The
term doppelganger has been used rather informally in many situations to refer
to someone who resembles another person who usually lives in the same community
or in another community. I was meeting
with some people at a training and they insisted they saw me in Wisconsin. They insisted it was me even though we were
in Sault Ste. Marie, MI at a training. The
sitcom “How I Met Your
Mother” featured
doppelgangers. I was in a book store in
St. Ignace, MI and I told the cashier she reminded me of someone and she said I
must have met her doppelganger. What is
a doppelganger and what is the origin of that word?
A doppelganger is a German word which means a look alike of a
person and is a paranormal double of a living person. It also means experiencing the sensation that
you had a glimpse of yourself in your own peripheral vision and there was no
chance this could have happened. There was no mirror to reflect your image off
of. In the past a doppelganger can be
viewed as a sinister warning of bad luck coming your way. Today, the word doppelganger is referred to
as someone who resembles you either physically and/or behaviorally usually
without regard to any paranormal meaning.
Going
back in history the German word is of relatively recent origin, the word
doppelganger has appeared in English use in 1851 referring to alter egos and
double spirits which appeared in folklore, myths, religious beliefs, and
traditions throughout many cultures for centuries. During ancient Egyptian mythology, a “ka” was a visible
or believable “spirit double” having the
same memories and feelings as the person of whom the counterpart belongs. Wikipedia gives the example of “The Greek
Princess”
an Egyptian view of the Trojan War, a “Ka” of Helen was used to mislead Paris
of Troy which helped stop the war.
I
have heard of people who have received a heart transplant for example and they
take on the same memories and feelings of the person who had the heart before
the transplant. I find that phenomenon
to be very interesting.
Recent scientific experimentation has created some doppelganger
effects by using electrical stimulation. This stimulation was applied to the
left temporoparietal section of a person’s brain during an experiment. In
September of 2006 a woman was requested to lay flat on her back on a bed and
electrical stimulation was applied to the patient’s left temporoparietal lobe. She reported that she felt the presence of
another person in her “extrapersonal
space.” She was being treated for epilepsy; but she
was otherwise psychologically fit. The
same experiment was conducted with other individuals with similar results. The researcher speculated that there may be
underlying mental health issues or there may be a failure of the left
temporoparietal junction. What do you
believe?
Notable
documented doppelganger experiences have existed throughout history. A biography of Abraham Lincoln denotes:
“A dream of illusion had haunted Lincoln
at times through the winter. On the evening
of his election he had thrown himself on one of the haircloth sofas at home,
just after the first telegrams of November 7 had told him he was elected
president, and looking into a bureau mirror across the room he saw himself in
full length, but with two faces. It
bothered him; he got up; the illusion vanished; but when he lay down again
there in the glass again were two faces, one paler than the other. He got up
again, mixed in the election excitement, forgot about it; but it came back, and
haunted him. He told his wife about it; she worried too. A few days later he tried it once more and
the illusion of the two faces again registered to his eyes. But that was the last; the ghost since then
wouldn’t come back, he
told his wife, who said it was a sign he would be elected to a second term, and
the death pallor of one face meant he wouldn’t live through his second term.” (Brooks, N. (1895). Washington in Lincoln’s Time. New York: Century)
Doppelganger
is a term that throughout history has been utilized to explain paranormal phenomenon
and serve as a warning of impending doom. The doppelganger phenomenon may be
created by stimulating the left temporoparietal function in the brain. It is
used today to explain a double of a living person, who can be physically and/or
behaviorally similar to another person.
