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Home / Lifestyle

Twin strangers: Identical doppelgangers meet

Daily Mail
1 Sep, 2015 03:30 AM5 mins to read

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Jennifer (right), 33, from Spring, Texas, found her real life doppelganger Ambra (left) , 23, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, after registering for the website Twin Strangers.

Jennifer (right), 33, from Spring, Texas, found her real life doppelganger Ambra (left) , 23, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, after registering for the website Twin Strangers.

They may be total strangers who are a decade apart in age, but two women who live thousands of miles away have been brought together after learning they are real-life doppelgangers.

Jennifer, 33, from Spring, Texas, was stunned by her uncanny resemblance to Ambra, 23, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, after she was matched with her within five minutes of joining the website Twin Strangers, which helps people find their 'identical' lookalikes anywhere in the world.

"I just put in my parameters and there she was," Jennifer explains in a video chronicling her first meeting with Ambra.

After making headlines for finding two of her own lookalikes as part of her Twin Strangers project, Niamh Geaney, 26, is now using her website to help connect others with their nearly identical counterparts.

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Jennifer noted that Niamh's meeting with her first lookalike, Karen Branigan, inspired her to sign up for the unique website.

"I was really quite fascinated with the whole thing, but especially that they reportedly shared similarities beyond their appearance," she told Twin Strangers.

"I wanted to see if I found another person that looked like me, would they act like me too? Would I feel a kinship?"

"I have always felt a bit out of place," Jennifer added. "I thought it would be fun to find someone that I might have more in common with."

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And Jennifer and Ambra's pairing may be the most shocking one yet. Both women share the same chestnut brown hair, thick eyebrows, full cheeks, and almond-shaped eyes.

When Jennifer contacted the website, she was shocked when Twin Strangers offered to fly them to meet each other.

In the heartwarming video chronicling their visit, Ambra, who flew from North Carolina to Texas, explains: "She really does have my face."

During their meet-up, the duo had their make-up and hair done in identical ways for a playful photoshoot highlighting their identical appearance.

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"There was a moment after we did our makeup that I looked in the mirror. I thought I was looking at myself at first, but the mirror wasn't angled properly for that," Jennifer recalled.

"When I realised my mistake, I turned the mirror and felt a jolt of shock when I saw us together. It was actually a pretty terrifying feeling, like seeing your own ghost."

Their amazing resemblance also left Jennifer's mother Karen and her fiance Travis in disbelief.

"It's uncanny...creepy," Travis said of how much Ambra looks like his future wife, while Jennifer's mother is filled with emotion in the video.

Footage shows the stunned mom looking at both girls before telling Ambra, "You're my daughter,' and giving her a big hug.

"You look so much like my daughter. Your smiles are the same. How is this possible?" Karen asks.

However, Ambra explained that meeting Jennifer's mom was a strange experience because she didn't know what to expect.

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"It felt weird to meet Karen. I felt like I was supposed to be meeting my own mum for the first time," she said. "It turned out she was more like my Aunt Monte than she was like my own mother."

Both Jennifer and Ambra agree that they have numerous similarities, and while they may be 10 year age difference between the two, their December birthdays are only two days apart.

They also share a love of science, horses, reading and children, however, Ambra noted, without going into detail, that their lives and how they were raised are incredibly different.

After their meeting, the two are still in touch as they look forward to learning more about each other.

It has been said that everyone has seven twin strangers, and Jennifer and Ambra think it would be possible to find their six other matches.

"Everyone should be searching for their own Twin Strangers!" Ambra said. "It was a fantastic, unique experience and I can't wait to meet my next one!"

Twin Strangers started when Niamh teamed up with two friends to launch a project called Twin Strangers.

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Niamh and her twin stranger Karen. Photo / Facebook
Niamh and her twin stranger Karen. Photo / Facebook

The aim of the social media experiment was to see which of the three could find their closest lookalike within 28 days and it attracted submissions to their website Twin Strangers from across the world. Incredibly, Niamh found Karen in just two weeks - just an hour away from her home in Ireland.

After their first meeting she said: "I was ridiculously nervous about how I would react to meeting someone who looks like me.

"For the duration of our encounter I pretty much stared at her. I couldn't get over her face.

"And some of the expressions she would pull I would think to myself or say aloud: 'Oh my God that's my face." I can't remember the number of times I said "this is so freaky'. It was truly amazing.

"I would say Karen is the shyer of the two of us," said Niamh. "But then you have to remember this was an even more surreal experience for her than it was for me. I'm the weirdo that contacted Karen and asked her to meet me."

After meeting lookalike Karen in April - and staging a photoshoot that went viral - Niamh was determined to track down her six remaining twin strangers.

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Just weeks later, the 26-year-old student and TV presenter found her second lookalike, Luisa Guizzardi, living in Genoa, Italy.

And while Niamh continues to hunt for her five other twins strangers, she isn't the only one who has found her perfect match.

Three similar British cases have been revealed; a London-based journalist who found hers in Birmingham, two male university students, also in London, and two retired men in Essex.

- Daily Mail

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