Have you Met Your Double?

Did it already occur to you being in two places at the same time? Or perhaps have come face to face with your exact double? Probably you will wonder if this is possible in the first place. This may seem absurd and weird but this happens in real life. Any person can experience this unusual phenomenon but this could bring bad luck or could be a harbinger of death. There are many intriguing stories throughout history of people that have encountered their doubles or most popularly known as their Doppelgangers. Some of them say that whenever their doubles appear, they become physically weak, drained and fatigued. But some cases are worse as death and danger soon follows.

A “Doppelganger” is a German word for “double walker”─a shadow of self, a ghostly or in some cases, a physical double of a living person. The term may also refer to any look-alike of a person, specifically in reference to the so-called evil twin, or to bilocation─being in two places at exactly the same time.

By tradition, it is said that only the owner of the Doppelganger can see his own phantom self, and that this can be a bad omen like a forecast of his death, illness or health problems. But occasionally, a Doppelganger can also be seen by the person’s family, friends and relatives, creating quite a bit of confusion.

Here are some of the famous Doppelganger stories:

• Guy de Maupassant, the French novelist and short story writer, claimed to have been haunted by his doppelganger near the end of his life. On one occasion, he said, this double entered his room, took a seat opposite him and began to dictate what de Maupassant was writing. He wrote about this experience in his short story "Lui."
• John Donne, the 16th century English poet whose work often touched on the metaphysical, was visited by a doppelganger while he was in Paris - not his, but his wife's. She appeared to him holding a newborn baby. Donne's wife was pregnant at the time, but the apparition was a portent of great sadness. At the same moment that the doppelganger appeared, his wife had given birth to a stillborn child.
  Percy Bysshe Shelley, still considered one of the greatest poets of the English language, encountered his doppelganger in Italy. The phantom silently pointed toward the Mediterranean Sea. Not long after, and shortly before his 30th birthday in 1822, Shelley died in a sailing accident - drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.
• Queen Elizabeth I of England was shocked to see her doppelganger laid out on her bed. The queen died shortly thereafter.
• In a case that suggests that doppelgangers might have something to do with time or dimensional shifts, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th century German poet, confronted his doppelganger while riding on the road to Drusenheim. Riding toward him was his exact double, but wearing a gray suit trimmed in gold. Eight years later, von Goethe was again traveling on the same road, but in the opposite direction. He then realized he was wearing the very gray suit trimmed in gold that he had seen on his double eight years earlier! Had von Goethe seen his future self?

The theory that each of us has a double could be true. A common instance is when you met one day someone you know, like an old friend, you get to talk to him or her, exchange stories and bid each other good bye then later on, you saw the person again only to find out that he or she never saw you that day. Weird huh?

These days, some theorize that Doppelgangers are evidences of the various worlds of quantum physics. But whatever it is, either a forecast of danger or simply a paranormal experience, there is no way, even modern technologies, can control it.