Emilie Sagee had a ghostly twin ? that would appear to others at random moments and scare the hell out of them.
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Emilie Sagee was a perfectly ordinary schoolteacher. She is attractive, smart, and passionate about teaching. And at the mere age of 32 years, she seemed to have a bright career in front of her. Except that, fate had something completely different in store for her.
Emilie Sagee had a doppelganger, a ghostly twin that would accompany her everywhere and would choose to make itself visible to others at random moments, scaring the hell out of them.
The first time it happened when she was teaching a class of 17 girls. The twin just came out of nowhere and started imitating her actions, right from writing on the blackboard to sitting on the table.
The children got scared and Emilie was promptly fired out of the school. This cruel fate would continue for her for the next 16 years where she was fired from 18 different schools due to her ghostly twin. Strangely Emilee never knew or saw her twin.
In 1846, Emilie was hired as a teacher at an exclusive all-girls school, Pensionat von Neuwelckle in present-day Latvia. That was her 19th and last job. After that, we have no idea about what happened to Emilee and her unwanted ghostly twin.
The story of Emilie Sagee
Emilie?s story was first told by the famous social reformer and spiritualist, Robert Dale-Owen in 1860, in his book called Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World.
In the book, Robert talks about hearing the story from Julie von Gldenstubbe, daughter of Baron von Gldenstubbe, who attended the elite boarding school Pensionat von Neuwelcke in the year 1845, in present-day Latvia.
This was the school in which Emilie Sagee was employed in that year that would be her 19th and last job. The school was run by a headmaster, Mr. Buch who was quite supportive of Emilee at the beginning.
Emilie was well-liked by the students and teachers alike and soon established the reputation of a quiet, hardworking, knowledgeable teacher. The school catered to the girls of wealth, nobility, and fine upbringing, so snobbery and arrogance were very much prevalent among the girls. So in such an atmosphere, being well-liked and respected was a big achievement to be proud of.
Then the odd things started to happen.
Students and teachers started complaining about seeing her ?twin? in the classroom, imitating her actions, sitting on her desk, or even trying to fix her dress like the ?real? Emilie. Everybody started avoiding her and complaints started piling up against her on Mr. Buch?s table who dismissed them as ?crazy?, ?the girls are dreaming? or ?mass hysteria?.
The interesting part is when Emilie was asked about this, she herself was at a loss. She had never seen this twin of hers who was ruining her and thus had no control over its actions.
And the last straw in this series of unexplainable occurrences came when her twin was witnessed together by a whole classroom of 42 girls. One afternoon, Emilie gave sewing assignments to a class of 42 girls and then stepped out in the garden outside to pluck some flowers while the girls were busy in the assignment. But while she was in the garden, her students looked on open-mouthed and scared as ?another? Emilie was sitting casually in her seat looking outside at the garden at the real Emilie.
Most of the students were spooked out and ran from the class. A few however were brave enough to go and touch this Emilie. What they found was that their hands could go through her and a sensation of handling ?cobwebs? could be experienced. By the time the shouting and screaming started and the real Emilie came back, the twin had gone.
The principal was left with no option but to fire her as many parents started threatening to take their girls out of the school. Mr. Buch let her go reluctantly, despite the fact that she was one of the best teachers he ever had.
Emilie left the institution and nothing was ever heard afterward about her or her ghostly twin.
Is there any explanation?
Yes, if you use a scientific, logical mind, you would dismiss all this as hogwash. Robert was lying.
Julie von Gldenstubbe just made this story for publicity and the school just wanted to be in the limelight. But then, Emilie is not the only case in history. People have encountered doppelgangers of famous personalities from Catherine the Great to Percy Shelley and there were no explanations available to explain the phenomena.
Yes, scientific explanations do offer solutions to some cases but hundreds of them are still lying within the annals of history, unanswered across cultures and nations. Maybe it is time for us to take a step back and do much-needed deeper reasoning of their existence rather than dismissing them as hallucinations of over-imaginative minds. After all, it is these unanswered questions that make our lives worth living and thinking.
As Stephen King has rightly said.
?It?s the unanswered questions that make it worth getting up in the morning.?
About the author-:
Mythili is a programmer by passion and a connoisseur of fine arts like painting, calligraphy, and pottery. She writes in the twilight between relationships, creativity, and human behavior.
