Woman pretends to be dead twin every holiday for grandparents unaware of her death

TikTok user Annie Niu earns praise for ‘heartbreaking yet heartwarming story’

A TikTok user revealed that she has been pretending to be her dead twin sister in front of her grandparents unaware that she passed away three years ago.

Annie Niu posted a TikTok video earlier this week that has gone viral and collected more than 8 million views, nearly 2 million likes and thousands of comments.

The video showed her calling her grandparents over the holidays and posing as her late sister.

“POV: your twin sister passed away three years ago but you still haven’t told your grandparents so now you have to call them every holiday pretending to be her,” said the text overlay on the video.

Ms Niu said she lost her sister, who she did not name, three years ago to meningitis – an infection that surrounds the brain or spinal cord and can be fatal.

She said her grandparents never learned of her sibling’s death and that she pretends to be her sister to spare them the pain.

Her video received many heartwarming reactions with many users expressing sympathy and understanding. But some also questioned her for lying to her grandparents.

One user described it as the most “heartbreaking yet heartwarming story”.

“I’m so sorry Annie, it’s so selfless of you to do that to protect your grandparents even though it must be painful,” said another comment.

Ms Niu posted another video on Sunday explaining her position to her 98.6k followers. She said her grandparents, who the twins were extremely close to, may not be able to deal with the shock and she fears it may impact their health.

“They don’t deserve to die, and you can’t guarantee that that’s not going to happen if you tell them,” she explained in the other video.

“My grandparents basically raised me and my sister, so we were very close to them.”

“We are probably just going to continue making up excuses why she isn’t visiting them,” she added.

The TikToker said protecting the elderly from shocking news is part of her culture.

“A lot of y’all don’t understand; this is really common in Asian culture. We try to shield the elderly from terrible news.”

She also said protecting her grandparents and posing as her sister brings her healing and that she dreams about her.

“I dream about her almost every single night, so I treat it as I am spending half of my life with her still because I see her every night,” she said, coming close to tears.