Have you ever experienced a doppelganger?

[BlueIris]

A doppelganger is a person's double. In myth and folklore, they are generally considered to be harbingers of back luck, harm, physical peril. Real life reports of doppelgangers usually involve people seeing them before they or a loved one are about to be hurt or killed, but occasionally, a report of a positive doppelganger encounter occurs.

I've never seen my own doppelganger, but an ex-boyfriend once told me he had seen someone who looked exactly like me wandering around our city, circa fall 2000. (No, I wasn't in physical danger at the time, as far as I know.)

I've always been fascinated by the doppelganger phenomenon, so I wanted to know if anyone here had any stories.

[hermetic]

1. LOOONG ago

I got married and honeymooned in Mexico. Our first day we were visiting the shops and people kept saying, "Nice to see you again. Glad you came back." I eventually learned that someone who looked just like me had been there the day before. At one point someone said, "Look, there she is." I saw the back of someone with hair like mine go into a store. And that was the end of that story. Nothing bad happened to me, so maybe I was HER doppelganger.

[MorningGlow]

2. Not at the same time

When I did my student teaching, I instantly bonded with the teachers and other students doing their practicums (practica?), for better and for worse (there was a LOT of karma around the English Department table in the faculty office). One of the other students and I became very close, very quickly--she was such an advanced soul that I lapped up her energy and wisdom every chance I got. Anyway, she was very psychic and told me that we had all been together before, in many lifetimes. Images I received during my meditation supported that.

Anyway, I had two supervising teachers. I had met the first during the summer and the second on the first day of my practicum. The second teacher practically fell backward when he met me and stammered later that he knew my twin 20 years previously. He never could get over how much I looked like she had (but he hadn't stayed in touch with her, so I didn't know whether she and I still looked alike or not).

I also had a high school friend who was the double of another girl in our town. People mistook them for one another all the time. They met only once, when we went into the ice cream shop where the other girl worked. They said they didn't see the resemblance, although everyone else could. Ironically I ended up working with the other girl about 10 years later, at a bookstore.

I'm not sure every doppleganger experience has a negative, but I can say for sure that the other girl was evil with a capital E-V-I-L. The worst kind--fake friendly to your face while wreaking havoc when your back was turned. (My high school friend was harmless; her worst fault was that she was incredibly vain.)

[northernlights]

3. yes

I played piano off and on, mostly self taught until I minored in music during college and had 4 years of regular instruction. I was particularly drawn to romantic period and struggled with Liszt. Was in love with the Bminor sonata, which was totally out of my technical reach due to my lack of longtime training, etc. but that didn't stop me from struggling with it. I couldn't let it go.

Fast forward a few years after graduation. Big international piano competition was on (I can't remember it's name now...held in NYC...maybe the Levintritt?). One of the finalists floored me. Looked just. like. me. Twin. :wow: Played the Liszt Bminor sonata. Floored me. Twin. Don't remember her name now. Don't know what became of her. She came in 2nd.

[Celebration]

4. wow, love that story n/t

[liberalmuse]

5. When I was a lot younger...

People would come up to me all the time and mistake me for someone else or say they saw someone who looked just like me. It was really weird. Then it stopped.

[findrskeep]

6. I was doing a meditation about a year ago and I was walking down

a street and I came to an old house with a very old door, the kind you see in New England, all wooden with vertical thin panels of wood. I knocked on the door and when it opened I was jolted out of the meditation because it was ME who answered the door, but I was dressed in a long skirt, a white undergarment on top and one of those laced up things over top of it. I will never forget it!

[Kind of Blue]

12. Wow!

Did the experience seem like it was during our modern times, because it sure sounds like a past life encounter!

[NJCher]

7. Here's an idea

What if we're not all that unique? Stamped out, maybe not in the millions or even thousands. But maybe a dozen.

It's an idea to play with. I've been reading this book that presents a theory that answers all questions about the universe. It's true: the theory does answer all questions. Of course there's a rub: the theory sounds very far out.

This theory postulates that we live in a "programmed reality," much like what one might find in a sophisticated video game.

Here's an excerpt from a blurb about the book. When you get to the part about the tree (boldfaced), think "us" instead of "tree:"

OUR DISCRETE WORLD - It takes an infinite amount of resources to create a continuous reality, but a finite amount to create a quantized reality. The very nature of the computational mechanisms of a computer are essentially the same as Quantum Mechanics - a sequence of states, with nothing existing or happening between the states. The resolution of any program is analogous to the spatial resolution of our reality, just at a different level. In fact, if you carry Moore's Law forward (which has been consistent over the past 40 years), computers will reach the Planck resolution in 2192. Not too far off. However, you don't need to model reality all the way to that level for the model to be indistinguishable from our reality. Let's say you want to examine the guts of a tree. You cut it open, scrape off a few cells and put them under a microscope, maybe an electron microscope. To simulate this computationally, one doesn't have to model every single tree down to the Planck level. Only the OBSERVED tree needs to be modeled, and then only the cells selected, and then only down to a resolution that matches the observational limitations of our measurement devices. The program can do that dynamically. And all quantum effects can be programmatically modeled without building a reality model to the Planck level. So, given Moore's law and the limitations of "observational reality", we should be able to create Virtual Realities that are indistinguishable from our current reality within 20 years or so. The very fact that our reality is quantized may be considered strong evidence that reality is programmed.



Cher

[BlueIris]

9. Wow. That's not too far out for me, actually.

It takes an infinite amount of resources to create a continuous reality, but a finite amount to create a quantized reality.

Not too crazy an idea, if you think about it.

[Cleita]

8. Yes, I have and I even knew her name.

I either had a double person who looked exactly like me running around town or something weirder. I was often told by acquaintances and friends that they saw me in a certain car, one that I couldn't afford, in certain places wearing clothes I wouldn't wear or places I've never been to. I would have people run up to me in the street calling me a name that wasn't mine (which is why I know her name) and they would be so surprised I didn't know them. Yes, I could have been Sybil or sleep walking (I wondered myself) but my husband was always with me other than during the day when he was working and when I was working, I worked with other people who would have noticed if I was missing. I actually tried to find this person but was never successful. I never got warnings or anything like that so I do try to believe this was a real person, who looked like me, because when I moved away no one every confused me with that person.

[Kind of Blue]

10. Yes, twice.

The first was a little girl who my parents saw on a PBS broadcast of Harvard Professor Louis Gates on his quest for his roots in Nigeria. He was able to trace his family there. He's up in the northern part of the country, the camera panned around and stopped for a few seconds on this little girl about 7years old standing in a doorway peering out with my face, build and attitude when I was her age eons ago. I caught the rerun and it was eerie. If I hadn't seen her and someone showed me a copy of the stills, I'd think the photo is of me. My parents really fought the urge to find the kid even though she could not possibly be their child. They just wanted her :crazy:

The second is from when I was still in Maryland. A co-worker had been on vacation in the southwest somewhere and she attended a Pow-Wow. She was so excited when she came back because she swore that I was one of the young Native American women at the ceremony. She followed her around and then worked up the nerve to ask if she knew me. Of course, she did not. She said we even spoke the same way. She took some pictures of her and with her, and lo, there is a woman who looks just like me or vice versa.

I chalk it up to genetics. My history on both sides of the family is a migration from North Africa, both grandmothers it turned out are distant relatives and didn't know it until my parents got together. Still have very distant relatives spread out in the northern nations so the child could be a relative. I wonder about both of these girls. The child must be in her early 20's by now and wonder I what she looks like and hope both of them are happy and living a fulfilling lives.

[Shallah Kali]

11. A friend saw a painting of a woman in an museum that she said looked just like me

in nyc. A friend of hers who also knew me confirmed it looked just like me only dressed in the style of the times. I think she said it was late 1800s. Of course neither remembered the artist or thought to write the name of the painting or which museum down so I could try to see for myself!

[Celebration]

13. not quite the same, but interesting

My best friend and I in high school looked a lot alike. Tons of people actually got us mixed up, and called us by each other's names. This happened whether they knew both of us, or only one of us. We would laugh about it. Now, most people that we knew well didn't have any trouble, but it was surprising how many times people got us mixed up. It happened a few times a week for both of us.

Fast forward DECADES-- I don't live there any more-- someone I knew back in high school (but my friend did not) came up to my friend in a restaurant and asked if she was me!! It so happened that my friend was with my sister at the time, and I thought maybe the mixup was because of that. But no, my sister was not involved in this at all, and did not know the person. Funny!! This friend doesn't do email much at all but believe me, she emailed me the second after this happened!

We were in high school in the Kennedy era, and people were always telling my friend she looked like Jackie Kennedy (she did!!). Only a few people told me I looked like Jackie Kennedy, though. (I didn't).

[Oak2004]

14. A friend of mine has a friend who has a parallel life trajectory

On the surface, they are different. But that's where the difference ends.

One was born in CA and moved to VT. The other was born in VT and moved to CA. Their interests parallel. Their development parallels-- there exist nearly identical photographs of each of them at identical ages. Each has had nearly identical experiences at nearly identical times. Their paths nearly crossed several times throughout their life (one year they attended the same school, but did not meet), until they met over the internet. And they are so alike internally they can complete each others' sentences and read each others' minds.

We call the two of them "doppelgangers", but it is more like the whole parallel timelines/multiple universes thing got mixed up, and two versions of the same human were born in the same universe.

[Fire Walk With Me]

15. The view from here is clouded now; I raise my glass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqzIw77RhVQ