What is a doppelganger?
A doppelganger is the phenomenon of seeing “another self” who looks exactly like you, or of being seen in a place where you could not have been. The German word means “double walker,” and it is said to have first been used by the German writer Jean Paul at the end of the 18th century. In Japan it was sometimes called “nijushin” (double body) or “rikonbyo” (soul-departing illness).
A doppelganger is said not to speak to the person and to appear in places connected with them, and it is said that someone who sees their own doppelganger will soon die.
Famous people’s doppelganger experiences
The German literary giant Goethe wrote in his autobiography that as a young man, while riding along a road, he saw himself coming toward him wearing clothes he had never seen. Eight years later, he said, he realized he was by chance traveling the same road wearing the same clothes.
In Japan, the writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke is said to have mentioned at a round-table talk and elsewhere that he had seen his own doppelganger, and because he took his own life soon after, this is sometimes linked with the ominous legend of the doppelganger. There is also a well-known anecdote that U.S. President Lincoln saw his face reflected double in a mirror.
What is a doppelganger really?
In medicine, the experience of seeing one’s own figure outside oneself is called “autoscopy,” and it is thought that it can be related to disturbances in the workings of parts of the brain, migraines, epilepsy, or severe fatigue and stress. Experiments have actually confirmed that stimulating certain parts of the brain can make people feel someone is behind them or feel they have seen their own figure.
Experiences such as seeing someone who happens to look like you, or being told by an acquaintance that “I saw you at such-and-such a place,” may also become doppelganger rumors. In its sense of having seen something before, it is a mysterious phenomenon often discussed together with deja vu.
