Irish Doppelgangers Meet Through Online Campaign: ‘This Is So Freaky’

The doppelganger phenomenon has gained popularity in recent years, thanks to TV shows such as The Vampire Diaries and How I Met Your Mother.

What would you do though if you actually met someone who looked nearly identical to you in real life?

That’s exactly what Niamh Geaney and her two friends set out to do with their Twin Strangers campaign. Using social media, Geaney and her friends, Terence Manzanga and Harry English, started a competition to see who could find the doppelganger who looked most like themselves.

In popular culture, a doppelganger is a look-alike or double of a living person. In folklore, the doppelganger has often been portrayed as a ghost or paranormal being, as was the case in The Vampire Diaries. Sometimes, a doppelganger is thought to be bad luck.

Geaney and her friends didn’t see it that way though, and when she met her real-life, living doppelganger, Geaney couldn’t get over the likeness, she told ABC News Today.

“For the entire 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 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.”

Geaney and her friends were attempting to use the power of the internet to search for doppelgangers all over he world, but as it turns out, Geaney’s doppelganger lived about an hour from her hometown in Ireland.

Geaney’s doppelganger is named Karen Branigan, and the two women met for the first time at Geaney’s home in Dublin, according to Geaney, who said the resemblance between the two women is uncanny. As seen in the videos, both women have a similar face shape, long dark hair, and similar skin tone. Geaney is 26-years-old, while Branigan is 29-years-old.

When they met for the first time, Geaney and Branigan styled their hair and their makeup in the same way in an effort to give themselves an even stronger doppelganger-like appearance. In addition, the women donned the same clothes.

Geaney has found a doppelgänger who looks almost identical to herself, but Manzanga and English are still looking for their real-life doppelgangers. The Twin Strangers campaign, which uses Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter to find doppelgangers, lasts for another 15 days. At the end of the campaign, the three friends will put it to an online vote to see who has the best doppelganger.

Have you ever met your own doppelganger? What would you do if you found your doppelganger?