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There are 7 BILLION people on the planet.
Which means there's probably someone out there who looks JUST.
LIKE.
YOU.
Hey everyone, Laci Green here for DNews. 2 strangers who are completely unrelated and
look exactly like.
Doppelgangers are a trip and are found all over the world allllll the time.
Our understanding of doppelgangers has taken on a more casual understanding this day in
age, but the concept has been a part of paranormal folklore for hundreds of years.
The term itself originated in Germany and means "double-goer".
It described the phenomenon of seeing someone who looks exactly like another person, or
perhaps seeing someone who looks exactly like yourself.
Mostly commonly, the visions of oneself are reported as happening in your peripheral vision.
Creepeh.
In German folklore, it was thought that seeing a doppelganger was a bad sign - some kind
of omen that predicted your near death.
And strangely, Abraham Lincoln, Catherine the Great, and Queen Elizabeth the First were
all reported to have seen their doppelganger before their death.
One night while relaxing at home, Lincoln glanced sideways into a mirror and saw another
person, nearly nose to nose with himself in bed!
The figure looked exactly like him - with a few exceptions.
He said the figure was slightly shorter and a little paler than himself.
When he examined the mirror, it went away, but as he laid back down, the doppelganger
reappeared.
He reported a pang of pain in his head while he was experiencing this.
Of course, experiences like these have inspired hundreds of fictional offshoots in film and
television.
How might one explain such spooky strokes with....yourself?
Some possible answers were accidentally stumbled upon by doctors who were doing a pre-surgery
evaluation on a patient with epilepsy.
They found that when they applied electrical stimulation to the patient's temporoparietal
junction, the patient experienced a figure with a shadow identical to her own in her
presence.
When she was laying down, she felt the figure was almost nose-to-nose with her.
Sound familiar?
It's almost exactly what Lincoln had described.
The findings were published in the journal Nature in 2006, where the scientists concluded
that this kind of disturbance in the temporal lobes may account for some paranormal events.
The case study happened shortly after the explosion of the infamous "God Helmet", concocted
by neuroscientist Michael Persinger.
Using a similar electrical current on the temporal lobes, Persinger induced participants
to have a "religious experience".
The experience included the feeling that someone else was with them -- perhaps watching over
them.
So far, other scientists have failed to replicate his study.
Thanks for joining me for DNews friends!
Have you ever spotted a doppelganger?
Tell me your stories down below (on our DNews Facebook page) and I'll see you next time.