HALLOWEEK-END SPECIAL: The Other Me

doppelganger  ˈdɒp(ə)lˌɡaŋə "an apparition or double of a living person."

Throughout time, communities globally have documented eerily similar encounters with doubles of themselves and people they know. From Appalachian mountain folklore to doppleganger death premonition stories and glitch in the matrix theories - we're covering lore from all over the world that assert their own versions of dopplegangers, mimics and other creepy phenomena. 

Happy Halloween from Unpacking the Eerie! 

Sources for this episode

Learn more about our Ghosty Giver Beneficiary and related orgs here

Reach out to us with thoughts, comments, questions or collab requests!

Theme Song Title: Creepy Mood | Artist Name: Oleg Fedak

Support the show

From October to December 2025 we will be re-releasing our favorite series' - A Lethal Location and A Psychedelic Nightmare. They will only be available for a limited time, as starting January our minisodes and 2nd part onwards of our series' will be exclusively available for our wonderful patrons.

Thank you for listening to our passion project <3 You can find us on social media here! We're a team of 2 people & have always been ad-free. If you are enjoying, please consider supporting our sustainability on Patreon or through Buzzsprout.

- your grateful hosts

P.S. We're in the process of updating our intro and making edits to our episodes. You may notice inconsistencies as we do that!

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Hello.

SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Hi.
Happy Halloween.

SPEAKER_01 (00:06):
Happy Halloween.
It's been five years since westarted unpacking the eerie.
Technically in August, but yeah.
We're in our fifth year.
From the depths of the socialwork building.
That's true.
Many different places.

SPEAKER_00 (00:24):
So yeah, for five years, I guess.
So there's this Halloweenrewind.
We're re-releasing Hotel Cecilseries.
And then the psychedelicnightmare series is a five-year
re-release.
And we also want to share somestats that we've got over the
years.
In the last five years, we'vegot over 13,000 downloads on our

(00:47):
episodes, which is like wow.
It's kind of odd to think thatwe're just like any people's
ears.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (00:53):
Totally.

SPEAKER_00 (00:54):
You don't even know me.

SPEAKER_01 (00:55):
And also maybe like people who know us, but we don't
talk to anymore.
They're still listening to ustalk.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00):
Oh, that's true.
Hello.
Hello.
Why don't we talk anymore?
Like, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 (01:11):
What's up?

SPEAKER_00 (01:13):
Like, I'm right here.
Unless you're hate listening,because then I don't want to
fucking talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
Or unless you know that we don't want to talk to
you, then don't reach out.

SPEAKER_00 (01:23):
I don't know who would do that, but on Buzzprout,
we can see where people aredownloading from.
And we've been listened to in 78countries, the top being the US,
obviously, because we're here.
But also Germany, the numbertwo, Canada, number three, the
UK, number four, Singapore,number five.

(01:44):
So amazing.
Hi.
Hello.
And then we've also beenlistened to in 1,338 cities.
And the top cities are Seattle,Washington, obviously, because
that's where we were based.
Los Angeles, number two, SanFrancisco, number three,
Frankfurt, MN Hess, Germany.

(02:06):
Which who are you?
Frankfurt.
How did you find us?
I really want to know.
That is so random to me.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (02:14):
Who the fuck?
I mean, don't be mysterious andshy.
Just say hello.
I'm a Frankfurt listener.

SPEAKER_00 (02:26):
And then number five is Portland, Oregon.
Cool.

SPEAKER_01 (02:31):
Hello.
In the background, we lived ineight different apartments.
We got two master's degrees.
We parented two fur babies.
Had six different jobs.

SPEAKER_00 (02:46):
Really wild.

SPEAKER_01 (02:48):
And yes, countless hours of research, gabbing, and
guffawing, amongst everythingelse that's been happening in
the world.
We made this also.
If you go to our Instagram,there's this episode story map,
which has a map that pins allthe different locations of where
the stories take place.

(03:09):
And we have stories also fromacross the world, which is very
cool to see.

SPEAKER_00 (03:16):
On Patreon, as we mentioned, a portion of all of
the money that we bring in goesto causes and mutual aid efforts
that are related to the episodesthat we're covering, the topics
that we're covering.
And here's all the places thatwe've given to over the last
years.
We got the People of Color SexWorkers Outreach Project,

(03:37):
Families Impacted by the MassageParlor Shootings in Atlanta,
Georgia, GoFundMe, CreativeJustice, People's Harm Reduction
Alliance, Seattle, Woman Inc.
in San Francisco, Project Southin Georgia, Sister Song,
Georgia, The Fire WeekCollective, which is a national
organization, In Loving Memoryof Keenan Anderson, which was a
GoFundMe, A Place for Marsha,Anera International.

(04:01):
We also recently donated toLiberate MKE, a beneficiary that
was related to our last serieson Jeffrey Dahmer.
It took place in the Midwest andwas contextually situated at the
intersections of policenegligence and brutality, racism
and homophobia.
And so with that in mind, wechose to donate to Liberate MKE.

(04:25):
It's a Milwaukee-based Black-ledorganization that fights for the
redistribution of funds frompolicing to direct investment in
neighborhoods that have beensystematically minoritized.
In partnership with organizingbodies and social support
organizations, their campaignshave led to the successful
reallocation of millions of citydollars from policing back into
the community.

(04:46):
Programs include but are notlimited to youth empowerment,
violence prevention, affordablehousing, and education access.
We chose Liberate MKE, which isa sub-project of the
African-American Roundtablebecause of their robust
partnerships and fiscal supportof important work, which include
but are not limited to otherorganizations we found doing

(05:06):
similar work.
And we wanted to uplift them aswell.
It's Black Pride Milwaukee, WeAre Here, and Campaign Zero.
So check that out.
We'll leave all the relevantlinks for you to click through.
Yeah, those are all the spots.
So thank you for allowing us todo that.
And as always, thank you forsupporting and listening.
And resources to help uscontinue this little passion

(05:28):
project.
You know, we started as apandemic project, and now we're
here.

SPEAKER_01 (05:32):
It continues as a passion project.
Yes.
Five years later.
Well, today, unlike last time,it's the morning times for me
and it's the night times forShayna.

SPEAKER_00 (05:43):
Yes, nighttime for me.

SPEAKER_01 (05:45):
Okay.
So we both have things todaywhere it's not like one story,
but it's like a phenomenon.
And then we have like a bunch ofstories, maybe things and things
connected to each other.
There's something just verycreepy and eerie about
doppelgangers, and I don'treally know why.

SPEAKER_00 (06:04):
It's a little uncanny valley, but yeah, yeah.
That's what I was thinking too.

SPEAKER_01 (06:07):
Yeah.
But I read a lot of stories forthis episode and also just like
in general.
I think they range from likebeing very mundane.
There is this example of thisperson on Reddit, E.G.
Llama, who saw like a Volkswagenvan driving behind her.
Her partner who had passed awayused to have the same van with a

(06:28):
lot of stickers on it.
And she was like, Oh, like maybeit's like the people that we
sold the van to.
But then so she slowed down.
And then as it drove by her, theperson in the driver's seat
looked just like her partner.
And then even weirder, theperson in the passenger seat
looked just like her.
And she had to stop the carbecause she got so weirded out.
There are really just like somany stories of people either

(06:51):
seeing doppelgangers ofthemselves or of their loved
ones, or also hearing theirvoices from places that they
know that they shouldn't be.
So a doppelganger is basically adouble or a lookalike of a
living person.
Sometimes it's referred to as amimic, but I kind of see the
difference between them in thatmaybe doppelganger is like more

(07:13):
like an umbrella term, and mimictends to be more like a specific
kind of doppelganger where it'spretending to be something that
it's not.
Like when you're like mimickingsomeone's voice, you're
pretending to be someone else.
While doppelganger could bethat, it also could be some
other things, as we'll get intothere's types of them.

(07:34):
The origin of the worddoppelganger comes from German,
and it's a word that meansdouble goer or double walker.
And it first appeared in a bookin 1790, in a book called Sei
Benkas by Jean Paul, where hewas talking about people who
could see themselves.

(07:55):
But even before this, it's likea very old phenomenon.
Like for a very long time,people have been talking about
being able to see people thatare either themselves or someone
they knew when they knew that itwasn't actually that person.
So I'm gonna go into differentfolklore where this is present,
and then I'm gonna go into sometheories, and I'll just be like
sprinkling some stories inbetween.

(08:15):
One of the folklores in whichthis is present is Appalachian
folklore.
And we know the Appalachian areais it's super weird.

SPEAKER_00 (08:25):
Appalachian folklore scares me.

SPEAKER_01 (08:28):
Do you know that there's these like rules that
you should follow when you're inthe woods in Appalachia?
Have you heard of that?

SPEAKER_00 (08:34):
If you heard your name, no, you didn't.

SPEAKER_01 (08:38):
Yeah, the rules are never stray from marked trails.
Okay, avoid the woods from duskto dawn.
And if you hear someone callingyour name, no, you didn't.
Okay, okay.
That's where sort of the thirdone is where the mimic comes in.
But yeah, basically, these ruleshave been passed down through

(08:59):
the generations, and it's rootedin like the numerous strange
happenings that happen in theAppalachian area.
And one of the commonexperiences that people have is
that voices call out from thewoods, voices that sound
familiar, like someone that theyknow.
And most notoriously, thesecalls are heard in the Rowan

(09:23):
Mountain in North Carolina andCheat Mountain in West Virginia.
The theories are that these arelost souls, mischievous spirits,
and also just like folklorethat's been passed down as a way
to instill respect andunderstanding of the natural
world's power.
Hashtag respect nature.

(09:45):
Yeah.
There's also a scientificexplanation which they've
theorized, which is like there'slike these unique acoustic
properties in the mountainforests where because sound
travels in unusual ways, ourbrains might misinterpret the
sounds as not natural sounds ashuman voices.
It's called periodelia, tendencyto perceive meaningful patterns

(10:07):
and random stimuli.
I'm gonna read a weird storyfrom from Reddit from someone
that he lives in the heart ofAppalachia.
This person lives in southernWest Virginia and has lived
there their whole life,basically lives in an area where
there's just woods everywhere.
There was one night where themand their friend were playing

(10:29):
like Xbox at their house andwatching TV.
Very late at night, they decideto do one of the things that
you're not supposed to do, whichis enter the woods late at
night.
So they decide, oh, let's go ona walk on a nearby trail to
smoke a joint.
Yeah, for sure.
Of course.
This does not sound like a thingthat girls would do.

SPEAKER_00 (10:49):
I see dudes wandering at night and I get
mad.

SPEAKER_01 (10:52):
I get mad too.
I'm like, I would love to dothat without you know the fear.
Fear I have every time of thedudes, you know, right?
It's not even of thesupernatural.

SPEAKER_00 (11:03):
Yeah, sometimes I see dudes just running at night,
and I'm like, such a fuckingdude thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 (11:11):
Yes, yeah, like feeling really safe.
Anyway, so the trail thatthey're on, it's not like a very
long trail, but it is in an areawhere the woods around it are
super dense.
So they're about 30 minutes intothe trail where they stop, and

(11:34):
then they are just like smokingand talking.
It's not usually that active atthis time of night.
It was like past 1 a.m., butthey were hearing a lot of
animals, I guess, when theyfound it kind of unsettling.
They finish smoking their jointand then they're continuing
walking when suddenly like itjust falls completely silent.

(11:54):
And as soon as it goes silent,they hear a voice, and he says,
it sounds almost like a mocking,humanoid voice, shaky and
uncertain, almost like an oldchildren's toy, like the one
with crackly speakers and arobot, robotic voice.
So then they're super freakedout at this point.

(12:15):
So they start running.
As they're running, like itsounds like no matter how far
they run, the voice and thesound is still at the same
distance.
It doesn't seem like it'sgetting closer, but it doesn't
seem like it's getting furtheraway.
It's like the same volume.
I mean, they just smoked also,so I'm sure the combination of
these things are not acombination of bad events.

SPEAKER_00 (12:38):
Yes, it's a cocktail for disaster, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 (12:41):
Don't go into the woods in Appalachia after 1 a.m.
and smoke weed.
We're just a bad idea.
Anyways, they're almost at theend of the trail, and they've
just been running this wholeway, and they're very, very
scared.
They're like almost crying.
As they're beginning to exitthis trail, he says, There is a

(13:03):
bone-shaking, heartstopping,murderous scream from directly
behind us.

SPEAKER_02 (13:09):
Mm-mm.

unknown (13:10):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (13:11):
And he goes, I know what a mountain lion sounds
like, and it was not an animal,and it was not someone playing
or watching a movie.
The scream sent birds flyingfrom their nests and made my
heart drop to my stomach.
It was the most genuinelydepraved and violent scream that
I have ever heard.
That's a creepy story ofsomething that happened in the

(13:31):
Appalachian woods to you, doobiedoobie.
User doobie.

SPEAKER_00 (13:40):
Doobie doobie with smoke and a doobie, huh?

SPEAKER_01 (13:44):
Yeah, smoking a doobie, and something very, very
scary happened.
So that's the that's the first.
Second, I'm gonna go intoAlgonquin Anishnaabe Cree
folklore, and this is theWendigo, which is a cold weather
creature that is said to haveoriginated during the times of
winter when there's a lot ofscarcity of food.

(14:07):
The Wendigo is associated withviolence, greed, selfishness,
and even cannibalism.
And is yeah, it's said to be 15feet tall, emaciated.
No matter how much it eats, it'sinsatiable, it's like always
hungry.
And then there are stories fromthis folklore about people being
possessed and cannibalizingother people in their community

(14:29):
or family.

SPEAKER_00 (14:30):
Um my god, this is gnarly.
You haven't heard about thewendigo before?
No, but it sounds like no facefrom Spirited Away.
Whoa, it's like a greedy, yeah,entity, and then also like shape
shifts and becomes other thingsand then eats them.

SPEAKER_01 (14:51):
Yeah, that actually sounds exactly like this.
Yeah, because Wendigo does dosome shape shifting too.
A rough translation of it is anevil spirit that devours
mankind, it connects todoppelgangers and mimics because
one of the traits they're saidto have is that they can mimic
human voices, which they use tolike lure people away from their

(15:14):
community, isolate them, andfeast on them.
The Algonquin people say thatduring the turn of the 20th
century, a large number of theirpeople went missing, and the
tribes attributed many of thosemysterious disappearances to the
Wendigo, thus calling him thespirit of lonely places.
One cool parallel, though, is inBraiding Sweetgrass by Robin

(15:38):
Wall-Kimmerer, who is a citizenof the Potawatomi Nation and a
botanist.
She makes parallels to theWendigo and the dangers of
individualistic thinking andcapitalism.
Quote, that within us whichcares more for its own survival
than anything else, because ofhow it's never satiated, always
wanting more constantconsumption that is required of

(16:01):
us under capitalism.
There's this quote from chapter20 Sykes that goes, cautionary
Wendigo tales arose in acommon-based society where
sharing was essential tosurvival, and greed made any
individual a danger to thewhole.
In the old times, individualswho endangered the community by
taking too much for themselveswere first counseled, then

(16:23):
ostracized.
And if the greed continued, theywere eventually banished.
The Wendigo myth may have arisenfrom the remembrance of the
banished, doomed to wanderhungry and alone, wreaking
vengeance on the ones whospurned them.
It's a terrible punishment to bebanished from the web of
reciprocity with no one to sharewith you and no one to care for

(16:44):
you.
Side note, when I was in gradschool and I was on my
internship, there was this oneintake I was supposed to sit in
on that my supervisor was like,Oh, actually, they don't want
anyone to sit in on it.
And then after it was over, hetold me that this person had
said that they had been followedaround by a Wendigo like their

(17:08):
whole life, and they werenative, and they said that it
was in the room when they weredoing the intake.
So there's this person on Redditwho shared their encounter with
a Wendigo, someone that lives innorthern Canada.
They were just out in the woodson a on a on a vacation, and it
was nighttime, and he had goneoutside to grab firewood and

(17:28):
also to pee.
Out from the tree line, he couldhear rustling in the bushes, and
he was sort of like watching.
And then he started to feel kindof funny, like dizzy,
lightheaded, and then couldsmell something that's he said
smelled like putrid stink, likeold milk or rotten food.
Then he saw the trees start tomorph and move ever so slightly
and begin to take the shape of ahead and slight facial features.

(17:52):
He says his eyes began to adjustand he could hear this voice
coming from there, and herecognized it.
Voice sounded like one of hisrelatives who had recently
passed away.
And the face also took a shapeof a relative.
And this being said, Hello, I'vemissed you.
Come see me.

(18:12):
Smiled and stepped forward, andthen the being stopped smiling
and became emotionless.
And then the skin began to turnpale and peel away, and chunks
of flesh from their cheeks beganto fall away.
And this person felt shock andoverwhelmed in their body,
didn't know what was happening,so started to like go back
towards the cam, but then didn'trealize that actually they were

(18:34):
walking towards a voice, notaway from it.
And then they said that thevoice became angry and began
shouting to come here.
So then as he was about to runaway, he turned and looked back
and saw something that basicallywas like rotting flesh on a
gnawed bone, caved in eyes, ahollow chest cavity, a humanoid

(18:55):
creature that was like tall andsuper thin.
This thing was chasing him.
He said he could hear heavybreaths and stomping feet from
right behind him.
And at one point it grabbed ahold of his leg.
But by this time, he was quiteclose to camp.
So then his brother woke up andran over.
He tried to explain what he sawand was trying to convince me

(19:18):
like I wasn't seeing stuff.
But then the brother also said,I also saw it.
So I know this poor person saidthat they had nightmares and
couldn't sleep for monthsafterwards.
He could see dark figures andthings looking into the window
or hear whispers when he waswalking home at night.
Eventually, when he was seeingthis dark figure daily, he

(19:38):
finally went to a shaman, amedicine man to ask for help.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
But he also heard thatceremonies only relieve it
temporarily.
So they have like protectionpouches that they carry around
with him.
And then he said, like, I foundout there's a strong possibility
that I encountered a Wendigo.

(19:59):
I learned that if you encounterone and survives, it attaches
itself to you like a parasite.
I learned that it could only dothis if it touches you, which it
did.
Ever since that night, I've beenon edge when I enter any forest
or wooded area, which sucksbecause I love being outdoors.
Now I always feel like a need tokeep my back against something

(20:20):
when I'm out in the wild.
Anyways, make your ownconclusions.
I've paid a price for being anignorant child to the stories of
old.
They are real.
I can attest to that.
Stay safe, everyone.
You know, stories are passeddown for a reason.
So next one is also somethingthat you're probably already
familiar with from Navajofolklore.

(20:42):
It's skinwalkers.

SPEAKER_00 (20:45):
Oh that shit creeps me the fuck out of the bridge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I used to get on TikTok late atnight, and then randomly I would
see these videos, and they werealways these skinwalker videos.
I saw this video of this dogthat scared the shit out of me.
And I granted, you know, I wastired and I had eaten a weed
gummy, so it was extra like, ohmy god, the dog was standing up

(21:08):
on his feet and it looked notright.
And the lady was screaming inthe video, and either it was
like a really well-done homevideo that was scary, or just or
her dog was being scary.
But that really freaks me outfor some reason.
I think it's the Uncanny Valleything, like when animals are
really not like animals.

SPEAKER_01 (21:30):
When I share more, you might understand maybe why
that's freaking you out a lot.
But I agree.
I know there's like a lot outthere about skinwalkers, but I
wanted to like hear about itfrom someone who is Navajo.
So I watched this video fromYouTube of this guy who makes
just a lot of creepy videos.
A lot of them are aboutskinwalkers, but the channel is

(21:52):
Sean Clen Shadow Productions.
The word for skinwalkers inNavajo is Yana Gloshi, and
that's how they refer to it.
And basically, what they say isthe origins of this is that a
long time ago, the medicinepeople of their community would
go to these four mountains inorder to do ceremonies, and they

(22:14):
would have to reach each of themountains like within a period
of a day.
And so they were given powers toshape shift into animals so that
they could traverse the land.
And this is supposed to be forgood.
But learning how to shape shiftwas very, very hard, and they
had to spend a lot of yearslearning how to do this.
And some people felt like thisis taking too long.

(22:36):
And quote unquote, evil anddarkness heard their prayers and
told them how it can be donemore easily and quickly.
He says that the first thingthat you have to do to become a
Yana Gloshi is sacrifice someoneclose to you.
So someone in your family oryour loved one, spouse, a
friend.
Oh no, it's dark as fuck.

(22:57):
It gets darker.
Just wait.
So he doesn't go into the othersteps because they're quite
gruesome.
Yana Gloshis can shape shiftinto anything, but they have to
kill whatever it is that theywant to shape shift into first,
skin it, prep it, do a ceremony,and only then can they use it.

(23:18):
Oh no.
Yeah.
So they can't shape it.

SPEAKER_00 (23:21):
They're Ed gaining the fucking animal, bro.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (23:27):
They are.
So that's why most commonly it'slike you see coyotes, wolves, or
bucks.
They run really, really fast.
How they connect to mimics againis very similar to Wendigo, is
that they can mimic voices.
And he said in this video, yes,this does actually happen.
They will copy family members'voices.

(23:48):
And he said he's experiencedthis before.
And he says, like majority ofpeople who live on Navajo Nation
have experienced at least onekind of skinwalker thing.
They have these whistles madeout of bone that when they blow
into them, the dogs will quietdown and put your animals and
protectors to sleep, is what hesays.
So people hear footsteps,rattles, growls.

(24:12):
Take note of this for later.
Again, he says like fear istheir biggest tool.
So that's like what they gettheir energy out of.
And also he says that likeskinwalkers they gain their
power specifically from the landthat is like in the Navajo
Nation area.

SPEAKER_00 (24:29):
You were saying something earlier about how
something that was sacred waskind of turned sinister as like
a promise, like of likeefficiency almost.
Like you can, I have a way foryou to get it quicker and easier
if you only do these things.

(24:51):
And that also feels to me like atie to the capitalism
conversation.
There's something exceptionallycruel that emerged out of
humanity when we decided weneeded to have everything
automated to have everythingimmediately and widely available
and really cheap right now forpeople who deserved it.

(25:14):
That feels tied to it.

SPEAKER_01 (25:16):
So, anyway, anyways, those are skinwalkers.
Now gonna move move on to adifferent part of the world.
We're gonna talk about Irishfolklore.

SPEAKER_00 (25:25):
Okay.
What they got going on?

SPEAKER_01 (25:28):
So we got two different beings from Irish
folklore that are connected todoblgang or mimics.
First one being fetches.
Fetches are believed to be amanifestation of a person's
spirit that appears before yourdeath.
So it's not malicious, but it'smore so like a premonition.

SPEAKER_00 (25:49):
I see.

SPEAKER_01 (25:50):
There's like a saying that's if you see your
fetch in the shadows, you willonly last as long as the flames
in the fireplace, which sort ofmeans like seeing your
dowelganger or seeing your fetchis a premonition that you are
going to die soon, basically.
And then the second one, whichyou probably have heard of
before, is changelings.

(26:10):
I have heard about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These are stories aboutbasically the Fey stealing human
children and replacing them withan ill or aged fairy that looks
like a human child.
But it's a focal story that cameabout during a time in which
sudden infant death was verycommon and inexplicable changes

(26:31):
in children due to disease andlack of understanding of
neurodivergence.
And it offered sort of anexplanation for when things
changed unexpectedly in kids.
So usually changelings will havephysical changes.
So they'll be sick, they'll bedeformed, is what it says.
They will age rapidly, theymight appear weak or frail, they

(26:54):
might have behavioral changeslike unusual intelligence,
faster development of someskills.
They might be very destructiveor mischievous, or they might
eat a lot.
The kids that were labeled aschangelings were disabled either
physically orneurodevelopmentally, like it
was kids that had autism, Downsyndrome, and other kinds of

(27:18):
developmental disabilities,which is very sad because one of
the quote-unquote queer queers,one of the quote unquote cures
is to expose a changeling toextreme heat.
And there are so there's manydocumented cases of like
basically child abuse and deaththat occurred because they

(27:39):
thought that the child was achangeling.

SPEAKER_00 (27:42):
So where'd they come up with this shit?
With the heat, like what's goingon?

SPEAKER_01 (27:45):
I don't know.
I mean, it kind of reminds me oflike, oh, like if you're a witch
and we put you in the water, ifyou drown, you're not a witch.
If you float, you're like umblood share.
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (27:56):
Just like I don't know where they come up with
this shit, but for people whodon't know, bloodletting was a
practice in like early, I don'teven want to call it psychiatry.
It was like people wanted tofigure out what was going on
with mental health, you know,and they didn't know.
And what they found was that ifyou fucking let someone bleed
out, then they chill out, whichis just like I these these dudes

(28:21):
really thought they were doingsomething, you know.
They were they were smellingtheir own farts, they were
saying, I'm smarty pants.
You see this?
This guy was wigging out justlike 15 minutes ago, and now his
energy.
Yeah, now he's chill as fuck.
This man is dying.

SPEAKER_01 (28:41):
That's what I was gonna say.
Like, I feel like probablysomeone who was like in like a
position of power in thesecommunities just made some
bullshit up, and then everyonewas like, Yeah, it must be true.
So, a sad true story is one ofBridget Cleary.
So she actually wasn't a child,but in 1895, she fell ill with

(29:02):
bronchitis and had a prettysevere case of it, that they
thought she was gonna die.
In response to this, her husbandMichael and her father believed
she had been replaced by achangeling.
And Michael therefore made herengage in many cruel rituals
with the hopes of quote unquotedriving out the changeling

(29:24):
examples where like they usedfire, but they also threw urine
on her.

SPEAKER_00 (29:31):
What's going on?
Who said it first?
And why did they?
I don't understand.
This is so random.

SPEAKER_01 (29:38):
Cruel rituals for on poor poor Bridget.
Then she was reported missing,and the police found her burnt
corpse a few days later andcharged nine people in her
disappearance and murder,including her husband.
So they assumed that she theyset her body on fire, basically.

(30:00):
She just had a bronchitis.
Well, this wasn't even like thatlong ago.
This is 1895.
You know.

SPEAKER_00 (30:08):
This is very odd.
But you know what?
The Irish are very traumatized,and trauma makes you weird.
True, true.
Like collectively, just reallyodd.
And also, um, you know, becauseI'm I'm not connecting the dots
here.
Like, y'all were being fuckedwith by the British, and like
were horrifically malnutritionedfor a long time, and you don't

(30:30):
think that that would producephysical ailments to your
children?
Like, what's missing here?

SPEAKER_01 (30:36):
Related to like changelings.

SPEAKER_00 (30:39):
Come on, like why why the energy is directed in
the wrong place?

SPEAKER_01 (30:44):
Yeah.
So that's Irish folklore.
And then we go to Islamicfolklore or sort of like ancient
folklore from the Arab world.
There's a type of djinn, andjinns are these spirits,
basically.

(31:04):
There's a group of a bunch ofspirits in from Islamic
folklore, but there's a specificone called a Kareen.
They are the doppelganger djinnsin Islam and Akbarian Sufism.
And the job of a Kareen is tomake people do bad things.
Basically, it's also somethingthat everyone has from birth.

(31:26):
I'm kind of like what Iunderstood about it is like it's
this like shadow part of youthat follows you for like most
of your life.
And it's sort of like if youthink about how like we have
devil and angel on ourshoulders, it's like the part of
you that tries to make you dobad things.
It translates to constantcompanion, and it is conceived

(31:49):
at the same time as its humancounterpart.
When a child is born, a Kareenenters its heart.
They are mischievous, they areevil, they tempt humans to
follow whims, do bad things.
For the Sufi mystic, both jinnand karin were not only
supernatural entities, but theywere also ways of probing

(32:09):
theological issues and problemsin society.
These beings have been, and theconcept of jinn specifically
predates Islam and has ties topre-Islamic Arabian folklore.
And jinn are neither human norangels.
They exist between the worldsand can influence humans.

(32:30):
So those are the different kindsof stories of doppelgangers from
folklore.
And now I'm gonna go into somefamous instances in history
where people saw theirdoppelgangers, and you can tell
me which one, which category youthink this falls in.
So first one is Abraham Lincoln.
He saw his reflection doubled inthe mirror first, and then he

(32:54):
also saw it two more times.
His wife thought that the visionmeant he would serve two terms
but die before the end of asecond.
So there's this quote from hisfriend, who is quoting Abraham
Lincoln.
And looking in that glass, I sawmyself reflected nearly at full
length, but my face, I noticed,had two separate distinct

(33:17):
images, the tip of the nosebeing three inches from the tip
of the other.
A little bothered, perhapsstartled, I got up and looked in
the glass, but the illusionvanished.
On lying down again, I saw it asecond time, plainer, if
possible, than before.
And then I noticed that one ofthe faces was a little paler,

(33:37):
say five shades, than the other.
I got up and the thing meltedaway, and I went off, and in the
excitement of the hour, I forgotall about it.
Nearly, but not quite, for thething would once in a while come
up and give me a little pang, asif something uncomfortable had
happened.
When I went home again thatnight, I told my wife about it.

(33:58):
And a few days afterwards, Imade the experiment again when,
with a laugh, sure enough, shethought it was a quote, sign
that I was to be elected to asecond term of office, and that
the paleness of one of the faceswas an omen that I should not
see life through the last term,which is what ended up happening
because he was shot three monthsinto his second term.

(34:20):
So that kind of connects to likethe premonition, you know, like
people see their doppelgangerbefore death.
So that's like the most famous.
Another is Catherine the Great,who was like a queen or
something.
Her servants said that they sawher double sitting on her throne
while she was asleep in herroom.
And so they went to get her, andshe got very angry that somebody

(34:44):
was sitting on her throne.
So she was like, I order whoeverit is to be shot, but obviously
there was no one there.

SPEAKER_00 (34:51):
To be shot?
That's so dramatic, Catherine.

SPEAKER_01 (34:55):
Yeah, she's like, someone's sitting on my throne,
they need to be shot.
She actually died of a strokethree weeks after that, also.
It makes sense.
She was stressed for no reasonall the time.
Who is Catherine the Great?
Some European bitch.
European, former Empress ofRussia.

(35:16):
Okay, Russia.
Reigning Empress of Russia from1762 to 1796.

SPEAKER_00 (35:23):
Well, I'm American, so I have an embarrassing lack
of knowledge about people aroundthe world.

SPEAKER_01 (35:30):
But also, like, we don't even know about European
history, like, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 (35:35):
That's true.
I but I did take AP Europeanhistory.
I don't, I just it was the APhistory class that was
available.
If nothing stayed in there, Idon't know.
It was boring.

SPEAKER_01 (35:47):
Yeah.
I used to think history was likesuper boring, also, and it's
because like a lot of what Ilearned was also just European
history.

SPEAKER_00 (35:54):
It's like that's so true.
Honestly, history, I was boredall the time, and it's because
we had to take five timessomething like that fifth grade,
eighth grade, junior year highschool, and then again in
college, four times.
You know why they're making youdo that?
Because they're brainwashingyou.
I yeah, I that's propaganda,yeah, exactly.

(36:16):
For real, you know, they weresaying things like George
Washington had wooden teeth.
It was not wooden teeth.
I was like, I learned that a fewyears ago.
A lot of it was just veryincorrect problems, and a lot of
it did fall out of my headbecause I have ADHD.
I saw a post online, it waslike, you know what, they didn't
get me because I have ADHD, andI was not paying attention when

(36:39):
they were trying to propagandizeme.

SPEAKER_01 (36:42):
Same.
I was like, this is notinteresting to me.
This is not interesting enoughto stick.
So the last person is also avery similar story.
Mary Shelley, who's the personthat wrote Frankenstein, Percy
Shelley, claimed to have seenhis doppelganger also before he
died.
He met this figure multipletimes.

(37:03):
Once on a terrace, the figureasked him, How long do you mean
to be content?
And then very soon after that,he died on the coast of the Gulf
of Speesia, which is northwestcoast of Italy, during a storm.
But some suspected that he mighthave like died by suicide

(37:23):
because he was not doing verywell.
And then he like went into thatstorm knowing that it was gonna
be unsafe, but also that likeseeing this doppelganger was
seemingly like making him evenmore unsettled.
But put a pin in that just forlike something we'll get into
later in terms of the theories.

SPEAKER_00 (37:43):
How so I'm mean to be content.
Yeah, what does that mean, even?
I don't I don't know.
If he was suicidal, then he wasnot content.

SPEAKER_01 (37:54):
Yeah, yeah, he was clearly not content, clearly not
content, yeah, and neither wasMary Shelley.

SPEAKER_00 (38:01):
Mary Shelley was clearly disturbed because
Frankenstein is sad as hell.
That's a tragic book.
I wrote a I wrote a littlebefore about it.
Oh, it was one of the books thatI chose.
I was just reading dark shit.
I was like in seven.

SPEAKER_01 (38:18):
Frankenstein's monster.
Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 (38:21):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (38:22):
Um, so now I'm gonna go into the theories and then
sprinkle some stories inbetween, and then end with some
stories as well.
What I noticed while readingabout the folklore and also have
going into these theories isthat it seems like doppelgangers
and mimics fall into threedistinct categories.

(38:46):
One being demons or malevolentspirits or entities, second
being like some kind ofmultiverse type stuff happening,
glitch in the matrix, and thenthe third being like a part of
our soul or a fragmentation ofour soul.
So, first theory is uh timetravel, time travel theory.

(39:10):
Oh, time travel theory.
Okay, let's hear it.
So there's a couple stories thatI'll share for this theory.
So, you know Goethe, the Germanwriter, I don't know if I'm
saying that correctly.
Some German writer dude that'skind of famous from the 1700s.

(39:31):
So he said anything about that,he saw his double on a horseback
in the early 1770s.
He said he was on his horse, andthere was a person on another
horse coming towards him in theopposite direction, who was him,
his doppelganger, but he waswearing different clothes and
passed by without saying a word.

(39:53):
Years later, he found himself onthe same road traveling, wearing
the same clothing that he sawhis double wearing.
So his theory was that he like,I guess, saw himself in the
future as well.
Or like, I don't know, there wassome kind of glitch that
happened where he alignedhimself in the future.
This is a super weird story Ifound on Reddit.

(40:16):
Like, honestly, could be fake, Iguess, but it like I guess it
like is a story that is like sostrange that it like feels like
it could be like a movie or likea plot in a TV show.
But this is from user just mel,just melm, just obscene from the

(40:37):
Reddit Glitch in the Matrix.
Title A Friend, apparentlycoming from the future gave me
an important envelope.
It happened on October 23rd,2015.
I have the exact date because Isent an email about this story
to my friend that day, and Ikept it since then.
You'll understand why later.

(40:59):
So this person is playing a gameon their computer, and suddenly
they see through the living roomwindow a blast of light coming
from the balcony.
They first thought likesomething had happened with the
electricity, like a transformerbroke or something.
So they get up to go see whathappened outside.
But then as they're getting up,someone rings a doorbell and
they open it and they see, oh mygod, my good friend from Canada

(41:23):
is standing there.
I can't really, I don't reallyknow where this person is, but
they're, I think, very far fromCanada at this point.
They say, her hair is all messedup, she had bruises all over her
face and was wearing a prettydamaged leather jacket.
She seemed panicked, she gave mean envelope and told me in a
hurry that I must read andfollow the instructions.

(41:44):
I didn't have the time toarticulate a single word before
she was already running down thestairs.
I tried to follow her, but shegot out of my sight when she
reached the underpart of mybalcony.
When I hit the last stair, shewas already gone.
I tried to search for her in afew places, but she was nowhere
to be found.

(42:05):
So I decided to call her cellphone in case I could hear her
ringtone.
I heard nothing around, but shepicked up.
I told her what just happened.
She thought I was completelycrazy, insisted that it was not
a funny joke.
This person requested that theyvideo chat so that she could, or
so that they could see that shewas in Canada and where she was.

(42:29):
And so to this person'ssurprise, she was in her current
home in Canada, thousands ofmiles away, no bruises, and her
hair was all nice and well done.
In no way could she havearranged that in a mere two
minutes that passed while I wassearching for her.
So this person was like, I waslike, okay, then must have been
some very weird doppelgangercoincidence.

(42:51):
And we hung up.
So, anyways, they still havethis envelope, right, that this
person gave them.
So they go back into theapartment to see what was inside
the envelope.
They found a piece of paper onit, on which there was a USB
tape to it, and eight pillswrapped in plastic film.

(43:13):
There was also a note saying,hi, this will take too long to
explain, but can you please sendme this through the mail?
There are eight doses that needto be taken at fixed times.
Thanks.
There was also three strangedrawings at the bottom of the
sheet.
That was extremely weird becauseI could recognize my friend's

(43:35):
handwriting.
And so I decided to plug the USBin to the computer.
The only content was a notepadfile saying, look at the date,
dude, which I did and noticedthat the date of the creation
was 23rd October 2025.
So it's like the exact date 10years into the future.
So this person then calls theirfriend back and tells them what

(43:58):
is happening.
So then the friend is like, Ireally don't like this joke,
like thinks they're kidding.
So they took a picture ofeverything and sent it via
email.
She recognizes her handwritingimmediately, and she also said
that the drawing at the bottomwas something she used to draw
with her best friend.
It was an inside joke fromelementary school between the

(44:21):
two of them that no one elseknew about.
So, as requested by theinstructions, I sent her the
package with the pills toCanada.
Later, it happened that her bestfriend became ill.
She has something no one wasable to identify or cure.
They said it was probably due tostress, but she just was getting

(44:43):
worse and worse.
Her best friend was told aboutthis weird story since the
beginning.
And in a despair, she asked totry the pills in case it was
sent for her.
Either it worked or it was acoincidence, but she took the
mystery pills and gradually gotbetter in the following weeks.
I don't know if in 2025 we willfinally have the missing parts

(45:05):
of the story, but it creeps meout every time I think about it.
And then they I looked at these.
There's a screenshot of theemail that they sent in the
pictures of the stuff.
And then there was also apicture of the screen.
So this is actually the weirdestpart about it, which I think was
the person trying to say, likethis was real, is they sent her
the USB as well.

(45:26):
And she has the same USB, andshe plugged them both into her
computer and took screenshots ofthe properties, and they were
two different USBs, but they hadexactly the same properties on
the computer.
This was from four years ago onReddit.
So theory number two also fallsunder like Glitch in the Matrix,

(45:47):
is about the multiverse,multiple timelines, and the many
worlds interpretation fromquantum mechanics.
The many worlds interpretationof quantum mechanics holds that
there are many worlds whichexist in parallel at the same
space and time as our own.
And there is like this conceptcalled quantum tunneling, which

(46:11):
basically allows individuals andobjects to cross between
barriers that they technicallyshould not be able to cross, uh,
cross.
So an example could be like howghosts and spirits can move
through walls.
And there's like a theory thatlike this can happen between
dimensions as well, and how likethere's some kind of like
overlapping of dimensions that'shappening when people experience

(46:36):
these doppelgangers.
And it also could be explainedby wormholes, which is also a
theory from quantum physics,where it's a wormhole is
basically a bridge between twopoints in space-time.
So like one of the doppelgangersis moving through a wormhole
from one place to another.

(46:57):
And then quantum entanglement,which one website described as
one seriously long-distancerelationship.
Because basically, quantumentanglement happens when two
subatomic particles becomelinked in such a way that their
properties remain connected nomatter how far apart they are,

(47:17):
including like if they're like abillion light years away,
they're still connected.

SPEAKER_00 (47:21):
A billion?

SPEAKER_01 (47:23):
Yeah, it doesn't really matter how far away that
they are, like their particlesare still connected.
This is what the explanation forsynchronicities and stuff are
through quantum physics.
Theoretically, this could alsohappen across dimensions, so
across timelines.
So I'll share one story alsofrom Reddit from the user minute

(47:44):
till midnight.
This is kind of mundane, butbasically, this person was over
at their friend's house, andtheir doppelganger was witnessed
by their mom and brother.
So they were around 16 or 17 atthe time, had gone to their
friend's house.
Sometimes during the night, theystarted to feel bad and wanted
to go home.
But since them and their friendhad plans the next morning, they

(48:06):
decided to just hang out andstay the night.
Next afternoon, they made ithome, and their mom and brother
are acting kind of strange whenthey came home.
And so they're like, Okay,whatever.
Like they're acting weird, butI'm just gonna go to my room.
After they go to their room,their brother comes up and the
mom comes up and they said, Didyou come home last night?
And they said, No, I stayed atthis person's house all night,

(48:29):
but I did think about cominghome, but decided not to.
And then they asked why.
Their mom spoke up and said,What happened?
She said, Her and my brotherwere sitting in her room talking
when they heard the front dooropen and close, then sound like
it locked.
Then they heard me walking upthe stairs and saw me walk past
the door.

(48:49):
They then heard my bedroom dooropen and close and my TV come
on.
They heard me laughing, so theydecided to come and make sure I
was okay because I had beenplanning on being at my friend's
house the whole night.
She said when they opened thedoor, the TV was on, but I was
nowhere to be found.
My car wasn't in the driveway,and they searched everywhere,
even in the basement, and theycouldn't find me.

(49:11):
She said, What makes it evenweirder is before I fell asleep,
which was around the same timethey saw me, I had this really
major urge to go home.
So TLDR, I haunted my own momand brother.
Kind of mundane, but verystrange and creepy, nonetheless.

SPEAKER_00 (49:28):
Honestly, if someone told me that I was somewhere and
I wasn't, I'd be like, don'ttalk to that bitch.

SPEAKER_01 (49:37):
Yes.
You don't know her, we don'tknow her.
We don't know who that is.
I heard one or I read one storyof how like this mom was at her
work and she got this likereally anxious, stressed out,
panicked phone call from herkid, who was like very young and
was like, You need to come homeright away, like something is

(49:59):
wrong.
Then she like drove home.
She like was like, Where's yourdad?
kind of like the kid was justlike, you have to come home now.
She goes home, kid and the dadare just like watching TV, and
she's like, Did you call me?
And he's like, No, I didn't callyou.
And then, like, in her phonelog, there is a call from like
an unknown number, but in liketheir phone and stuff, there's

(50:23):
no log that the call everhappened.
And it's like her kid is prettyyoung, so it's like not
something that he would likecome up to do as like a prank.
So super strange.

SPEAKER_00 (50:36):
Very strange.

SPEAKER_01 (50:37):
Next theory by location/slash astral projection
is basically when someone isintentionally or unintentionally
projecting themselves into asecond location.
So I have one story about thisthat is super fucking weird.
There was this nun in the 1600sin Spain, and her name was

(51:02):
Venerable Mary of Agrada, andshe apparently had these
supernatural powers.
And in one of her visions, Godshowed her the people of New
Mexico, and basically she gotthe message that she has to
convert the people of New Mexicoto Christianity.
So between the ages of 19 and29, she started billocating from

(51:28):
Spain to different parts ofSouth and Southwest America,
North America, so East Texas,New Mexico, Western Arizona, to
teach them about the Catholicfaith.
And she apparently did this over500 times over the course of 10
years.
And many times, like they wouldsee her and they would try to
kill her because they're like,who is this fucking person?

(51:52):
But then her spirit would justreturn to her body and then she
would later reappear again tothe same Native folks.

SPEAKER_00 (51:59):
So apparently in 1628, 50 colonizer astral
projecting, and that is just sooutrageous.
I know.
Get a life.
Are you serious?
Oh my god, what's it to you?

SPEAKER_01 (52:19):
This is a well-documented story, actually.

SPEAKER_00 (52:22):
So I was like, for some reason, it's reminding me
of like people who have aproblem with gay marriage.
Something about it, somethingabout the vibe, you know.
I'm just like, like they want towhy do you care?
Yeah, it's it's like, yeah, whydo you care?
Why I what is it to you?

(52:43):
What is the problem?
When I went to when I was inhigh school, prop eight, prop
eight was the thing.
And so in California, there wasa prop called Proposition Eight,
and it was written funky.
So if you said yes on propeight, it meant that you wanted
to ban gay marriage.
And if you said no, you werelike, No, we're not banning gay

(53:07):
marriage in the state ofCalifornia.
And so it was tricky becausethey, you know, if you weren't
paying attention, it looked likeyou were being sneaky on
purpose.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
But I think I was naive orsomething because I just didn't
realize how many people were sopreoccupied with the lives of
people that they didn't evenknow.

SPEAKER_01 (53:28):
The current times are a very clear reflection of
how much people care about thelives that they never even
interact with, probably on adaily basis.

SPEAKER_00 (53:39):
You're right.
Yeah.
It was naive of me.
I just didn't understand, youknow, and I wasn't someone who
went to church, so I think theywere getting these messages
everywhere.
I mean, we live in a homophobicsociety, so I'm not saying that
that wasn't something that I hadexposed to.

SPEAKER_01 (53:54):
It never made any sense to me, though.
I like just didn't compute forme.
I'm like, I don't reallyunderstand why we're just like
demonizing specific people forlike their desires.
It doesn't make like it nevercomputed for me even when I was
young.
So again, neurodivergence savesyou from propaganda because
propaganda usually makes zerosense.

SPEAKER_00 (54:16):
I don't understand.
I was like, I don't get it.
And it was really like anawakening for me in some ways
because all these people Iotherwise thought were really
nice people because they werenice to me, had these views that
I thought were so hateful, and Iwas confused.
And when I asked them questions,they would get mad because they
didn't actually know how toanswer them because it didn't

(54:37):
make any sense.
Yes, because why do you care?
Yeah.
No, why do you care?
Oh my god, that's what I waslosing my goddamn mind.
I was learning really every daythat everybody cared.
There was this dude in my classwho made his entire final
project on why gay people shouldnot be allowed to marry.

(55:02):
He's a pastor now.
Ugh.
But I'm just like, Yeah, why doyou are making this?

SPEAKER_01 (55:10):
Yeah, it's like, why are you making this your
personality?

SPEAKER_00 (55:13):
It's like really like why is it so simple?

SPEAKER_01 (55:15):
Are you just closeted?
Yeah.
Honestly, grinder always hasincreased usage whenever there's
a Republican convention in anycity.

SPEAKER_00 (55:26):
Just be free, be yourself.
I don't understand.

SPEAKER_01 (55:30):
You're so repressed.
Like, come on.

SPEAKER_00 (55:32):
Like, live your life, you know.
You're just mad that people areaccessing their freedom of
expression.

SPEAKER_01 (55:38):
Their joy.
You're just mad that people areliving their authentic lives,
and you have decided that youcan't when actually you can.
You can make that choice, also.

SPEAKER_00 (55:49):
I don't understand it's a cage of their own making.
I really don't get it.

SPEAKER_01 (55:54):
And then they want to cage everyone else because
they're in their own cage.

unknown (55:58):
Yes.

SPEAKER_01 (55:59):
Get them.
Seriously.

SPEAKER_00 (56:04):
Oh my gosh.
People used to gang up on me.
Oh my god.
I remember one time I was in aphysics class, and this little
dude, this Nathan guy, theNathan guy who did the final
project.
He asked me what my my finalproject was on.
It was about controversialissues.
And I said that my my final wasabout the human rights

(56:25):
violations of the United States.
And he said, Oh, that's that isvery you and a very good choice.
It's very me.
It's just been me.
Yeah, been me.
I also was naive because Ididn't realize people would hate
that.

(56:46):
I thought that we knew.
I thought it was just commonknowledge that the United States
would be doing stuff that's verywrong.
Yeah.
I didn't know they would beupset.
No, they were mad.
They were mad.
There was a section on policebrutality and they were mad.
And I'm just like, there arevideos right here.
Like you can't, what you gonnafight me on?

(57:06):
This is evidence.

SPEAKER_01 (57:08):
Like, yeah, what are you mad about?
It just who are you mad at?

SPEAKER_00 (57:11):
I'm not even sharing an opinion, I'm just listing
things that they did.

SPEAKER_01 (57:14):
It was literally the laundry list.
Yeah, I'm just like, I'm just amessenger.

SPEAKER_00 (57:20):
Yeah, I'm just letting, I'm just you know,
letting us know.
I thought that you know, we'reon the same page, but we
weren't.
So people hated that.
And he I said, What are youdoing your project on?
He says, Oh, I'm doing it on gaymarriage.
I said, Oh, I uh think thatmight not land well for a lot of

(57:41):
people, actually.
And he was like, Oh, well, well,how do you feel about that?
You you believe in gay marriage?
And what the fuck is do youbelieve in gay marriage?
Gay people get married, that'sit.
Yeah, what do you mean?
Do I believe in it's not amythical situation?

SPEAKER_01 (58:02):
That's so stupid.
It's like whether or not a legalinstitution says that it's valid
or not, people still commit toeach other.

SPEAKER_00 (58:11):
I just didn't understand that question, but I
didn't have I didn't have thelanguage for that.
So I just said he, yeah, all Isaid was like, yeah, I think gay
people should be allowed to getmarried.
I don't think it's anybodyelse's fucking business.
Like, what is the problem?
Yeah, yeah.
And he goes, Oh, well, yeah.
He was very uncomfortable.
He didn't like that.

(58:32):
And then another student came inand she was my friend, and she
was like, he was like trying toget people to agree with him,
and she was on his side.
I said, Oh, oh no.
And then they started talkingabout bestiality.
I said, That's so crazy.
What are you talking about?
Bestiality.
Someone was like, How come theycan't just be okay with civil
unions?

(58:52):
Marriage is sacred.
And I was like, if it's thesame, then what's the problem?
And they said, Well, you know,it's a sacred thing, and like
it's but it is the same, it'slike equal under the eyes of the
law.
You know, you get the samethings, and I think I was like,
you know, I just don't thinkthat separate but equal

(59:14):
philosophies have worked for usin the past, and then this other
guy in the back said, You thinkof married this is a civil
rights movement, and I said, Ohmy god, not another one.
I look back at this guy, hesaid, Are you really doing that?
And I said, I think I am doingthat, yeah.
It's a different situation, butsame same mindset.

(59:38):
Yeah, it's not the same for you.
Why are you so mad?
They were coming for me, andthen I don't remember how it
ended, but I remember beingtired, and I remember being
confused because I did notexpect.
I was always like, Oh my god,out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_01 (59:51):
It was really aggressive.

SPEAKER_00 (59:53):
I'm sorry, it was really aggressive.
I made a lot of enemies thatyear, I think it's all.
Homophobic as fuck.
I mean, I think people havemoved a lot.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:02):
Anyways, I'm not gonna stay with this for too
long, but basically, likethere's evidence that people saw
her and they like thought of heras the mysterious lady in blue
because she used to wear thislike blue robe or whatever.
And uh some of the peopleactually did travel quite a

(01:00:23):
distance to get converted toCatholicism, supposedly because
of this woman's um bi-location.
Super weird theory number four,we get into the juicy stuff:
demons and or malevolentspirits.
Okay, let's go.
So basically, I think if you'veheard stories about demons or

(01:00:45):
poltergeist or spirits, like alot of times you'll hear of
like, oh, I heard someonetalking when it sounded like my
roommate, but my roommate wasnot home.
So it's like something that theydo commonly.
They do this to basically getyour attention.
And it's like basically a toolto like scare you or like feed
off of your attention.

(01:01:06):
They can copy voices, copyappearances, and they feed on
fear and negative emotionalenergy.
So that and also they use it asa way to like exploit trust,
manipulate emotions, and alsomanipulate relationships within
the house.
Which I don't know if you everlistened to this podcast, but if
you haven't, it's actuallyreally good and connects to

(01:01:28):
stuff about sleep paralysis andthe night hag and stuff as well,
and has some mimic stuff in it.
It's called The Chilling, andit's the story about it's
basically about these peoplethat lived in this very haunted
house in Ohio.
Basically, like they were allreally close friends before they

(01:01:49):
lived in that house.
And then, like, the housebasically like changed a lot of
their personalities and likethey became not friends.
And even though they had livedtogether before, it was not like
the first time they were livingtogether.
And one of the common thingsthat used to happen is one of
the roommates would like hearsomeone running up and down the
stairs, and she would get reallyupset because she thought it was
the upstairs roommate, and shewould think that the upstairs

(01:02:12):
roommate was always making thesenoises because it sounded like
it was her and her boyfrienddoing it, but it would happen
even when they were not.
It's a very, very interestingpodcast and very creepy for
sure.
Another story is one from my myfriend who wanted to share a
mimic story that she had.
She said that she used to livein this house from when she was

(01:02:33):
13 to 20, and that a lot ofweird supernatural stuff used to
happen in this house.
But one of the things was thislike specific instance of a
mimic where her aunt and hercousin had come to stay at their
house for a period of time.
And she said that ever sincethey came, like there was like a
weird, weird vibe in the house.

(01:02:55):
And there was like one day whereshe was sitting in the living
room, and there was like twodifferent there was like a front
balcony and a back balcony, andshe saw her cousin, sort of who
was like six or seven, runningthrough the room and who stopped
and talked to her, who was goingto the back balcony.
She just like was hearing thecousin making like a lot of

(01:03:16):
noise, and she wanted to tellher, like, hey, can you like
stop doing that?
And so she called her, and shetook like a really long time to
come over there, and she waslike, Oh, like, wait, weren't
you just like on the backbalcony?
And her cousin was like, No, Iwas on the front balcony this
whole time.

(01:03:38):
And she was like, Oh, but I likejust saw you walk by and you
talk to me.
Yeah, so that was like herstory, and she was like, Yeah, a
lot of other weird thingshappened, which she didn't tell
me about, but she was like,There was just like a weird
energy in that in that house.
This one is really freaky.
It's from Reddit from the userEclipsed Griffey.

(01:04:00):
So they said she was downstairs,she saw her eldest son come down
the stairs looking really,really freaked out because he
quote just saw me upstairs inour room, slowly backing away
into the darkness, and that myeyes were glowing white, and I
was smiling.
So it's creepy.
I know already that's creepy onhis own.

(01:04:22):
But the creepier thing is shewas saying, me and my son used
to like play these gamestogether where I would like try
to scare him, and then he wouldlike come into my room and try
to like attack me.
So she thought like the spiritwas like trying to do something
that would lure the son into theroom, like it was something that
the mom might do, but he wasable to know like realize like,
oh, that's not my mom, and likeran down the stairs.

(01:04:45):
And she said, right before thathappened, there's like a camera
in her room, and right beforethat happened, the camera had
like fallen as well.
The advice is that if you hearlike a voice or something that
you know is a mimic and not likeactually that person, that you
should just ignore it.
Don't pay any attention to it,try not to even like talk about

(01:05:07):
it and stuff like that, becauseit's basically just giving it
what it what it wants, which islike speeding off of your
energy, whether it's like fearor whatever excitement.
Those are sort of thesupernaturalslash sci-fi
theories.
And the last two are thenon-supernatural theories.

(01:05:27):
The fifth theory is somethingcalled autoscopy, which is
actually a psychologicalcondition where you hallucinate
your own image at a distance.
And there's been actually tonsof studies done on this because
of how common the doppelgangerphenomenon is.
Like there's studies from 1950suntil now on autoscopy.

(01:05:50):
Yeah.
There's actually six differentkinds of autoscopic phenomenon.
One of them is an autoscopichallucination, which is you see
a hallucination, you see adouble of yourself, but you
don't identify with the double.
Second is an out-of-bodyexperience, which is like, yeah,

(01:06:12):
you see yourself, you feel likeyou're outside of your body.
Then there's hotoscopy, which iswhen you see your double, but
then you also identify, like,oh, that's a version of me, or
that's a part of me.
Then there's sensation ofpresence where you feel like
there's something near you thatis your double, but you can't

(01:06:33):
necessarily see it, you just aresensing it.

SPEAKER_00 (01:06:37):
Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:39):
Yeah.
But it can be associated with alot of different things like
lack of sleep, high fever,neurological injuries,
consumption of substances.
And then it also has been linkedto like if you think back to
Percy Shelley, it's been linkedto depression and suicidal
ideation and impulses, alsoseizures, epilepsy, anxiety, and

(01:07:02):
schizophrenia.
But similar to sleep paralysis,they haven't been able to
identify a neurologic onespecific neurological reason why
this happens, because and thedata is very inconsistent.
But a lot of different studieshave identified a specific

(01:07:23):
region of the brain, which isthe temporarietal junction, that
is involved usually when this ishappening.
And this is the area thatbasically is the overlap between
the temporal lobe and theparietal lobe, but it's an area
that has a lot of different andcomplex functions.
Like one website described it assort of like if you think about

(01:07:47):
a traffic intersection in yourbrain, like that is what this
region is where there's justlike a lot of different things
going on.
So you can't really identifywhat specific neural activity is
happening when yeah, people arehaving experiencing this
phenomenon.
So there is this paper, there'squite a few papers about

(01:08:09):
autoscopy.
If you want to look them up,it's very interesting.
I'll share some examples.
So there's this one paper calledAutoscopic Phenomenon by T.
R.
Denning and G.
E.
Barios that was written in '94.
And it just is like a basicallylike a study of people who have

(01:08:30):
experienced this.
And then at the end, they listthree case reports.
And I'll just read two of thembecause they kind of connect to
things we've already learnedabout.
First one, a 55-year-oldprofessional man employed at an
Oxbridge college was walkingacross the college quadrangle

(01:08:51):
when he suddenly had anautoscopic experience.
He saw himself directly aheadand several yards away.
The image was vivid and colored,although it did not speak to
him.
He stopped and the imagepersisted for five to ten
minutes before disappearing.
During this time, he also feltdepersonalized and dysphoric.
He then proceeded to have afull-blown panic attack.

(01:09:13):
He had two similar episodes overthe next few months and, fearing
he was losing his sanity,consulted a psychiatrist.
It emerged that he'd always beenan anxious man who,
nevertheless, had adistinguished record as an Air
Force pilot before leavingbecause of anxiety.
His present post was stressful,and there were financial

(01:09:33):
problems which concerned him.
So he was also experiencingdepression and anxiety at the
time this happened.
Next case is quite different.
75-year-old male physician wasafflicted with cancer.
He awoke one night feeling likehe needed to use the toilet.

(01:09:53):
And as he set up, sat up, he wassurprised and disconcerted to
see a solid-looking image ofhimself moving away from the bed
and walking silently across theroom.
The image appeared to use thetoilet and then disappeared.
Episode lasting two to threeminutes.
He was left feeling amazed andshaken.
After sitting quietly for a fewminutes, he used the toilet and

(01:10:16):
went back to bed.
There was no evidence ofneurological or psychiatric
disorder.
The episode clearly occurred ina state of altered consciousness
upon waking.
The autoscopy was not repeated,nor did he have any other
hallucinations.
He regarded the episode as aharbinger of his death, and he
did indeed die a few monthslater.

(01:10:39):
Oh shit.
So this seems like a thing wherepeople do see Wow, interesting.
Yeah, very interesting.
And this is, yeah, like it'sinteresting that this is like in
a published paper.
If you're curious, there's likeyou just go to Google Scholar
and look up autoscopicphenomenon.
There's like so much shit,honestly, which I didn't expect

(01:11:00):
to find so much like ofscientific research on this, but
I guess it just happens reallyoften and has been happening for
so long that that's why they'vestudied it.
Also, very similar to sleepparalysis.

SPEAKER_00 (01:11:14):
Yeah.
Which we're gonna get to.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:18):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now we come to the last theory,and then I just have like a
couple stories after that.
Last theory is just kind offunny, it's interesting and
funny.
It's a non-genetic double.
So basically, there's a one intrillion chance for this to
happen.
But there was actually thisdude, this French-Canadian

(01:11:38):
photographer called FrancoiseBrunel, who over the last 25
years has traveled the worldphotographing around 250 pairs
of doppelgangers.
And he has this project calledI'm Not a Look-alike, which is
pictures of these people who arenot related, but they look
alike.
And they did a study on thesesame people.

(01:12:00):
It was published in 2022.
They recruited 32 pairs oflook-alikes from the photography
project.
They completed DNA tests,completed questionnaires, and
then they also use a facialrecognition software to quantify
similarities in their faces.
And six of the pairs of 50,sorry, 16 of the pairs, so 50%

(01:12:22):
of them had similar overallscores to identical twins that
were analyzed by the same facialrecognition software.
That's really wild.
Yeah.
But the thing is, those 16pairs' DNA was then analyzed,
and they found that they sharedsignificantly more genes than
the other 16 pairs, but thattheir epigenome was like very

(01:12:48):
different.
So like we know that epigeneticscomes off of people's like
environments and stuff.
So like they were sort of sayinghow even though the
doppelganger's genomes weresimilar, their epigenomes and
microbiomes were different.
Genetics put them together andepigenetics and microbiomes pull
them apart.

(01:13:11):
So definitely a thing.
And there's like websites whereyou like find my twin or
something.
I guess you can go go look atthat.
So my personal doppelgangerstory, which actually links
doppelgangers with sleepparalysis, which Shana's gonna
get us into next.

(01:13:31):
There was a time when I wasyounger, it was a summer between
my sophomore and junior year ofcollege.
And I was at home, and I wasspending the entire day reading
creepy threads on Reddit.
And then I realized, oh my gosh,it's getting dark.
I should probably stop readingthis.
I was also like in this periodof time where I think I was

(01:13:53):
trying to learn how to luciddream, which has connections
with sleep paralysis as well.
So anyway, I like go to theliving room and I fall asleep
with the light on andeverything.
Suddenly I wake up and I realizeI can't move, that I'm in the
living room, and I was like, oh,I'm dreaming.

(01:14:14):
And so then I was like, oh, likemaybe I can make stuff appear,
because like that's what luciddreaming is about.
But then I remembered, oh myGod, I've been spending the
entire day reading really creepystuff, like what if a ghost
shows up?
And then I start to get reallyfreaked out.
So I'm basically lying on thecouch, and then the back of the
couch is like to my right side.

(01:14:38):
And I sense, and I can see fromthe corner of my eye, but I
can't really like move my eyesthat much either.
I can sense that there'ssomebody there.
And I can see from the corner ofmy eye that this person is like
has their hands on top of thecouch and is like leaning on it
like that.

(01:14:58):
And they're wearing my hoodie.
So then I was like, oh, it's me,but it's not me.
And I started getting reallyfreaked out, and I was like, I
need to wake up, I need to wakeup.
As soon as I had the thought oflike wanting to wake up, this
thing just grabs my hand and islike holding onto it super,
super tight.
And I was trying to scream and Icouldn't scream.

(01:15:20):
And then finally I was able towake up, but I could still feel
it's like you know, when someonegrabs your hand really hard and
they let go, you can still feelwhere they were holding it.
I could still feel that there,and I was so freaked out I
couldn't sleep by myself for fora little while after that.
That was the first time I mether.
Then I met her in a differentdream where it was not a sleep

(01:15:42):
paralysis dream, but it was anap dream where she was being
very mean to me and she hadtattoos all over her face, but
then towards the end of it, wemade out.
So it was just weird.
It was weird.
Yeah, she definitely seems likesome weird, like yeah, mean
version.
I wasn't expecting that.
It was it was very strange.

(01:16:05):
I also went on a date with thisperson once who told me that
they met their doppelganger inhigh school and they actually
like dated and hooked up for awhile, which I thought was
strange and funny.
So yeah, would love to hearother people's doppelganger
stories if you have any.
Send them to us.

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:25):
Well, it's interesting because it sounds
like doppelganger is like a lotof different ways you can
conceptualize it.
There's like the literal,there's somebody else in the
world that looks psycho, butthen there's also these other
pieces that are like, oh, maybeit's a mimic, or or maybe
there's this other part of youthat's dark, or maybe it's like

(01:16:47):
soul.
Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:49):
Or maybe it's like from a different timeline.
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:53):
Different kind of folklore.
Okay, well, thanks for sharing.
Yeah, it ties really well intothe sleep paralysis combo.

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:01):
Well, thanks for listening.
Oh, yeah.
Thanks for listening.
Hope you got some sleep.
Bye.
Bye.
See you on the next one.
Happy Halloween.

SPEAKER_00 (01:17:14):
Yeah, happy Halloween.