Long-Lost Sisters Who’ve Been Best Bingo Buddies

This week I thought I’d give you a touching and amazing story from real life, a story I could hardly believe. You know that often truth is stranger than fiction. This is certainly a case that confirms the saying. I don’t want to keep you waiting, so here’s the news. Two sisters who had lived separately since birth got reunited after a long search. On top of that, it turned out they had already known each other, but by different names. They had been online bingo buddies for full eight years!

Meet Elaine Walker, 59, of Billingham who grew up with four brothers and her adoptive parents. I bet she was a happy child surrounded by love and affection. Now meet Jackie Green, 65, who was brought up by her father in Croydon. Elaine was abandoned by her biological parent as a child, and although, at present, she is happy to have found many of her siblings, she is still resentful towards her mother for leaving her. When she was 25, Elaine learned she had a sister and started looking for her. Over the years, no sign of the lost sister was found, but another sister and two brothers showed up. Elaine hadn’t known about them at all. She believes she has 14 siblings in total (I know, I know!) but the possible life hardship due to having such a large family is not enough of a reason for her to forgive her parents.

Last year, instead of locating Elaine’s sister, the hunting organisation, whose service Ms Walker used, found a deceased brother of hers. Despite the bad news, the information helped Elaine learn her sister’s surname. And then came the discovery. After Elaine searched for Jackie Green on Facebook, she found out the two already had mutual friends from an online bingo website. By and by, they became aware that they were besties on that very online bingo where the chat moderators even had a nickname for the duo, “the terrible twins”, owing to their habit to appear online at the same time and raise hell in the chat room making everyone laugh out loud.

“The terrible twins” had been friends for 8 years and were very close to each other when they realised they were sisters and finally got together on the phone. The rest is history, they say. A magnificent story, a wonderful thing to happen, I’d say. I know it’s cheesy, but this did bring tears to my eyes.