So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: Phantom Dopplegangers

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

The internet is flooded with stories of someone meeting their exact double – a copy who looks, acts, speaks, even thinks like them, only they seem to have a… supernatural quality to them. Even prominent figures in history, from Catherine the Great to Abraham Lincoln have come into contact with their doppelgängers, making many wonder, are these ghosts of ourselves, or versions of us from some alternate reality? For a full list of sources, please visit: sosupernaturalpodcast.com/the-unknown-phantom-dopplegangers So Supernatural is an audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social!Instagram: @sosupernatualpodTwitter: @_sosupernaturalFacebook: /sosupernaturalpod

Growing up, I thought it would be so freaking cool to have an identical twin. Maybe it was the Olsen twins, maybe it was the Parent Trap movies, I don't know, but something about being a kid in the 90s made me obsessed with having a double. Someone I could share clothes with, who I could play pranks on people with, someone who looked like me, talked like me, thought like me. But once I became interested in the supernatural and dug deeper into the fringe, I realized my twin may very well exist out there. And suddenly I didn't want one anymore.

It turns out there's stories all over the internet happening all over the world and throughout history. Stories of people who say that they've interacted with another version of themselves, or an identical version of someone they love. Someone who talks things acts just like them, someone who's a perfect carbon copy. Only it's not a twin, or anything else with a logical explanation. It's called the Paranormal Doppelganger Theory, and it has kept me up laying awake at night

ever since I discovered it, because it poses one terrifying question. Can there be a ghost of us, even if we aren't dead? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is So Supernatural. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is So Supernatural. Okay, I am so excited about this topic, and little confession. I'm a total nerd, and I love everything Marvel, everything DC. I believe in the multiverse. When we started diving into this topic,

I know both of our minds were racing with ideas, mine especially. We thought we'd find an endless stream of theories and explanations. We expected TikTok breakdowns and YouTube deep dives, but the more we dug, the more we realized people were mystified by the paranormal doppelganger theory.

Don't get us wrong, there were loads of stories from those who've had experiences with this kind of thing, but the more stories we heard, the more questions we had about these so-called phantom doppelgangers. And it left us with some terrifying revelations. Like, maybe we aren't each one of a kind after all. Yvette, you and I are sisters. Yes, we are, Rasha. We're sisters. I know I'm stating the obvious, but people who don't know our story

probably wouldn't think we're even related. I mean, one-inch percent, that is a true statement, Rasha, and I think most people just look at us and they assume that we're best friends. Which we are, but we're also sisters. So people who do know our story, though, know our family is multicultural. So even though we're sisters,

we're far from being twins, at least on the outside. Yeah, that's for sure. But the interesting thing about us is that we're not twins, but we do so many things that are similar. Like when we write emails, we will say practically very similar things. But Rasha is the punctuation and grammar police. Comma police too.

Yeah. But it's so strange because I could not have even looked at your email and then I see it and I'm like, oh my God, we basically said the same thing, but two different words, right? Right. It's almost like we have twin brains. Now most of us have probably heard the term doppelgangers before. People who aren't related but are practically identical to someone else. The word doppelganger roughly translates from German to mean double walker.

But I'm not talking about Margot Robbie and Jamie Presley, for example. Right. Or Zoe Deschanel and Katy Perry because like they have dark brown hair, blue eyes, but they're not the same person. That's a good one, too. No, I'm talking about a theory that has been popping up in fringe corners of the internet for quite a while. It's called the Paranormal Doppelganger Theory, and it says we could all have someone or some thing out there who looks like us, acts like us, talks like us, even has

all of the same memories we do. Hello multiverse. So we dug deep into some forums and threads and found some pretty spine-tingling stories from people who've supposedly encountered their own doppelganger or the doppelganger of someone very close to them. Okay, y'all, I'm gonna start with one that really sent me down a deep dive into a rabbit hole. I'm just saying. It's a Reddit post from a couple years ago,

and for the sake of the story, I'll name this person Tom. One afternoon back when Tom was in high school, he was apparently sick one day. So he spent the morning playing computer games in his room while his mom was at work. But around noon, he heard her come home. She popped her head in. She said she was there for a quick lunch. Now this was a little out of the ordinary. She usually came home for lunch at one o'clock. But Tom noticed something different about his mom. She was wearing a blue shirt that he had never seen before. But you know what?

He just shrugged it off. OK, maybe she went shopping or something, right? About an hour goes by, and he's still on his computer. Then his mom pops back up again, and she says the exact same thing to him, something like, hi honey, I'm home for lunch. She even offers him some of her french fries this time. But now, Tom's getting a little weirded out, and he replies, mom, you said the same thing to me

when you got home an hour ago. And when he turns to look at her and notices she's wearing something completely different, a white shirt, he recognizes. His mom looks totally confused, and then she says to him, with all sincerity, she has no idea what he's talking about. She hasn't been home all day.

At the end of this post, Tom says to this day, he still doesn't know who or what was in his bedroom. But he is certain it wasn't his mother, rather a very strange, bizarre-o-land version of her. If this was to happen to me, I would lose my mind. SONIA I'm just saying. I don't care how sick I was, I would like have to open the door and be like touching mom's face or something. I know, I know. Well, here's another one that I also found on Reddit

posted about six years ago. I'll call this user Lucy. When Lucy was 14 years old or so, she woke up in the middle of the night and found that she couldn't fall back to sleep. After tossing and turning for some time, she switched on her lamp, then shuffled down the hall in her PJs

to get a drink of water. Once she returned to her room, she was ready to hop back into bed, but then something caught her eye. Standing on the opposite side of the bed was an identical version of herself. That would freak me out. I would have to run out of the house on that one.

Me too, me too. Lucy said there was no mirror in her room, so she was certain this wasn't her reflection. This was a full 3D version of her. But there were a few big differences. She said the figure stared right through her with this blank look on its face, and something about its eyes terrified her, almost like they were dead inside, without a soul. And it wasn't dressed like her either.

It was wearing a long lavender nightgown, one Lucy presumably didn't recognize. Lucy didn't know what she was looking at, but she was terrified. So much so that she ran to her mom's room and dove into her bed. After that, Lucy stayed wide awake all night, afraid that thing would follow her into the next room or reappear. It wasn't until later, when she did a little research at the library, that she learned about phantom doppelgangers. To this day, she says she cannot wear anything lavender because the memory still freaks her out so much.

Here's the thing, if this was the first doppelganger story I heard, I could see myself thinking this was just some kind of bad dream, right? But knowing what I know now about this phenomenon, there's just too many similar stories that make me wonder what's really going on here. Like listen to this other one that I found. This woman, I'll call Janet, posted in an online forum about all things supernatural begging others for her help. Her encounter happened one day while her two kids were playing in her pool at her home and at one point she went inside to grab them something to drink. But minutes later, her seven-year-old son came in after her. She said he was hysterical. She tried to calm him down to find out what was wrong, and here's what he eventually said. While he was swimming, he looked

down and saw her face under the water with full makeup on. This creepy version of his mother was there smiling up at him. That's when the boy hauled himself out of the pool and ran into the kitchen. And from what I can tell, Janet hadn't been in the pool that day and she was already inside when this happened. Okay, now I have a kid and she's 13 now, but when she was seven, if she came to me and said that, like, I know kids say outlandish stuff sometimes, but I would totally believe her, especially if it was like that boy who was completely inconsolable. It sounds like he was not making this up for attention. Yeah, and people in the comments seem to believe Janet's story too. This is what they told her, which makes a lot of sense, to spiritually cleanse her house with sage and get help from a medium. Like I 100% would have done the

same thing because that's scary. That's a little freaky. So freaky. Yeah, I would have done the same thing. Sage, Palo Santo, medium, all the things. Right. And when you do the sage, like I would have opened every door and every window in the house. Yes, it is something you would do. So look, you've got a couple different versions of these stories. You've got Tom who saw his mom's copy during lunch one day. You've got the inverse where Janet's kids say they saw her in the pool. And then you have Lucy who saw herself. But each of those stories was a one off. But the next one I'm about to share is a little harder to rationalize, because it didn't just happen to someone once, it happened twice and in two different ways.

A woman who we'll call Sarah was about 15 when her experience occurred. She was home in the middle of the day all alone. At one point she walked down the hall and out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw what looked like a real carbon copy of her standing in the corner of her bedroom. The sight alone was horrifying, but it was especially weird because there was a desk in that corner, so no physical being should have been able to stand there. Now something in Sarah's gut, like some weird supernatural force, told her not to look straight at this thing. Her heart raced and she squeezed her eyes tight for a moment.

And when she opened them again, the figure was gone. Like a lot of these reports, Sarah mentioned another specific detail. The clothing. She said that Doppelganger had been wearing a blue shirt, one she knew she owned, but was hanging in her closet at the time. Yeah, that's interesting, right? Like, why would they both have, like, for Tom, the one, the guy that I was speaking of before,

he saw his mom in a blue shirt, and then the same thing. Right. With Sarah, a blue shirt. So there has to be something to that. Some kind of connection with the clothing maybe. But the story doesn't end there. Because Sarah encountered a doppelganger again years later as an adult. And this time she didn't see her doppelganger, but someone else's.

Sarah was at home working at her desk in the living room. At one point her husband came home. They chatted for a bit before he told her he was going to take a shower. Then he walked down the hall toward the bathroom, which was connected to their bedroom. About 30 minutes later, she started to wonder if he was ever gonna come out of the bathroom. So she does what so many of us do,

to text their spouse, she texted him. But he messaged her back saying he didn't know what she was talking about. He was still down at the neighborhood pool, the same place he'd been for the last couple of hours. He wasn't even home. She asked if he was messing with her and he swore he wasn't. That's when she realized the security system would have beeped if he'd left the house again, but she never heard it. Her husband joked that there must have been a blip in the universe, like a wrinkle in time and space.

Well, now, I'm wondering if he might be on to something, because here's what I find really eerie. I saw other stories online where people saw something weird in their reflection for a moment, or, I mean, they caught a quick glimpse of someone passing that they thought looked like them. But in all the stories we told, people saw something. They saw flesh and blood in the room for more than just a moment. Some even interacted, like had a conversation with the person they saw.

And every doppelganger also seemed to disappear into thin air. So are people's eyes just playing tricks on them? Or is the million dollar question is there something more going on here? I'll admit, we have to take these internet stories with a grain of salt, but Redditors and Facebook users aren't the only ones who've had doppelganger encounters. History is plagued with stories of important figures being visited by their supernatural selves. And almost always, it led to a very tragic ending.

The paranormal doppelganger theory is sort of a fringe topic, but there are a ton of people who say they've had encounters. And not only people online. History is riddled with stories of those who encountered their ghostly doubles. One of the most famous is about Catherine the Great, who was the Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. In the last year of her reign, Catherine was dealing with, let's just say, lots of drama. First her granddaughter was supposed to marry the King of Sweden, and Catherine threw a

ball to announce the engagement, but the King ditched out at the last minute. Not only that, but Catherine was in the middle of a very sneaky plot to have her favorite grandson supersede his father as her successor. So in between planning and canceling balls, Catherine was holding roundtable meetings plotting with her advisors and at some point she probably just wanted to lie down and take a nap. Well one night Catherine finally did get a little bit of R&R but it didn't last long. She was asleep in her chamber when her servants burst into the room and claimed that they just saw a woman

identical to her sitting on the throne. As we know, Catherine had power struggles on the brain, so her first instinct was imposter. She ordered the guards to find the woman and have her killed. Only the woman, identical to Catherine the Great, seemingly vanished just as easily as she had infiltrated the castle. After that, there were no more sightings of the doppelganger. But something tragic happened a few weeks later. Catherine the Great suffered a stroke and died. Or the vision was a sign or an omen of some sort. Maybe

some supernatural force was telling her to enjoy her days on the throne while she could. Now I say this because this wasn't the only time in history someone reported seeing their double before devastating events happened. Let's fast forward about 27 years to the life of Percy Shelley, a well-known poet who was also married to Mary Shelley, the author who wrote Frankenstein. In 1822, the pair was spending the summer with friends in a seaside town in Italy. Mary was pregnant, so she took it easy most days while Percy did, uh, poet things. Right, like pondering, contemplating, getting in his feelings, all the stuff you know that

poets do. Yeah, all the good things. One night during this retreat, he was standing on the veranda, gazing out at the water, when suddenly he noticed a small, shadowy figure forming in the surf. It rose from the water and Percy made out the shape of a child. It locked eyes with him and smiled. And then it vanished. A few weeks later, Mary tragically suffered a miscarriage. Now, not exactly the doppelganger stories we've been hearing, I know.

But that's not the end. Soon after, Percy was out on the same terrace, admiring the sea when he thought he heard his friend walk up behind him. When he turned, he saw his doppelganger wearing his friend's clothes. The double even spoke to him, asked how much longer he would quote, be content. Then it turned and walked across the terrace before vanishing completely. But this message felt personal to Percy, because it was no secret that he had a difficult life. He was known to struggle with suicidal ideation, so this encounter probably scared him for

obvious reasons. But it was especially frightening that the figure seemed to understand his psyche, questioning if he was okay and good with life. Plus that wasn't a one-off event. Percy started seeing his doppelganger pass by windows at different times of day when no one else was home. Then Percy started having vivid nightmares. In one, he dreamt that his house was flooded by the sea.

A few days after, Percy went boating with a couple of friends. Something I personally might have avoided after a dream like that, just because I would be so majorly spooked. But it doesn't seem like Percy was. But unbeknownst to them, the boat that they were on was poorly built. On top of that, there was a bad storm on the horizon. 10 days later, Percy's dead body washed ashore.

I was thinking about this, like sometimes I think people know that the end is near. I think they have a sense of it and he was going through obviously all these things. But again, it's wild to me. We have a story of someone seeing their doppelganger before a tragic event. But there's another historic figure who saw his doppelganger. And it isn't just a good story, it may have changed the course of history. His name was Abraham Lincoln, elected to office as the 16th President of the United States

in 1860. This was in the lead-up to the Civil War. So if you think the U.S. feels divided these days, imagine how it felt back then. Not to mention, his son had died a few years before. He and his wife Mary Todd were both dealing with bouts of depression ever since, and suffice to say, there was a lot weighing on him. One night, Lincoln was in his bedroom getting dressed. He checked himself out in the mirror at one point, but said,

the reflection staring back was unlike anything he'd ever seen. It was him, but he was gaunt and pale as a ghost. Lincoln was so stunned, he was knocked off balance by the image. Mary must have heard him and burst into the room worried, and when he caught his breath, he told her exactly what he saw. Now Lincoln's story might not seem like the conventional doppelganger tale either. It's of a different breed, since it was more like a mirrored reflection.

But it did share a commonality with the others. It was followed by a pretty tragic outcome. Now, Lincoln wasn't sure what the experience meant at the time, but his wife, Mary, seemed to have an immediate understanding of it. She thought it was a sign that her husband would win re-election in four years, but he, quote, wouldn't survive a second term.

That's very specific. I know. I assume Mary's prediction was based on the general level of conflict and violence in the country at the time. But she was right. Lincoln was re-elected in 1864. That same year, he started having vivid dreams about his own death. And then, Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

Okay. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. Okay, so just to recap, we have Catherine the Great, who was spotted on the throne while she was asleep in her chambers. We have Percy Shelley, who actually saw and interacted with his doppelganger. And Lincoln, who only saw his twin in the mirror. So basically, these things seem to appear in a variety of forms, and not always to the person they are mimicking.

But ultimately, it seems like none of them had any control over this supernatural twin. No, they didn't. But I heard about one person who did. Her name was María Jesús of Agueta, a Spanish Franciscan nun born in 1602. She spent most of her life in the convent of a greater Spain, and she happened to be known as a mystic. It's said she had the ability to bilocate, a phenomenon that allows a person to appear in two places at the same time.

Mary of Jesus, as she was commonly known, claimed to do this through spiritual visions. And she was said to teleport a double of herself to the New World, specifically what is now the southwestern United States. She appeared to indigenous American tribes to teach them about Catholicism and prepare them for the arrival of the Spanish missionaries. And she did this without ever physically leaving her convent in Spain. Eyewitness accounts describe Mary falling into trances. They said her body became light as a feather and that the slightest breeze would blow her around the room. Y'all, can we just take a pause and think about that? I think Ashley did a deep dive on this particular topic earlier in So Supernatural episodes,

so make sure to go take a listen to that. Yes, and it's called The Mystical Lady in Blue. Is that what it's called? Yeah, that is what it's called. When she came to, she could remember specific details about the tribes she encountered, like the clothes they wore and the geography of where they lived. Meanwhile, Spanish missionaries confirmed that in the New World, some groups of indigenous people were already familiar with Catholic teachings.

And they said that a lady in blue had visited them. The missionaries thought this matched Mary's description because her convent wore blue habits. Sounds a lot like astral projection. I'm glad you brought that up, Rasha. Bilocation is sort of a form of astral projection, absolutely. Okay, I'm going to need you to break that down for us, please. Okay, listen. While some philosophers and religions say the astral plane is the place between the physical world and the spiritual world, when a person actually astral projects, they separate their consciousness from their physical body and their consciousness travels through the astral plane. I know that's a lot to take in, just let it soak in. They might do this the same way people meditate, except in order to astral project, a person's

mind would have to enter a sort of semi-conscious state. People can also astral project while dreaming, but they can also do it unintentionally. I've studied yoga and, you know, in the Hindu and the Buddhist philosophy, there are the eight limbs of yoga and the last one is this and that's like Samadhi. So for someone to be able to do this from the get is crazy. And you mean someone can do this unintentionally out of nowhere as a person is just going about their day?

Pretty much. Dr. Leslie Phillips is a psychic development teacher who studies this stuff. She described an instance where a woman in England was driving past a field of sheep when suddenly she found herself in the field with the sheep. So what we're saying is astral projection could be a solid theory for phantom doppelgangers. It's totally possible because as I started digging into the explanations, So what we're saying is, astral projection could be a solid theory for phantom doppelgangers. It's totally possible because as I started digging into the explanations, I found a whole host of theories that will PSHHH! Blow your mind.

Some even changed how I see the physical world as we know it. There are tons of ideas about what paranormal doppelgangers really are. People have spent countless hours researching, trying to answer this supernatural phenomenon. But there were three theories we came across most during our research. I think it's worth starting with the most scientific one. Essentially, some researchers believe doppelganger sightings are psychological phenomenon known as autoscopy or autoscopic doubles. According to a study in the British journal of psychiatry, an autoscopic double is when a person sees an image of themselves from within their own physical body.

So when I think about this, I think of like out of body experiences, like when you hear about people floating above their bodies in the emergency room. Has that ever happened to you? Actually, it did happen to me many, many years ago, and it happened at a dentist's office, and I was getting like five teeth pulled at one time and I felt like I had too much of the laughing gas and I literally felt myself floating above and I could see above myself and I could see everything that was going on like I could see the blood and the this and the that, it was the weirdest experience that I've ever had in my entire life. So it does happen.

Well, OBEs actually fall under the umbrella of autoscopy. In fact, in 2002, a team of Swiss neurologists wanted to learn more about what actually happens in the brain during an OBE. They focused on a part of the brain known as the temporal parietal junction or TPJ, which plays a key role in processing information about your own body and where it is in space, as well as distinguishing between your own actions

and external influences. They discovered if they electrically stimulated the brain while applying other sensory stimuli, like stroking the subjects back, they could trigger OBEs in their subjects. Once the subjects were in OBE mode, researchers found that all those little signals that tell you where your body is in a physical space and what you're looking at, they get crisscrossed. And if that happens, a person can hallucinate a vision of themselves. This kind of hallucination is also known as an autoscopic double. The exact science is still under research, but it's a steadily growing field. And at

this point, we know OBEs can be caused by a neurological or psychiatric illness, stress, even brain tumors. Which we know Lincoln and Catherine the Great were definitely under immense amounts of stress. But there's no way of knowing if this was the cause of their experiences. And that's why I'm so intrigued by the supernatural possibilities. Now everyone at home might be familiar with the multiverse theory, which of course I've already mentioned, you know, the everything everywhere all at once of it all. And if you saw that amazing Oscar film starring Michelle Yeoh and Kei Yung Kwan, you know what

I'm talking about. Yeah, and this is an incredible, incredible movie. I think you have to watch it two times though to really let it sink in but they talk about all of this the parallel Universe, you know, it's this deep stuff right here that we're talking about so much supernatural stuff Well, I think a big reason why people love that movie so much is because it shows the infinite amount of possibility In our lives, even if we don't know we're living infinite lives all at the same time. So maybe that's what deja vu is. I mean, a peek into one of those other versions of us that have already been there and done that.

And I'm sure all of you have experienced this at some time or another in your life. Or it might be why some people believe that paranormal doppelgangers could be us from another dimension. One important aspect of the multiverse theory, for those of you who haven't seen that beautiful movie is every action you take causes a new life path to branch off in another timeline, resulting in a multiverse comprised of all the possible outcomes of our lives, which would mean there are infinite versions of each of us. And even though every version sprouted from the same seed, so to speak, they've all gone

on to have different lives and experiences. And even other than Everywhere All at Once, one of my favorite TV shows on Disney Plus is Loki, and that totally talks about the multiverse and everything splitting off into every rich way in every direction. It's so cool. The thing about it is, if this is true, then I guess it goes to show just how powerful

every little choice we make in this life truly is. Yeah, no kidding. And if there's a universe out there where people have figured out how to travel to other realities, that might lead to doppelganger encounters in our universe. It totally reminds me of that one Reddit user we called Sarah, whose husband, remember early in the episode, that he joked about a blip in the universe. I mean, maybe he's not wrong.

This would definitely explain the more physical encounters where a person saw themselves or someone else in the room with them. But in one of my deep dive rabbit holes, a Reddit user posted a theory that's been my Roman Empire. What if ghosts and spirits are actually from an alternate universe. This user says that when someone refers to a quote thin veil between worlds, they're usually referring to the veil between the physical world and the spirit world. But the user posts that the veil actually lies between our universe actually lies between our universe and the next.

That brings me to the third and final theory. I came across this one a lot online. It's the belief that paranormal doppelgangers could be something even creepier, specifically ghosts of ourselves haunting us. There are some people who believe we each have a ghost around us our entire life, and when we come into existence, so do they. We are what's referred to as the doppelgangers original.

The spooky part is that their entire goal is to get rid of us and take over our life. They're said to have no shadow, no reflection, almost like vampires. They're even thought of as malicious. They may intentionally give their original bad advice or put bad thoughts in their head. This is their way of leading us to our own death. It seems like the stories from history support this lore, like Percy Shelley's doppelganger getting in his head right before he died. This freaks me out so badly, you have no idea.

Yeah. So there's not a lot of detail behind this theory, probably because it's the least rooted in science. I'm not going to lie, when Ashley first said there could be a ghost of yourself while you're still alive, I was shook. But after reading more, I definitely lost a few hours of sleep. Beyond the fear factor, doppelganger encounters are just so freaking mysterious and intriguing.

Between the psychological and the metaphysical and the quantum theories, the paranormal doppelganger theory has that mix of fright and that intellectual stimulation that honestly, I geek out about this kind of stuff. Well, for me, the idea of encountering a perfect replica of myself taps into questions about identity and reality. Like what would you do if you met another you? Yeah, I would have to take a long moment because first it would freak me out, but then it would

make me really think hard about what is going on in my life. This must be a sign or a symbol that I need to recognize. I don't know. That's a great way to look at it. All I know is if I come across my twin one day, I'll make sure they are guiding me towards the light instead of the darkness. Amen for that. This is So Supernatural, an audio check original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So SupernaturalPod and on our website, SoSupernaturalPodcast.com.

Join Rasha and me next Friday for an all new episode. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No.