I once even thought I had seen my late grandmother. Can science explain my overfamiliarity with strange faces?
W
hen I was in my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I was dumbstruck – she had passed away the year before. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn’t be her.
I’d had similar experiences all my life. Every now and then, I “recognized” someone I didn’t know. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – like my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn’t place.
Recently, I started wondering if other people have these odd encounters. When I asked my friends, one said she frequently sees people in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they’d met and people they hadn’t.
