DOPPELGANGER
In ancient times, the Egyptians called them ka which means spirit double and was thought of to share the same memories, thoughts and mannerisms of their victim while in ancient Troy, the Trojans believed that the Greek Princess Helen was such a creature and had mislead Paris, eventually leading to the war. And even in Cherokee legend there are those called Nunnehi, which impersonate themselves as living persons and to offend one would bring about death. And there are those legends from the Orkney Islands of Scotland which talk about Trows, small fairy-like creatures who give birth to sickly babies known as changlings. It is the Trows which are famously known for stealing healthy babies and replacing them with a changling which would die at a young age due to some illness.
Throughout history, there have been stories of people actually running into their Doppelganger and the most intriguing of these stories is that of Emilie Sagée, a 19th century school teacher from France whose tale was recorded by the American writer Robert Dale Owen who gathered the story from Julie von Güldenstubbe, who was the daughter of the Baron von Güldenstubbe. The story goes that Emilie had been teaching at Pensionat von Neuwelcke, in Latvia in 1845. According to the many witnesses at the time there at the school, she was the strange center of doppelganger activity. Once, while conducting a class, 13 of her students saw her Doppelganger mimicking her actions while she wrote upon a blackboard. On another occasion, 42 of her students saw her out in the school’s garden picking flowers while her ghostly double sat motionless in a chair in their classroom. A few brave students managed up the nerve to touch the apparition which they said felt like coarse cloth. Sagée claimed that she never saw her Doppel-ganger but whenever it was said to appear, she would feel completely drained of energy. As time passed, the ghostly double became a regular sight at the school, causing a great amount of disturbance with everyone in the vicinity and on school grounds. So much so that many of the parents started removing their children, forcing the headmistress no other recourse but to let Emilie Sagée go, along with her ghostly double.
And then there is the bizarre tale of the French writer, Guy de Maupassant who, towards the last days of his life, is said to have regularly had visits from his Doppelganger, this eerie twin not only having long talks with him, but who actually sat down and began to dictate a short story to him, with Maupassant himself claiming that one of his last short stories was literally, written by his own ghost before his death! If that is not bizarre enough, the story that the spirit allegedly dictated to him was “The Horla,” an unnerving tale of a man whose sanity is slowly consumed by an evil sprit that uses him as a host. As if echoing the story, Maupassant’s own state of mental health was starting to deteriorate shortly after the story had been completed. He died a year later in an Asylum for the Insane.
There are numerous stories of people and their run in with Doppelgangers. Abraham Lincoln claims to have had a run in with his Doppelganger in 1860, shortly after his first election which his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln believed was a dark omen and foretold of her husband’s death shortly after his being elected a 2nd term. The there is Percy Shelly, the poet who saw his ghostly double in Italy silently pointing towards the Mediterranean sea, and who just before his 30th birthday, drowned in a freak sailing accident in the Mediterranean. And Queen Elizabeth I of England claimed to have seen her pale ghostly form sleeping on her bed only a few short days before her own death!
But of course, these are stories and not first hand accounts of Doppelgangers and tend to make us believe that just maybe they’re fictionalized. Stories told to send shivers up and down our spines at this time of year - Halloween now only a couple of hours away at the writing of this. But what if I were to tell you that I am one of those who has first hand knowledge of his Doppelganger? What if I were to tell you about my slightly bizarre double? Would you believe me? I guess it would be up to you to make that decision...
It was in the spring 1981, in Chicago. I was recently separated from my first wife, Virginia and was living in a tiny studio apartment at the Malden Arms Apartments on the North side of the city. I’d been working pretty long hours at the time up in Evanston at Northwestern University as the assistant maintenence man for the largest dorm on campus, which not only entailed upkeep of the dorm building which come fall semester would be home to over 400 students, but it also included care and upkeep of the grounds. So quite often, I would leave for work before dawn and would return home well after dark, hardly seen by anyone who knew me since on most nights, I would take my dinner at a diner or at the university itself and then go to bed the moment I arrived home. Working those hours not only helped put coin into my pocket, but kept my mind occupied and away from my own personal marital problems.
I remember that it had been a weekend, a Saturday in fact. I’d slept in that morning, tired as I’d been from a week of working twelve hour days and had simply not bothered to answer my phone or knocks on my door, and it wasn’t until about 3 o’clock in the afternoon that I got up, and decided to poke my head out of my apartment, walking downstairs to check my mailbox. Entering the lobby from the stairwell, there was a small gathering of people I knew in the lobby talking in hushed tones and none had been paying much attention to my presence until I said good afternoon to them, at which time they all turned to look at me with their mouths agape and shocked looks on their faces. One of them had been my friend Maryann.
“YOU’RE ALIVE!” She screamed and came practically running over to me and giving me a big bear-hug.
“Yeah, I am.” I replied, or something like that, not sure what the hell was going on. This is the story as it was told to me by Maryann...
Apparently the night before (when actually I had still been at work at the university, I'd been seen leaving the apartment building in a rush, acting depressed and although a couple of my neighbors whom knew me had attempted to engage me in conversation and find out what was wrong, I had ignored them, acting as though I hadn’t even heard them. An hour or so after this mysterious sighting, the cops had showed up at the apartment building and talked to the manager. It seems that a man of my approximate age and description had committed suicide by jumping out of a window from a downtown high-rise. There had been no identification on the person, only a slip of paper with the address of the Malden Arms Apartments, and my name written on it. The manger let them into my apartment, didn’t find me of course and after checking with the neighbor who claimed to have seen me rushing out of the building who told the cops what I’d supposedly been wearing then they claimed to have seen me leave, they put two and two together. Needing someone to identify the body, they’d gotten Maryann to come down to the county morgue, where she identified the person as me.
I was legally dead according to the Cook County morgue, my body identified. First of all, do you know how difficult it was for me to prove that I was still alive? That aside - who was this guy who Maryann and even the cops agreed, was the spitting image of me? Where was he coming from in the building when he was identified as me by the neighbors, who admitted not having seen him come from my apartment. Why did he have a slip of paper in his pocket with my name and address on it!?
I never did get to see this man who was my Doppelganger, and to this day if you were to ask any of those who knew me at the time about it, I’m sure that they would tell you they all believed it to be me, that he was me and I was him! Once my identity was proven, he was listed as just another John Doe and I’m sure buried in a paulper’s grave somewhere, if not cremated, no one ever coming to claim the body. It was still a few years before DNA testing was done. My Doppelganger story - cross my heart and well, you know...
Happy Halloween everybody!
Respectfully submitted 11:30 PM, October 30th, 2017
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