PARIS — It’s easy to do a double take when you see the shaggy dark hair, bushy beard, high cheekbones, soul-piercing dark eyes and iconic black top hat.

No it’s not Abe Lincoln.

It’s Chester Connell of South Paris who some say is a dead ringer for the 16th U.S. president.

Connell said he’s not necessarily an Abraham Lincoln enthusiast and he definitely can’t give a reason why he decided to dress up as the Great Emancipator for the Barack Obama Bash in Paris shortly after he was elected the 44th president.

Connell said he did some canvassing work for the Democrats during the 2008 election cycle and was invited to the political gathering. That’s when the idea popped into his head.

“I just decided to dress like Abe. I don’t know what made me. I went scrounging around for some clothes to wear … a hat and a long, black coat. I found something halfway like it,” he said. “There were politicians there. They wouldn’t let me take my outfit off. Everyone else was taking off their coats.”

He was a smash hit with then-state Rep. Terry Hayes, D-Buckfield, and others who snapped photos with him.

Seven years later, he’s getting ready for another Presidents Day on Monday, Feb. 16. He just dyed his beard blacker for the occasion.

“Old Abe was a pretty shabby looking guy and I am pretty shabby looking most times,” Connell said.

This year, he will make Presidents Day visits to Norway Center for Health and Rehabilitation, Maine Veterans’ Home in South Paris and Ledgeview Living Center in West Paris. He fondly recalls some of the times he played a successful Lincoln impersonator, including the first time he visited Norway Center for Health and Rehabilitation on Marion Avenue.

“The activity coordinator was Georgia-something. They asked, ‘Are you looking for Georgia?’ I almost said, ‘No, Illinois,’” Connell said, grinning from ear to ear.

He’s also traded hats with veterans at the South Paris facility and caused one who was sitting in the day room to think he was hallucinating. When Connell made his second round to the day room, the veteran asked him if he was really there. He also caused a sleeping woman to jump out of her wheelchair when a nurse woke her and she saw who she thought to be Abe Lincoln.

It’s not just seniors who Connell fools with his Lincoln-esque looks. He used to work as a school bus mechanic in Auburn and would dress up around Presidents Day for the kids.

“One of the kids on the bus asked me if I was really Abe Lincoln,” Connell said with delight.

It’s easy to see Connell enjoys portraying Lincoln as much as the people he visits. He’s also visited Oxford Hills School District classrooms, walked in the West Paris Old Home Days Parade and went Quincy, Mass., where his sister lives, for a celebration at a replica of the log cabin Lincoln was born in.

“I’ve had more pictures taken of me dressed up as Abe more than I have all my life,” Connell said. He keeps them in an album.

“Some people say they can’t believe how much I look like him,” he said.

Others have told him he looks more like Lincoln than Daniel Day Lewis in the 2012 movie “Lincoln.”

But there are, of course, some naysayers, who tell Connell he’s too short to be the 16th president. Lincoln was said to be 6 feet, 4 inches tall.

“Wait ’til you get over 200 (years old); you’ll shrink up, too,” Connell said, laughing.

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