Doppelgangers

In modern day terms a 'Doppelganger' simply refers to a look-alike of a person. It can also be described as seeing a 'reflection' of yourself in your peripheral vision, only to find that there was nothing there that could reflect your image.

In fiction and folklore, a Doppelganger was a paranormal double of yourself, typically evil or mischievous.


An experiment in 2006 was taken to produce the effect similar to that of the doppelganger phenomenon. While laying flat on a bad, electromagnetic stimulation was applied to a female patient's brain. She immediately felt the presence of another person in her personal space. Apart from being epileptic, for which she was being treated, she was psychologically fit.

The person she felt was described to be young, and although didn't speak or move, it had a body posture identical to her own. She felt the other person located exactly behind her.

A more intense test was taken, only the patient was sitting up with her arms folded. In this test she felt the presence of a "man" who had his arms wrapped around her. She described the sensation as very unpleasant, and the test was stopped.

The last test involved the patient sitting upright, and asked to perform a language test with some flash cards, while have electrical stimulation applied. She said that the presence she felt, which was sitting beside her to her right, was attempting to interfere with the test, and said: "He wants to take the card; he doesn't want me to read." The effect was disturbing and the test was ceased.


Many cases of people seeing doubles of themselves have been reported, even for that of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln said that during one particular winter, he had repeated dreams or illusions, and on the evening of his election, he looked into a bureau mirror from across the room and saw himself at full length, but with two faces. After moving from the couch he was lying down on, the illusion stopped, but repeated when he would return. It bothered him and he told his wife about it, she was worried as well.

He attempted this again, and the  two faces returned, one paler than the other, however this was the last time he saw it.

His wife said it was a sign he would be elected to a second term, and the death pallor of one face meant he wouldn't live through his second term.

Demons - The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel

When it comes to demon possession, the most famous case is that of Anneliese Michel. A German Catholic woman who died at the young age of 23. She was born on 21 September 1952 in Leiblfing, Bavaria, West Germany to a strict Catholic family.

At the age of 16, she was diagnosed with epilepsy after suffering a severe convulsion. The first signs of demonic possession occurred in 1973 when she began to suffer from depression and started hearing voices which were telling her that she was "damned" and that she would "rot in hell".

She later began treatment in an unnamed psychiatric hospital. However this treatment did not improve her health. Instead, her depression worsened. She had grown increasingly frustrated and annoyed with any sort of medical intervention as it didn't help. All types of long-term treatment proved unsuccessful, and her conditions worsened in time.

Anneliese began to contrast her condition to demonic possession. She became intolerant of sacred objects and places, such as the crucifix, as she attributed this to her own demonic possession.

In June 1970, she suffered a 3rd seizure at the psychiatric hospital she had been staying, and then was prescribed anti-convulsants for the first time. She talked about "devil faces", which she claimed to see at various times during the day. She was increasingly adamant that her illness was of a spiritual kind, and was convinced that no medicine could help her. She took several different types of drugs up until shortly before her death.

On a pilgrimage to San Damiano with a good friend of the family, Anneliese managed to get an exorcism. After some examining from a vicar, who after seeing Anneliese, declared that she didn't "look like an epileptic" and that he didn't see her having seizures. Also she refused to walk pas a crucifix and refused to drink the water of a holy spring. The vicar believed she was suffering from demonic possession, and he urged the bishop to allow an exorcism.

After being convinced that she was possessed, Anneliese and her parents stopped seeking medical treatment, and decided to solely put her fate into the hands of the exorcism rites.

Over 10 months, between 1975 and 1976, 67 sessions of exorcism, one or two each week, lasting for up to 4 hours, were performed on Anneliese. At some point, she began talking about dying to atone for the wayward youth of the day, and she refused to eat.

On the left are a few pictures of her during the exorcism.

On 1 July 1976, Anneliese died in her home. An autopsy reported the cause of death as malnutrition and dehydration.





Below is a short clip of the exorcism:


Below is the full audio tapes for the exorcism:


Several movies have been loosely based on this case, such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Raining Blobs(Oakville Blobs)

On the 7th of August 1994, it began to rain in Oakville, Washington, at 3:00 AM.

As common as rain was in the area, the residents began to notice that this wasn't really rain, but instead was a gelatinous substance that they had never seen before.

For the next three weeks, the rain continued to fall for a total of 6 times.

An officer, David Lacey, had said that when the 'rain' first started to fall, he was on patrol with a civilian friend. He said that when he turned his windshield wipers on, the rain smeared, rather than washing off. He then had to pull into a gas station to attempt to clean it manually, although he put on a pair of latex gloves to be safe. He describe the texture of the substance to feel like jelly, and to be very mushy.
Later that afternoon, David and many other residents had suddenly become violently ill. They described the sickness as having difficulty breathing, extreme vertigo, blurred vision, and a sense of nausea. Another resident of the area said that everyone in town contracted a flu-like illness that lasted two to three months.

Additionally, several cats and dogs that had come into contact with it also got sick, but died.

Another resident, Dotty Hearn, was found sprawled out on her bathroom floor, conscious but very weak, after an hour of first noticing her symptoms. Her daughter, Sunny Barclift, described Dotty as feeling very cold and sweat-drenched and very pale. Dotty was taken to a hospital and stayed there for 3 days.

While Dotty was being taken to hospital, Sunny remembered the odd rain, and thinking that it had some connection to her mother's illness, took a sample and sent it off to the hospital. A lab technician examined it and found human white blood cells in the sample, but had no idea how they could have gotten in a substance that came from the sky.

The sample was then sent to the Washington State Department of Healthy for further study. A Microbiologist  named Mike McDowell noted that the substance was teeming with 2 species of bacteria, one that lives in the human digestive system.

Due to Mikes findings, the substance was immediately thought to be from an airline human waste system, however this was disproved due to the fact that all human waste from planes is to be coloured blue, and this substance was clear, and that pilots are not allowed to release the waste system while flying.

After another sample managed to get to a research lab called AmTest Laboratories, a researcher called Tim Davis, another microbiologist, believed that he saw a eukaryotic cell; a complex, nucleus-containing cell that is present in most living creatures. This meant that the substance is or had been alive.

One theory about the rain's origins is that the military's naval bombing runs at sea had accidentally destroyed a school of jellyfish, and sent their pieces flying into the atmosphere, only to come back and settle in Oakville, 50 miles inland. However, the idea of this was very much doubted by the residents, due to the distance they would have to travel, and the fact that there was no rotting smell.

Dog Suicide(Overtoun Bridge)

A curious and interesting case of the unexplained mysteries of our world is that of the Overtoun Bridge.
Overtoun Bridge is located in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. It has caught the attention of media due to the fact that between the 1950's and 1960's, a numerous amount of dogs have committed suicide by jumping off of the bridge, at a rate of about once a month.
Apparently that not only would all the dogs who died jump from the exact same side each time, but those who survived the fall would return later to jump again, from the same spot.

This mystery became known internationally through the media, and was a common topic of discussion and interest for many a while.





Below is a Documentary about this case, with leading animal behaviourist, Dr David Sands.

Sleep Paralysis(Night Demons)

Have you ever woken up suddenly out of a dream, only to find that you are incapable of moving?

At this point you would probably start to panic, and the fact that you might even sense another presence in the room doesn't help either.

What is actually happening to you is that you are experiencing Sleep Paralysis.

Sleep Paralysis is a phenomenon which occurs upon either entering or awakening from sleep. The effects are complete paralysis, and the inability to speak; most who try can usually get no more out than a strained groan.

Another common and particularly interesting effect that occurs during Sleep Paralysis is that many who experience it have reported feeling a heavy weight on their chests, as well as feeling an 'evil presence'. Some have even seen visual images of dark figures.

Sleep Paralysis occurs more frequently among those who have narcolepsy. It is also easier to happen when you are very tired from staying awake for too long.

Apart from the supernatural theme and explanations for this phenomenon, there is a perfectly informative scientific explanation for why this occurs.



To start, there are 5 stages of sleep. The most relevant stage however, is Stage 5: REM Sleep.

REM stand for Rapid Eye Movement, and it is during this stage that we are in our most deepest sleep, and when we dream. Now during this stage of sleep, in order to keep us from moving around in our sleep from our dreams, our brain releases a chemical which stops our muscles from reacting to our brains signals. Therefore, every night when you sleep and you dream, you are, in fact, paralyzed.

Now the reason Sleep Paralysis occurs, is that for some reason, you can wake up during your REM stage, and usually at this point the chemical is supposed to cease from being active, but sometimes it doesn't. It is because of this that Sleep Paralysis occurs.

Note: From this we can see that Sleep Walking is the opposite of Sleep Paralysis, in the sense that Sleep Walking is when the chemical ceases to stop the muscles in our body from reacting to that of our brain, thus ending up with us walking around and acting out our dreams.

Also, if the body is more exhausted, this can make it much easier for the chemical to stop working, simply because the body is still asleep, which is why it occurs in people who have narcolepsy a lot more.

Shadow People

When you are sitting down somewhere, and out of the corner of your eye, you see a flash, or a shift in the darkness. You look towards where you saw the flicker, only to find that nothing is there.

Most people dismiss this as nothing, however there is a supernatural explanation for this; Shadow People.

According to believers, they are shadow-like humanoid figures, and can only be viewed by your Peripheral vision.

They are generally believed to be evil and aggressive, although there are few who believe them to be Guardian Angels.

In the United States, Shadow People have been described as the most regularly reported paranormal phenomena.

A paranormal researcher named Heidi Hollis was interviewed several times, and she said she believes that shadow people have always existed, and that they feed
upon fear, and can be repelled by positive thinking.

There are others who believe that shadow people are
extra-dimensional inhabitants of another universe.

Below is an email regarding a personal shadow people experience in which the person caught a picture of what appears to be a shadow person.

I have always bumped into shadows ever since we've lived here. Everyone laughed at me until one Thanksgiving when my daughter took a picture of her boyfriend. When she showed me the picture, she said, "What is that?" In the photograph, she was referring to a tall, black, perfect shadow of a  man with smoke coming out of his head that was swirling and went up to the ceiling. So scary looking. I said,"That's the shadow man that I've been seeing". Now, they all believe me and now he is almost constantly around in my bedroom.

It is the same story as everyone else that's written in: darker than dark, fear of someone watching even if you don't see him and they are outside also.

Too much to write about. I just wanted people to know they're really out there. If anyone wants more info or can help me get rid of them, please let me know.

The picture was sent in with the email

Both email and picture were taken from here.