Defeat Your Doppelgangers

taken it sometimes yourself. Yes, I have frequented at Martyn myself. Yeah, And so you're completely surrounded by strangers, and if you're like me, you kind of keep your head down and eyes on your book and heading some music and trying not to make eye contact. No eye contact, that's the

first rule. Yeah, but you still can't help it. Get a glimpse of people out of it in your peripheral vision and uh yeah, sneak looks and occasionally, if you can get away with it, like genuine people watching, but

that's more of a sunglasses thing. But but anyway, that when I first started taking it, I had this situation where out of the corner of my eye, I was like, oh, my goodness, that's my my friend Becky, who take makes this uh this train as well, And I'd look over and upon closer examination and and stringent questioning, I found out that it is not her the questioning h yeah, yeah, the question you know. I drilled her for about an hour and she finally you know, fest up. No, I'm

not really packing but yeah, but anyway I can. I still see her occasionally, and I think of her as foe Becky, as this this doppel gang er, this this double that Becky has in the world and apparently has never met and doesn't know about, and probably to Becky doesn't look a lot like Becky. But I even encountered her in yoga class one time, and I wanted to come up and be like, your foe, Becky, what are

you doing outside of Martha? But um it But this this experience though, of seeing somebody else's double or seeing your own double, uh, you just you find it throughout human culture and in different way shaped and form it might spirit um especially the classic German dopel ganga topel ganga. Really yeah, I like write it and you give it a good sprockets go there. Um you know the idea that there are or you know, invasion of the body snatchers pod people, that there there are doubles out there

trying to replace you or replace people you love. Um, it's just a common item in folk tale and fiction throughout history. Yeah, I mean it means double walker right in German. I believe so. And it actually that the idea that the pure idea I suppose and folklore is that it's your evil twin and if you were to be visited by such, it would pretend death. And and not every culture has it laid out like Star Trek where you can tell your evil twin is evil because

of their goatee, right right, exactly. Yeah, And actually, I mean there are a lot of people who have said that they saw their their doppelganger, and Percy Shelley is one of them. Uh, Abraham Lincoln that that falls into the hole that Lincoln really get shot or was it his twin? Right right? I mean it gets since some

creepy territory. Yeah, and uh, you know, as we're we can explore in this podcast, there are there are various types of what world is referred to as doppelgang er situations, encounters with a mysterious double of some kind that that have a definite scientific explanation. Um. And then that's what's fascinating about it, because something has clearly been happening to the mind, So kind of like the like we discussed in our episode on an alien abduction, something is clearly happening.

It causes people to have extraordinary situation encounters with what seems to be the supernatural, and it becomes a part of the stories we tell. Um. But you can when you really examine it and boil it down with modern science, you find some some some genuine reasons for what's happening. Yeah, it's interesting that you bring that up, because in the alien abduction there's there're always these memes, right, these these

ideas that have a certain thread running through them. So a lot of alien abductions sound like the same sort of thing, right, little green men, weird lights, so on and so forth, and that shares some similar days with double gangers. I think, yeah, because it's like you you end up, say, you see yourself or you see somebody who who you think has been replaced. Um, your mind ends up coming up with these reasons for it. There's a story they're that they're replacing somebody, there's some sort

of nefarious scheme at work. The thing is, our understanding of it now is so much more nuanced, and so in the past in degree, we were like, oh, that person is just certifiability nuts, right, But now through neuroscience we have a better understanding of it as an actual

secondary condition. So if you had brain lesions, UM, if you had an epileptic fit or um some other uh neurological damage to your brain, it's very possible that you could have this type of delusion in which you had a doppelganger of yourself or I might even imagine that you right now have been replaced, that you are an impostor. Who Yeah, it's possible for new listeners. You don't even know if you you have no frame of reference. That's right. I mean I've never seen anywhere of that shirt before.

That's that's the way you're shuffling your papers. Well, let's uh, let's get into it then. UM let's look at the first of these doppelganger syndromes. And this is uh cop grass syndrome. And this was discovered by French scientists Joseph

capgra In. Right. Yes, this syndrome basically breaks down to you have to end up with this strong suspicion that impostors are replacing friends and or loved ones, right and everywhere else, you're you're completely functional, right, Like your logic is completely intact um, nothing wrong with you except that, right, It's it's the pod people thing, the invasion of the body snatchers, right. Something you you run into, say, your mother are a close friend and you're talking to them.

They they look like your mother. Uh, but there's something off. There's something that's not right, that's not clicking, and and and you realize and you your brain totally rationalizes that something has replaced them, right, And you've actually covered this in a blog post before U there was this one specific instance where there was a guy I think he's maybe in his twenties at the time, but he was being treated by Dr vs. Ramachandran and he had an accident.

He had some brain damage, and honestly he was perfectly fine cognitively, you know, functioning, except that he was he was convinced that his parents had been replaced by impostors. And we're you know, complaining to them day and night and basically saying, like, you know what, that lady that was here this morning that made me the breakfast, I like her better. Those eggs were really good, you know, sort of implying that the person that was standing right there.

His mother was the impostor. So the way this breaks down is that each of us has a visual system and a limbic system which helps to generate and process emotions. All right, So there's a there's a screw up in the visual system here, uh and and then it's left to the to uh, to the to other parts of

the brain to interpret that data. Um, particularly the amiga amigdala, Right, amigdala is the emotion processing center, right, and uh so it has to it has to make sense of this, right, He's like, it engages the again, the emotional significance of what you're looking at, trying to figure out, you know, what's going on there? Is this? Is this a threat?

Is this a dangerous it's something to ignore? And uh and so it ends up getting excited and it ends up and it ends up applying an interpretation or a meaning to it. So it's um one way I was thinking of it. It's kind of like, so you have an editor and a journalist at a newspaper and say, that's just like a star journalist, right, and the editors will always go go to bat for that journal to that for that journalists to defend what they've written. You know,

someone says, hey, I don't, I don't. I don't think they're they've got the story straight in this article. They say, no, totally. This person is always done right by us, this one. No, this this guy knows his story. And then imagine that that journalists I don't know, screws up one day, maybe has a um, you know, a head injury or something, and and or or it's just totally misinformed on something.

The journalist is still going to go to bat form I mean, I mean the editor is still going to go to bat for that journalists and be like like, look this this person is totally totally knows their beat. They've they've got all the facts, um, you know, totally trust the stellar creds. So it's kind of a similar situation with these two systems in the brain. This one system is getting something wrong, but the other side is totally going to go to bat for it and say, yeah,

there's something wrong with this person. It's uh, it's it must be um, it's a double it's a It ends up creating a story in which this uh neural problem

makes sense. Well, that's what I think is so fascinating about this is that you've got the fusiform gyris right, which is the part of your brain that recognized is the face, and so it's recognizing the mom and dad's face right in the case of David, I believe it's the subject here, Um, David's mom, Dad knows it, but that the thread to the magdala is all sorts of crazy shredded or you know what. It's not working, and

so that emotional processing isn't there. So David can say, yes, that is my mother, that is my father, and yet I don't feel those feelings of love for them, and then the brain can then take that, as you say, anxiety sets in and start to weave a story around that. That is fascinating that your brain is capable of doing that, that instead of sustaining brain damage and having your entire brain dim like a light bulb. You know, everything else

is functioning except for this one little part. And the brain is like, you know what, We'll just run with this, trying to make sense of this with the data that we do have. We're not going to shut down production just because something that the little fishy. We're gonna we're gonna work with and therefore, you know, David's parents, they must be imposters. That's what makes it's right, because if you don't have that feeling of love, that connection, then

then that would be what your brain might perceive. Yeah, and this can be The interesting thing about this too, is it's not necessarily like a situation where it has to be extreme brain brain trauma like alcoholism can play

a role in this. Pituitary tumors, migraines, UM, you know, against severe injuries, Alzheimer's UM, schizo, effective disorders, UM, a whole host of There can be a whole host of causes for this, and and in many cases you can effectively treat the primary cause and uh, this doppelganger or or you know, mysterious double or body snatcher a scenario will just fade away. That's right. You could, I mean, if it's a brain tumor, you could treat the brain

tumor and hopefully it would would completely go away. Or you could use antidepressants if it's not a brain tumor, or in conjunction with it UM. If it's dementa, though, that's a problem because you're continually going to have some sort of deterioration going on in the brain. So in some cases with to mention actually worsens. Yeah, and and and when it worsens, you can also end up with situations where an individual attacks or becomes violent towards, uh,

the other individual. Yeah. And you know, I have this idea in my head and I don't know if it's some sort of um myth, but I feel like someone perceived their family member to be a robot and actually ended up decapitating the person to see to verify whether or not they had some robotics of puitry going on. Yeah. So if it's one way to tell, yeah, I mean that's that's the extreme. So if you have a loved one asking about where you're lithium ion battery pack is

seek shelter. This presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. Yeah, and indeed, if you have any suspicion that somebody has been replaced in your life by by an impostor go to the doctor first before you call the police or taking matters into your own hand, because it's uh, it is almost guarantee it's something and your logical going on and not uh uh some sort

of twisted scheme to disrupt your life. Yeah, yeah, um, and we know this too because Ramachandra, the doctor treating David, he could actually test the emotional response and verify this lack of emotional response. He uses the galvanic skin response. And and of course we knew that you attach electrodes to your hand and then when you think about someone that you know, the loved one. In theory, you should start sweating, right because you're you're having some sort of

emotional response. And and um, when Ramachandra tested this, there was was absolutely no response whatsoever to his parents, was absolutely flat. So he knew he had he had some verification that this was what was going on. In addition, and I thought this was really interesting. Um, David the subject, when he would speak to his parents on the phone, he didn't have the feeling that they weren't imposters. He was like, where have you been? How? So like on

the phone, everything's fine, yeah, absolutely fine. Yeah. And so what Ramachan positive is that the auditory circuitry was left intact during the damage that he sustained and that it was actually fine. And he ended up verifying that as well. So it's really kind of trippy that he could get on the phone with his parents and be like, oh my god, did you know that you've been taken over

by someone? Like they're in your house right now getting to be I wonder how cold like the mom couldn't call and say like, look, there's my double is going to come over and cook breakfast this morning. I know her breakfast isn't as good as the breakfast that I cook, Like, just be polite, be kind, and I'll talk to you to night on the phone. Yeah, yeah, who knows. Maybe

she tried it. You know, maybe that made it worse because then he was like, Okay, now I know for sure because my mom, my real mom on the phone told that's all right. Well that's one doppelganger down. Uh, let's turn to another. Um, another interesting syndrome, and that would be the syndrome of subjective doubles. Now, this is this is not a oh, you know, you're on the train and you look over and you see somebody looks

like a friend of yours. This is where you get on the train and um, maybe maybe maybe at the far end of the car you climb onto, maybe just exiting as you come on, you see yourself yeah, it's kind of terrifying, right, Yeah, this is more like the classic German doppelganger. There is someone out there that has either taken on my appearance or is trying to thick on my appearance, and clearly they're up to no good. Well, in a study that you actually shared with me, there

was the case of miss A right. Yeah, she eighteen years old. She thought that her neighbor was putting on these elaborate prosthetic masks and wigs and masquerading as her, and the gang was putting them that's right, that's right. There was some sort of puppet master gang out there that was putting her up to it, and those people were spalling on her or whatnot. So there was some

sort of paranoia that's woven into this as well. Um and these um, these doubles actually replicated themselves when she was admitted to a hospital and she got very upset and assisted that the doubles of her the unmasked um

and again here's again instances where violence come into play. Yeah, Like she was actually like leaping at the double and like trying to attack it, attack her, attack that her perceived double, and insisting that the doctors tear the mask off because she she thought that that she believed that they were quote putting on a wig and a mask and walking from room to room stealing things in order

to incriminate her. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of said. And what they found is though that she suffered from epilectic seizure. So again here's another case where it's secondary. She may have had some other conditions, um that had to do with mental instability in addition to that. UM. It was a little bit unclear from that study, but what was clear is that this could definitely be some sort of

indirect process going on. Yeah, it seems like if you're the type of if you've suffered through something or you just end up with the mental um uh you know architecture that it makes you think people are out to get you, or you're very suspicious of people. It seems like the stronger that is, the stronger that's going to be when you perceive a double all right, right, And she was treated with a number of things antidepressants, electric

shock therapy, so you know, sad um. But what I thought was interesting about this is that we have heard about these epileptic auras before that there's this sense that someone might be there. And Susan Blackmore, we've talked about her before. She she shown up in our Abductions podcast before. And she's also the medicist's hair. She's blue, yellow, all sorts of stuff. She's a skeptic and the psycho uh

analytic chick so to speak. Uh, she's great. And she actually visited a doctor Michael Persinger at one point um to undergo some manipulation on her own temporal lobes to see if she could have this sort of sense of someone else being there, this hallucination or rather this delusion replicated in herself. And Persinger used these magnets on her temporal lobes machine. Right, yeah, he's He's done a couple

of different things. But the God machine is was nicknamed that because those sort of euphoric feelings of another are present, hence the God machine. But she actually had the same thing happened to her. So when he used those magnets on her temporal lobes, she felt like there was someone in the room with her. So it's really amazing that we can get it down to this point in science where we can actually duplicate the duplications so to speak. Yeah, and it's it's almost kind of like a like a

really potent form of deja viku. You know. It's a except really really strong yea, and very disorienting. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and yes, it's actually kind of a tragedy, right because I mean for people who cannot alleviate it, I mean, the suicide ridge is pretty high. Um, so it's a little bit depressing. Yeah, it's you know, it's easy. It's easy to look in from the outside of pretty much any kind of mental illness or or a neurological disorder and say, oh, well that, you know, I can

see the exit from that maze. But when you're actually in that mental labyrinth, it's not not so simple. Yeah. And it's another example of how your mind is really beautiful but can be really sick at the same time. You know. But another example of this clonal pluralization of self. Now, this one's great, This one's this is more like you you're on the train and it's not that you're seeing your double, but you are seeing yourself. That person isn't

an imposter, but it's another you. It's kind of kind of like any any type of any of these films were like suddenly a person clones himself and completely illogically it's an actual double of them, or somebody travels in time and he's hanging out with themselves. It's it's that sort of scenario. It's sort of like if my twin all of a sudden showed up. Yeah, yeah, and which just happened to this eighty six year old man, right, yes, Oh no, I don't. I don't think we have a

name for yeah, eighty six year old. Um. I believe he's Hungarian um mentioned in a two thousand nine study. And yeah, suddenly his uh, this doppelganger shows up, his his it's not even a twin, but it's perceived as as him, like right down of the clothes, he's wearing the same clothes as this guy. And it's it's this is a real twist on on our last scenario because because there's not like, oh my goodness, I need to

bar the door because my doppelganger is shown up. I'm I have company come in and let's let's have tea, let's do crossword puzzles. And they did. They literally did crossword puzzles together, and um, and that's the interesting thing to literally it's difficult in this scenario, right, Literally, in his mind they did it together. But so for him

it was a sense of comfort. Rate yeah, yeah, it's like this guy's lonely, and then who's who better to hang out with but yourself when they fell up on your door straight and uh, And he was kind of like, well, I seem to have this twin and I think we're the same person. Let's do some experiments so that the crosswords was one. Like they each supposedly took the crosswords into a different room and they filled out the crossword puzzle, and then when they came in to compare notes, they

had the exact same answers. Can you imagine that? It's yeah, I can imagine it even more if they were playing scrabble against each other. Well, no, no, they wouldn't have the same title, or would they. I don't know. This is it's really hard to pre take because you're in pre ten world now, right. Um. But he did have

brain lesions, right, uh. And the neurologist Dr Feinberg actually said something along the lines of the brain lesions and neuropsychological impairments are necessary, right for this condition, for this condition, but the full development of these syndromes depends upon the individual's responses to his or her defects as much as

the defects themselves. So I thought was interesting because they had gone on in the study to say that clearly he was lonely and that this this twin although it's it's a figment of his imagination brought on by the legions, he still had the subjective ring to it, where it was like, you know, as long as I'm gonna have this delusion, and might as well, you know, copy myself

and have a body, you know. Another experiment that he performed with the double um, according to this guy, was that one of them would stand in the house and the other would stand outside, and the one standing outside would describe what the one inside was seeing on the wall, described like the exact size and details of paintings that the guy had framed. UM, because they could see through each other's eyes, right, I mean, you know, I laugh,

but it's just it's just kind of it's sort of funny. UM. And there's also another aspect to this, uh, just going off on what Feinberg said and talking about how there's the subjective quality to it. Dr Carol Berman talked about how the negative aspects of a person that are are psychologically turned into a disassociation with that person. And this is more in cap craw right, where what do you

think there's an impostor? So in other words, uh, if I if I think that you're impostor, Robert, and let's say that you're you're tapping your fingers on the desk, then I might say, like, that might actually annoy me, and that might turn into another reason why I think that you're an impostor. And what is so interesting about

the blog post that you have. You've got um an embed in there of the YouTube video with David, and you can see David talking to his father and saying, you know, you drive too fast, but my real dad like he's a much better driver than you. And it's like this ultimate passive aggressive act of saying, you know, could you slow down a little bit? So I mean, And of course David is not sitting there pretending to have cap gratches so that he can, you know, say

this little zinger of passive aggressiveness. But it's an interesting side note to see that these negative attributes that they see in other people than sort of underscore that their feelings for that person being an impostor. Uh yeah. Now the there's an interesting end to the story of the eight six year old Hungarian man. Oh yeah, yeah, and and that's that they they treated him, they were treating the treated him with with various medications and his condition improved.

But and so this double ends up brawlinsons and purposes vanishing. But again, the mind has to make sense of this. It has to it has to roll with these changes. I can't just vanish. So the version, well, I mean, I guess it could if one word, say, engaging in some sort of the type of supernatural occurrence that would that where it would make sense for this person to vanish. It was like an angel or an alien. I they're

like Doug Henning is my Yeah. But the way this guy interpreted was that they had merged into one person. They'd like they had come together, and he would talk to himself for a while, like like there was still like it didn't just completely vanish, it it kind of faded and and so he would continue to talk to himself a fair amount of the time. But there wasn't a necessarily a sense of a physical other, right and uh, and eventually it got back to where he could, you know,

he was a lot more normal daily life. Yeah, and and and again. Here here's this person who, other than this is functioning fine in the world. So good thing that he got cohesive with his personalities. Uh. There's one other one in this sort of of what you would call delusional misidentification syndromes, and that is the mirror self identification.

Oh yeah, this one. This one is pretty interesting too because it brings to mind the classic gag that, as far as I know, originated in the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup, where you know, and you if you haven't seen that film or this scene, then you've seen some version of it in a cartoon or a sitcom. And it's where one person is pretending to be the mirror

image of the other. Uh. Maybe it's like a you have like a picture frame, but there's no actual glass or mirror, and so one person thinks, oh, that's my reflection. But the person that's dressed like them or looks like them on the other side is just shadowing their movements.

And so the you know, one person, uh, the one person on one side will we'll sort of we'll move around and suddenly make a you know, some sort of um uh strange movement to try and throw off his quote reflection and uh and try and uh and and eventually in cases um reveal the false reflection for what

it is. This is also mime exercise too, right. Yeah, but they found a case where there were two dementia patients, right who who were I mean, they weren't miming or were they doing Mark's brother routines, but they could no longer recognize their faces in the mirror. Right now, they could recognize other people's faces in mirror. So it wasn't like just a weird screwy mirror thing. It was when they were looking at their own face in the mirror, they they were like, who is this guy? Is this

handsome devil? I don't know? Uh. But they also suffered from right side brain lesions. And again, this is the portion of the brain, the fusiform gyus, that's associated with self recognition. Yeah, like, even if you're using self describing adjectives, yeah, this is the portion that lights up. Yeah. Yeah. Um, And it's I mean, I guess you would say it's similar to face blindness, right, except for that you with face blindness, you are blind to everyone all the time, yeah, right,

even yourself. Right, But this is this is more selective, just just like I don't I don't know who that is. That's so I guess that's me, but it doesn't look like me. Yeah. So the final specter that I thought was interesting that popped up in some of our research is something called the third Man phenomenon or the third Man factor. Oh yeah, this one, this one was really fascinating. So you've probably heard some version of this story before, um,

and and that is you have some sort of extreme situation. Um, you know, it's you know, it's like it's it's explores in the Antarctic or the Arctic, It's it's it's climbers on Everest, it's you know, people in one of the World Trade Center towers. You're in an extreme situation. It was life and death. And suddenly there's somebody there to help you write like emotionally, your haggard, your body physically

is at its end of its rope. Right, and then it's like a guardian angel, um, you know, an alien, a spirit, uh, you know, something something supernatural has appeared and and there's a sense of maybe things are gonna be all right, and and like and in some cases it's actually manifests as a a physical helping hand, like something somebody's helping you up and uh, and then they're gone after things are cool. It's like a Superheroes jumped

in and saved the day. Now, you're right, And every single story, once they have surmounted their obstacle, that that person vanishes, right, and then like who was that mass man? Yeah? Um? A good example is Frank Smith three climbing Mount Everest. He went with a group of people. He was the last one to make it to the to almost make it to the summit. At this point, Um, he was feeling weak and hopeless. He didn't know if he could go on, and so he had and he's in the

death zone, right, just low oxygen area. We've I think we've discussed this in the past, Like this is a good model for for some of the things that can happen in space when when you have low oxygen levels aboard a spaceship. Right, so, really mess with your mind. Yeah, I mean at this point you're not thinking clearly anyway, right, Um. But the whole time he had been discussing something with with a person that he felt was behind him the

whole time. And um, and at this point where he was at his his most hopeless, he actually turned to get some food and share it with this person and was completely shocked that that person wasn't there to receive like the other half of his whatever nineteen thirty three, Cliff bar Is or whatever. Um, I interpreted like a half of a tunafig sandwich on white bread. When I read the account, dide listen to. I mean, that's the ideal food to split with, uh, you know, an imaginary devil.

I think, huh, get some protein carbs and tasty manni's um. But he actually thought he this is a quote from him. He said, it seemed that I was tied to my companion by a rope and if I slipped, he would hold me. I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder. Um. And again, it's not it's not a surprise, right that this is happening. The surprise is that it's happening so freak only in so many different instances. Yeah. Again, you

see it happen, and just various accounts of it. I mean, you have other famous stories from say Sir Ernest Shackleton during his trance Antarctic expedition. There was a sense that they were being accompanied by this third man. Uh. It's it's referenced in by T. S. Eliot. Who is that third besides you? And is the group too that perceived him? It wasn't just him. They all discussed it later and thought there was another person that wasn't there. It's uh,

it's inter right. I was reading an article on Scientific American that nails down some of the actual reasons for what's happening, and they're they're all pretty interesting. One is that one factor is isolation. So if you're in a case where it's like one guy out in the middle of nowhere, or or even if if it's like an extreme situation and you have uh, you know, there are

other people around. There's a certain isolation in death experiences, and so this high selection can trigger the mind to hallucinate the normal feelings we have when we're working or traveling with other people around. Uh, you know, it's like we're constantly surrounded their people in our in our peripheral vision, and the mind can sort of hallucinate that they're still

there in some fashion. Um. The other other possibility is rational uh, cortical control over emotions shuts down due to oxygen deprivation such as you know, death zone, uh, sleep deprivation or exhaustion, which are certainly you know, if you're struggling for your life, you may not have time for a nap, especially if going to sleep and subzero temperatures

would mean death. And so this opens the door for inner voices and imaginary companions uh and and this reminds me a lot of of some of the accounts that have been studied of alien abduction UM. The the individual who was on the bike ride and have been up for a long time was just pushing himself to the limits and then he falls out and interprets the events as aliens coming to abductive. Well, what's interesting about this is that in every single one of these accounts UM.

You know, in some of some of the CAPCRA and the UM and the other misidentification syndromes and abductions, epileptic seizures UM and the RS and delusions that accompany them, the temporo parietal junction is the at issue, right, and so the temporal lobe is responsible for processing images in long term memory, and then the parietal lobe is what

helps us map objects um as coordinates. So when you talk about seeing someone in your periphery and misunderstanding and that that's the that's the those that's the juncture that is processing all of this information. And so I mean, even if you think that there's some sort of uh truth to what maybe the person's personal account is, you have to to think about how and every single one of these cases, that's the area of the brain that's

being compromised. Yeah. Another another thing to the temporal lobe handles body scamma, which we which we've mentioned on the Tool Users podcast that that's how the when you are using a tool, it becomes an extension of your own body because it's tied up in the body schemma. Um. Well, the temporal low body scamma can be tricked in some cases into seeing into interpreting a double So instead of interpreting just your body doing things, it kind of gets

double vision. Yeah. And again here's your brain taking the data that it has available to it and constructing these stories. Yeah.

So you can imagine like this sort of double vision where instead of you opening the door to escape the burning building, it's interpreted as some other person opened that door so you could escape and and the brain rights the rest right, And it's fascinating and that life or death situation that it can spring from the font of fabulism and create this little story to get you some fire up under your bomb and get you going. Yeah. So, as far as fictional doppelgangers and mysterious doubles go, do

you have any particular favorites. There are a lot of them, But I really like Dr Jackel and Mr Hyde because I think that's the perfect evil twin example, that is, that's one of this one of the really iconic ones for sure. Yeah you uh yeah. The ones that I really like her, I mean, I love a story about

an evil doppelganger. I'm a real sucker for those. But I also really like the ones that are kind of like the story of the eighties Yu Old Hungarian Man, where where the doppelganger is either accepted with or or just dealt with in a kind of curiosity. Um Alan robe Gerla, the uh now deceased French author, had a book called Repetition, which starts out with the narrator discussing the his double that he occasionally encounters. UH. While I think typically on the train and uh, and so that's

a really interesting book. And then uh. A horror author Brian McNaughton has a story called The Vendron Worm, which deals with a guy who will occasionally glimpse this stranger, this kind of double that he uh that that he can't quite explain, but ends up being tied to something really ghastly and horrifying. But but but before he finds out the reason, he's just kind of like, oh, there's my double, you know, and you just sort of come to accept it, which I find is a really interesting

take on the whole scenario. It's very European of you just to be like, you know, I'm just gonna go with it. It's kind in many of these cases, it's like, let's go with it, let's make sense of it, let's do it. Yeah. I mean, like the American mentality is a conquer it, right, give it some drugs, attack it, give it some drugs, Call the police, call your mother,

want to you know, whatever it takes. So, if if you have any interesting tales of doppelgangers and mysterious doubles in your life, if the reflection in the mirror doesn't look quite right, and you don't have a good March Brothers explanation for it. Let us know. You can drop by Facebook or Twitter. We are Blow the Mind on both of those and if you or your doppelganger would like to drop us a line, please do so at

Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The how stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes