What happens if you see your double: a folk sign. People who met their doubles I saw a guy's double on the street

What are the chances that one day you will find your exact copy? The editors of BBC Future asked this question and found out that meeting a “clone” is actually not that difficult. And all because there are too many people living on Earth.

We see faces everywhere: in passports, on “Police Wanted” stands, at alumni reunions and on the streets. They recognize you by your face, even if they haven’t seen you for years. The face is so closely tied to your identity that it has even been proposed as a universal identifier: you could walk into an office, buy a house and unlock a smartphone using your face. The underlying assumption behind this idea is that your face is unique. However, it is not.

“I was the last one to board the plane. Someone was sitting in my place. I asked the guy to move. He turned to me - and it turned out that he had my face,” says Neil Douglas, who met the doppelganger while flying to a wedding in Ireland. “The whole plane looked at us and started laughing. That’s when I took a selfie.”

The “irony of fate” did not end there: Douglas arrived at the hotel - and there he again met his double. Their paths crossed again at the bar. The next morning, Douglas was already a celebrity: a photo of his doubles became viral. In response, photos of people with exactly the same appearance poured in on Instagram.

Popular wisdom says that everyone has a double. Somewhere on the planet there lives an exact copy of you, with “mom’s” eyes, “daddy’s” nose and even a mole on the cheek. This idea has inspired artists and poets for centuries. The motif is found even in one of the oldest literary monuments, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Many historical figures have claimed to have seen their doubles: Queen Elizabeth saw her exact duplicate on her deathbed in 1603.

What is this belief based on? We share the planet with seven billion other people. Does this mean that someone else will definitely be born with your face? This is not a very serious question with serious background, and the answer is more complicated than it might seem.

Until recently, few people were involved in “clone science.” Last year, Tegan Lucas from the University of Adelaide in Australia decided to test how likely a person was to be convicted of a crime committed by a double. The researcher analyzed four thousand photographs and counted how many similar faces there were. The conclusion was favorable for criminologists: the probability of being someone’s copy according to eight indicators (distance between the eyes, length of the nose, and so on) is one in a billion. This means that for our planet the possibility of the existence of at least one pair of doubles is 1 in 135. Tegan summarizes:

“In the past, you could ask in court: “What if this is just a person who looks like a criminal?” Now we can say that this is extremely unlikely.”

The results can be explained in terms of the famous infinite monkey theorem. Put a monkey at a typewriter, give it enough time, and sooner or later it will spit out the collected works of William Shakespeare or Leo Tolstoy, just by randomly hitting the keys. True, to catch up with the classics, the primate will need an unimaginably long time. There is a one in 26 chance that the monkey will guess the first letter of Macbeth in the original. So far so good. But the probability of getting the second letter correct is only 1 in 676 (26 x 26). By the end of the fourth line (22 letters), the ratio becomes microscopic: 1 to 13 quintillion. As the number of combinations increases, their probability decreases at a dizzying rate.

There are two objections here. Firstly, the selection of only eight external features seems arbitrary. Secondly, the researcher relied on precise measurements: if your double’s ear length is 59 millimeters, and yours is 60, then the similarity will not be counted. (And in any case, similar ears are not the most obvious criterion for finding copies).

In general, a lot depends on what we call the word “double”. Berkeley statistician David Aldous says:

“It makes a big difference whether we mean similarity from a human’s perspective or from a facial recognition program’s perspective.”

Francois Brunel, who shot 200 pairs of “clones” for his project “I am not a double,” came to the same conclusion. If you look at the models individually, Brunel says, they appear to be exact copies of each other. But put them together and the differences can be easily found.

If you remove the requirement of an exact match in all features, then finding your double becomes much more realistic. However, now we need to take the next step: understand what happens in our minds when we recognize a familiar face.

In the late 90s, an optical illusion dedicated to Bill Clinton and Al Gore was circulating on the Internet. At first glance, the President and Vice President appear to be standing next to each other, but you soon notice that Gore's facial features have been replaced with Clinton's eyes, nose and mouth. At the same time, the vice president looks more or less recognizable.

This is an example of how faces are stored in the brain: they are more of a map than an image. When you run into people you know on the street, your brain instantly begins to recognize their features - hairline and skin tone. It's like how we recognize Italy by its shape. But what if our friend just got a new hairstyle? Or wears makeup?

To ensure reliable recognition in any context, the brain uses the so-called fusiform gyrus. It is she who connects all the features together. This holistic approach allows you to recognize friends faster than looking at traits individually. The brain concentrates on the big picture at the expense of small details.

“Most people focus on superficial features like hairline, hairstyle, eyebrows,” explains Nick Fjeller, a statistician at a research project on computer-assisted facial recognition.

In fantastic works, the technique of “time bending” is sometimes used: it stops flowing as usual, or a person “falls out” into the past or future. Can this happen in reality?

It turns out that there are a lot of similar examples in the history of anomalous phenomena! Researchers believe this is due to unknown physical effects. So, in July 1990, the famous paranormal researcher I. Mirzalis (Igor Vinokurov) investigated the case of a poltergeist. When, during the conversation, one of the people who became victims of this phenomenon left the table, the researcher, looking at his wristwatch, automatically noted the time in his notebook: “20.10.”

About a quarter of an hour later, the person who had left returned, and Igor Vladimirovich, looking at the dial again, put down the time: “20.10.” He noticed the discrepancy much later, studying his notes... He checked his watch - it was running fine. This means that the phenomenon was observed only in the house where the poltergeist occurred! In the spring of the same year, Muscovite D. Davydov experienced a strange adventure. He was going to meet his friend who lived one bus stop away from him.

We agreed that Davydov would come to the entrance of a friend’s house. When he hung up the phone, it was exactly two o'clock in the afternoon. He decided to immediately leave the house to get some fresh air. And suddenly he saw that his friend was coming towards him! There was no way this could have happened, since at most a few minutes had passed since the conversation. Then Davydov was blinded by a flash of some light, and when the ability to perceive his surroundings returned to him, he discovered that there was no friend nearby.

In bewilderment, Davydov reached the stop, boarded the bus and drove to a friend’s house. He opened the apartment door and was terribly surprised: “Well, you’re just like a jet plane!” I just called and I’m already here! How did you do it?” Davydov looked at his watch - it showed 14.00! His friend's watch showed the same thing. But from the moment they called, at least forty minutes must have passed until they met in the apartment!

The phenomenon of the appearance of doubles may also be associated with falling into such a “time loop”. It must be said that people have long treated the appearance of ghostly doubles - dopplegangers - with superstitious fear. It was believed that this was not good, but most likely - a serious illness or death... So, I.V. saw their doubles shortly before his death. Goethe, Russian empresses Catherine I and Anna Ioannovna...

Before the death of Empresses Elizaveta Petrovna and Catherine the Great, their phantoms were also observed in the Winter Palace... And in October 1923, a double of Lenin was seen in the Kremlin, who at that time was lying seriously ill in Gorki... However, the appearance of doubles of famous researchers of anomalous phenomena Anatoly Martynov and already the mentioned Igor Mirzalis (Vinokurov) did not lead to any tragic consequences. Although in these cases the doubles appeared not to himself, but to other people.

Here's another such episode. In 1975, two students of the University of Perm, Alexander and Igor, agreed late one evening to get together and drink three bottles of cheap wine, which was their custom then... Approaching the house where Igor rented a room on the first floor, the friends saw in the window light. Only Igor had the key, and he remembered very well that in the morning when he left the house, the lights were turned off...

Looking out the window, the guys were taken aback: sitting in the room at the table... were themselves! The doubles had glasses of wine in their hands. Looking out the window, they both laughed and, raising their glasses in greeting, drank... The young people rushed away from the house. They walked the streets for a long time and discussed the sight they had seen. In the end, they came to the conclusion that they were visited by a mass hallucination...

Returning to Igor’s house, they discovered that the light in the window was no longer on. The room was locked, and there were no traces of the “feast” in it. Having placed bottles and glasses on the table, the friends poured wine, drank and again started talking about their mysterious adventure. “Or maybe these doubles of ours are now clinging to the windowsill and looking at us?” - Igor joked. Looking towards the window, they laughed and raised their glasses, as if in greeting... And only after that they realized that they had exactly repeated the gestures of the “clones” they had seen earlier...

They just saw their own future in some unimaginable way! According to scientists, theoretically, the effect of “distorted time” can arise as a result of a powerful gravitational, electromagnetic or nuclear impulse caused by an artificial or natural cause. A living being or object subjected to such an effect breaks down into molecules, which then reconnect with each other. Sometimes we may not even notice a short-term “absence”... But sometimes, as a result of such processes, “miracles” occur, such as meeting our own double...

Doubles, our ancestors believed, were evil twins or even paranormal entities.

Translation for – Lina Skok

Once, complete strangers stopped me on the street, began to hug me and say something strange, calling me Natasha - as if we had known each other for a hundred years. And apparently, they were offended in the end, deciding that this same “Natasha” did not want to talk to them or was trying to play a stupid prank on them. From this I concluded that my double lives somewhere. It's a pity that I didn't get to meet him.

In ancient times, by the way, meeting a double was considered a bad sign, foreshadowing misfortune and even death. Doubles, our ancestors believed, were evil twins and paranormal entities.

However, practice shows that all this is nonsense. And many people are happy when they find their copy. Thanks to the Internet, this has become much easier. Here is a small part of the doubles who have found each other, who are not related to each other in any way:

I found my double, it's fantastic!

My seat on the plane was next to my exact copy. Having arrived, we stayed at one hotel and in the evening we went to drink beer in a bar

My friend met his doppelganger at a party

We met on the beach. My family mistook this girl for me. In the end we decided to take a photo together

My friend (left) met his doppelgänger in the supermarket

Me and my double

The priest, Father Neil Richardson, moved to Essex, where he was often called John. Because his exact copy lived in this town.

My girlfriend and her double

My dad moved to a new job, where one of his co-workers turned out to be his double

My friend accidentally met his doppelganger yesterday

This is my twin from another mother. His name is Adam and he, like me, loves beer very much.

My double. Incredible

Found my double. It's funny. We even have the same birthdays

10 years ago I went to college for the first time and many people came up to me calling me Brian. My name is Josh. A couple of weeks later I met Brian and we took a photo together

My double. We look the same, only he smiles more

Amazing, I met my double!

I saw my double on the Internet and a few weeks later we met

As the legends say, these are supernatural duplicates of a real person. They appear in several ways: you can notice them out of the corner of your eye, or meet them on a deserted road, or see them standing behind your shoulder, reflected in the mirror. Sometimes people do not see their double at all, but other people can see it. A double can also help a person in something or act as a fictitious body. There are a large number of explanations for the appearance of a double.

For centuries, mystics believed that they were supernatural beings, either divine copies of humans, or demonic. But scientists say that doubles are nothing more than a hallucination or a consequence of a mental illness such as schizophrenia. Adherents of mysticism claim that the appearance of a double is often a harbinger of trouble, and many prominent historical figures said that doubles haunted them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Famous German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is a poet and politician who made a huge contribution to the development of literature. They listened to his words and treated his opinion with respect. One day, Goethe, in a depressed state after a quarrel with a girl named Frederika, was driving along a path. Suddenly he encountered a mysterious man who was riding on horseback to meet him. From Goethe’s words, he saw this man not with his eyes, but with his “mind’s eye,” as if he were himself, although Johann Wolfgang and the man were dressed in different clothes. The figure soon disappeared, and Goethe, who found the sight of the mysterious traveler strangely calming, forgot about what had happened.

After 8 years, he again rode along the same path in the opposite direction to see Frederica again. It was then that he realized that he was wearing exactly the same clothes that his double was wearing 8 years ago. This was not the only double that Goethe saw: on another occasion he saw his friend Friedrich walking down the street wearing Goethe's own robe. Puzzled, the writer went home and found Friedrich there, dressed in the same robe that Goethe had seen on the ghost - his friend had been caught in the rain and put on the robe while his clothes were drying.

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln spoke openly about his interest in the paranormal, at least in private. From what he said, he had some experience with this kind of thing. The night after his first election, he found time to sleep on the sofa. Lying there, he accidentally looked into the mirror and saw his face. There would be nothing unusual in this if he had not noticed that there were two faces in the mirror. The second Lincoln, pale and ghostly, looked at him from the mirror next to his own face. Startled, Lincoln stood up from the couch... and the doppelgänger disappeared. He sat down again to see his double again.

Lincoln was amazed, and his wife Mary was horrified. She was sure that the double was a sure sign that Lincoln would be re-elected to a second term (perhaps because two Lincolns are two terms), but would not survive it (because the second Lincoln looked like a dead man). Lincoln continued to repeat the experiment on the couch at the same time every night. He managed to see the double again, but then he stopped showing up. Maybe he had already gotten his message across and Lincoln didn't actually live to see the end of his second term.

Catherine the Great

The Empress, Catherine the Great, who ruled Russia in the 18th century, was a strong and dangerous person. But strange incidents also happened to her - for example, she saw her ghostly double sitting on her throne. One night, as Catherine lay in bed, her worried servants told her that they had just seen her enter the throne room. Catherine decided to figure out what was going on and found her double in the throne room, calmly sitting on the throne. Catherine immediately ordered the sentries to shoot the impostor. History is silent whether the bullets did any harm to the empress’s ghostly double, but soon after this the real Catherine died.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The brilliant poet Percy Bysshe Shelley is remembered mainly as the husband of Mary Shelley, who created Frankenstein. Although one might assume that Mary, as a writer in the horror genre, has much more opportunities to see her double, it was Percy who saw him. Shortly before his death in 1812 (the ship on which Percy was traveling sank), he admitted to Mary that he had met his double more than once. One of these meetings was particularly frightening: Percy walked out onto the terrace and saw his double, who asked: “How long will you be happy?” Oddly enough, their close friend Jane Williams witnessed the appearance of Percy's double - she often saw Percy passing under her window, the street ended in a dead end, but he never returned. The real Percy was always in a different place at this time.

Sir Frederick Carne Rush

British Member of Parliament Sir Gilbert Parker was participating in a debate in 1906 when he suddenly noticed that another Member of Parliament, Sir Frederick Carne Rush, was sitting next to him. This surprised Sir Gilbert very much, because Sir Frederick was seriously ill with influenza at that time. However, he greeted Sir Frederick politely, saying, "I hope you are feeling better." Karn Rush did not react to this in any way, he simply continued to sit with a stony, gloomy expression on his face. When Sir Gilbert soon looked at him again, the seat was empty. Confused, Sir Gilbert began looking for Carn Rush in the building, but no one saw him leave. When he discussed the event with fellow parliamentarians, it turned out that others had also seen Carn Rush.

When the real Karn Rush, who was actually at home in bed at the time, learned about what had happened, he was quite surprised. He was eager to take part in the discussion, believing that his spirit had dropped into parliament. His household, however, were horrified and feared that the doppelganger was a bad omen. It soon turned out that they were right: for a long time, Karn Rush's colleagues irritated him when they met, poking fingers at him to make sure that he was flesh and blood. In the end, he had to write several sarcastic letters to the local newspaper, apologizing for not having the good sense to die to make way for the doppelgänger, and promising to behave more decently next time.

Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I of England (reigned 1558-1603) was the last ruler of the Tudor dynasty. She was considered a charismatic, balanced and sensible monarch. She was the kind of person you wouldn't expect to encounter paranormal phenomena. She claimed to have seen her double. According to the queen, the ghostly Elizabeth lay motionless on her bed, almost like a corpse at a funeral. This was especially memorable for her, because such appearances, according to legend, are a sign of imminent death. However, it would be easy to make people forget about this incident if Elizabeth did not actually die soon.

Maria Agredskaya

And although doubles are usually considered something sinister, there is evidence that sometimes people can not only control them, but also use them as a kind of second body, capable of moving to any place in an instant. In the 17th century, explorers and missionaries in the New World were surprised to discover that many tribes in New Mexico were already practicing Catholicism. In response to a question, the Indians said that they were turned to God by a mysterious lady in blue, who taught them everything and even gave them crucifixes and other objects of worship. After careful investigation, several priests managed to “see” the apparition of Maria of Agreda, a young Spanish nun.

She wore a blue robe and stated that Christianity “taught” her how to travel to the Indians overseas. Maria never left her monastery and only knew that the places she visited were “wild lands.” However, her words were enough to convince the priests. At first, the Inquisition was quite suspicious of Maria, she was even accused of witchcraft, but then she was acquitted - perhaps because her story was too good to just give up.

Her abilities began to be attributed to divine origin. She became an international celebrity, the leader of her monastery, and the author of rambling books about how she acquired her powers. Throughout her life, she changed her mind several times: sometimes she claimed that she was forced to say that she could easily move her spiritual copy to another continent, sometimes she said that it was all true.

George Tryon

For Vice Admiral George Tryon, June 22, 1893, was not a very good day. He commanded two columns of ships off the coast of Syria and gave the command for the columns to turn their noses towards each other. Such an attempt to perform a majestic naval maneuver turned out to be a stupid mistake, since the first ships almost immediately rammed each other, and one of them, on which Tryon was, sank. Tryon died knowing that he had just condemned 357 sailors to death. His last words were dignified and sad:

"It's entirely my fault." At the same time, Tryon's wife hosted a party for her friends at their home in London. Unexpectedly, to the surprise of the guests, Tryon appeared at the party. Silently he walked down the stairs, walked solemnly through the living room, and opened the door to go out, and then suddenly disappeared. He was dressed in full dress uniform, as if he were commanding a demonstration of ships. True, there are some inconsistencies in this story: for example, someone says that Lady Tryon was busy with guests at that time and did not see her double, while others claim that she was one of the witnesses. However, the story is similar to the horror stories of sailors whose doppelgängers informed their families of their deaths.

Guy de Maupassant

Perhaps the French writer Guy de Maupassant described his closest experience of meeting a double. Towards the end of his life, he was rumored to have constantly interacted with him. This creepy double not only spoke to the writer, but one day sat down and began dictating a story to him. De Maupassant claimed that one of his last stories was literally written by a ghost. A story dictated to de Maupassant by a spirit, "Orlya" tells the story of a man whose mind slowly succumbs to an evil spirit using his body.

As if to echo the story, Maupassant's mental health began to deteriorate shortly after the story was completed. According to another version, the double did not dictate the story, because he disappeared immediately after the frightened de Maupassant called the servant. However, a few months later the double returned. He entered the writer's room, looking at him sadly, then sat down and covered his face with his hands, as if in despair. Maupassant decided that the double brought terrible news, and from that day the writer’s life went downhill, and a year later he died in a mental hospital.

Emily Saji

Emily Saji herself has never met her double, but other people have seen him. Saji worked in elite schools for girls. She was an excellent teacher, but for some reason she preferred to constantly change her place of work: in sixteen years she changed it nineteen times, and in 1845 the reasons became known. Saeji was allegedly the victim of her double's strange behavior. Her ghostly twin first appeared during class, and the 13 schoolgirls saw the twin standing side by side with Saeji and copying her every move with mirror-like precision.

The next time the double appeared behind her while she was eating, and again began to repeat her movements. Seji paid absolutely no attention to the ghost, although everyone else saw him quite clearly. However, Saeji became addicted to drinking and was sometimes almost unconscious when the double appeared and did strange things. Saeji later said that she was thinking about them at that moment, and suggested that she may have some subconscious control over the double.

Soon the double no longer appeared in the immediate vicinity of the “original”. First, he would walk into a classroom full of students and calmly sit down in a chair while Saeji herself was outside working in the garden. The few who dared to approach the double found that they could walk through it, but it felt like thick fabric to the touch. Time passed, and the ghost became a regular visitor to the school, and the girls' concerned parents began to take their children out of school. Although Saeji was an ideal employee, the headmistress had no choice but to fire her along with her ghostly counterpart.

“Interesting newspaper” – (Incredible)