanished.
One night I got out of the shower and went into my bedroom. I was sitting on a beanbag chair in my room. The hallway was dark, but I could see the area just outside of it clearly because of the light from my room. I was on my phone, and I looked up and I saw my brother clear as day standing in the hallway just outside of my room. He was bent over and flailing his arms around wildly. It was really weird. I watched him doing this for a good five or ten seconds, and all the while I’m thinking, ‘What is going on? What’s his problem?’ I thought it was just my brother acting goofy. But then I blinked, and he was gone. I ran to the hallway, but there was no one there. It turns out my brother was downstairs the whole time.”
There is another category of doppelgängers that has nothing at all to do with ghosts or hauntings. It is called ‘bilocation’, and it is often associated with saints and mystics. Bilocation is the simultaneous presence of the same person in two different places.
One little known Catholic story of biocation is about the Virgin Mary. “Our Lady of the Pillar” is the name given to the blessed Virgin Mary in the context of the belief that she appeared to the apostle James the Greater while he was preaching in Spain in 40 AD. It is the only instance of Mary exhibiting the mystical phenomenon of bilocation while she was alive on earth.
Padre Pio is a Catholic saint known for exhibiting stigmata for over 50 years. In Christianity, stigmata are the bodily appearance of wounds, scars, and pain corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, such as the hands, wrists and feet. (*) In addition to exhibiting stigmata, Padre Pio was known for his ability to appear in two places at once. In one story, Padre Pio appeared to a family in Flushing, New York. A woman’s grandfather became gravely ill. He went into a coma, and the family stayed by his bedside. One day, a young Capuchin monk dressed in the traditional dark brown robe knocked on the door and said that he had come to pray for their grandfather. This was odd since there were no Capuchin monks in their local parish, or in any other parish in the area. After praying with the family and giving the man his last rites, the monk left. As soon as he left a family member exclaimed, ”Don’t you know who that was? It was Padre Pio. He looked exactly like I remember him when I used to deliver eggs to him in Pietrelcina.”
Other stories of Padre Pio’s ability to bilocate involve the saint appearing to people and speaking to them before vanishing.
But Catholic saints are not the only people who seem to have the ability to bilocate. Many prominent Hindu gurus are reported to have this same ability.
Of course, good people don’t have the monopoly on biolcation. During the Salem witch trials, many women were accused of appearing to people, either in dreams or in the flesh. And the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley was reported to have appeared to friends and acquaintances when he was actually miles away at the time. Crowley never denied having the ability to bilocate, but he said he was not conscious of it happening.
Then, there are doppelgängers who show up in old photographs or paintings who look eerily similar to people from the present. You can find a lot of photos online of famous people who look exactly like people in old tintype photos. Yeah, I know--it’s probably just a coincidence, but seeing some of these photos does make you wonder. One old photograph looks amazingly like Nicholas Cage, and another looks strikingly similar to John Travolta. Justin Timberlake looks exactly like an old-time criminal in a mugshot, and Daniel Radcliffe seems to have a number of people who look like him, including women!
I’m no stranger to this phenomenon. I stumbled upon a painting while on a family vacation that left me speechless. My wife and I had taken the kids on a trip down South and we stopped by the Wright Brothers National Memorial Museum in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. We viewed the outdoor stone monuments, then made our way into the museum and viewed the various exhibits which included a wall displaying paintings of famous aviators. My daughter suddenly came running over to me and said, “That lady looks just like Amy!” At first I looked around the room thinking there was a visitor in the museum who resembled my wife, but my daughter said, “No, the painting!” I looked and was stunned to see that the woman in the painting bore an uncanny resemblance to my wife. I quickly called her over and asked, “Who does that woman look like?" Without missing a beat my wife said, “She looks like me!” I took a photo of the painting and it became a topic of conversation for years.
I recently came across the photo and decided to see if there were any photos of Louise Thaden online. I figured that the painting might look like my wife, but a photograph probably wouldn’t resemble her. It would be too much of a coincidence. Not so. My wife really does bear an eerie resemblance to the famous aviator. But I’ll take it one step further. Louise Thaden not only looks like my wife, the painting and the photographs of her seem to have my wife’s energy, her personality, her spirit.
Now, is this proof that Louise Thaden was actually my wife’s doppelgänger? Maybe not, but it makes me think that, perhaps, each of us actually has a double out there somewhere, either in this time period or from somewhere in the distant past. Or, maybe we are someone’s doppelgänger from the future.
By the way, if you’re interested in seeing photos of my wife, and of Louise Thaden side-by-side, you can see them by clicking HERE.
Have you ever had a dream that you remembered for years? I had one as a teenager that I remember to this very day. In the dream, I was walking down a road when I saw someone walking toward me; a boy who looked to be around my age. He was quite a distance away, so I didn’t pay much attention to him, but as he got closer, I realized that he looked exactly like me. When we were within arms-length of one another he stopped and looked at me. We were both amazed. We were dressed alike, looked alike, were the same height, had the same hairstyle--we had the same everything. I said to him, “You look just like me!” and he said, “No, you look just like me!” I said, “That’s impossible. That’s just amazing! You’re me!” “No, you’re me!” he said. We both laughed, then the boy turned and walked with me. The dream cut away to a scene of the two of us walking away down the road together, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, our conversation and laughter fading until the two of us were out of sight.
I wonder if that boy was actually me in some other dimension or in some other reality--a version of myself living a totally different but parallel life. If so, I wonder if today he remembers a dream he had as a boy when he met himself, and the two of him walked off together laughing and talking and comparing notes about their lives.
Resources
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160712-you-are-surprisingly-likely-to-have-a-living-doppelganger
http://www.francoisbrunelle.com/webn/e-project.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/strangers-who-look-like-twins-im-not-a-lookalike_n_4575750
https://globalnews.ca/news/2300048/your-doppelganger-exists-according-to-science-heres-why/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAcwp-PuiOQ Top 10 Scary Doppelganger Stories
https://www.bustle.com/p/8-creepy-doppelganger-superstitions-that-will-make-you-hope-you-never-meet-your-double-12273817
https://www.martianherald.com/9-mystifying-cases-doppelganger-phenomenon/page/6
https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-blog/5-historical-figures-who-saw-their-doppelganger-and-then-died
https://erenow.net/common/occult-america/3.php
https://www.caccioppoli.com/6%20Examinations%20of%20the%20wounds.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation
https://www.businessinsider.com/check-out-these-celebrities-and-their-ridiculous-historical-dopplegangers-2012-8
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/27/dickens-exhibition-spooky-plagiarism-scare
https://www.liveabout.com/true-stories-of-doppelgangers-2593448
Michael burst through the backdoor, snow swirling in after him. He slammed the door shut, threw his book bag on the mudroom floor and pried off his snow-caked sneakers, losing one soggy sock in the process. He pulled off the other drenched sock and threw both on top of his book bag, then threw his wet jacket on top of the pile. ‘I’ll pick that stuff up later,’ he thought; but in reality, he knew that his mother would pick up after him like she always did.
Music was blasting in Michael’s headphones as he headed to the kitchen to grab a snack. School was let out early because of the snow, and with more than a foot predicted by morning, it looked like tomorrow would definitely be a snow day. ‘Yes!’ he thought, ‘one less day of 11th grade!’ He riffled through the junk food cabinet and settled on something he considered to be highly nutritious--Strawberry Pop-tarts. His reasoning? They’re made with real fruit.
He tore open the two-pack of Pop-Tarts and said in his best announcer voice: “Jump-start your day with a blast of gooey, strawberry-flavored filling!” Taking a bite, Michael headed out into the living room and made for the staircase. When he was half-way across the room he slowed, took another bite of his Pop-Tart, then stopped and looked at the crucifixes that hung on all four walls of the room and thought, ‘Christ, dad, What the hell did you get us into?’
Three months ago, crazy things started happening in the house after Michael’s father bought an antique pump-organ he saw while doing a job at a house in Elmsford. His father was an electrician, and a musician on the side. So, when he saw the organ he bought it from the guy, even though it came with a warning. The guy told his father that that organ was ... Michael shook the thought away and started walking to the staircase, then he slowed and eyed the big wooden crucifix that hung above the front door. To the right of the door hung a string of rosary beads, and on the door itself was a picture of Jesus, his eyes lifted to heaven. Michael shook his head and said out loud, “I don’t believe any of this crap,” and turned up the volume on his headphones. ‘Haunted my ass,’ he thought as he turned the corner and headed upstairs.
Michael was on the third step when he looked up, then quickly pulled the headphones off of his ears and turned off the music. His mother was standing at the top of the stairs. She was looking down at him, and she didn’t seem very happy. ‘Christ,’ he thought. ‘What did I do wrong now?’
“Hey mom! I didn’t know you were home. What’s up?” he asked, making his voice sound just a tad too cheerful. His mother just stood there looking at him. Michael smiled up at her and climbed a few more steps until he was just eight steps down from her. “We got let out early because of the snow. Kelly should be home soon too. They let the middle school out a half-hour after the high school. I bet we’ll be off tomorrow. We’re supposed to get a foot of snow!” His mother stared.
“Mom? What’s up?” he said as she continued her accusatory stare. “Oh, sorry I didn’t clean my room this morning. I’ll do it now,” he said and started to climb the rest of the stairs. But she just stood there on the landing at the top of the stairs looking down at him as if she wanted to confront him about something. She was holding a dish towel, so he guessed she had just come up from the kitchen for something. But what was her problem? She was literally blocking his way, but she wasn’t saying anything; just holding the towel in one hand, twisting it with the other, and staring at him.
“Mom, what’s the matter?” Michael asked. He was genuinely beginning to get concerned. ‘Oh Christ, maybe she had a stroke or something’, he thought. Then, as he looked up at her, the corners of her mouth turned up slightly, and she shifted the weight off of one foot and took a step back as if she was about to let him pass. But just as Michael started to climb the stairs again, she slowly took a step forward and twisted the towel tighter.
“Mom? What’s the matter? Did I do something wrong? Talk to me!” he yelled. Then, the corners of her mouth slowly turned upward into a big grin, as if she had just been playing some kind of a joke on him. He sighed with relief and smiled back at her. He laughed, “Mom, you really had me fooled there for a minute,” he said.
From downstairs, he heard someone walk in from the kitchen and through the living room. “There’s Kelly now,” he said. “Her school bus must have just dropped her off.”
Suddenly, a voice called to him from the bottom of the stairs, “Michael, who are you talking to honey? I could hear your voice from all the way in the basement.” Michael turned around quickly and stared down the stairs in total disbelief. The skin on his scalp crawled, and he began to shake. His mother was standing at the bottom of the stairs smiling up at him. She was holding a roll of paper towels in one hand and a spray bottle of cleaner in the other. “Who are you talking to up there?” she asked again.
Michael’s head jerked around back to the top of the stairs. There was no one there, just a twisted dish towel laying limp on the top step.
“Michael? Michael? What’s wrong honey? Michael?”
The story you just read isn’t fiction. It comes from a paranormal investigation I conducted in Weschester County, New York. The family had a number of bizarre experiences after the father brought the haunted organ home, but Michael coming face-to-face with his doppelgänger-mother was by far the strangest.
Almost everyone has heard the term “Doppelgänger”. It’s a German word that means “double-walker” or “double-goer”. Basically, a doppelgänger is someone who looks, acts, and sounds exactly like another person. Stories of doppelgängers have been around for literally thousands of years, and many theories surround these mysterious doubles.
One theory is that a doppelgänger is a duplicate version of ourselves from an alternate reality or from another dimension; that they actually are our double, but in their reality, they are living an entirely different life than the one we live in this reality. We’ve all pondered the question of what our life would be like today if we had taken a different path--gone to a different college, taken a different job, met and married someone else. In the alternate reality theory, there are multitudinous ‘versions’ of ourselves who did all of those things, each living an entirely different life than the one we’re living. And when both realities line-up in one way or another, one of us ‘bleeds over’ into the other’s world and we end up seeing each other. In this scenario, the sightings are usually brief, and the doppelgängers usually vanish when sighted.
Another theory is that a doppelgänger is our exact double, a cell-for-cell duplicate living in the same reality. Some think that it’s impossible for two of the same person to live in the same reality or in the same dimension, so when the two meet up, one must die. If this is true, then, seeing your own doppelgänger is never a good thing. Take Abraham Lincoln, for example. In 1860, Lincoln had an eerie vision of his own double while looking into a mirror. One of Lincoln’s friends, Noah Brooks, remembered the story as Lincoln told it to him on November 9, 1864. Recalling Lincoln’s words as best as he remembered them, he remembered him saying:
“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day ... so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber.
Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it, and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler--say five shades--than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away, and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it--nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened.
When I went home again that night, I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again when, sure enough the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a “sign” that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”
Critics of Lincoln’s story argue that what he saw was nothing more than a defect in the mirror. But those who believe that Lincoln saw his double point out that he saw himself “reflected nearly at full length”, yet he only reported seeing a pale, double-image of his face floating about three inches above his actual face. Had this been a problem with the mirror, his entire image would have been shown as double, not just the pale phantom face.
Did Lincoln’s doppelgänger vision actually foretell his death? We’ll never know for sure. What we do know is that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, three months into his second term, just as Mary Todd Lincoln predicted, and just five months after sharing his doppelgänger story with his friend.
Lincoln wasn’t the only historic figure to die after seeing his doppelgänger. A number of famous people have reported seeing their double shortly before they died.
Catherine the Great, the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, reported seeing her doppelgänger just a few months before she died. According to the account, Catherine was in her bedroom when two of her servants knocked on her door in a panic. They said that they had just seen the Empress entering the throne room, even though they knew she had been lying in bed at the time. Catherine called her guards, then went to the throne room to investigate the servants’ claims. Once inside the room, she was shocked to see a duplicate version of herself seated calmly on the throne. The guards saw this mysterious figure as well, and Catherine wasted no time in ordering them to fire at the woman--but the bullets seemed to go right through the spectral queen. The queen’s doppelgänger slowly vanished and was never seen again. Not long after, Catherine suffered a stroke. She fell into a coma and died.
It seems that royalty is no stranger to doppelgängers. Elizabeth I ruled England from 1558 until 1603. According to historians, Elizabeth is said to have seen a deathly pale version of herself lying in her chambers like a corpse. She described the doppelgänger as “pallid, shivered, and bloodless”.
The story of Queen Elizabeth’s death is an interesting one. In 1563, the queen was stricken with smallpox. She made a full recovery, but her face was left with disfiguring scars. The queen believed that her beauty was part of her power, so she wore thick, white makeup to cover the scars. Unfortunately, the main ingredient of the makeup she wore was lead. It was this foundational mask of lead that, over time, most likely poisoned the Queen to death. Near the end of her life she suffered extensive hair loss, mental disorientation, memory loss, fatigue, and digestive problems. All of these are symptoms of lead toxicity. Soon after seeing her doppelgänger, Queen Elizabeth I died.
Of course, it’s possible that the doppelgänger Queen Elizabeth saw could have been just another symptom of lead poison. But then again, one can make a case that she didn’t die until right after seeing her ‘evil twin’, so the jury is still out.
The English Romantic poet, Percy Shelley, had a short life filled with tragedy. When he was 19-years-old he eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, whom his father had forbidden him to see. After three years, he abandoned Harriet and started living with another woman. Two years later, Harriet committed suicide by drowning herself in a lake. He had several other failed love affairs before marrying Mary Shelley, author of the novel Frankenstein. But tragedy was to mar their marriage as well. The couple lost three of their four children, and Mary’s sister, Fanny, committed suicide.
Shortly before he died, Percy confessed to his wife that he had seen his doppelgänger many times. Once, Percy was walking on the terrace of his house when he came face-to-face with his exact double. Not only that, the phantom actually spoke to him and asked him the curious question, “How long do you mean to be content?”
Other people also reported seeing Percy’s doppelgänger. One day, his friend Jane Williams saw his spectral twin walking on the terrace of his home. Mary Shelley recounted the story after Percy’s death. She said:
“Now Jane, though a woman of sensibility, has not much imagination and is not in the slightest degree nervous, neither in dreams nor otherwise. One day she and Edward Trelawny were standing at a window that looked onto the terrace. It was daytime, and Jane saw Percy pass by the window. As he often was then, he was without a coat or jacket. Soon after, he passed by the window again. Now, as he passed both times from the same direction, and as there was no way to get back from the side towards which he went each time except past the window again--or over a wall twenty feet from the ground--she was struck at seeing him pass twice thus.
Looking out and seeing him no more, Jane cried, ‘Good God! Can Percy have leapt from the wall? Where can he have gone?’ Edward Trelawny replied, ‘What do you mean? Percy hasn’t passed.’ When she heard this, Jane trembled exceedingly; and it proved indeed that Percy had never been on the terrace. He was, in fact, far off at the time she saw him.”
Percy Shelley’s last encounter with his doppelgänger was when he saw himself on a beach pointing out at the sea. He ran towards the mysterious figure, but it vanished as he approached it. Not long afterward, Percy drowned in a sailing accident in 1812 at the age of 29.
One of the most fascinating reports of a doppelganger comes from writer Robert Dale Owen, who recounted the tale of a French woman named Emilie Sagée. In 1845, Emilie was a teacher at an exclusive girls' school, and one day while she was writing on the blackboard, her exact double appeared beside her. The doppelgänger copied the teacher's every move as she wrote, except that it was not holding any chalk. Thirteen students in the classroom witnessed the event and were understandably frightened.
Another time, Emilie’s doppelgänger appeared next to her in the dining hall. As Emilie ate her dinner, her phantom twin was seen sitting next to her mimicking her every move.
During the next year, Emilie’s doppelgänger was seen several times. The most amazing instance of this took place in full view of the entire student body of 42 students.
One afternoon, Emilie gave sewing assignments to her class and then went out in the garden outside to pick some flowers while the girls were working on the assignment. While she was in the garden, her students looked on in amazement as ‘another’ Emilie was nonchalantly sitting in her seat looking out the window at the real Emilie. Most of the students were so frightened that they ran from the class. A few, however, were brave enough to go and touch the doppelgänger. They later reported that their hands went right through it, and that it felt as if they were going through cobwebs. By the time the real Emilie came back, the mysterious twin had gone.
While Emilie apparently never saw her doppelgänger, it was reported that when the entity was present "the color would drain from her face and, overcome with fatigue, her movements would become listless."
Eventually, Emilie was let go from her teaching position due to the disturbing presence of her double. If the school had looked into her background before hiring her, they would have noticed something strange about her employment record. In the eighteen years that Emilie had been teaching, she had been hired and let go from sixteen different schools. Apparently, her mysterious double had been around for a very long time.
So far, the stories we’ve heard happened a long time ago, but sightings of doppelgängers isn’t just a thing of the past. There are many current reports of the sighting of mysterious doubles.
Susan from Texas reported encountering the doppelgängers of various family members in her childhood home. One night, she was in her parent’s bedroom talking to her mother on her bed. The girl fell asleep, but she woke up when she heard the bedroom door slam. When she woke up, her mother was sitting on the bed drinking a cup of milk. When Susan asked what the loud slamming sound was, her mother said that the girl’s sister, Amy, had just brought her a cup of warm milk. But she must have been mad or something because after handing her mother the milk, Amy walked away without saying a word and slammed the door.
The next morning the mother asked Amy if she was angry about something, and she told her the story about how she had slammed the door after handing her the cup of milk. Amy looked at her mother and said, “What are you talking about? I didn’t bring you a cup of milk last night. I know I usually do, but I was tired so I went straight to bed. I heard a door slam really loud too, though. I thought that maybe you and dad had a fight or something, and that one of you slammed the door.”
Another time, Amy was making dinner with her mother. She had to go upstairs to get something from her room, and when she got to the top of the stairs she saw her sister Susan coming out of the bathroom. She told her that dinner was almost ready, and to come down to eat, but her sister just ignored her. Amy went down to the kitchen and said to her mom, “What’s up with Susan? I just told her that dinner was ready, but she just ignored me and walked into her room.” Her mother said, “What do you mean? Susan isn’t here. She went out to a friend’s house a few hours ago.”
Amy was so sure that she had seen her sister coming out of the bathroom that she drove over to the friend’s house to ask her if she had gone home briefly, then left to go back to her friend’s house. But Susan said that she had been at her friend’s house the whole time.
Doppelgänger are often silent, and they often behave in a way that is uncharacteristic of their double. One day, a young man was sitting in the kitchen with his mother drinking coffee while his father was outside in the driveway working on his truck. His father came in to get a drink of water, then said, “I’m going to take out the trash, then take a shower. After that we can go out for dinner.” He grabbed the trash bag from the kitchen, then went out the back door to put it in the trash can at the end of the driveway. About 10 seconds later, he came storming back into the house. He walked into the bedroom and slammed the door.
The young man and his mother called out to him asking what he was mad about. They thought his behavior was odd because he was in such a good mood when he left to empty the garbage a few seconds earlier, and because he came back so quickly. A few seconds later, the father came in again through the same door they had just seen him come through. The mother and son were shocked, and the father swore that it was the first time he had come into the house since he went out to empty the trash.
There is a strange audio doppelgänger phenomenon common to hauntings whereby people living in haunted houses have reported hearing their family members calling their names, asking them questions, or even having full conversations with them, only to discover that the person was either not at home, or that they weren’t talking at all. I call these doppelgänger voices Spookpraat, which is Dutch for “Ghost Talk”
A perfect example of spookpraat comes from an investigation I conducted at a home in Oxford, Connecticut. The family reported seeing the ghost of a dark-haired girl around eight-years-old, and an amazingly clear video of this little ghost girl was captured on the family’s home security camera.
In addition to the sightings of this mysterious child, the family reported hearing voices in the house. But it wasn’t the voice of the little girl they heard--the voices sounded exactly like members of the family.
These spookpraat voices were heard by several family members. During the investigation, the homeowner explained, “My husband had a job videotaping weddings, and he would often get home late at night. Before coming up to our bedroom, he would sometimes hear me calling for him very loudly at the top of the stairs. He would hear me calling his name, and then he would go upstairs only to find that I was asleep in bed. He said it sounded just like me. I don’t have a history of talking in my sleep, so we don’t have any explanation for this.
I’ve also heard someone who sounds like my daughter calling ‘Mom! Mom!’, and several times I’ve heard someone calling my name. To me it always sounds like it’s one of my kids calling to me or talking. My husband swears that the voice that he hears sounds just like me
One time our family friend Jack came to visit. My sons, Jake and Spencer, were upstairs, and Jack and I both heard one of the boys calling loudly from upstairs, ‘Mom! Mom! Mom!’ All I could think was, ‘My husband is upstairs with them, what could they want?’ A few minutes later, Jack and I heard the voice calling me again, so I excused myself and went upstairs to see what the problem was. When I got up there, everyone was asleep!”
Another woman shared a story with me about the mysterious spookpraat voices heard in her Connecticut home. She said, "My husband was away on business and the kids were in the family room. All of a sudden, they came running in and said, “Oh my God mommy, did you hear that?” I’m like, “What, what did you hear.” They said, “We heard daddy’s chair pull away from the desk upstairs, and we heard his voice say, “Hey ... bed!” as if he was telling them to come upstairs to go to bed. The thing is, my husband wasn’t home, and I reminded them of this. The kids were so positive that they heard his voice that they didn’t believe me. They thought that maybe he came home and went upstairs without telling anyone. So, I walked them upstairs to show them that he wasn’t there, but they still didn’t believe me. I actually had to call my husband and put them on the phone with him to assure them that he wasn’t in the house.
About three weeks later I came home and I heard my daughter in our family room call out to me, ‘Hi Mommy! How are you? Did you have a good morning?’ It was like a sing-songy way that she talks sometimes, and I called out to her, ‘Oh, I’m doing good honey,’ and I started having a conversation with her about my morning. I went around the corner to the family room, and all of a sudden I realized that something just wasn't right. Then I’m like, wait a minute, I’m still talking to her, but she’s not talking back. I said, ‘Samantha, are you there?’ Dead silence. I walked into the family room, and the room was empty. I ran upstairs and found my daughter fast asleep in her bed.”
Another Connecticut resident reported that her husband heard a spookpraat voice in their apartment through the baby monitor. She said, “We moved into the apartment on Christian Street when my son Logan was about four months old. During the time we lived there we experienced a number of strange things, like lights turned on and off, and sometimes it felt like somebody was watching you, especially in the bathroom.
Logan had his own room, and we installed a baby monitor so we could hear him if he woke up. One night after I put him to bed, I was in the living room folding clothes watching TV, and my husband was in our bedroom. All of a sudden he comes out of the bedroom yelling, ‘What is the matter with you? Why would you say that? Why would you talk to Logan like that?’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? I’m here folding clothes?’ He said, ‘You didn’t say anything?’ I said, ‘No!’ He goes, ‘I just heard your voice over the monitor yelling ‘Shut the F_ _ _ up Logan’.’ I actually had trouble convincing my husband that it wasn’t me that he heard on the baby monitor because he said that it sounded exactly like my voice.”
Sometimes, sightings of a doppelgänger are accompanied by voices other than family members. And it seems that some spirits have the ability not only to imitate anyone’s voice, but they can also take on the appearance of anyone they want.
A woman from Newtown, Connecticut who lives next to an old abandoned mental institution reported hearing the voice of a little girl in her house. Her father heard the voice as well. “Sometimes I would be in one room,” she said, “and I would hear her talking in another room. One time my brother was getting off the bus and I heard downstairs, as clear as day, a little girl saying, ‘Is he getting off the bus?’.
Another time I was down in the basement when I heard footsteps on the wood floors above me, and the sound of a little girl giggling. My dad heard her too, and came down and screamed at the ghost!
I’m sure that this girl’s spirit came from Fairfield hills, but I think there was another spirit with her; a non-human spirit that would act as a doppelgänger. My brother said that he would often see me wandering around the yard when I wasn’t even home. One time I was in the basement and I suddenly saw my brother running at me from across the room. Right as he was about to hit me, he vanished.
One night I got out of the shower and went into my bedroom. I was sitting on a beanbag chair in my room. The hallway was dark, but I could see the area just outside of it clearly because of the light from my room. I was on my phone, and I looked up and I saw my brother clear as day standing in the hallway just outside of my room. He was bent over and flailing his arms around wildly. It was really weird. I watched him doing this for a good five or ten seconds, and all the while I’m thinking, ‘What is going on? What’s his problem?’ I thought it was just my brother acting goofy. But then I blinked, and he was gone. I ran to the hallway, but there was no one there. It turns out my brother was downstairs the whole time.”
There is another category of doppelgängers that has nothing at all to do with ghosts or hauntings. It is called ‘bilocation’, and it is often associated with saints and mystics. Bilocation is the simultaneous presence of the same person in two different places.
One little known Catholic story of biocation is about the Virgin Mary. “Our Lady of the Pillar” is the name given to the blessed Virgin Mary in the context of the belief that she appeared to the apostle James the Greater while he was preaching in Spain in 40 AD. It is the only instance of Mary exhibiting the mystical phenomenon of bilocation while she was alive on earth.
Padre Pio is a Catholic saint known for exhibiting stigmata for over 50 years. In Christianity, stigmata are the bodily appearance of wounds, scars, and pain corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, such as the hands, wrists and feet. (*) In addition to exhibiting stigmata, Padre Pio was known for his ability to appear in two places at once. In one story, Padre Pio appeared to a family in Flushing, New York. A woman’s grandfather became gravely ill. He went into a coma, and the family stayed by his bedside. One day, a young Capuchin monk dressed in the traditional dark brown robe knocked on the door and said that he had come to pray for their grandfather. This was odd since there were no Capuchin monks in their local parish, or in any other parish in the area. After praying with the family and giving the man his last rites, the monk left. As soon as he left a family member exclaimed, ”Don’t you know who that was? It was Padre Pio. He looked exactly like I remember him when I used to deliver eggs to him in Pietrelcina.”
Other stories of Padre Pio’s ability to bilocate involve the saint appearing to people and speaking to them before vanishing.
But Catholic saints are not the only people who seem to have the ability to bilocate. Many prominent Hindu gurus are reported to have this same ability.
Of course, good people don’t have the monopoly on biolcation. During the Salem witch trials, many women were accused of appearing to people, either in dreams or in the flesh. And the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley was reported to have appeared to friends and acquaintances when he was actually miles away at the time. Crowley never denied having the ability to bilocate, but he said he was not conscious of it happening.
Then, there are doppelgängers who show up in old photographs or paintings who look eerily similar to people from the present. You can find a lot of photos online of famous people who look exactly like people in old tintype photos. Yeah, I know--it’s probably just a coincidence, but seeing some of these photos does make you wonder. One old photograph looks amazingly like Nicholas Cage, and another looks strikingly similar to John Travolta. Justin Timberlake looks exactly like an old-time criminal in a mugshot, and Daniel Radcliffe seems to have a number of people who look like him, including women!
I’m no stranger to this phenomenon. I stumbled upon a painting while on a family vacation that left me speechless. My wife and I had taken the kids on a trip down South and we stopped by the Wright Brothers National Memorial Museum in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. We viewed the outdoor stone monuments, then made our way into the museum and viewed the various exhibits which included a wall displaying paintings of famous aviators. My daughter suddenly came running over to me and said, “That lady looks just like Amy!” At first I looked around the room thinking there was a visitor in the museum who resembled my wife, but my daughter said, “No, the painting!” I looked and was stunned to see that the woman in the painting bore an uncanny resemblance to my wife. I quickly called her over and asked, “Who does that woman look like?" Without missing a beat my wife said, “She looks like me!” I took a photo of the painting and it became a topic of conversation for years.
I recently came across the photo and decided to see if there were any photos of Louise Thaden online. I figured that the painting might look like my wife, but a photograph probably wouldn’t resemble her. It would be too much of a coincidence. Not so. My wife really does bear an eerie resemblance to the famous aviator. But I’ll take it one step further. Louise Thaden not only looks like my wife, the painting and the photographs of her seem to have my wife’s energy, her personality, her spirit.
Now, is this proof that Louise Thaden was actually my wife’s doppelgänger? Maybe not, but it makes me think that, perhaps, each of us actually has a double out there somewhere, either in this time period or from somewhere in the distant past. Or, maybe we are someone’s doppelgänger from the future.
By the way, if you’re interested in seeing photos of my wife, and of Louise Thaden side-by-side, you can see them by clicking HERE.
Have you ever had a dream that you remembered for years? I had one as a teenager that I remember to this very day. In the dream, I was walking down a road when I saw someone walking toward me; a boy who looked to be around my age. He was quite a distance away, so I didn’t pay much attention to him, but as he got closer, I realized that he looked exactly like me. When we were within arms-length of one another he stopped and looked at me. We were both amazed. We were dressed alike, looked alike, were the same height, had the same hairstyle--we had the same everything. I said to him, “You look just like me!” and he said, “No, you look just like me!” I said, “That’s impossible. That’s just amazing! You’re me!” “No, you’re me!” he said. We both laughed, then the boy turned and walked with me. The dream cut away to a scene of the two of us walking away down the road together, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, our conversation and laughter fading until the two of us were out of sight.
I wonder if that boy was actually me in some other dimension or in some other reality--a version of myself living a totally different but parallel life. If so, I wonder if today he remembers a dream he had as a boy when he met himself, and the two of him walked off together laughing and talking and comparing notes about their lives.
Resources
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160712-you-are-surprisingly-likely-to-have-a-living-doppelganger
http://www.francoisbrunelle.com/webn/e-project.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/strangers-who-look-like-twins-im-not-a-lookalike_n_4575750
https://globalnews.ca/news/2300048/your-doppelganger-exists-according-to-science-heres-why/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAcwp-PuiOQ Top 10 Scary Doppelganger Stories
https://www.bustle.com/p/8-creepy-doppelganger-superstitions-that-will-make-you-hope-you-never-meet-your-double-12273817
https://www.martianherald.com/9-mystifying-cases-doppelganger-phenomenon/page/6
https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-blog/5-historical-figures-who-saw-their-doppelganger-and-then-died
https://erenow.net/common/occult-america/3.php
https://www.caccioppoli.com/6%20Examinations%20of%20the%20wounds.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation
https://www.businessinsider.com/check-out-these-celebrities-and-their-ridiculous-historical-dopplegangers-2012-8
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/27/dickens-exhibition-spooky-plagiarism-scare
https://www.liveabout.com/true-stories-of-doppelgangers-2593448
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