Mysteries of Doppelgangers?
The term is derived from two German words: “doppel” and “ganger”, which mean “double” and “walker” respectively.
A doppelganger is a term that describes a physical double of a living individual. Doppelgangers are believed to look exactly look like other people to whom they have no relation.
It could also be an evil “twin” of a person that goes around causing trouble. There are many different theories and ideas about the phenomenon. Some people consider it to be nothing more than an overreaction to seeing someone having similar physical features as someone else. There are only so many physical features that six billion humans can have, so it’s not surprising that some people who never meet or have no relation look a lot alike.
However, there are others who consider doppelgangers to be something ominous. In some cultures, seeing one’s doppelganger symbolizes death: if one should see his or her doppelganger, it could mean that he or she is going to die. If friends or relatives of someone should see that person’s doppelganger, it could mean that the individual is going to experience a lot of bad luck and health problems in the near future.
Another theory is that a person’s doppelganger *is* that person from a parallel universe or dimension, and that if the two versions of that person should meet, something bad will happen. One possible theory is that, should one meet and communicate with his or her doppelganger, the universe will collapse. Another theory is that both versions of the person will cease to exist.
A temporal doppelganger is a version of oneself that an individual may meet when time traveling. In this case, the doppelganger would look exactly like an individual did at one point in the past, or will look like at some point in the future. It’s also considered a bad idea to approach the look alike. If time travel were even possible, many believe nothing good could come out of contacting one’s own self at any point in time.
Whatever doppelgangers are or are not, most consider it to be unwise and bad to attempt to communicate with their own. Whether they are malevolent spirits taking on the form of a particular living person, an actual living person from a parallel universe, or just a random lookalike, nobody knows exactly what doppelgangers are. There has been a lot of folklore about them over the years, and many cultures have stories and theories about what/who they are and where they came from.
