The case of Emilie Sagee is one of the most well-documented and fascinating doppelganger cases in history, which questions every aspect of our rational world.
Have you ever been told that you reminded them of someone they once met or that you looked identical to someone else who wasn’t biologically related to you?
Most of the time, we laugh it off as, oh, it must be my evil long lost twin, and you move on. But what if this reported double was an entity everyone could occasionally see, except for you?
Related article:- Doppelganger – The Evil Twin
In German, doppelganger translates to double goer or double walker and is defined as a ghostly counterpart of a living person. In traditional folklore, doppelgangers are considered most often to be ghostly apparitions or entities, not real people.
Some mythology suggests that doppelgangers don’t cast shadows and their reflections cannot be seen in the mirror or in water. Doppelgangers have been witnessed on numerous occasions, both by the twinning or seen individually by others.
Generally, these accounts are sightings that come and go in an instance or two, which many believe to be a bad omen or premonition of impending tragedy or death.
The creepy case of Emilie Sagee
Unlike the usual brief appearances, the doppelganger of Emilie Sagee was almost always with her. It said that she was aware of this entity. However, she never saw it.
The entity was only visible to others and only through their reaction was Emilie alerted of its presence. Its appearance typically reduced her energy level significantly, causing Emilie to become suddenly lethargic whenever it manifested.
Some witnesses reported that when the doppelganger would appear, the face of Emilie Sagee would drain of color and she would be overcome with fatigue.
Her movements became listless while in the same room as the figure, though she seemed to be oblivious to the impact it had on her appearance and energy.
Despite its credibility being questionable, mostly due to all reports and paraphrases being traced back to a single source, which was from a book published in the 1860s by Robert Dale Owens titled Foot Falls On The Boundary Of Another World, in which Sagee’s story is told.
The double trouble
Emilie Sagee was a woman who began teaching at the age of 16. Her lengthy history of job terminations might lead one to think that she was just bad at her job.
But to the contrary, it said that Mademoiselle Sagee was well-liked and was known to be a good teacher. So why then was she always let go so often and given a letter of recommendation each time?
People were not only uncomfortable with what they witnessed but were also frightened by the doppelganger figure she seemed to bring into the school with her.
This reaction to the phantom figure ultimately led to these terminations. Since her dismissal was no fault of her own, she always received a referral from her school for her actual work ethic.
She was forced to find work in new areas each time to avoid rumors reaching the new school. It’s uncertain as to when her doppelganger first appeared. But when the case was documented in Owen’s book, Sagee was said to have been at the age of 32.
So it would seem as though it’s been troubling Emilie since her early teaching days at the very least. The account took place at an all-girls school in Latvia, which was also Sagee’s last known whereabouts.
The Latvia incidents
According to the book, sightings began just a few weeks into her tenure at what was by now her 19th school, which was the Pensionat von Neuwelcke, a school for girls in Latvia, in and around 1845 or 1846, as reports vary.
The students were mainly girls who came from wealth and nobility. So snobbery and arrogance were pervasive and the fact that Emilie was well-liked and respected when she started there spoke highly of her abilities and personality.
It started innocently with Mademoiselle Sagee being mistakenly placed when someone asked her whereabouts. One student would ask if anyone had seen her and two other students would report seeing her conflicting areas at the same time.
This wasn’t an isolated incident, as it would frequently occur, leading to the girls wondering if perhaps they had been mistaken. While these accounts were often dismissed by other governesses as nonsensical, more undoubted sightings were underway.
One day while giving lessons to 13 girls, of which Julia Vaughn Goldsteuben was among them, Mademoiselle Sagee approached the blackboard and proceeded to write on it.
As the chalk glided across the board, the girls suddenly saw a twin to Mademoiselle Sagee materialize before their eyes. They claimed the twin was identical to Sagee, moving along the blackboard mimicking the motions of the real Emilie, only without chalk in its hand.
When asked about the strange event, all 13 pupils told the same story. However, the doppelganger wasn’t always mimicking what Mademoiselle Sagee was doing.
More incidents
At times, Emilie Sagee would rise from her chair and the doppelganger could be seen sitting in the chair she’d just risen from. More and more began to witness this eerie phenomenon.
Servants and students alike had reportedly witnessed the double standing behind Emilie’s chair as she ate dinner, mimicking her eating motions but without silverware or food in its hands.
On one occasion, Emilie had agreed to help a pupil get ready for a party, and as she was fastening the back of the pupil’s dress, the student turned around and saw in the mirror not one, but two Mademoiselle Sagees doing up her dress. She fainted at the sight of the phantom figure.
In another instance, Sagee was sick in bed with the flu. While lying in bed, a student who was reading to her noticed that she suddenly appeared very pale and weak.
Moments later, the student witnessed her walking around the room, despite having just moments ago appeared on the verge of fainting.
These incidents were witnessed by individuals or smaller groups of people until one day, all 42 students would witness the most notorious occurrence of them all.
The 19th termination
During class, while working on embroidery, supervised by another teacher, the students noticed Mademoiselle Sagee collecting flowers in the garden.
When the supervisor of the lesson got up from her chair at the head of the table and left the room, the people suddenly noticed Sagee seated in the same chair.
They peered back out the window to see Mademoiselle Sagee still collecting flowers, only now she moved as if she were exhausted. Awestruck, two students, the bravest of the bunch, approached the apparition, trying to touch it.
They noticed a soft fabric-like resistance. One even walked through a portion of her while passing in front of the chair. Eventually, the figure disappeared.
They claimed the Sagee in the chair was so realistic that had they not seen her in the garden before, they would have thought she walked into the room and sat down without them noticing.
Students later asked Sagee if she felt anything strange that day and she simply replied noting that she noticed the supervising teacher’s chair empty and had thought to herself that the students were surely getting into trouble and goofing off without her presence in the classroom.
The double would continue to show up throughout her time at the school; it was noted that it would be most vivid and lifelike when the real woman appeared drained and lifeless, but as it faded away, the teacher would come back to her normal self.
After being let go from the school due to dropping enrollment believed to be due to students telling their parents of the strange phenomena. Sagee remarked that this was the 19th time this occurred.
Last account of Emilie Sagee
Some say that the doppelganger may have even been a reflection of how industrious and capable Emilie Sagee wanted to be. Allowing her, in essence, metaphysically, to complete multiple tasks at the same time.
Others theorized that the doppelganger appeared to do tasks in Emilie’s dimension, but she could be from an alternate reality, in which that version of Emilie had made different choices.
She had no control over the doppelganger and couldn’t even see it. She felt powerless and at a loss of what to do. However, the consequences remained. The people around her were afraid and uncomfortable.
Many of them began avoiding her. Asked about her doppelganger, Emilie Sagee reportedly had no explanation. Owen’s book noted that Emilie left the school and went to live with her sister-in-law nearby, tutoring her young children.
Her alleged former student, Julie Von Goldstueben, claimed to have visited her, and the young children were fully aware of the doppelganger, saying they saw two Aunt Emilies. This was the last mention of Emilie and her whereabouts.
Whether the story is true or not, it is possible that since the story seems to have been passed down orally and through an elapsed amount of time, the details could have eroded and gotten lost along the way.
Theories
Sometimes doppelgangers can be spotted by friends or family members, but not the actual person whose double is being seen. This is called bilocation and was significant in the case of Emilie Sagee and her doppelganger.
Another possible explanation for doppelgangers that many paranormal investigators believe, is the idea that a person can travel through alternate realities through an astral projection.
Professor Christopher French, whose specialty is anomalistic psychology, the study of human behavior connected to the paranormal, believes that phenomena like seeing doppelgangers can be explained by the human brain.
French says that some mental illnesses, including schizophrenia or other conditions like brain tumors, can cause people to hallucinate versions of themselves or other people, which is known as Heautoscopy.
A doppelganger is now casually used as a term referring to a twin stranger or someone you don’t know and isn’t biologically related to you, who looks exactly like you.
One professor at the University College London reported in 2015 that the large number of variables when it comes to doppelgangers means that it makes it virtually impossible to calculate the odds of two doppelgangers meeting.
An assistant professor at Cornell also reported that there is only so much genetic diversity to go around. Implying that it is more likely than most think that they have someone in the world who looks exactly like themselves.
The BBC also published an investigation concluding that finding someone with an extremely similar facial structure is not unlikely.
Science vs Supernatural
While science may be able to uphold the idea that we have lookalikes out in the world due to limited genetic diversity as a tangible explanation, what can not be fully grasped are the doppelganger experiences that lean more towards the supernatural.
In cases such as that of Abraham Lincoln and the many others found in folklore of various cultures, the doubles were presumably not real people but rather an entity of the individual themselves.
Not to be mistaken with a twin stranger who, remember, is a person separate from you who is alive and living their own lives, apart from yours, these more supernatural cases are not cases of spotting lookalikes, but spotting the ghostly apparition of a person who is still alive.
The definition of what a doppelganger is seems to vary depending on whether the case is perceived as a genetic anomaly or a supernatural encounter.
Thus, even if one has a greater amount of physical evidence, it doesn’t necessarily disprove the other. They are not meant to be the same.
Either way, seeing a stranger who looks nearly identical to you or a ghostly figure who appears to be you is likely a jarring experience that may either leave you awestruck or very spooked.