Strange Things: Doppelgangers

Legend has it that if you see your own doppelganger ("double walker" in German), you'll die soon after.

This isn't always the case, it seems. In 1771, the poet Wolfgang von Goethe was riding away from his friend's home when he briefly saw himself riding towards him, looking much the same but wearing different clothes. Eight years later, he was riding down the same road and realized that he was wearing the gray coat his doppelganger had worn.

French writer Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) wrote about France's upper crust for most of his career, then (suffering from syphilis, which can derange) he began to write horror stories about men driven insane by unseen forces. In the first, He?, a man is so haunted by a shadowy figure that appears in his room that he marries just to avoid being alone with it. This story came to life in 1886, as Maupassant was in his own room writing his most famous horror tale, The Horla. A man entered the room unannounced and sat opposite the writer, then proceeded to dictate the rest of the story to him. Only as the man departed did Maupassant realize it was his own doppelganger.

Percy Shelley didn't fare so well after seeing his doppelganger. The depressed poet was living in a villa on the Gulf of Spezia with his wife, Mary, in 1882. He was suffering many delusions and hallucinations, including visions of an infant rising from the sea (Mary had recently suffered a miscarriage, and Shelley had lost other children). One day he saw his own image standing on the terrace, looking out across the Gulf, and the doppelganger turned slowly to point its finger at him. Shelley drowned in a sailing accident soon after.