Julie Petersen's Doppleganger

Cedar: Georg von Podebrad College sophomore Julie Petersen seems to have been indirectly responsible for paranormal events on campus recently. Similar to poltergeist phenomenon (where the unconscious psychokinetic activity of small children produces ghostlike effects), it would appear that she has unwittingly created a psychic double, or doppleganger.

     The two young women assumed that the "Julie" Alicia had seen must have been remarkably similar to Julie in appearance, but nothing more. It wasn't until summer session that Julie began to get a little worried about her double.

     On July 14th, students eating lunch on the lawn of Old Main were witness to a supernatural spectacle. Standing atop the roof of Pendergast Hall was a human figure, motionless. Not even her hair moved in the slight wind that day. One of the twenty or so students present on the lawn, only one, junior Brian Kopecky, made a hasty move for the dorm. He found the hall's Resident Advisor and brought him up the narrow, rarely-used stairs to the roof hatch. They climbed up onto the sharply sloping roof and saw Julie Petersen standing quietly some thirty feet ahead of them.

     Recalls Brian, "I knew who it was as soon as I saw her. It was Julie Petersen. She was in my American Literature class that summer and was one of the most outspoken students in the class. Me and the RA called out to her to come down with us back into the building, but she didn't move and didn't say a thing. Then I noticed that she looked different somehow. Julie was real pale, and so thin that it didn't look like she'd eaten in weeks. Her eyes were sunken and had a faraway look in them."

     Julie then walked over to the far sloping side of the roof, and disappeared from view before Brian and the RA had a chance to stop her. Peering over the edge of the building, they found no trace of Julie. The drop is five stories, and there was no way she could have gotten into a window from her vantage point. The RA went to Julie's dorm room, and discovered her taking a nap. She said that she had been feeling ill with some sort of stomach cramps and didn't want to be disturbed. The RA asked why she was just on the roof, but Julie denied any knowledge of what had happened. She was also in a great deal better heath than the "Julie" on the roof. She was quite tan, and seemed at a fit weight. Spectators mused about who might have been up there, and how she could have gotten down and away so quickly, but investigation turned up nothing. At that point, Julie began feeling somewhat worried. If there was someone who looked like her acting in such an erratic manner, she wished they would stop for their own sake and for hers.

     Things came to a head for Julie Petersen in October of that year. At eleven o'clock in the evening on the 24th, Julie was cramming for an anthropology exam. Finding herself drowsy after a six-hour studying spell, she decided to get up and move around in hopes of reclaiming some energy. She left her cubicle and walked down an aisle in the bookshelves. She took her first left to go to the main hallway when she saw, standing no more than fifteen feet in front of her, herself. She was floored.

     "It was like some weird fun-house mirror," she recalls. There I was, dressed the same was, my hair looked the same, but the me in front of me was still different. She was excruciatingly thin and very pale. Her eyes looked haunted, if that's the right term for what eyes look like when they seem sunken in. I wanted to scream, even though she wasn't saying or doing anything. Maybe that's why I wanted to scream. But I couldn't. And then the most horrible stomachache I've ever had ripped through my abdomen, and I doubled over. When the pain was gone, I looked up, and so was my double."

     Making the connection between the appearance of her doppleganger and the onset of her stomach aches, Julie decided to get to the bottom of things. At the behest of a friend interested in the realm of the supernatural, Julie did research on doppleganger phenomena. Her best lead was Psychic Travels in the Astral Plane by Eudonius Silver (Fallen Oak Press, 1978). She found a chapter on Tibetan Buddhist monks who have a traditional practice of inducing psychic personas. These personas, or chu'en, are physical recreations of the individual monk, used to provide guidance for solving problems utilizing the hidden knowledge of the subconscious self, channeled through the chu'en.

     The chu'en may be created in two ways. The monk can undergo rigorous discipline toward this goal, a process taking many months and almost constant meditation. Or, the chu'en may appear involuntarily if the monk has a particularly active subconscious. This is what Julie believes happened to her. Judging by the appearance of her emaciated other self, she feels her doppleganger was warning her about her stomach pains. And her condition might have become life-threatening.

     Julie checked into the hospital the next day. Some days later, doctors removed a benign tumor from her stomach lining that was threatening to tear the stomach wall. If Julie had not sought out help, she may have been dead only a few months later. Since the library incident, Julie has not seen her doppleganger, and wonders if in future crises her double will appear again. This time, says Julie, she'll welcome her chu'en's visitation.