The Terror of Catherine
According to Nigel Cawthorne, in his book, Tyrants: History’s 100 Most Evil Despots & Dictators (Barnes & Noble, 2005), Czarina the Great ranked among Napoleon, Hitler, Hussein, Caligula and Duvalier as one of history’s cruelest leaders.
She proclaimed herself as Empress. Shortly thereafter, her husband abdicated his power and was murdered. She seized the serfs and lands belonging to the church and went to war with Turkey.
Catherine’s military forces crushed the rebellion of the Cossacks. She continued to tighten her grasp on serfdom. She annexed western Ukraine and Crimea and dismembered Poland, dividing the country between Austria, Prussia and Russia. She died of natural causes in 1796.
Doubles as Documented and in Folklore
Rosemary Ellen Guiley, in The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits (Facts on File, Inc., 1992) wrote about doubles. These are twin apparitions of the living that have been documented.
Bilocation is when a person appears in two places at the same time. Frederick W. H. Meyers, a distinguished parapsychologist, researched and wrote about this. In his book, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (Longmans, Green and Co., 1954), he wrote about a father and two daughters who went hunting. The girls went home early with the coachman and saw their father on their way, astride his white horse which appeared dirty and nervous atop a small hill. He waved his hat. He momentarily disappeared because the trio went down a dip in the road. When they could see the top of the hill again, he was not there. He arrived home after they did and assured them that he had not been in an accident nor had he waved from the hill.
It is possible that one is perceived by others when a person has an out of body experience, be it spontaneous or conscious. Doubles have been documented when a person was in extreme crisis. Cases where the double was seen have been reported just before the time of death or when a person was in a life threatening situation.
The folklore belief that doubles are death omen is common in the European Countries. In Irish and English folklore, the double of a living person is called a fetch. Generally, it is perceived as a bad omen, but, to the Irish to see the fetch in the morning is an omen of a long life. When seen at night, it is a death omen.
Catherine and her Doppelganger
The double is called a Doppelganger in Germany. The term translates as “double-goer.” In rare cases, people see their own double shortly before they die. One of these was Czarina Catherine the Great of Russia. She saw her own double seated on her throne. She ordered her guardsmen to shoot it and died not long after.
Catherine was not Russian. She was German. Her place of birth was in the, then German city of Stettin in Prussia.
