The Strange Tale of the TikTok Doppelgänger

Has anybody ever told you, Hey, you told me this thing and you're like, no, I didn't, and they're like, yes, you did well. And then I'm like, oh, you're gaslighting me because you don't remember. And I'm like, well, you're the one with the drinking problem, so I think I'm a more reliable one. Here. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle Edwin. What do you know about dappel Gangers That they're creepy and I have an interesting story later on if you're what, Oh, I'm excited. I'm excited. Dappel Ganger literally translates to double walker, which is fascinating me. It's a German word and it's not to be confused with like a look alike or a dead ringer, or like when someone dates the exact same type of person, which is common. Everybody has a type. Admit it, Admit it. Everyone has a type. It's fine. Apparently mine is old sad eyes. I guess I'm just like okay, But anyway, back to Dappelgangers. Let's see where was I Dppelgangers are different than just lookalikes or your type or whatever, you know, like, they're different. Doppelgangers are not just other people that are similar to you. They are exact carbon copies of you, and in fact emulate everything about you, at least in a ghostly reflection. Imagine that. I know. Also, seeing your own doppelganger is considered an extremely bad omen. The lore goes, if you see your doppelganger, you die shortly afterwards, which I also think this is why TikTok is loving this concept right now, because it is trending on TikTok as people pretending to be their own doppelgangers and making videos of it. Oh that is good and creepy. I can see that. Oh wow. Yeah. But you know the crazy thing is is there's been several strange cases throughout history of people seeing their own doppelgangers. Yeah, and one of the most famous is the strange case of Emily Sage. Have you ever heard of her? It rings a bell. But that's a creepy name for some Maria I know. Well, we're going to the time machine, so right, let's go. Yeah, here we go. Here we are in eighteen forty five. What's the vibe is in like, what's going on? What kind of we're in Europe, We're in Latvia. Okay, So Edwin, you are a simple schoolgirl attending an exclusive girls school in Latvia, So you know all of which that entails. I imagine maybe like pigtails. You clearly have petticoats, and you know you're there to learn. You're an exclusive girls school. You have a new teacher and her name is Miss Emily Sage. Your new teacher, Miss Emily Sage, is writing your lesson on the chalkboard. You like her a lot. She's from France, She's around thirty two and a lot kinder than some of the other teachers. Well that's good, yeah, yeah, and she's popular with the students. But you've ever heard some of the other teachers gossiping that apparently miss Sage has had nineteen different schools over the past sixteen years. Ooh, red flat, that's like nineteen different jobs. Yeah, in the past sixteen years, which is a little suspicious. I mean, could there be a reason? And you know, the staff is scared that she'll just move on at the earliest opportunity, which you think would be unfortunate because you like her as a teacher. You're sitting with thirteen other students in your class while Miss Sage writes on the board and her back is to the room. All of a sudden, another woman appears right beside her, mirroring her image and movements exactly. It seemed to have no unique awareness of its surroundings or of what was going on. You and the other students describe it as if the teacher, Miss Snagge, had been copy happy, the same way a mirror image would be, but only not reversed, And the instant was bewildering enough for those who witnessed it. And then when you told people about it, nobody would believe you, at least not at first. That is the worst feeling ever, oh one thousand percent, especially if it's thirteen students being like, uh, what the hell is that? Yeah? What. The second time it happened, Miss Saggie was sitting in the school hall eating lunch, and it was relatively empty at the time, but the few people that were present were alarmed to see a ghostly apparition blink into existence right behind her. Okay, okay, once again, it started copying her movements as she ate Emily was sitting down, but the Dappelganger stood up, and while no food could be seen, the doppelganger's hands moved as if she were eating, and Emily herself seemed completely unaware of the Dappelganger's presence, unaware, like she couldn't see uh huh, she had no idea, but everyone else could see. Yeah. And then her ghostly double began to like wander beyond her immediate vicinity. Importantly, it began to appear as though it was mirroring her own minds and actions, but like diverging away from what she was doing. Emily asked a colleague to watch her class while she helped some other students in the garden, and at one point during the lesson, Emily walked back in. The teacher that was filling in left, and the students at their desk thought nothing of it until they looked out the window and saw that the real Emily Sage was still working in the garden, and the Dappelganger simply sat in the seat silently watching them. That is the creepiest thing I think I've heard, you tell me clear, watching them, And although Emily confirmed that she had been outside the whole time. School officials documented in their notes that at the exact time of her sighting in the classroom, she had wished to be indoors teaching her sewing class instead of working at the garden. Okay, I don't even know what's going on, but that is beyond creepy. Is she doubling herself? So, I mean that's a good question, because you and a few other brave students find the courage to approach the apparition. Finally, everybody's just been observing, like yeah, everyone's like, I imagine this time when she's just sitting in the classroom. This was the time that you did this. Because it's like you're looking outside, you're seeing the teacher. You're looking inside, you're seeing the teacher. Finally, we're approaching. Okay, we're approaching. Yeah, so you get brave enough to go up to her. As you touch her, your hands are met with a strange resistance. The air immediately surrounding the figure was like thick fabric. Emily's doppelganger eventually became a permanent fixture at the school. What yeah, a job, No, I mean she uh, Basically, people saw it so much that it just became like an average thing. And also she'd often say she felt tired or drained whenever it materialized, like as the appearances became more frequent, whatever it was, it was also draining her. But obviously, unfortunately for Emily, it had a habit of not only confusing people but absolutely freaking people out. So a number of parents complained and she was asked to leave. And now you, as her student, understood why she could never stay on one place too long. I do have some theories, but there are some other weird cases throughout history of people seeing their actual doppelgangers and like acknowledging them that are pretty crazy, because like it happened to Abraham Lincoln. What I mean this is one of the stories is that he was taking was laying down on a couch. He looked in the mirror and he saw himself in the reflection, and then he saw a double of himself, and in the double of himself like looked sick, didn't look well. And so he told Mary Todd Lincoln, who was a famous spiritualist, and she was like, oh, it means you're gonna it's gonna you're gonna win a second term. But you're not gonna live through your second term. And then, of course Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, apparently woke up one night. She was woken up by servants who had reported as seeing her enter the throne room, and she was like, well, I went to bed three hours ago, so that's not possible. And so she got up and she went into the throne room and there was someone while her sitting on the throne. She saw the doppelganger sitting there and immediately ordered guards to shoot it, and they, of course, the muskets had no effect on the doppelganger, and it eventually faded, and then the Empress died shortly afterwards. WHOA, this is kind of a different take on it, but also I still think it counts as a doppelganger. There is this German where he's like a writer and a poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goete. So he was a famous writer in his day. He happened he was writing along a writing path and he saw him, a serious stranger, ride towards him and then passed him. And he looked at the man and he was startled because the guy looked exactly like him, but wearing different clothes, and so he was just you know, he just thought it was so odd. Then eight years later, he happened to be writing down the same path, the opposite direction, and suddenly he recalled seeing his double eight years ago, and he looked down and he realized he was wearing the same clothes that the mysterious Stranger had been wearing eight years ago when he rode by him. Like a time travel type of thing. Yeah, like a matrix glitch that happen. I know. So like the Doppelganger has like a few theories that are pretty cool. Obviously the matrix glitch, Like I feel like that's a pretty obvious, like dimensional thing going on with the good story. But also other theories are like mysterious entities, astral projections, the embodiment, Like I feel like with Emily Sage, it was like the embodiment of one's thoughts and wishes being so powerful that they manifest, you know, Like the thing that she really wanted to be doing was what her doppelganger was doing. Like maybe she just wanted to be standing up and eating for some reason. I mean, I remember a phrase one of my teachers said at one point, like where she was like, oh, I only have two arms because she wanted to help us all or whatever. Yeah, and then at one point, I remember some of her phrases were like, there's only one of me, right, Like what if this teacher really wanted to be in two places? Right, and for some reason she knew how to do it, or well, didn't really know how to do it, but was doing it. It was fired from it. It was kept getting fired for her talents. That sucks. You were getting two teachers for the price of one. Yeah, I mean, why not. That's amazing. But also this that particular thing is called biolocation, which is like when someone's in multiple locations. It's like a real specific Yeah, I found the name. It's biolocations. It's a phenomenon. It's been in like variety of different like religious contexts and like Greek legends and Christian traditions and occultism. So it's like a thing. Like I feel like that's kind of tied to her story, is that it's like she's a doppelganger dude to buy location, you know what I mean. Like that's interesting. I don't think it felt harmful to anybody. It didn't seem like it was implying that it was like a it was scary because like, what the hell is it? I mean, did anything happen to her after? I know, it just goes blank. There's not even a death date, she falls off the map or whatever. She's still alive. She's been alive this whole time. But yeah, and then you know glitch and the matrix. Of course, you know, that seems to explain it when the other one isn't aware of like anything that's going on around them, is that it's just kind of a glitch in the matrix. But then maybe the freakiest story is based in demonology, and it's said that certain paris expirits which can impersonate anyone, including their hosts. For this reason, people have suggested that doppelgangers, especially those that can display a level of intelligence and can interact with the world around them, might in fact be demons. You know, one of my friends has a theory that there are no ghosts, there are no entities, even though we like watching ghost adventures and like all these other things. He says that anything that's still roams or that's roaming around the earth that's there's no explanation to is something demonic. Yeah, something evil just cannot be anything else. So and that's one interpretation of it. You just gotta go with, you know, whatever's in your gut about that. There's definitely things that roam around that have not been alive. Not necessarily it could it be evil. It's probably more neutral, but you know, some stuff that's not been alive that wanders around. And then what about when people saw Doppelganger and they died and this was like really interesting to me? Is that? Weirdly enough, in scientific research, it's supported by a number of tests that subjects found that when certain areas of the brain were stimulated, participants felt an outward presence of themselves standing in the same room as them. And it's theorized that natural stimulation of certain areas of the brain through injury, illness, or chemical imbalance could cause this hallucination. And you see your Doppelganger during these illnesses and injuries, which would then go on to cause death, and that would explain the law around it. Science, it ruins everything, But also, okay, it makes sense. It makes sense for at least one type of it. You know, it makes sense for Catherine the Great. Catherine the Great story that makes sense with you know, like, but if who was shooting at it, then they must have seen it, right, Like, yeah, they must have seen it. Oh yeah, you're right, they must have seen it. Yeah, they must have seen or maybe maybe they're just following orders otherwise they get shot. They also, you're right, and there's no way either of those like I don't know what that is, but okay, we'll shoot the throne. But I mean, you know, given that, there's so many differences between these experiences, which is really fascinating because there's clearly like tons of different ways it could go. But one thing you definitely don't want to see is someone standing behind you in the mirror that looks just like you or or you like just all like Abraham Lincoln style of oh yeah you in the future. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs that. My sister had a picture taking of her at this party and apparently she wasn't at that party, Like they showed her a picture and she wasn't there. Oh my god, that's terrifying. What did people say? What were the what were you were there? And she's like, I was not there? What do you even Like this day, I still want to see that picture. But like she says, she's screeped out by it, like she just doesn't want but everybody swore that, yeah she was there, and like, no, she wasn't. Like the closest explanation she has is like maybe someone that looks like me was there and they just thought it was her. It's a party, like maybe people were drinking and they thought it was her and they were just convinced. But she wasn't there. And yeah, very creepy, very creepy. Rib sister's alive. She's doing well, but good, that's good. The scientific thing is like if you see yourself, right, but like she tak me, she didn't see herself like other people saw her and they would. I've heard other stories too, like people seeing a person that isn't there, Like, for example, you see somebody like they said, you see your brother, he's walking down the hallway and then you call him and then he's like, oh, hey, I'm at work, let me call you back. It's like, oh, like what, well, that feels like a matrix slip, you know, Like that's like the stuff where it's just like, oh, well, that's pretty weird. Anything glitch in the matrix thing that I've seen on TikTok is, like it's creepy. I've seen the one of the bird just kind of standing still in the air. There's one where there's a bunch of birds just standing still. It's like a bunch of them just stopped all of a sudden. It's pretty weird. Weird little glitchy things. And that's a good topic actually for an episode. Just glitches. Weird little glitchy things, and that's a good topic actually for an episode, just glitches. Well, we don't know what your doppelganger is capable of, so I just watch out. Oh man, Well that's all I got. So what are we going to talk about next week? Edwin? I think it'll be a surprise, or it'll be a surprise. It always is scary. Mystery Surprise is hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Karubyes. This podcast was edited and sound designed by Sarah Orhe's Wendel, a VW sound