My body, myself?

One of the most mysterious phenomena from the fringe of the so-called "normal" human experience is the appearance of one's look-alike, also - and better - known by the German name of Doppelgänger (pronounced: dopple-GEHN-gehr).

There is an old belief still going around that supposedly everyone has a "double" or a look-alike somewhere in the world. The concept of the doppelgänger is a more sinister variant of this belief, in that the "double" isn't thought to be a real physical person but a sort of ghostly Self of the person, often interpreted as a harbinger of death of that person.

The term itself - doppelgänger - first appears in the German novel Siebenkäs (here is an online English translation), published in 1796/97 by Jean Paul. But there seems to be little doubt that the writer was merely harnessing the poetic potential of a belief that was much older than his work.

The exact origins of this belief may be difficult to determine, but it does seem to be ancient. It appears in the concept of the vardøger (Norwegian) or the etiäinen (Finnish), in Northern European folklore, for example. The main characteristic of this concept is that the apparition (or, sometimes, sounds associated with the person in question) is a predecessor of the person in question, seen arriving or performing any given activity before the real person is seen doing the same things. (A typical case is the well-known story about Emilie Sagée, to which we may return in the future).

There are many stories about doppelgängers or seemingly related apparitions. Abraham Lincoln reportedly saw a ghostly double of his own image in the mirror, which he interpreted as a presage of both his re-election and his untimely death before the end of the second term as the president of the USA. According to his wife (who was, incidentally, the creator of Frankenstein), so did Percy Bysshe Shelley, also shortly before his death. Even Elizabeth I of England and Catherine the Great of Russia reportedly saw their own doubles (and feisty Catherine even had hers shot - not that it helped much).

But there is one famous sighting that stands out, not only because it was not followed by the death of the "original", but because it appears to have been a genuine glimpse into what was the "future" of the person who saw it: Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

Goethe's testimony is all the more interesting in this context because he was in possession of a prodigiously perceptive and analytical mind, producing ground-breaking research in various fields, such as optical phenomena.

Here is what Goethe wrote in his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit, published in 1811 (the following excerpt is from the English translation by John Oxenford):

I now rode along the foot-path toward Drusenheim, and here one of the most singular forebodings took possession of me. I saw, not with the eyes of the body, but with those of the mind, my own figure coming toward me, on horseback, and on the same road, attired in a dress which I had never worn, — it was pike-gray, with somewhat of gold. As soon as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, that, eight years afterward, I found myself on the very road, to pay one more visit to Frederica, in the dress of which I had dreamed, and which I wore, not from choice, but by accident. However, it may be with matters of this kind generally, this strange illusion in some measure calmed me at the moment of parting. The pain of quitting for ever noble Alsace, with all I had gained in it, was softened; and, having at last escaped the excitement of a farewell, I, on a peaceful and quiet journey, pretty well regained my self-possession.

It is typical of Goethe, ever the scientist, to try and explain this vision.
But as reassuring as this explanation may have been to him... is that really what happened? How would he explain the sighting of very specific clothes that he had never seen before and was to wear eight years later?

And, of course, there have been many later attempts to explain this sort of perceptual anomaly. However, the most scientific-sounding explanations are often the most treacherous ones, precisely because they sound "sensible". For one thing, they tend to omit any aspect of the phenomenon that doesn't fit into the proposed theory; also, they tend to blur the difference between cause and effect. (Such is the case with the recent experiments with stimulation of the temporo-parietal lobes, to which we will return in the future.)

The "eye of the mind", of which Goethe speaks, does not necessarily reside in the brain.
As a matter of fact, the mind itself does not seem to reside in the brain (the brain being more of a processor - not a generator).

But more on that on some future occasion.

Into thin air?

Exactly two hundred years ago today something strange is said to have happened in Perleberg, Germany.

The young British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst was returning from an important diplomatic mission to Austria. On November 25th, around noon, he stopped at the small town of Perleberg, precisely half-way between Berlin and Hamburg, in Prussia.

At the Posthaus (it was exactly what it sounds like: a post house) he ordered a new set of horses and then he went to the nearby "White Swan" inn (Zum weißen Schwan, later the Hoffmanns Hotel), to eat and rest.

Around 9 p.m that evening, Bathurst was ready to continue his journey. Standing outside the post house, he was watching his luggage being loaded onto the carriage. Then, he is said to have "walked around the horses" - and disappeared. Just like that: into thin air.

The post house, the inn and other buildings around were searched, as were the nearby woods and marshes, and the river was dragged, all to no avail. Not even the reward offered for any information leading to him helped: Bathurst was never found.

At least that is how the story goes - and it is certainly one of the better known stories about "unexplained disappearances". It has captured the imagination of thousands; and while it may not have been a time slip, at least three authors certainly thought it was - or they made it into one (one each, that is):

Avram Davidson wrote about Bathurst in Masters of the Maze.

Australian author Bertram Chandler wrote about it in his 1964 story Into the Alternate Universe: Contraband from Otherspace.
The third story featuring the elusive Mr. Bathurst, by H. Beam Piper, is conveniently available to you right now, free of charge.

An old postcard of the main square in Perleberg

It seems, however, that Bathurst's disappearance might be considerably less intriguing than the vox populi has made it to be in the past two centuries.

The purpose of the British diplomat's mission had been to convince Austria to join the war against Napoleon. (The highly sensitive and dangerous nature of his enterprise is indicated by the fact that Bathurst was travelling under an assumed name and identity: as a German merchant, by the name of Koch.)
Indeed, French agents were suspected early on to have had a hand in Bathurst's disappearance; but Napoleon swore on his honour that he had nothing to do with it.

Here's what Charles Loy Fort has to say about it:

"He walked around the horses.

Upon November 25th, 1809, Benjamin Bathurst, returning from Vienna, where, at the Court of the Emperor Francis, he had been representing the British Government, was in the small town of Perleberg, Germany. In the presence of his valet and his secretary, he was examining horses, which were to carry [198/199] his coach over more of his journey back to England. Under observation, he walked around to the other side of the horses. He vanished, For details, see the Cornhill Magazine, 55-279.

I have not told much of the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst, because so many accounts are easily available; but the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, in Historic Oddities, tells of a circumstance that is not findable in all other accounts that I have read. It is that, upon Jan. 23rd, 1810, in a Hamburg newspaper, appeared a paragraph, telling that Bathurst was safe and well, his friends having received a letter from him. But his friends had received no such letter. Wondering as to the origin of this paragraph, and the reason for it, Baring-Gould asks: "Was it inserted to make the authorities abandon the search?" Was it an inquiry-stopper? is the way I word this. Some writers have thought that, for political reasons, at the instigation of Napoleon Bonaparte, Bathurst was abducted. Bonaparte went to the trouble to deny that this was so."

That may have been so. Nevertheless, in 1990 the investigator Mike Dash undertook a re-investigation of the case, and discovered that parts of Bathurst's clothing were found in the woods in the same year of his disappearance; and in 1852, human remains were found in the cellar of a local mason's house. It was evident that the dead man had been murdered. Furthermore, Mr. Bathurst's sister even went to Germany, to identify the remains...
Thanks to this wonderfully convenient extra you can read all about it here.

(Interestingly, even Bathurst's date of birth seems to have undergone a process of curious "disinformation" through the years: according to Dash, he was born in September; according to all the other sources freely available on the internet - AKA Wikipedia and all the others who borrow its information - he was born in March, either the 14th or the 18th.
Go figure.
Myself, I'll go with The Peerage, where his date of birth is entered as March 14th, 1784.)

Whatever the truth, Bathurst's disappearance remains a mystery.
And to honour its longevity, the town of Perleberg is going to unveil a commemorative plaque at the old Posthaus, in a special ceremony that is to take place on November 28th, followed by the opening of an exhibition to mark the occasion.

What I find most interesting of all - and somewhat, strangely, endearing - is that even 20 years after Dash's recapitulation of the real course of the search for Bathurst, the old version of the diplomat's disappearance is still making the rounds, unabated, with barely a mention of the evidence pointing to possible - even highly likely - murder.*

People simply love unsolved mysteries - and it's the unsolved part that they love most of all.

And why not?
They may not even know it themselves, but there is a nugget of ancient wisdom in such an attitude. More than wisdom: it's the obscure awareness that even the most (seemingly) explicable events contain a core of mystery that is linked to our deepest yearnings; that, in its heart of hearts, even the known and the mundane is - like ourselves, each and every one of us - still and forever an enigma.

For the human heart and mind, the "inexplicable" is the signpost pointing towards the transcendental.



* LATER EDIT:
I have just found a rather good account of this story that does mention the evidence. Clearly it was written by somebody who likes to think, rather than just copy and paste old stories, like so many other "paranormal" blog- and webmasters.

** For more unexplained disappearances, see here and here.