Doppelganger

 

A doppelgänger - Doppel (double) Gänger (walker or goer) - is a double of a living person, which is seen either by the person themselves or by someone else, in which case the person appears to be in more than one place at the same time.

The word has been misapplied in common usage to simply mean someone who looks like another person – a lookalike - but this is not the correct usage.  The word 'doppelgänger' is very specifically a psychic phenomenon and is treated in medical circles along with hallucinations, out of body experiences and near death experiences.

 

Clearly a person seeing their own image can be terrified, whereas others seeing an hallucination of a person who appears perfectly ‘real’ to them, is only disturbing if they find out the person was somewhere else whilst this was happening.

Dr Jean Lhermitte did a great deal of work in this area and documented a great number of case studies.  The medical term he used for seeing a visual hallucination of the self was ‘autoscopy’.

 Example

One person who did see himself, but as he was to appear in the future, was Goethe

An explanation of the phenomena

OBEs or NDEs-  Where a person sees themself, the most common cause is an out of body experience or even a near-death experience.  In other words, the person may not have heard of either OBEs or NDEs and their conscious self may have separated from their body.

They may be viewing their physical body from their disembodied self.  As both OBEs and NDEs involve the transfer of consciousness from the will to the Higher spirit, the Higher spirit is thus 'seeing' the physical body it has left.  The person may not realise they [as Higher spirit] have no body, or the person may in fact appear to have a body - there are some OBEs and NDEs where the person simply feels themselves to be a ball of light for example, and yet others in which they still feel as though they have a body of sorts.

For a person unfamiliar with OBEs, the effect can be more profound if, in the out of body state, they do not fly or pass through doors, but find themselves on a level with their own body.  Once flying or soaring, gliding or similar actions occur, the person then realises that the only physical self is the one they can see, 'they' have become spirit.

Hallucination - where a third party sees the double it can be classified as an hallucination - a super-imposition of a spiritual image over the image from the 5 senses.

But even here there are some interesting questions that can be raised.  Is the spiritual image an actual person, who is perhaps out of body or having an NDE at the time, or is the image simply a playback from their own perceptions ?

 

Generally speaking an image that interacts with them is a person who is out of body or having an NDE, whereas a simple cine-roll like image is a playback from perceptions.

Synonyms

In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance. In Breton mythology as well as in Cornish and Norman French folklore, the doppelgänger is a version of the Ankou, a ‘personification of death’.  This has taken on a strangely sinister meaning in some fictional books, whereas there is nothing sinister about this belief.  We become our Higher spirit when we die, thus this is simply a recognition that the double being seen is the Higher spirit of either someone having an OBE or NDE, or someone who has died.

References

There have been a number of videos released on youtube covering both bilocation and the doppelganger phenomenon

1. The Mysteries Of Bilocation
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siw-p7J4aUs&t=101s
2. The Eerie Doppelgänger Of Emilie Sagée • Unexplained Stories
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqVZHj8207c
3. Garabandal - The Padre Pio Bilocation
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTyBhDTN1ew
4. The supernatural gifts of Saint Gemma Galgani | Part 1
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh6GLne4JDI
5. The supernatural gifts of Saint Gemma Galgani | Part 2
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpR3SHy7ZmM
6. La Nuit de décembre - Alfred de Musset - Thalie Envolée (HD)
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eerzoh4fC0M
7. ‘Witchfinder’ General "Sir George Tryon"
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zM16fb4nCg
8. 5 Disturbing Doppelgänger Encounters
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE57EfUb9xY

Observations

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• Andrew Lang's niece and her dog Turk together see a ghost
• Appearance of a little dog during an experimental séance
• Blithe spirit - The Other
• Donne, John - A Premonition of his wife's stillborn child
• Dostoyevsky - Doppelgangers and the story of Goliadkine
• Dr. Franz Hartmann and OBEs. For those who speak of such phenomena through personal experience, the a priori negations of those who have nothing personal to contribute appear so specious that they cannot be accepted under any circumstances
• Dr. M. Isnard and his two sisters witness their dying mother’s double
• Dr. Solfier – Hemiplegics claim to feel and see very close to them, on the paralyzed side, another person whom they regard as the exact reproduction of themselves
• Dr. Sollier - Bulletin de l'institut Général Psychologique – The Doppelganger of a Morphine addict
• Ernesto Bozzano, Professor - The parapsychological manifestations of animals – 11 The angora cat and its doppelganger
• Gambier Bolton, Robert – The Conditions needed to obtain a materialisation – 07 Do not use hypnosis, it results in materialisations that are conjured entirely from the perceptions of the sitters or sensitive
• Goethe - A prophecy leaving Sessenheim
• Hoffman, E T A – BMJ Article by Dr Jean Lhermitte - Visual Hallucination Of The Self
• I saw a person come to me whom I recognized as my own double when she approached
• I saw the patient himself, who had just died, looking at his own corpse with an expression of great astonishment
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 01 With the Eyes of the Mind
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 02 Source of the Hallucination
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 03 Its form
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 04 Anxiety
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 05 The Double in literature
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 06 Very often her body halved itself
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 07 1 Diseases which Can Produce the Phenomenon; Epilepsy
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 07 2 Diseases which Can Produce the Phenomenon; Infectious diseases, and especially typhus
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 08 A Perception without Object
• Marryat, Florence - The Spirit World – Edith, being in a state of clairvoyance, witnessed the process of separating the spirit from her sister’s body
• Maupassant, Guy de – Le Horla – 10 August 20th – September 10th
• Miss I. B., then a little girl, saw her own double appear, sitting right next to her
• Mr. W. T. Catlengh sees the double of his dying daughter
• Musset, Alfred de - La Nuit de Decembre
• Rasch, Sir Frederick Carne - In two places at the same time
• Rochas, Albert de - Annals of Psychic Sciences - Noula the doppelganger seen by a horse
• Romanes, Dr George John - Sees the ghost of his dying sister
• Sagee, Mademoiselle Emilie - Doppelganger
• Schrödinger, Erwin - Quantum entanglement and the Doppelganger
• Schubert - Schwanengesang, D 957: no 13 Der Doppelgänger
• Seeress of Prevorst, the - Sympathetic magic and doppelgangers
• Shelley, Percy Bysshe - Sees a Doppelganger
• Sibylle - demonic possession and sexual abuse
• Snell, Joy – Ministry of Angels – The death of her friend Maggie
• The apparition of Jim, the laughing collie dog, took place one hundred and six miles from the city where it was killed
• The Ceasing of Notions – 09 Creating matter using thought
• The ghost of the dying girl struck the witness on the shoulder when it passed by
• The ghostly mule escapes from a customs officer
• The lady and the dogs passed through them and retreated into the night
• The premonitory hallucination of her brother’s demise – a ghost with prostrate and collapsed body measuring only half its size, and with paralyzed and dragging legs unable to support its shaky and emaciated body
• The schoolboy Borti goes out of body whilst preparing his examination in French literature
• Turvey, Vincent – The beginnings of Seership – An experiment in materialisation with Mr F T Blake
• Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon and his doppelganger