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But some of the more exotic breeds of ghosts are so off-beat, so far out in their personalities, that they
merit a chapter of their own.
One of these odd-ball spirits is the Doppelganger, who is, in effect, a ghost of the living. He is a
"double."
Parapsychologists have a name for his condition; it is called "autoscopy."
There is a significant difference between the Doppelganger and the routine astral traveler. The Astral-
naut is out of his physical body, looking back at his shell. The Doppelganger is the shell itself, being
looked at by the physical body.
In the former case, consciousness resides in the astral body; in the latter, it remains in the mortal body.
The mortal intelligence clearly observes life exteriorization and is puzzled by it
Among the famous people who have experienced this phenomenon are Johann von Goethe, German
poet and philosopher; Alfred de Musset, French poet and novelist; Percy Bysshe Shelley, British poet;
Ernest Mach, Austrian physicist; Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and Guy de
Maupassant, French novelist.
It is only fair to observe that most of the above are literary people, supposedly possessing an over-
active imagination. It also should be noted, in the interests of scientific detachment, that de
Maupassant died a madman and it is difficult to judge, from this distant point, whether his condition
caused his phantasms or whether his phantasms caused his condition.
Let us investigate the carryings-on of some typical Doppel-gangers.
We will start with two of the aforementioned; let them state their own case posthumously:
"I rode now on the footpath toward Drussenheim," wrote Goethe, "and there one of the strangest
presentiments surprised me, I saw myself coming to meet myself, on the same way, on horseback, but
in a garment such as I had never worn. It was light grey mingled with gold. As soon as I had aroused
myself from this dream, the vision entirely disappeared. Remarkable, nevertheless, it is that eight
years afterward I found myself on the same road, and in the same garment which I had dreamed about
and which I now wore, not out of choice, but by accident. This wonderful hallucination had a quieting
effect on me."
Now we will hear M, de Maupassant's testimony:
"How would you feel if you had to go through what I experience? Every other time when I return
home, I see my double. I open the door and see myself sitting in the armchair. I know it is an
hallucination the moment I see it. But isn't it remarkable? If you hadn't a cool head, wouldn't you be
afraid?"
Always bearing in mind that distance lends disbelief, we shall now bring out witnesses down to the
present time. Eileen Garrett, surely one of the most reliable and prestigious of all psychic mediums,
tells in her memoirs of an instance when she was lying ill in Grenoble, France. She dreamed that she
got out of bed and walked to her dresser for her medicine. Then, waking up, she very clearly saw
herself walking over to the dresser again. In the morning the medicine was on her night stand within
easy reach. Was the dream trip real but somnambulistic? And on which trip did she secure the
medicine?
James Hewat McKenzie, founder of the British College of Psychic Science, deliberately got himself
stoned on one occasion, purely in the interests of science, to determine the effect of alcohol on the
etheric body. Walking along the sidewalk, he observed another J. Hewat McKenzie walking on the
other side of the street. He crossed over, attempting to join his other self, but to his chagrin, the double
was seen by him walking back on the original side of the street, where he had been. He eventually was
able to "pull himself together" and get home.
Cynics will observe that "seeing double" often results from the same stimulus as seeing pink
elephants. However, McKenzie was not customarily a frivolous man nor a drinking man. He had
experienced and recorded many psychic phenomena while in his usual sober state, and this was,
indeed, a basically serious experiment to prove what he had suspected: namely, that the threshold of
consciousness is lowered, and human vulnerability heightened when under the influence of alcohol,
drugs or anesthetics.
In some recorded instances, the seat of consciousness hops back and forth between the physical body
and the astral body, and one may be an Astral-naut one moment and a Doppelganger the next!
In one recorded case an M.L.L. Hymans, suffering considerable discomfort in the dentist's chair,
watched himself escape from himself and observe his own agony at a safe distance from the dentist's
drill. An instant later he was out of the chair and standing in the safe observer's spot where his double
had been, and the double was back in the chair wincing under the onslaughts of the drill!
Professor C.J. Ducasse in his book The Belief in a Life After Death describes the adventures of a
Mary Ellen Frallic, who, in an everyday walk along the sidewalk, suddenly found herself suspended in
the air and watching her other self. The "grounded" self evidently knew what had happened, for Miss
Frallic noted it looking upward, with an expression of astonishment on its face. An instant later and
exchange of consciousness took place, and the real Mary Ellen was down on the ground, looking
upwards in amazement at her floating double.
"This all happened within a brief time," she relates. "But it did happen. ..By going through this
extraordinary experience, I understood myself better. It proved to me that man is not alone a material
being, but a mental principle."
What does all this mean? We might find the answer in the writing of Chuang Tzu, a Chinese sage who
lived 2500 years ago:
"Now am I Chuang Tzu who has dreamed that he was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly which is now
dreaming that it is Chuang Tzu?"
16 - Ectoplasm
One of the most spectacular as well as one of the most suspect spiritualistic phenomena is the
materialization of that strange, nebulous substance known as "ectoplasm."
Ectoplasm has been created from the body of mediums and metamorphosed into recognizable forms
under impeccably controlled conditions. But it has also been faked more often than any other
paranormal happening.
The very spectacular nature of this achievement - when it is achieved-is such that it lends itself to
fakery, and of all the times that this mysterious substance has been produced, it is safe to estimate that
10% was genuine spirit emanation and the remaining 90% was black-lighted gauze.
Genuine materialization of ectoplasm is rare. Of all the successful and sincere operating mediums,
only a few can qualify as genuine materializing mediums.
Ectoplasm has been described as "a mysterious protoplasmic substance streaming out of the body of
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