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Doppelgängers (IHTM)

I had a bit of a wierd thing when I was at middle school (about age 9/10 I suppose.) I was in the same class as a girl that really looked like me and we often were mistaken for each other.
The strange bit is that when I moved schools (I went back to the school all thge kids I'd grown up with went to. Ain't divorce grand!;) ) all of a sudden people kept accidently calling me by the other girls' name. We didn't have anyone by that name in my class and there hadn't been any crossover of friends. It was just wierd.
 
Meeting yourself

This is my first post on here : but its an interesting one.

near my home is a park. About 8-9 years ago, i was walking along one side of the street that runs beside it. as i did, i noticed someone walking the opposite way down the other side of the street who looked a lot like me, but maybe a couple of years older. This person gave me a really weird look as he passed by on the other side of the street.

That was odd enough, but a couple of years later, i am walking down the same street, the other way, and i notice across the street is someone walking up who looked remarkably like me, but a couple of years younger. I then remembered the original incident and looked at what i was wearing. I was wearing exactly what i remembered my lookalike wearing a couple of years before, and the younger lookalike i saw was wearing exactly what i had been wearing the first time. I'm sure that the person i saw must have seen a really odd look on my face because i was getting a months worth of chills!
 
wow, that's really quite something.
Once I rang up my friend and he said that I'd just a minute ago knocked on his window and then run off (which I hadn't) but I think he may have just been confused.
 
Well, that'd be your classic 'fetch', then, I believe, with a neat twist. A fetch is your supernatural double, and seeing your fetch is traditionally not a great sign, from what I can recall. Still, you're probably okay, as you could argue it's 'just' an incredibly unusual timeslip instead. Just!

When did you see yourself (both times)? Morning or evening? This appears to make a difference to the significance in folklore.

This story is so slick it almost sounds like a ready-made urban myth (not that that means it didn't happen, of course!) :)
 
I wish it were

I wish it was an urban myth. I am a hardcore sceptic most of the time but this just creeped me out. If it weren't for that i would be a complete scientific atheist. Instead, it has made me more of a fortean ( that there are things happening we dont understand...yet )
 
Being all Fortean about it, did you think you might one day see your younger self after the first sighting? Was it something you thought about when you went down that road? Something you dreaded, maybe?

Or was is a complete surprise?
 
filling in details

Both times it was mid-morning. very similar days in general. same time of year ( mid spring )
 
it was a complete surprise. the first time i just thought it was an odd coincidence. after the second time i still think it could be just a big coincidence - but thats really wild odds of that happening.
 
Sorry to sound cynical, but did you make a mental note at the time of the first meeting to remember exactly what both you and the stranger were wearing? What first drew your attention to the stranger?

Jane.
 
the first time i fobbed it off as just a coincidence. i didnt really think about it until the second time.

for why i looked, i just 'noticed' him... no real reason - both times.
 
bringerofbroom - Here's a similar story.

Not mine, in case you were wondering.
 
interesting story. The guy/s i saw were definitely solid and real. It's had me wondering what would have happened if i had actually crossed the road and said hello...
 
Accurate information

rereading my original post, it does look just like an urban legend - no real specifics.

So here they are, as much as i can give.

the first situation happened in march-april ( not sure exactly when ) of 1992. The second about the same time of year in 1995. It happened when walking along Highbury Crescent that runs alongside Highbury Fields in Islington,London.

I have not had any 'fortean-type' situations happen to me before this or after and i am generally very sceptical about these things.
 
it's interesting, it could call into question things like free will: imagine the future you had decided to say "hello". Then in the future you'd decided to say "hello" to the past you. Would it really be a choice if you'd seen it happening a couple of years before?
 
its an interesting idea, but as it didnt happen that way, still just an idea.
 
To keep probing (while you're online), are you SURE it was you both times? What margin of error would you give it - are you 90% sure, for example?

I know it's difficult to quantify, but...

(on an unhelpful note, I was jogging up Highbury Crescent last week, so I now have a decent mental image of where it happened!)
 
its an interesting idea, but as it didnt happen that way, still just an idea.
 
the people i saw were VERY similar to me - the chances of someone looking similar to me ( i am not originally from the area and dont have family near there, so its unlikely to be long lost relatives who look like me - also, i have a scar on my right cheek and my eyes have obvious epicanthic folds - rare in causasians )
 
this reminds me of something that happened when i was about 15 and my brother was about nine. we lived in a little, isolated desert town in southern New Mexico. my brother really stood out in the largely hispanic community because he had straight white hair and pale skin, almost albino-looking at that time. it was halloween. he was going as a vampire. he and my mother were in the bathroom, where she was putting on his makeup. i stood watching in the doorway. we were chatting and laughing. someone knocks at the front door. i leave the bathroom, go approximately ten steps to the door. turn on the porch light and open the door, expecting a trick or treater. there is my brother, standing, not on the porch, but at the bottom of the steps, dressed in his black cape. nothing on his head. his signature white hair. he looks terrified. my mind is struggling with the impossible logistics of the situation. i ask how he got out there. I ask what's wrong? he runs into the dark. i return to the bathroom to tell my mom. there they both are, just as i left them.
this was a very small, one story house. probably less than 1,000 square feet. the bathroom was just a few steps from the front door. the bathroom had a window, but it was high, almost to the ceiling, and very small. if my mother had been able to stuff him through, he would have dropped six feet on the other side, then would have had to run around the house to get to the front door. logistically, it would have been impossible to pull off.

Throughout the years, I've asked my brother about this and he doesn't even remember it. He just gives me the same puzzled and confused look he and my mother gave me that night.
 
About 10 years ago my brother had a very disconcerting experience when he saw "me" a couple of times in our home town. At the time I had moved 50 miles away to university. The first time he saw a girl on a bike, he was positive it was me and asked me what the hell I was doing riding a bike about town and not reporting to home base, when I should have been in college. I told him he was going mad, I wasn't there. The next time was a few months later in a shop. He was just on the point of giving the girl a thump on the back (as we do) when he realised, somewhow, that it was not me. He spent a bit of time staring at her as he said she was my 'double', so much so she hurried off. He never saw her again. My cousin also reported seeing "me" in a place in the town that I wasn't. I could understand the cousin making a mistake, but not my brother. I have never seen this girl myself. Makes me wonder what my Da was up to, huh!
 
The white haired kid story was wonderfully creepy, and the sister story makes me wonder - what are the statistical chances of finding someone who looks incredibly like you?

After all, it can't be impossible - and it would make sense if you saw the same person twice, bringerofbroom!

There oughtta be a website for individual facsimiles - www.amImeornot.com!
 
I had a similar experience when I was in high school. While walking across the grounds to my next lesson I saw a girl who looked just like me walk towards me. My reaction was "Holy shit! It's me!....wait it a minute it can't be me- I'M me!". When we passed each other though I realised it was just a girl who looked an awful lot like me, rather then some future self. Although I'd like to know why I never saw her again...

Likewise several years ago one of the national newspapers ran a section on teenage smoking. I opened up the page and staring back at me was my double. She had the same shape face, same haircut, even the same jacket...that was damn freaky. I even had people ringing me up telling me to look in the paper because 'there's someone who looks just like you in it!'.

Shame my clone turned out to be a chain smoker =/
 
I had something totally mundane but funny happen to me along these lines. I look a lot like a certain minor celebrity (who shall remain nameless, since he’s not known for his good looks, lol). One time, I was in the magazine section of the bookstore, and a magazine with the celeb’s picture on the cover was in the rack. I noticed the man next to me looking back and forth between me and the picture on the magazine, like he was trying to figure out if it was me. I'm not sure what I would have done if he'd asked for an autograph -- fortunately I wasn't tempted by his asking :p

-Neil
 
"the fetch"

according to irish belief, the apparition of a living person; the irish version of the "wraith". it resembles in every particular the individual whose death it is susposed to fortell, but is generally of a shadowy or ghostly appearence. the "fetch" may be seen by more than one person at the same time and, like the "wraith" of england and scotland, may appear to the person it represents.

there is a belief, too, that if the "fetch" is seen in the morning, it indicates long life for the original: but if it is seen at night, his speedy demise may be expected.

the "fetch" enters largely into the folk-tales of ireland; and it is hardly suprising that so many tales have woven around it, for there is something gruesome in the idea of being haunted by ones own "double" which has frequently been turned to account by more sophisticated writers than the inventors of folk tales.


"wraith"


the apparition or "double" of a living person, generally susposed to be a omen of death. the "wraith" closely resembles the prototype in the flesh even to details of dress. it is believed possible for people to see their own "wraiths", and among those who have been warned of approaching dissolution in this are numbered.

but "wraiths" of others may appear to one or more persons.

the belief flourishes also on the continent, and in different parts of britain it goes under different names such as "waff", "swarth"*, "task", "fye", etc. variants of the "wraiths" are the irish "fetch", and the welsh "lledrith"**. in scotland it was formerly believed that the "wraith" of one about to die might be seen wrapped in a winding sheet. the higher the shroud reached the nearer was the approach off death.

(also see "astral body")

*a connection with the word "swarthy" meaning "dark complexion"?
** lit. trans. "illusion"?
 
that's very interesting, melf. i've never heard of the fetch, but i do remember that i spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about my brother, thinking that maybe Death had come to the door. after a time, my worry faded, but i can still vividly recall the event and the impact it had on me while everyone else was oblivious.

edit: i wonder if these sightings tend to happen to teenagers?
 
I live in Tucson, Arizona, which, while no longer the quaint southwestern town as pictured on old postcards and episodes of Gunsmoke, is hardly a metropolis on the order of, say, Los Angeles or even Phoenix. For the past 10 years or so, I keep bumping into people who will either swear that they've met me before, or that "say, aren't you that guy who's been dating so-and-so?" I always put this down to mistaken identity. However, on two occasions, I've been out shopping, and a complete stranger will come up to me smiling, give me a big bear hug and ask how everything is going, how are the kids, etc., and on the second and most recent occasion, they even called me by MY NAME. Even after explaining that I do not know them, they tell me that I'm joking or putting them on, what's wrong with me, too good to talk to an old friend, you know the drill. I remember one lady who was actually quite irritated that I was 'pretending' not to know her, and that I should be ashamed of myself for not reciprocating her demonstrations of affection. I don't know just what to make of this. I'm aware of the whole doppelganger thing, and if this is the case, he's been leading a very busy life. I've often thought about how very weird it would be to come face to face with myself. I've also heard that there is at least one other person in the world who your exact double. If that's the case, then all I can say is...poor bastard.:D
 
Recently at school I had someone say hi to me and call me by my first name. I did not recognize this person at all and no matter how much I thought about it I could not place them. I am just assuming that I did meet them at one point and for some reason they remember me when I don't remember them. Maybe I had a class with them. :splat:

Sorry, I just like that smiley.
 
The first bloke I met when I joined the British Army looked the same as me. All new recruits had to report to Reading train station where we would be picked up by a drill sergeant. People came from all over Britain which involved lengthy train journeys usually with serveral changes along the way. This meant that as we all drew nearer to Reading, more and more of us ended up on the same train. All 17 to 19 year olds, it wasn't long before we found our way to the restaurant car for a few beers where we shyly established contact and discovered that we were all in the same boat.

Anyway, the first one I met was a chap called Darren Cheeswas. All through our training everyone kept saying how alike we looked. Finally we had a big passing out parade, which was attended by my parents. After the parade they happily told me that they had been able to pick me out straight away and had been watching me all the way through the parade. They told me exactly where I'd been standing - the only thing was that the person they'd picked out was Cheesey and not me!

A few weeks later the official platoon photo arrived home and again they picked me out immediately - but again it was Cheesey they picked out and not me! The one that I pointed out as being me was apparently 'not tall enough and his face was too square'!
 
ignatius said:
Even after explaining that I do not know them, they tell me that I'm joking or putting them on, what's wrong with me, too good to talk to an old friend, you know the drill.
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Next time, try asking detailed questions about the guy to prove it's not you. Tell them how often this has happened to you, that it's kind of freaking you out, and to please pass the word among their friends that there's someone in town who looks just like him.

... Did they call you by your full name or just your first name?
 
ignatius said:
However, on two occasions, I've been out shopping, and a complete stranger will come up to me smiling, give me a big bear hug and ask how everything is going, how are the kids, etc.,
Click to expand...
hehe in my town there is a girl my age who used to be my exact double (at least according to everyone mean) but on at least one occasion I was flagged down and talked to by some family friend or relative, who couldn't tell teh difference until I pointed it out.
 
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