FETCH
In English folklore the term for a ghostly double of a living person. The fetch is remarkably similar to a double or doppelgänger but witnessing your own fetch, also called a co-walker, is believed to be a sure sign of your own death, which isn't typically the case for the doppelgänger. If the fetch isn't you it is taken to be a sign that someone close to you will die. In Irish folklore, however, the fetch is only a death omen if it is seen at night; if it is seen in the morning it is thought to suggest a long life.
Legend has it that Elizabeth I of England was shocked to see a corpse lying on her bed. On closer inspection she saw that it was her. Shortly afterwards she died.
John Donne, the sixteenth-century English poet, was allegedly visited by an apparition of his wife while he was in Paris. She appeared to him holding a newborn baby. Donne's wife was pregnant at the time, but the apparition was a portent of great sadness because at the moment it appeared, his wife had given birth to a stillborn child.
Text from The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts & Hauntings by Theresa Cheung (HarperElement, 2013)
