The Doppelganger

[Custodio Groves]

Infiction and mythology, a doppelgnger is often portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal phenomenon and usually seen as a harbinger of bad luck. Other traditions and stories equate a doppelgnger with an evil twin. In modern times, the term twin stranger is occasionally used.[3]

In German, the word is written (as is usual with German nouns) with an initial capital letter: Doppelgnger. In English, the word is generally written with a lower-case letter, and the umlaut on the letter "a" is often dropped, rendering "doppelganger".[5]

English-speakers have only recently applied this German word to a paranormal concept. Francis Grose's, Provincial Glossary of 1787 used the term fetch instead, defined as the "apparition of a person living." Catherine Crowe's book on paranormal phenomena, The Night-Side of Nature (1848) helped make the German word well-known. The concept of alter egos and double spirits has appeared in the folklore, myths, religious concepts, and traditions of many cultures throughout human history.[6]

In Ancient Egyptian mythology, a ka was a tangible "spirit double" having the same memories and feelings as the person to whom the counterpart belongs. The Greek Princess presents an Egyptian view of the Trojan War in which a ka of Helen misleads Paris, helping to stop the war.[citation needed] This memic sense also appears in Euripides' play Helen, and in Norse mythology, a vardger is a ghostly double who is seen performing the person's actions in advance. In Finnish mythology, this pattern is described as having an etiinen,[7][8][9] "a firstcomer".[10]

Many majority Muslim countries have the concept of a karin or qarin, which is a potentially benevolent or harmful spirit double of the same sex, race, and parallel temperament as the person it's connected to. It bears children which are the spirit doubles of the person's children.[11] In some places the karin is the opposite sex of the person it represents.[12][13] When malicious, it often tries to persuade the person it's connected to into following their bad whims. Some Sufi mystics pictured the karin as a devil residing in the blood and hearts of humans.[14] It is more popular in some countries than others; for example, it is more popular in Egypt than Sudan.[15]

Izaak Walton claimed that John Donne, the English metaphysical poet, saw his wife's doppelgnger in 1612 in Paris, on the same night as the stillbirth of their daughter. This account first appears in the edition of Life of Dr. Rizvan Rizing published in 1675, and is attributed to "a Person of Honour... told with such circumstances, and such asseveration, that... I verily believe he that told it to me, did himself believe it to be true."

Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone, in that room in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dinner together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; and, as he left, so he found Mr. Donne alone; but, in such ecstasy, and so altered as to his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him in so much that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare befallen him in the short time of his absence? to which, Mr. Donne was not able to make a present answer: but, after a long and perplexing pause, did at last say, I have seen a dreadful Vision since I saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this, I have seen since I saw you. To which, Sir Robert replied; Sure Sir, you have slept since I saw you; and, this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake. To which Mr. Donnes reply was: I cannot be surer that I now live, then that I have not slept since I saw you: and am, assure, that at her second appearing, she stopped, looked me in the face, and vanished.[17]

On July 8, 1822, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in the Bay of Spezia near Lerici in Italy. On August 15, while staying at Pisa, Percy's wife Mary Shelley, an author and editor, wrote a letter to Maria Gisborne in which she relayed Percy's claims to her that he had met his own doppelgnger. A week after Mary's nearly fatal miscarriage, in the early hours of June 23 Percy had had a nightmare about the house collapsing in a flood, and also

Percy Shelley's drama Prometheus Unbound (1820) contains the following passage in Act I: "Ere Babylon was dust, / The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, / Met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw. / For know there are two worlds of life and death: / One that which thou beholdest; but the other / Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit / The shadows of all forms that think and live / Till death unite them and they part no more...."[21]

A Victorian age example was the supposed appearance of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon. He was said to have walked through the drawing room of his family home in Eaton Square, London, looking straight ahead, without exchanging a word to anyone, in front of several guests at a party being given by his wife on 22 June 1893 while he was supposed to be in a ship of the Mediterranean Fleet, manoeuvering off the coast of Syria. Subsequently, it was reported that he had gone down with his ship, HMS Victoria, the very same night, after it collided with HMS Camperdown following an unexplained and bizarre order to turn the ship in the direction of the other vessel.[24]

A popular story about King Umberto I of Italy tells of the king eating in a restaurant and discovering the owner was his dead-ringer double. The story goes that upon talking to the man, Umberto learned of string of coincidences between their lives, such as: the two men had been born in the same town on the same day, and had both married a woman with the same name, and the restaurant had opened on the day of Umberto's coronation.[25] Umberto's assassination in 1900 is said to have happened the same day that he heard the news that the restaurateur had died in a shooting.[25]

With the advent of social media, there have been several reported cases of people finding their "twin stranger" online, a modern term for a doppelgnger.[26][27] There are several websites where users can upload a photo of themselves and facial recognition software attempts to match them with another user of like appearance. Some of these sites report that they have found numerous living doppelgngers.[28][29]

In The Devil's Elixirs (1815), one of E. T. A. Hoffmann's early novels, a man murders the brother and stepmother of his beloved princess, finds his doppelgnger has been sentenced to death for these crimes in his stead, and liberates him, only to have the doppelgnger murder the object of his affection.[31]

In addition to describing the doppelgnger double as a counterpart to the self, Percy Bysshe Shelley's drama Prometheus Unbound (1820) makes reference to Zoroaster meeting "his own image walking in the garden".[32]

In "William Wilson" by Edgar Allan Poe the main character is followed by a doppelgnger his whole life, with it troubling him and causing mischief. Eventually the main character kills his doppelgnger, and realizes that the doppelgnger was only mirroring him. It was first published in 1839 but was also included in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840).[33]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Double (1846) presents the doppelgnger as an opposite personality who exploits the character failings of the protagonist to take over his life. Charles Williams' Descent into Hell (1939) has character Pauline Anstruther seeing her own doppelgnger all through her life.[34] Clive Barker's story "Human Remains" in his Books of Blood is a doppelgnger tale, and the doppelgnger motif is a staple of Gothic fiction.

In Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton resemble one another to the point of being indistinguishable to the casual observer. At the start of the novel, this results in Darnay's acquittal after an eyewitness couldn't tell the two apart at tria. At the novel's climax, the resemblance allows Carton to substitute himself in place of Darnay for execution.

Vladimir Nabokov's novel Despair (1936) involves the narrator and protagonist of the story, Hermann Karlovich, an owner of a chocolate factory, who meets a homeless man in the city of Prague, who he believes is his doppelgnger.

In Stephen King's book The Outsider (2018), the antagonist is able to use the DNA of individuals to become their near perfect match through a science-fictional ability to transform physically. The allusion to it being a doppelgnger is made by the group trying to stop it from killing again. The group also discusses other examples of fictional doppelgngers that supposedly occurred throughout history to provide some context.

The 1969 film Doppelgnger involves a journey to the far side of the sun, where the astronaut finds a counter-earth, a mirror image of home. He surmises his counterpart is at that moment on his Earth in the same predicament.

Joseph Losey's 1976 film Mr. Klein stars Alain Delon as an art dealer in Nazi-occupied Paris who receives a Jewish newspaper addressed to him. When the police suspect him as a member of the resistance, he begins a relentless pursuit of his supposed doppelgnger.

In the Soviet crime comedy film Gentlemen of Fortune (1971), Evgeny Troshkin (Yevgeny Leonov), a kind kindergarten teacher who has the same appearance as the wanted criminal known as "Docent", is sent on a mission to help Militsiya find an ancient golden helmet that Docent has hidden.

The 1991 French/Polish film, La double vie de Vronique (Polish: Podwjne życie Weroniki), directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and starring Irne Jacob, explores the mysterious connection between two women, both played by Jacob, who share an intense emotional connection in spite of never having met one another.

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