| Doppelgängers | |
|---|---|
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| Doppelgängers | |
| Aliases: | Shadow Selves |
| Films: | Doppelganger Evil Dead, The Lake Mungo Men |
| Programs: | Ash vs Evil Dead Buffy the Vampire Slayer Vampire Diaries |
| Comics: | Tomb of Dracula Vol 1 |
| Representatives: | Ash doppelgänger |
Doppelgängers are mythical beings of folklore. They exist as physical duplicates of other living people, imitating their physical form, and often even their memories and personalities. Some Doppelgängers may exist as corporeal apparitions, or shades, while others may possess physical characteristics that distinguish them from those that they resemble. Ancient traditions portray Doppelgängers as harbingers of bad luck.
According to German folklore, all living creatures have a spirit double who is invisible but identical to the living individual. These second selves are perceived as being distinct from ghosts (which appear only after death), and sometimes they are described as the spiritual opposite or negative of their human counterparts. German writers coined the word Doppelgänger (from doppel-, meaning "double," and -gänger, meaning "goer") to refer to such specters.
History[]
A woman named Holly Gooding had a version of a doppelgänger. Prior to her own birth, Holly had absorbed the fetus of her twin sibling, who had died in the womb. Trace elements of the twin lived on within her however, causing her to develop a split personality. Her psychiatrist, Doctor Heller, took advantage of his patient's mental state and manipulated her into murdering her own mother. Being implicated in this homicide, Holly decided to relocate from New York City to Los Angeles. [1]
In the realm of the Evil Dead, an unfortunate encounter with the Necronomicon may result in the creation of a doppelgänger. When hard-traveling hero Ash Williams was transported to Europe in the year 1300 AD, he interacted with the Necronomicon, which caused a doppelgänger of him to step out from Ash's image reflected in the shards of a broken mirror. One of these reflections leaped down Ash's throat then began to grow itself a new body that separated from Ash's core physicality. More smaller iterations of Ash were created and these little homunculi tormented the hero at great length. One of the Ash duplicates ended up becoming a full-on Deadite and commanded the legions of the dead against the kingdom of Lord Arthur. [2]
Another doppelgänger was a supernaturally generated facsimile of famed vampire hunter, Blade. This being was created by Blade's maker, Deacon Frost, and possessed all of the same attributes as Blade himself, who was a half-human/half-vampire creature known as a dhampir. [3]
In 2008, a sixteen-year-old girl named Alice Palmer was attacked by a disfigured duplicate of herself and drowned in Lake Mungo in Victoria, Australia. [4]
Characters[]
| Character | Series |
|---|---|
| Ash doppelgänger | Ash vs Evil Dead |
| Blade doppelganger | Marvel Comics |
Notes[]
- "Doppelgänger" and "Doppelgangers" both redirect to this page.
- English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley claimed to have encountered his own doppelganger in June, 1822. Percy was the husband of Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley.
External Links[]
- Doppelgänger at Wikipedia
- Doppelgänger at Dictionary.com
- Doppelgänger at Vocabulary.com
- Doppelgänger at the Cryptid Wiki
- Doppelgänger at the Vampire Diaries Wiki
References[]
- ↑ Doppelganger
- ↑ Army of Darkness
- ↑ Tomb of Dracula 50
- ↑ Lake Mungo
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