Doppelgänger
Artwork by Benedetta Fiore. ArtStation | Instagram
Origin: German folklore
Other names: Doppeltgänger, double-walker, twin stranger
The doppelgänger is more complex than a clone; rather, at its origin, it’s an invisible spiritual replica that every living thing has. What’s more, this lore existed before the name. The idea of alter egos has existed in mythology and lore all over the world since before recorded time. The concept was originally called fetch in German folklore, according to Francis Grose's 1787 A Provincial Glossary. Catherine Crow’s 1848 The Night-Side of Nature used the word “doppelgänger” (which translates to “double-walker”), and has been a popular term ever since.
Considering the staggering amount of information and connections we have at our fingertips nowadays, finding someone who looks just like you among the other seven billion people on this planet isn’t too hard. However, coming into contact with your spiritual double (or even just an unrelated look-alike) was a sign of death, bad luck, or other ominous things to come in times past.
In 1612, English poet John Donne supposedly saw a doppelgänger of his pregnant wife in Paris while she was still at home. He’d been sitting alone in a dining room after his friends had left. When one of them returned, John sat there in a perplexed, altered state. He said that he’d just seen his wife pass by not once, but twice, cradling a dead child in her arms. He dispatched a messenger to check on her, only to receive word that she was in poor health after losing their child.
In 1822, author Mary Shelley wrote a letter about some peculiar sightings around the death of her husband, Percy. Three weeks before his death, Mary’s friend Jane Williams claimed to have seen two versions of Percy through their window. A week later, Percy confided to Mary that he’d had visions of meeting with himself on their terrace. His other-self would ask, “How long do you mean to be content?” Just two years prior, Percy wrote in his drama Prometheus Unbound:
They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know there are two worlds of life and death:
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live
Till death unite them and they part no more…
Appearances in media
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There are so many examples of doppelgängers in media, I’m also going to leave a TVTropes link here.