Famous Cases of Real Doppelgangers

French Author Guy De Maupassant encountered his own double. Culture Club / Getty Images

Do you have a body double or a doppelganger? There are many instances of two people who are not related yet closely resemble one another. But the phenomenon of a phantom self is something more mysterious. 

Doppelgangers vs. Bilocation

Body doubles, as a paranormal phenomenon, typically manifest themselves in one of two ways.

A doppelganger is a shadow self that is thought to accompany every person. Traditionally, it is said that only the owner of the doppelganger can see this phantom self and that it can be a harbinger of death. A person’s friends or family can sometimes see a doppelganger as well. The word is derived from the German term for “double walker.”

Bilocation is the psychic ability to project an image of the self in a second location. This body double, known as a wraith, is indistinguishable from the real person and can interact with others just as the real person would.

Ancient Egyptian and Norse mythology both contain references to body doubles. But doppelgangers as a phenomenon, often associated with bad omens, first became popular in the mid-19th century as part of a general surge in the U.S. and Europe in interest in the paranormal.

Emilie Sagée

One of the fascinating reports of a doppelganger comes from American writer Robert Dale Owen, who recounts the tale of a 32-year-old French woman named Emilie Sagée. She was a teacher at Pensionat von Neuwelcke, an exclusive girls’ school near Wolmar in what is now Latvia. One day in 1845, while Sagée was writing on the blackboard, her exact double appeared beside her. The doppelganger precisely copied the teacher’s every move as she wrote, except that it did not hold any chalk. Thirteen students in the classroom witnessed the event.

During the next year, Sagee’s doppelganger was seen several times. The most astonishing instance of this took place in full view of the entire student body of 42 students on a summer day in 1846. As they sat at the long tables working, they could see Sagée in the school’s garden gathering flowers. When the teacher left the room to talk to the headmistress, Sagée’s doppelganger appeared in her chair, while the real Sagée could still be seen in the garden. Two girls approached the phantom and tried to touch it, but felt an odd resistance in the air surrounding it. The image then slowly vanished.

Guy de Maupassant

The French novelist Guy de Maupassant was inspired to write a short story, “Lui?” (“He?”) after a disturbing doppelganger experience in 1889. While writing, de Maupassant claimed that his body double entered his study, sat beside him, and began dictating the story he was in the process of writing. In “Lui?”, the narrative is told by a young man who is convinced that he is going crazy after having glimpsed what appears to be his body double. 

For de Maupassant, who claimed to have had numerous encounters with his doppelganger, the story proved somewhat prophetic. At the end of his life, de Maupassant was committed to a mental institution following a suicide attempt in 1892. The following year, he died. It has been suggested that de Maupassant’s visions of a body double may have been linked to mental illness caused by syphilis, which he contracted as a young man.

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