Famous Doppelgangers
There have been many cases of doppelgangers appearing to well-known
figures:
* Guy de Maupassant, the French novelist and short story writer,
claimed to have been haunted by his doppelganger near the end of
his life. On one occasion, he said, this double entered his room,
took a seat opposite him and began to dictate what de Maupassant
was writing. He wrote about this experience in his short story
"Lui."
* John Donne, the 16th century English poet whose work often
touched on the metaphysical, was visited by a doppelganger while he
was in Paris - not his, but his wife's. 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. At the same moment that
the doppelganger appeared, his wife had given birth to a stillborn
child.
* Percy Bysshe Shelley, still considered one of the greatest poets
of the English language, encountered his doppelganger in Italy. The
phantom silently pointed toward the Mediterranean Sea. Not long
after, and shortly before his 30th birthday in 1822, Shelley died
in a sailing accident - drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.
* Queen Elizabeth I of England was shocked to see her doppelganger
laid out on her bed. The queen died shortly thereafter.
* In a case that suggests that doppelgangers might have something
to do with time or dimensional shifts, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
the 18th century German poet, confronted his doppelganger while
riding on the road to Drusenheim. Riding toward him was his exact
double, but wearing a gray suit trimmed in gold. Eight years later,
von Goethe was again traveling on the same road, but in the
opposite direction. He then realized he was wearing the very gray
suit trimmed in gold that he had seen on his double eight years
earlier! Had von Goethe seen his future self?
Source: http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa111102a.htm
