Yes, and it was a pretty traumatic experience. A friend of mine hooked up with a gal who looked like the banjo player from Deliverance, and decided that I needed to date her sister who looked like “Beaker” from The Muppet Show. Neither one of these gals were what one would call “overflowing” in the brains department. Anyway, I bailed on “Beaker” pretty quickly (like in days) and did my best to forget her. Roughly a year later, I spot “Beaker” with a guy who looks just like me! “Ye Gads!” I think. Then, a year or so after that, I spot them again, and he’s wearing clothing similar to what I have on, he’s carrying a kid, looking tremendously unhappy and “Beaker”'s at his side! I couldn’t help thinking that I dodged a bullet.
Yep, we went to high school together and were good friends. We never recognized it until people started asking if we were brothers.
Later, we’d say yes and then spin this long story about how we were twins, but were born one week apart and then adopted by different fathers but met later in life. The fact was, we were born a week apart and found some gullible people.
Someone will still call me by his name when I’m back in the old hometown, even though we’re out of high school almost 25 years. And several people have expressed surprise the his ex-wife and I haven’t become a couple, even though we live 3 hours apart and I only see her (and my godkids) a couple of times a year.
I was in a musical in H.S. and my family was in the front row waiting for the show to begin (it was a rehearsal). This was the show that publicity photos were taken during the musical. Before things started the photographer that the school hired came out and was busy taking pictures from different spots from among the seats. My mother commented to my siblings that it was unusual for me to be taking pictures when I was about to be starting the play. Then the play started, I came out - and yet there I was taking pictures of me. My mother couldn’t believe it. She swears that it was me taking the pictures and only knows it wasn’t because she saw us both at the same time.
I never did get to see what this guy looked like. But the fact that my family couldn’t tell the difference makes me wish that I had.
Lamentably, the situation you describe is not as unlikely as one might think. I’d recommend obtaining copies of your credit reports from the Big Three if you are at all concerned and haven’t already done so.
A similarly named bazillionaire in my area with a gazillion dollars in debt has held up the closing on my home, a refinance and even financing an automobile. One might think unique SSN’s would stop this from happening. It’s a never ending battle.
At my grandmother’s wake, I went out to the atrium for some fresh air and was quickly approached by some toughs from another wake.
T1: Dude, your growing your hair out.
L: Yeah.
T2: Yeah, and you’ve gained some weight.
L: Yeah.
T1: Dude, I can’t believe you showed up at your mother’s wake.
L: Well, she is my mother.
T2: Yeah, but you haven’t talked to her in ages.
L: Just trying to do the right thing, man. (exits)
I met my double, but I had to kill him. Or was it the other way around?
I first met andygirl a little over a year ago.
One of her friends best summed it up when she asked “So, besides being the same person, what else do you have in common?”
Heh.
Really, it’s beyond creepy in regards to how similar we are. We’re both lesbians, came out at about the same time, involved in the same activities, same schools, virtually identical taste in music… I could go on.
When we met each other’s parents, it was amusing, to say the least, to see the expressions on their faces. 
I used to have people tell me “You look JUST like so-and-so. You could be sisters!” I’d never met Miss So-and-so, so I’d just laugh and go on.
One night I was in the mall and I saw another woman shopping. I thought “Goodness, she looks like me!” and I wondered if this was the person other people had compared me to.
I followed her around for a few minutes, until I decided that I wouldn’t be able to explain why I was following her around and staring at her. That would have been creepy.
I’ve never met my doppleganger, but I think I bear a frightening resemblance to Xena Warrior Princess …
Apparently I have some “real” doubles, as i was alawys accused of being somewhere that I hadn’t been when I was a teen [perhaps i could bi-locate?]
The term originally referred to apparitions, ghostly doubles, so I doubt if they were ever common in any country. The English equivalent is “cowalker,” although it the German version seems to be much more popular.
Okay, this is a double coincidence, because the same thing happened to me. I was in a grocery store in Santa Cruz, where I don’t live. I don’t remember what aisle I was in, but she swung around the corner and we both stared at each other in shock. It was, honestly, like looking in a mirror. I didn’t talk to her either, because at the time, I believed the superstition that if you see your own double, you’ll be dead within the year. (I hope she’s okay!)
Not an exact double, but once I worked with a woman who had the same description as me. I mean, we didn’t look alike in the face, but a cow-orker once had the devil’s own time telling the team lead which one of us had had to go to emergency services.
“The redhead.”
“Well, they both have red hair.”
“The short one.”
“They’re both short.”
“The one with big boobs.”
“They both have big boobs.”
“The one with the glasses.”
“They both wear glasses.”
“She was wearing bright red lipstick.”
“Oh, that’s Rilch.” Our only dissimilarity!
Yeah. I met him.
It’s a really long, really sad story.
When I was in college, there was a “twin” of mine running around somewhere. Apparently she also had a jean jacket like I did, and rode a bicycle a lot, so even friends of mine would double- and triple-take before they realized it wasn’t me. When my sister arrived on campus, I had to explain to friends that she, also, was not me - people often mistook us for twins even though we didn’t see that close of a resemblance personally.
I have a friend who looks a lot like me. We have similar tastes in a lot of things, and a lot of people have mistaken us for brothers. At my mother’s funeral people, including my own relatives, kept offering him condolences. On two separate occasions his wife even mistook me for him. About the only difference between us is that he is very organized while I’m not.
We once decided that in a former life we had been the same person, either Attila the Hun or Ghenhis Khan, and had to be split up to keep us from taking over the world in our next incarnation.
When I was about 18 years old, I was camping with my parents and sister in the Bordeaux region in France. One night, we were sitting on the terrace of a fish restaurant having dinner. Suddenly, my mother’s eyes widened (I was sitting opposite), as she appeared to stare at something behind me. “Look at that guy over there! He… looks just like you!”, she said.
I turned around, and sure enough. It may as well have been me. I looked at the guy for a good few minutes, and I honestly couldn’t tell it wasn’t me. The hair, face, eyes, smile - it was all the same, 100%.
Definitely somewhat creepy, like a clone of me was walking around all these years, somewhere in South-Western France.
We never spoke, and I don’t think he saw me. I wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway.
I was at a dance during my college years and saw somebody who looked exactly like what I saw in the mirror every day, except a few years younger. He even wore clothes identical to what I frequently wore a few years earlier.
I was convinced this person was my doppelgänger and fled the scene in panic. My date thought I was crazy, but she did acknowledge that the resemblance was uncanny…
During my first year of high school I met a girl with the same initials as me and as our friendship continued over time I learned that we also shared the same:
-birthdate
-geographical background
-mexican traditions
-colour of paint in our bedrooms
-style of daybed (really rare stlye of furniture)
-type of incense in our bedrooms
-make and model of car
-height
-weight
-taste in music and sports
-preferences relating to alcohol
-preferences relating to men
-also, our mothers and fathers were the same height and weight
we practically shared the same lives before we met each other, we became very good friends but after a while of constantly being around one another, our similar taste in men got the better of us and we stopped talking to each other due to a conflict about liking the same guy at the same time…
I used to know one of them (we lived in the same dorm) and I have seen another on stage (he is a musician) and what’s even weirder is that we have the same first name. My mother has met him on a number of occasions and she keeps telling both of us how much alike we are. A friend of mine, that I hadn’t met for a couple of years at the time, once thought he had met me in the street, but most probably it was the above mentioned musician as he responded to the name.
On another occasion I met an old friend from high school in the street and he recognised me immediately as well. However, when I asked him if he was so-and-so it turned out it was neither of us. 