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Doppelgänger Day
“On a winter night I hear the Easter bell: I knock on graves and quicken the dead, Until at last in a grave I see — myself." ~ Vyacheslav Ivanov, Winter Sonnets: XI
Yikes! Seeing double in the mirror—or perhaps across the street? Welcome to Look-Alike Day, the start of Doppelgänger Week, a celebration of eerie resemblances and mirrored mysteries. Fittingly, it begins on June 9 (6/9)—a date whose digits are mirror images of each other, like numerical doppelgängers staring back in perfect symmetry.
The word doppelgänger, German for “double-walker,” originally described a ghostly double of a living person. Though often seen as a bad omen in folklore, the term itself first appeared in 1796 in Jean Paul’s comic novel Siebenkäs. Over time, the idea took on deeper psychological and symbolic meanings, inspiring countless stories of duality and hidden selves.
Classic literature is full of unsettling doubles. Poe’s William Wilson, Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and Henry James’s The Jolly Corner all explore the chilling consequences of meeting one's other self. Perhaps most famously, Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde gives us a doppelgänger of a different kind—not a look-alike, but a split personality. Here, the respectable Dr. Jekyll transforms into the violent Mr. Hyde, embodying the inner conflict between virtue and vice.
Today, the theme lives on in lighter form through internet memes, as people share celebrity or portrait look-alikes during Doppelgänger Week. Museums, athletes, actors—even old oil paintings—become part of the fun.
Even this fascinating tartan joins in, with its ghostly three-dimensional illusion and mirrored pattern in shades of black, red, and white—perfect for a week devoted to doubles. 🖤 ❤️ 🤍 🖤 👥 🖤 🤍 ❤️ 🖤
Doppelgänger Week, which occurs variously throughout the calendar is an internet game whereby users of social networking websites change their profile pictures to that of celebrities, athletes, historical figures, paintings, or friends with whom they share appearance traits. This internet meme started in 2010.
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger (literally "double-goer") is a look-alike or double of a living person, sometimes portrayed as a paranormal phenomenon, and in some traditions as a harbinger of bad luck. In other traditions and stories, One's 'double-goer' is an evil twin.
In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes in time the appearance a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance.
In Breton mythology as well as in Cornish and Norman French folklore, the doppelgänger is a version of the Ankou, a personification of death.
Designed by Carol A.L Martin, this tartan has a ghostly double pattern!
There are many famous accounts of individuals seeing their own doppelgänger. Click the twin doubles for more treatments of the double in literature.