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Sagee, Mademoiselle Emile
Category: Ordinary person
The case of Mademoiselle Emile Sagee was published in an issue of Light in the year 1883. It appears it has since appeared embellished and adapted in numerous books and websites.
American writer Robert Dale Owen was told the story by Julie von Güldenstubbe, the second daughter of the Baron von Güldenstubbe. In 1845, when von Güldenstubbe was 13, she attended Pensionat von Neuwelcke, an exclusive girl’s school near Wolmar in what is now Latvia. One of her teachers was a 32-year-old French woman named Emilie Sagée.
The account we have used as the observation is that provided by Ralph Shirley who had access to the full story as it first appeared in Light magazine.
Very briefly, Sagee was a very good teacher from her references, but for some reason had kept moving from one job to another. In 16 years, she had changed positions an impressive 19 times. In 1845, the school found out why. Sagee was the centre of some very strange doppelganger activity.
Her spectral twin was first seen during a class, as 13 students witnessed the doppelganger standing by Sagee’s side and mirroring her movements.
Next, it stood behind her as she ate, pantomiming her movements. Sagee herself was completely oblivious to the apparition, despite the fact that everyone else could see it clearly. However, she did become strangely groggy and powerless during the times the doppelganger manifested, and the wraith was often seen doing things Sagee later said she had been thinking about at the moment, suggesting that she may have had some subliminal control over it.
The few people who dared to approach the doppelganger found they could pass through it, yet it had a texture that reminded them of thick fabric.
Emilie herself did not appear to be aware of what was taking place, and never perceived her own double. Naturally, there was much talk of these extraordinary occurrences, and when there was no longer any doubt as to their reality the parents of the pupils took exception to leaving their daughters in a school in which such strange phenomena were taking place, and many of the girls, after leaving school for their holidays, failed to return.
At the end of eighteen months the scholars had dwindled from forty-two to twelve. Unwilling as the directors were to dismiss a mistress who performed her duties in so exemplary a fashion, they felt that they had no option but to give her notice
“Alas!" she exclaimed, on their decision being intimated to her, "this is the nineteenth time. It is indeed too cruel!"
There have been all sorts of suggestions as to how this doppelganger was created, but perhaps the most ingenious we have heard came from a lady called Therese Abbenhaus from the Saint Louis University School of Nursing
Was her mother pregnant with twins, and one died in utero?? Or at birth?? My husband was the youngest of 8 - one of his older sisters had been a twin, but at 9 months of age one had died of the inflenza epidemic of the early 1900's. But he and the surviving twin always said they had a "guardian angel on their shoulders" - being in the right place at the right time, or avoiding an accident by changing their plans at the last minute.
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