Girl who released balloon with name and address into the sky stunned after discovering who found it 10 days later
10-year-old Laura Buxton experienced one of the world's craziest coincidences after letting a balloon with her name and age on it off into the sky, as the recipient had nine eerie similarities.
Sometimes coincidences feel a little too strange to be just chance, and it makes you question what on earth is going on.
But Laura had the absolute shock of her life after experiencing arguably the world's most ridiculous coincidence.
One day the young girl decided to let a balloon off into the sky, as some so often do, and attach her name and age for a curious recipient to read wherever it happened to land.
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But where the balloon ended up 10 days later can never be explained.
The balloon travelled 140 miles over the course of 10 days, and ended up being spotted by a man called Andy Rivers from Milton Lilbourne
Noticing the balloon had a label on it with the name Laura Buxton and an address near Stoke on Trent, the man decided to take it to his neighbour who he knew had a little girl also called Laura Buxton and was 10 years old too.
But the similarities don't stop there and it set off a chain of insane coincidences for the two young girls.
Given the bizarre turn of events, the two decided to meet with the help of their parents.
And this is where things get extremely spooky.
The two girls arrived at their meeting, both wearing a pink sweater and jeans - odd, but not unimaginable.
It also turned out that they were the same height, which was unusual for their age.
Both girls had brunette hair, and had styled it in the same way.
And if you're thinking that's probably where it ends - things got even freakier.
Both girls had three-year-old black Labrador Retrievers at home, as well as grey pet rabbits.
Not only that, but both had brought with them their guinea pigs, which happened to be the same colour, with the same unique marking on them.
It's almost as if these two girls, who lived 140 miles away from each other, and were complete strangers, were actually identical human beings.
We're talking exact replicas.
The two Lauras are reportedly still friends to this day - believe it or not.
Users in the comments of a Reddit post couldn't quite believe the scenario.
But one said: "It's like winning the lottery. The odds of any one person winning the lottery are infinitesimal, but somebody winning the lottery is basically inevitable.
"Likewise, you might not have predicted this specific girl would randomly find her doppelganger, but it's not surprising that it happened to somebody, somewhere."
Another noted: "While the coincidences are pretty astounding, also consider you might write 1000 facts about each of them and it's possible the ones in the title are the only ones that match. Besides what we see here, they could be very different people."
Mia Williams