What would you do if a complete stranger showed you a photo of someone who could be your twin, then revealed she shared the name you always wished was yours, your exact career path, and a story you’d heard before about someone else entirely?
That’s precisely what happened to Reddit user Low-Site3317 during what should have been an ordinary morning coffee run. Her account, shared on r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix, reads like fiction but left her questioning the nature of reality itself.
It started simply enough. The drive-through line at an unfamiliar Tim Hortons was too long, so she went inside. The shop was nearly empty except for two men in their 50s or 60s sitting at a corner table.
“The men locked onto me as soon as I walked in,” she wrote, “but whatever, old creepy men that’s nothing new.”
She ordered her coffee and waited. Then one of the men approached.
The Photo That Changed Everything
“He just kind of stands near me so I moved out of the way and say ‘oh sorry am I in your way?’ He says ‘no no sorry, can I show you something?'”
Cautious but curious, she agreed to look. He showed her his phone’s screensaver.
“It is a young woman who looks IDENTICAL to me. I mean if you put us side by side we could be twins.”
The man explained it was his daughter. She laughed, agreed with the resemblance, and asked the daughter’s name.
Jade.
This is where the story takes its first unsettling turn. “When I was a kid all I wanted is to be named Jade,” she explained. “All my gaming tags were a variation of Jade and numbers, when I played make believe with friends I was always Jade, I even told strangers my name was Jade. It was a strange obsession.”
She smiled politely and said it was a pretty name, keeping her reaction hidden.
The Coincidences Keep Stacking
The man continued talking about his daughter. Jade was currently in Hong Kong, he said, because she’d been scammed into carrying a package to China and was arrested there.
“This exact story actually happened about 3 years ago in a town about 4 hours away to a woman my family was loosely tied to,” she wrote. “I look at him and say ‘you know I want to be sympathetic but are you fucking with me right now.'”
He swore on the Bible he was telling the truth.
The witness works in the court system with mentally ill offenders and those struggling with addiction. She started running her professional checks for signs of intoxication or mental health issues. “This man seems completely lucid.”
Then came another impossibility.
The man mentioned his daughter had wanted to get into law enforcement and was enrolled in the same school and program the witness had recently graduated from. “I am not necessarily someone who looks like I work in the field I do,” she noted, “and I definitely don’t advertise it on my person.”
The Taco Man
As the man prepared to leave, he shook her hand and introduced himself as Gary. Then he introduced his companion.
“He introduces his friend as ‘Cameron’ but says people call him ‘Taco Man’ because when he drinks he likes to make everyone tacos.”
This was her breaking point.
“My ex-boyfriend, who I was with for a very long time, was jokingly called ‘the taco man’ because he would, get drunk, and make everyone tacos.”
The men politely held the door for her as she left. She watched them drive away in a newer truck.
“I have never felt more strange.”
A Glitch in the Matrix or Something More?
Even her own family struggled to accept the story at first. “I told my mom and husband and they both were hesitant to believe it at first! I honestly felt like I must have been loosing my mind.”
Reddit users offered various theories. Some suggested the universe’s rendering system had gotten lazy. As commenter justbehereokie put it, “It feels like the ‘autofill’ option to render reality can be a bit lazy sometimes, just randomly applying our life’s details in a remixed way and playing it back to us.”
Others wondered if there could be a biological connection. “Is it possible you and the woman could be half siblings or cousins and just not know about it?” asked thecathugger.
One commenter proposed a more metaphysical explanation, suggesting that her childhood obsession with the name Jade had somehow manifested another version of herself into existence.
The witness tried to track down her apparent doppelgänger online but came up empty. “I have tried everything! I pride myself on being pretty good at finding people and I can’t find a TRACE.”
Some wondered if it could be an elaborate scam, but as commenter Extension_Use664 noted, “How would they know you would be there at that time? What would they gain?”
The witness agreed the logistics don’t add up: “To know all those little details from vastly different points in my life would be crazy… I didn’t recognize him at all and I have a very small social media presence with a different listed name given my line of work.”
The Feeling That Won’t Fade
Perhaps most unsettling was her description of the man himself. “He felt familiar but like a complete stranger at the same time.”
Whether this was an extraordinary string of coincidences, evidence of parallel lives intersecting, or something stranger still, the experience left an unmistakable mark.
As she joked to one commenter: “It’s either a glitch in the matrix or I’m being stalked! Only time will tell!”
Have you experienced a glitch in reality or met someone who seemed to be living a parallel version of your life? We’d love to hear your story. Send your report to Reports@ParaRational.com
