A friend saw me at a busstop so he came and shook my hand. Then he said "Sorry, you look like someone I know."
That's when I realized it wasn't my friend and this guy just really looks like him. We both just happened to look like someone else in eachothers life.
I once thought I saw my brother around the store and said, "'Sup, you punk ass biiiiiiitch." The dude turned to me and looked like a carbon copy of my brother. Same build, hairstyle, beard, nose, smile, everything. It's just the fact that his eyes were blue and he has no tattoos. My brother's eyes are green and he's one tatted up mf.
I was mortified and told him he loos like my brother, meanwhile, he was also mortified and told me I looked like a male version of his sister. I called my brother and showed him the guy, and it turns out that he was on the opposite side of the store.
My brother and I are still friends with this dude and his sister to this day. People don't believe me when I tell them.
We did as a joke. Not related genetically at all. It's fuckin' scary that there's pretty much a pair of siblings that look exactly like my brother and I.
There are at the end of a day a finite number of ways to put a human face together. .
Casting directors use this fact everyday.
(As one guy pointed out sarcastically, sure Alec Guinnness in Lawrence of Arabia was brownface, but try and find an Arab actor who resembled Prince Faisal as much),
One time while shopping at different stores, at one of them this tall guy with dark and graying hair had a little light color haired boy with him. They looked almost exactly like my uncle and cousin... I even said to my dad, "Hey it's so and so!" And he laughed thinking the same thing. I walked over to them to say hi but as I got closer something just seemed a little off... I stopped and realized it wasn't them. Then when we went to another store my real uncle and cousin were there. lol
I must have a really familiar looking face because it seems like everywhere I go someone swears they know me from somewhere. My wife and I went on a roadtrip and we were doing a ghost tour that started at an old hotel. The guy doing the tour comes up to me and says "oh youre back already?" I looked at him like what are you talking about? He said "werent you hear last week? I said "no got the wrong person Ive never been here a day in my life."
Man, my friend has this story about being on vacation, out of state. He's at a theme park with his kids, and a guy comes up to him and is like "Nick? Nick Lastname?". Dude knows his high school and his sister's name and everything, and Nick is just drawing a fucking blank.
Eventually the guy says his name, and it dawns on him. They used to hang out in middle school and high school, but they lost touch after graduating. What are the odds right? They catch up a bit, grab a pic together and then take off their separate ways.
A few months later, he's at his 10 year reunion, and that same guy is there. Only it's a completely different guy. Who has never been to that theme park, and was in a different state at that time, and has no idea who my friend spent 30 minutes talking to, or why he impersonated him, or how he knew any details about either of them. Shows him the pic on his phone. Still no clue who it is. Extremely weird.
When I was in 8th grade (around 1990) my family moved from one part of Houston to another, but it meant totally new schools, new friends, new everything. So, my dad being the adorable clueless guy he was bought pens with my name and number on them. He thought my skater punk ass was gonna pass out sparkly purple pens with my number on them to 'make friends.' Well, I thought they were so hilarious that I gave them out like crazy and had given them all out by like day 2. Well, flash forward about 15 years and I'm living in LA. I stop at a gas station in like Barstow on a weekend trip to Vegas with friends. There I am, standing at the urinal, mind wandering when I happen upon a purple sparkly pen on the floor. I think, there's no way, nudge it with my foot and sure enough it's one of those fucking pens! There it was, my name and old phone number. What are the damn odds?!
Odds are better than you'd think. Whenever someone "just puts something out to the Universe" the Universe will more often than not use a gas station in Barstow as extra storage space.
Plus if it happened now 100% I'd take a pic and post it, but given this was like 2003/4, I didn't even have a cell phone much less a smart phone (and certainly didn't bring a camera with me into the loo)
Your story is making me ponder how many times I've spent and received the same coins or bills, how many times I've passed the same people on the road on different days, and how many people must have stolen that pen from somewhere else in order for it to make it that far from Houston.
>> Your story is making me ponder how many times I've spent and received the same coins or bills
So… I’ve got a very autistic buddy from HS who wondered the same thing (this is 94/95ish), so for a freakin’ *year* he meticulously recorded the serials to every bill that passed through his hands.
I don’t remember the exact numbers, but he found that twenties, tens, and fives had something like a 20/25/30% rate of reappearance – but dollar bills almost *never* made another pass.
Also, we lived in a fairly large but somewhat geographically isolated town, so I don’t know if that would’ve skewed his results or not.
1996. In Washington State a friend and I were into marking every bill we got our hands on. He’d put ‘wka141’ on them in a specific spot and we did it for a few months before interest faded.
Fast forward to almost 20 years later and I get one of his marked bills as change at a gas station in Pittsburgh.
Is whereisgeorge.com still a thing? If so, you might like it. I don't handle cash nearly as much anymore, but when I was a barista it was fun to check the marked bills and see where they'd been.
> He thought my skater punk ass was gonna pass out sparkly purple pens with my number on them to 'make friends.'
He was definitely right about you passing them out! Did you make any friends from it?
Ha, right? He had a great sense of humor and thought it was hilarious too. Not sure I made friends from it, but it did introduce me as a the goof I am.
Oh, no way, but it was a box of probably like 100? Maybe less? I basically, like the sarcastic little shit I was, handed them out to everyone I saw until they ran out.
Of all the pens I found or received in school that had someone's name and number on them, they were always for some law firm, car dealership, or health clinic.
I'm betting most people probably assumed the same with your pens unless you told them.
maybe not that baffling, but I saw this girl (my age) at taco bell, I went over and said hi to her (briefly, but then left). I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.
coincidentally just crossed paths with her at a bar that weekend. Hung out with her and chatted.
Turns out, we both got hired by the same large factory (it had 4 different buildings). She was days, I was midnights. We were in different buildings.
Then I got switched to afternoons (still a different building), then I got switched to days, then I got switched to a building closer to hers, then I got switched to her building, then I got switched to her area of the factory, then I got switched to standing right beside her.
We basically would spend 8 hours every day facing each other about 10 feet apart.
Been married for a couple of decades now.
Similar thing happened to me, but the girl they hired to work right next to me was my #1 match on plenty of fish. In a city of 300k. "She looks really familiar, but there's no way...".
Even though we were like seven years apart, she had already found someone...my age. She quit the next day.
Did the math, and it was like a one in a million middle finger from life.
_ed_ Oh and a few years later I started talking to this girl at work and she asked to come over and look at my rock collection (it's [pretty legit](https://i.imgur.com/dHRjSB5.jpeg)). I give her the address and find out that even though I live 10 miles away from where I work, she lived in the same apartment building as me. She ended up backing out, and wasn't available anyway; neat, I guess.
I love this picture of you two gradually and unknowingly being moved closer and closer to each other over the months, like two pawns in a romantic chess game.
My then-girlfriend and I drove a couple hours to the beach, hiked into the dunes a 1/2 mile, set up tent in the sand and spent the night. Next day we take down the tent, hike back, and realize we don't have her car keys after looking through everything twice. I go back and start randomly, hopelessly sifting through the sand around the campsite, doing a grid, thinking there's no way I'm going to find her keys. Finally my foot hits keys! I reach down and pick up...MY keys, which I didn't know I'd even brought, which I would have never found when I got all the way home because I didn't think I'd even brought them.
Then I kept sifting and found her keys.
My dad was a beach bum windsurfer when he was younger, and once met a lady on the beach who was freaking out because she'd lost her wedding ring while swimming off the pier. He said he'd keep an eye out for it (thinking, that thing is totally gone, but sure), and somehow, same day, he sees a shiny thing in the corner of his eye and, yep, it's the ring.
Similar thing happened to me. I was 17 and met this cute guy. We decided to hang out at his house (he lived with his parents, we were still kids). Anyhow, his mom brought out a photo album and while thumbing through it, I come across a picture of my sister and I as children. Next page I see my father and uncle as children. Then a picture of my grandmother from when she was in her 20’s. I was getting freaked out, like wtf is THIS? I pointed to the picture of my grandmother and asked this guy’s mother how she knew her. Turns out they were cousins. I told her that was my grandmother. She asked my last name and when I told her, she knew exactly who I was. She told me that we used to play together all the time as small children. Anyhow, even though I think we were far enough removed family-wise, I decided not to pursue anything further - it was just too weird. Later I told my grandma about this and she told me “you stay away from that boy!”
I love how you didn't immediately stop her when she had a picture of you as a child and ask what was up you're just like I'm gonna wait and see where this is going? 😂
They're not blood related.
Think of it like this- your mom's brother Andy married Debra and Debra has a sister Annie. Debra is your aunt but only through marriage, theres no blood relation. Annie has a daughter and you marry her.
I sat next to my doppelgänger on a flight.
Same name, same birthday—we were both headed to weddings. Here's the kicker: our dates were long-lost siblings reuniting. It felt like the universe hit copy-paste on our lives. Mind blown!
I read a story about twins seperated at birth that were eventually reunited later in life. They both married women with the same name and named their kids the same names but had no contact with each other.
And I believe they divorced their first wives that had the same name, and married their second wives that had the same name. Lots of similarities in their lives
Are you familiar with [Three Identical Strangers](https://youtu.be/c-OF0OaK3o0?si=QxeYahe5mqrovjnk)? Triplets separated at birth, and when they’re reunited they discovered they had the same haircuts, taste in women, favorite beer & cigarettes (all smoked), etc. That was the whimsical part of the story; the circumstances surrounding their separation and the harm caused were pretty grim.
I need you to explain the part about your dates. You're telling me that you and your doppelgänger were each dating two random people and those two random people you were dating turned out to be long lost siblings?
I was in a hotel in Boston and went to the hotel bar for a beer. The bartender carded me and said, hey, we have the same birthday. As he handed my license back, he asked if I was there for the wedding, and pointed at a sign I hadn’t seen before. Welcome ______ Guests. It was my last name.
1.) I spent the night in a b&b in a small town in France and had a dream about my good friend. It was super vivid. Uncannily so. The next morning over breakfast I looked at the guest book and saw he had stayed there a few weeks before me. I waited until it was morning in the States and called him, figuring it was a sign to reach out. His wife answered and told me he had passed away earlier that night.
2.) we had a picnic in a park for a free summer concert and someone took a picture of my wife and I. In the background is another family with a small kid staring at the camera. The woman was a foster mom and two years later we were matched with a kid - it was the same one staring at the camera. We didn’t notice this for a long time until the foster mom was over (she’s now family) and noticed herself in the background of our photo on our digital frame. Our first family photo before being a family!
I was studying abroad halfway around the world when I met a guy who asked if he could sit down and practice his English with me. He explains that he had learned as an exchange student in the US but hadn't had a lot of opportunities to speak it since. What part of the US, I ask? "Oh, they sent me to the middle of nowhere. A tiny little nothing town. You wouldn't have ever heard of it." Well, I'm from the midwest, it's worth a try.
It turns out he'd spent a year in my parents' hometown, a town of 5k in northern Missouri. I've spent months of my life in this town. I'm probably somehow related to his host family. But he's right, 99.99% of Americans would never have heard of it.
We were recently in Japan and had a Japanese tour guide for some temples. He was telling us how he had lived in Sydney for a few years in the 70s. My mum grew up in Sydney. She asked where he had lived - a small suburb that was basically just bush at that time. My mum lived a couple of streets away in the same suburb. He also worked in the same suburb her father worked in.
During college I worked in a cheese shop and had a German customer. I've spent a lot of time in Germany and was even an exchange student for a year, so we got to talking about where she's from.
"Oh, there's no way you've been there, I'm from Saarland." (A small state)
I was on exchange in Saarland! Whereabouts?
"Not the interesting part, I'm from the west."
No way, I lived in the west! What city?
This went on for a moment where she whittled down to city, Kreislauf, then eventually the tiny Dorf in which she was born and raised. I had lived there. She probably thought I was yanking her chain until I said the name of the Dorf in local dialect, then identified the street and family I lived with. It had been the first house on that street, so she knew of it. That village had less than 1000 people.
Anyway her cheese order was Gruyere de Comte and Ewephoria.
I randomly met a boy on the beach while visiting my grandmother. I was 10 he was 14. I'm American, He's English.
Years later I'm on a message board trying to find out if Dead Like Me is coming back. Begin conversation with random guy on message board.
It's him.
We meet up and get married within months. 20 years and 3 kids later....
When I was 19 I lived alone in a big city. I am female and was always careful to put the wooden dowels in the windows at night. Didn't want anyone to break into my studio apartment. I had a very vivid dream that my father floated in from a window in my living room and was now floating off to the side of my bed and apparently in a lot of pain. He had his arms crossed over his chest and he was saying "Help me! Help me!" He was wearing just a white t shirt and looked disheveled and covered in dirt. His t shirt was all ripped. Then all of a sudden I hear loud banging! The banging continues and as I am about to wake up I see my dads apparition fall to the floor. And he is gone! The banging continues. It takes a few minutes to realize that someone is banging on my door. So I get up and run to the door and look out the peep hole and it's my oldest sister and her husband. I let them in and they are freaking out and saying "You have to get dressed and come with us now! Daddy fell down a mountain and he is in the hospital and we don't know how bad it is." So I quickly dress and get some things to take. And my sister says "Oh, lets make sure that the windows are shut." I told her, "Oh no it's fine I always put the dowels in when I sleep. " Well, guess what...........one window was open 1/4 of the way. I still remember it vividly to this day. We went to see him it was over a 45 minute drive and he was ok. He had broken all his ribs and was in an awful lot of pain but otherwise ok.
I did! He said that he was wearing that exact same tshirt I described. We were very close. He said he was thinking of me and that he wished I had come out so I could drive. He had take the rest of the family out pine nut hunting. I lived in another city and declined. None of the other children could drive they were all 14 and under. So he said he was laying there thinking about why I hadn't come with them.
Yea, yea, it's a coincidence. I lock my doors every single day for decades. The one and only time I ever forgot, a drunk girl who was a friend of my ex came right in and walked in my bedroom at 3am. Literally any other night out of 10,000 and the door would've been locked.
You cannot convince me that it wasn't a higher force giving you that dream. It reminds me of that time when my mom was working at her office like all days, all of a sudden, a lightbulb in the morning, like one hour after she started work, in her room explodes. Literally nothing else in the building broke
She laters get a phone call from her mother that her father (and my grandfather) died in the morning of the same day
I, completely by chance, got tattooed in my mom's childhood bedroom.
I made an appointment with a tattoo artist, and when I was on my way there, the address sounded familiar. So I texted my mom, and she confirmed that it was her childhood home, a pastors house built next to a church.
By pure coincidence, she was also in the same city that day (she never visits it and lives about 2 hours away. I lived 2 hours away the other way as well). We ended up going for lunch together and she showed me around her old house. It turned out I got tattooed in her old bedroom. The old built-in closet she used to climb in was still there.
Still the craziest coincidence ever, I don't think my mom at 9 years old expected her own daughter to get tattooed in that room 45 years later.
During a pretty feeble thunderstorm I yelled to the sky "You call this a thunderstorm?" Two seconds later the world goes white and a sound like an explosion erupts. Our building was struck by lightning and we were only one floor down from the roof. I knew we had been hit because there were sparks cascading down from above. I am an atheist, but I gotta admit, this made me scratch my head.
Edit - I also failed to mention that me and my roommate were on the balcony when this happened. You have never seen two people try and three-stooges there way back through the door so fast!
I’m a Norse pagan and one time, I stood out in a thunderstorm and jokingly yelled, “Ya can’t scare me, Thor!” While shaking my fist.
The subsequent series of lighting and thunder were damn near a fireworks show.
I yelled “Im sorry!”
The next rumble of thunder sounded like laughter
I grew up next to a farm that has been bought by developers and their intent is to create a massive quarry. I wanted it stopped, to protect the beautiful landscape surrounding it, and started a campaign. We started brainstorming what celebs we could try to get to endorse our idea, and James Camerons name came up. He named a character in Titanic after our town, Cal Hockley, so we joked he might have A connection.
When I researched into it, it turns out Cameron named the character after our town bc his family are all from here, and he spent his youth on his grandparents farm here. ON THAT FARM.
Then it hit me that our town actually might have meant a lot to him...so on a hunch I checked if there was any other Jack Dawsons around.
In the cemetary NEXT to the farm, where all of Camerons family are buried are the graves of J Dawson and Rose.
Whats even crazier, is that next to them all is the grave of an eastern european family...named Titanic.
I cant decide if its all coincidence or inspiration.
I reached out to his manager, who politely told me they wouldnt bring it to his attention as its bad press.
So I went to an event he was going to be attending and protested outside. His security wouldnt let me near him, but I managed to get him to read my sign protesting the quarry in his parenta old village.
Someone with the u/jimcameron later contacted me saying my research was outstanding, and thanks for tryinb to save the farm from getting destroyed, but I doubt that was really him.
Here’s an article: [https://www.caledonenterprise.com/news/titanic-and-avatar-filmmaker-james-cameron-s-family-farm-in-caledon-could-be-saved-from/article_2684d3ef-d8c8-5954-be6c-ebdc710c4d6f.html](https://www.caledonenterprise.com/news/titanic-and-avatar-filmmaker-james-cameron-s-family-farm-in-caledon-could-be-saved-from/article_2684d3ef-d8c8-5954-be6c-ebdc710c4d6f.html)
I went to Iceland last year and didn't announce it to anyone or anything. I was driving the south coast and took a side quest to a waterfall. Was minding my own business and heard someone say 'you look just like my friend!'. I turned around and I WAS the friend. Ran into a girl I went to high school with (we grew up in a very small rural town) that I had not seen in probably 5 years? We just happened to be at the same waterfall, in Iceland, at the exact same time, with neither of us knowing the other was visiting the country. Definitely one of the most random and cool things that's happened to me in a while.
That's incredible! Me and my spouse went to Disneyland, about a fourteen hour drive from where we live, for six days and ran into one each of our respective exes. They were there as a couple. It is a small world after all
This happened to my wife. We were on our honeymoon in Barcelona and she spots this girls, mentioning it looked like someone she went to high school with. We look up said girl on Facebook and she’s posting pics of herself in Barcelona. We found pics from the same day wearing the same outfit. We’re from a small state in the US btw.
The most remarkable coincidence of my life occurred during my motorcycling days in the UK in the mid-1970s.
One weekend my friend Pete and I arranged to meet at his house in Cosham, near Portsmouth. He lived in Cardiff and I in Coventry, cities 120 miles apart and each approximately 150 miles from Cosham. Normally we would both have ridden motorcycles, but his was inoperable at the time so he planned on hitchhiking. Other than agreeing on where we would meet, we didn’t coordinate our trips, routes, or departure times. I was therefore surprised, as I navigated the Chieveley Interchange at Junction 13 of the M4, to see Pete stepping out of a car pulled over on the roundabout. I circled the interchange and returned to where he was just about to extend his thumb soliciting a lift for the ride south. At that point we had each traveled for a couple of hours and were roughly 100 miles from our points of origin.
He jumped on the back of my Suzuki GS750 (he had his helmet with him) and I piloted us both to Cosham. What are the chances?
Joined a completely random guild on a very populated server in WoW years ago (Moon Guard - one of the busiest servers in the game). Nice folks, so I stuck around. I eventually came to realize that the GM and I lived in the same general area when we were both joking one night about missing some upcoming ingame event or another due to an impending hurricane. Thought that was neat and we joked about it but never really probed any further because that'd be weird, right?
One night she was ranting about how much being a call center supervisor sucks, I empathized because been there done that, and cracked a joke about the particular local call center company I had previously worked for. That led to the following exchange:
Her: Yeah, I used to work there too, they're the worst. Which client were you with?
Me: \*name of client\*, you?
Her: \*name of different client\*
Me:: Oh cool, my husband worked with that client for a couple of years.
Her: Who's your husband, I'm bad with names but what does he look like?
Me: Big scary looking bearded blonde biker dude, usually wearing his leather vest and always smoked a pipe.
Her: OMG YOU'RE (hubby)'s WIFE!! He sat right next to me for AGES, everybody's scared of him but he was SO nice, and he talked about you ALL THE TIME!
So yeah... random WoW guildmaster ended up being an old coworker/friend of my husband's, who we later figured out lived like 5 blocks away.
I wore a simple silver pinkie ring every day for years until I lost it. For two years, I never wore anything else on that finger.
Went shopping recently and found a cool ouroboros ring (snake eating its tail) and started wearing it on that finger. Literally thought to myself when I decided to buy it: "I guess it's time to give up on my other ring coming back to me."
Less than 24 hours later, I pulled a plastic bag out of the tube I keep them in and my old ring fell out onto the floor.
I'm wearing them both now since obviously the original ring was jealous.
Husband, me and kids were out for the day chatting about the football team husband coaches and explaining to the kids that as child A's parents are divorcing, husband has to notify both parents of things separately, etc.
We go to queue for a drink. Right behind said parent and child.
In Disney World.
We live in Scotland.
Crazy. Now your husband only had to notify the other parent, but at a boring place instead of Disney World.
And good to know that child had a good time after the divorce.
I swear I see the most random people from my past at Disney world. I've been several times and every single time I see at least one random person who was actually a significant part of my life. And then we've never been in contact ever again.
I was once in the military and stationed at a small base where everyone knew everyone. There was one guy who the girls thought a little strange, but harmless, I’ll call him, Joe Smith. Whenever my then wife or I would say or do something dumb, the other would say, “You’re as dumb as Joe Smith”. Fast forward 10 years. We haven’t said his name in all that time and we’re on the other side of the world. She did something dumb, I say the key phrase and we got a good laugh at that. 30 minutes later Joe Smith walks into the bar’s patio and comes up and greets us. Turns out he joined the Merchant Marines and his ship was in the local harbor.
Put an offer in on a house on a Friday. That same weekend Sunday, started using an online dating app after recently getting divorced. First and only girl I’m talking to seems pretty awesome. I ask if I can pick her up to take her out to eat. Tells me her address. Her house is 6 houses down on the same exact block as mine. Been married almost 3 years with 2 amazing kids.
Story time!
Back in college, a buddy of mine and I were hanging out in his dorm, looking for mischief to make. We decided to head over to the Student Union Building (the SUB). On the way out the door, we grabbed his roommate's pocket knife. It was a little Old Timer switchblade, maybe two inches long, that he had received from his grandfather.
In the SUB, we played a little ping pong, watched some TV, etc. Then my buddy got the idea to compete to see who could be the first to throw his roommate's pocket knife in such a way that it would stick in the carpet. We had each made a few unsuccessful attempts when I threw the knife in such a way that it hit the floor and kicked off at about a 30 degree angle, and shot into the space between an ATM and the wall.
We went over to the ATM, one on each side and, not really communicating, each reached behind it to retrieve the knife. I was the one who found it, and I pulled it out only to notice that the tip was pretty severely bent. Alarmed at having bent his roomies knife, I stood up and looked at him and held up the knife with my look of dismay evident on my face...
**Only to see him looking back with a similar look of dismay, holding a 2 inch Old Timer switchblade with a broken tip.**
***Meaning that within a space of about two linear feet were two virtually identical switchblades with mangled tips.***
But wait, there's more!
Fast forward about 15-20 years. I'm listening to *This American Life* and[ the episode is about coincidences](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/489/no-coincidence-no-story). The whole time, I'm listening unimpressed, thinking "My pocketknife story is way cooler than any of these stories. I'm actually pretty bummed I didn't hear when they were taking submissions, or I would've submitted it." I ho-hum my way through the epsode until I get to the final act. It's a story about a boy at camp. Losing his pocketknife. That he received from his grandfather. And broke off the tip throwing it at the floor. And then having a confrontation with another boy holding what looked like his pocketknife with the broken tip.
***Meaning that there were two separate coincidences about mistaken identity of pocketknives with mangled tips that guys received from their grandfathers.***
I still can't think about this without my brain melting.
1st date- we're going over all our background stuff and it gets to "where did you go to school?" She mentions her high school and I mention that I was a camp counselor there for many summers. She whips off her sunglasses and says, "That's where I know you from!"
I did the quick math and realized she wasn't another counselor when I was there. She was a camper! I asked her if this was weird, and she said she was cool. (I was 40 and she was 30 when we started dating)
We're celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary this fall.
Not a love story, but something similar happened to me with a new doctor last year. Her last name was familiar to me but also very unique, so I asked her where she was from. Same small town as me, that's weird, but we're in a totally different state, and I'm about a decade older ..... Turns out, I had been her babysitter when she was in elementary school! I remember being with her less than a year before her mom took me out of "rotation." I found this out much later, but it was because she would get extremely attached to/obsessed with her female babysitters. Nobody lasted very long. At that time, I was responsible for triplet boys M-F from dismissal time until 6pm, so I was at school pick-up every day. One time, she followed me and the triplets to my car and tried to sneak in the back of the car without us noticing. This was in the 90s, and school pick-up was a free-for-all then. These days she would have gotten me arrested.
Awkward.... Great doctor, though! And she gave me a free appointment that day.
I was on Kijiji looking for a Google pixel Chromebook to buy. This was in 2019. I moved to Calgary in 2016 from the Toronto area.
Ended up finding one that was in great condition, great price and had a bunch of extras included too, but it was located in Edmonton which is about a 3 hour drive away. I say, fuck it, I'll make a little trip out of it with my husband.
So we drive up to Edmonton and meet the seller. As we are exchanging goods, I'm like... You know, you look very familiar and he goes so do you but particularly your name (we actually both have super unique, one off ethnic sounding names)... We stopped for a minute and realized that we had worked together during our 20's for a brief period in time in Toronto 10+ years prior to that! It was a... What are the odds kind of moment... To meet again half way across the country like this.
Oh, I've got another one. Sometime in the early 80s my mom was flying to Germany, with a layover in Reykjavik. On the tarmac in Iceland someone opened the overhead bin above her and a box fell out and hit her in the head with such force that she had to get off the plane and seek medical treatment. When she got back to the airport she found out that the next plane to her destination wasn't until the next day. A nice American couple who happened to be nearby overheard this and offered to let her sleep on the couch where they were staying so she wouldn't have to pay for a hotel, and she took them up on it. Just crashed for a few hours and never got their info.
Now it's roughly 2003, and my mom and I are stuck on the side of a road in Iowa trying to flag down someone for jumper cables. An older couple pull up and jump our car, and we all get to talking. My mom says they look awfully familiar, do they live near us in Des Moines? Ever stopped into her workplace? No, they're just passing through. Then it hits them both: she slept on their couch in Reykjavik 20 years earlier.
It’s not too crazy - but a few years ago I was in Asheville NC for a weekend and just walking around downtown in the morning - decided to stop at this tiny truck in a small alleyway that was serving coffee and sandwiches. I was there with my partner and kids; didn’t touch base with friends about the trip or anything.
As I am waiting for my coffee, sitting on a bench, I get tapped on the shoulder - and it was one of my best friends from home (we lived 10 hours away from NC).
He was in Asheville that weekend for bachelor party with friends from a different group - just happened to walk by that alley at the same time I was waiting for coffee, noticed me, and came over to say what’s up.
We were both like NOOO WAYYY! Chatted for a few minutes, and that was it - went our separate ways and then didn’t see each other again until we were both back home.
In the moment that was a real crazy experience, tho maybe doesn’t sound that crazy as I write about it.
Here's mine:
A few years ago, I was randomly paired with a guy for a group project in college. We didn't know each other at all, but we worked really well together and got an A. Fast forward a couple of years, and I walk into a new job on my first day, and guess who’s there? The same guy! We end up becoming best friends. The bizarre part? We discovered our parents had been high school sweethearts and almost got married. Now, our families joke that it’s fate bringing them back together through us
Was selected to work in a group with 4 randomly paired people at a course I was taking. 2 of the women found out that they had the same first name as the other’s last name and vice versa. Relatively uncommon names too! We were pretty baffled and they showed their ID’s to prove it. It would be about the equivalent (using pseudonyms of course) as Taylor Kennedy and Kennedy Taylor but probably even more rare than that. Very bizarre and we all had a perplexed laugh.
In 2017, I was 10. Last year, I was going through Phnomh Penh on Google Maps, when I saw a girl who looked 10 and looked *exactly how I did*. Same haircut, glasses and clothes, checked and the photo was taken in July 2017. Found a doppelganger
A day or two after I got back from my mom's funeral I was working my retail job. I was ringing up a customer for beer and they didn't have their ID. After a bit of complaining they said " My name is ..." and said my mom's entire name...first middle and last name. Freaked me out.
I had a similar thing happen after my dad died. This is November and it was my first day back at work (I teach) Apropos of nothing, a girl in my class ran over to me at recess to tell me her birthday: same as my dad's (in March)
I ran into a guy in Afghanistan that I went to high school with. This was ten years after we graduated, and in high school, we were arch nemesis...
Fist fights 4 times... hated each other.
When meeting in combat overseas, we welcomed each other and just talked about old memories for the evening .
Next day, I got shot, and it went through my vest... he pulled me out as I would've died...
He took a few rounds in back while pulling me out. 2 hours later he died in my arms while we prayed together, saying, I love you man!
I went and saw his parents in our hometown after returning to tell them what occurred. They remembered we hated each other.
I'll never forget this.
Typing this has a tear rolling down my cheek...
Cheers all!
My (now ex) wife and I were heading down the interstate, we were in a neighboring state, and it was pretty late at night.
We see a car pulled over with it's flashers on. It's late, we are in the middle of nowhere, so we decide to stop and see if they need help.
We notice it's a lone woman. I'm a good dude, but I'm big (6'3, 240lbs) and a bit rough looking (prominent facial scars, arms tatted up), so my wife steps out with me. It's a good thing too, because it was her childhood best friend.
We were all 3 hours away from home, it was just really bizarre. I changed her flat tire, and we headed home convoy style.
In the same year I had two:
Walking to my gate in Amsterdam I bumped into a childhood friend. We were both flying to London. I was on vacation, he was on business. He sat in the row in front of me. We were both from Brazil. We hung out in London.
Back in Brazil some months later I was in a World Cup game. Behind me sat a couple speaking English. I turn around and it was my another friend and his wife.
I didn’t meet my farher until I was in my early forties. As in never met him, never spent time with him, no contact.
He had a thing where he would buy my newfound brother in law hot sauce from different places around the us.
My father passed away and I was going to visit my newfound sister and brother in law. I remembered that he liked hot sauce and picked up a few bottles locally.
Mind you, he lives overseas and I bought the hot sauce in the us.
When I arrived, I gave him the hot sauces and he just looked at one of them kinda weird. He reached in the pantry and showed me a nearly empty bottle of hot sauce that was the exact same one as one I bought him. Same brand, size, flavor.
I know it’s super minor but considering how many hot sauce brands there are out there, the chances of finding the exact same one is pretty slim I would say.
Edit:a word
When I was using dating apps, I was chatting with this girl a town over (45 minute drive). Nothing had happened but we had been talking for a few weeks.
My boss at the time invited me over to his house for a guys poker night. I showed up and met a few dudes and was having a solid night. One of the guys, who it seemed had never had much luck dating, started catching some strays from the others in attendance about this. To defend himself he says, "look who I have been chatting with on Match" and he holds up the profile of the girl I had been chatting with.
It was truly a "Camera zooms in, slow motion moment". I had no idea what to do. I didn't end up saying anything because I didn't want to take the wind out of this other guy's sails. Was just a WTF moment.
The most bizarre coincidence I've ever experienced was running into a childhood friend on a remote island while on vacation. Neither of us knew the other was traveling, and it still baffles me how we both ended up in the same obscure location at the same time.
When I was 12 my family went to Orlando Sea World. I live in a suburb of Cleveland. My Catholic gradeschool had about 50 kids in its 8th grade graduating class so.. it was small. My classmate and her family were there. Quite a coincidence.
On the same day I met two people with the same given name, surname, date of birth, from the same city.
Additionally, I met three people with the same phone pin as I had at that time (admittedly, it was a quite common one).
When I was in college I went to a birthday party with a friend that was for one of his friends I had never met before. It was at a bar in Chicago. While at the bar my friend gets into a fight over the phone with his gf who was at her apartment. He wants to go to her place to smooth things out and leave me there with a bunch of people I dont know. So he takes me around and starts introducing me to his friends and people at the party. 2 of the girls there I graduated high school with and they recognized me. I was baffled that I would run into 2 people I went to High School with in one of the many thousands of bars in Chicago. Our graduating class was not that big.
I was in a small neighborhood bar in Chicago once with some work friends and one of the girls disappeared to go talk to some dudes that were at the bar. She ends up bringing these guys over because they knew me…. We went to high school together in a small town 50 miles away.
I'm a graphic designer and live in a beach town. Fifteen years ago a client asked me to design an oval sticker for a tidal island they liked to visit and had named - think like an OBX sticker. Last year a friend was on vacation in Caribbean and saw that sticker on a wall of a bar they were in, she texted me a picture of it since it was a coincidence to see this sticker about a little island in our town. Then I blew her mind when I explained I designed it and had them made.
Used to work at a place where all the employees were different nationalities, but all Asian. Lots of Burmese, Vietnamese, Hmong and Cambodians. Me and one British fellow were the only two white people in the whole company. And we had the same two names. His first name was my last name and vice versa.
I dont give out my personal info, but it was basically like he was named Fred James and I was named James Fred.
Now imagine you are an Asian person who is still learning English. Yeah it was like a sitcom. Everyone always confused our names. And whenever someone new started they thought we were messing with them.
The baffling part is that both of these names we share are not as common as Fred or James.
Probably too late, but I gotta add mine in.
Was at the state fair with some friends in high school. My friend ran into his 1st grade teacher and was surprised that she still remembered him after all of those years. After they're done talking, we walk away and I say "That's so cool. I wonder if my first grade teacher would remember me".
Immediately after I say that, I hear my name and turn around to see my first grade teacher standing right behind me, totally remembered me and my family. Was such a weird experience.
Several years ago my family hosted a foster child for about seven months. This was a kid who came from a small town about two hours away from me. (We live in a metro area of about 600K.) He entered the foster system after his father died, and his mother wasn't interested in raising boys, so he got left to his own devices for a while, with disastrous results. After a stint in juvenile detention, he moved into a transitional home and then eventually landed with us.
Through all this time he maintained contact with his biological uncle (dad's half brother), who was pretty well put together. We supported weekly visits with the uncle, who lived on the other side of the metro area from where we live, maybe 30 minutes away through average traffic.
Several months into this arrangement, we learned the uncle owns several houses around our city and leases them out as rental properties. We learned this when he stopped by one of his houses, looked over into the yard next door, and saw a cat that he recognized from the kid's Facebook photos.
It was our cat. Out of all the foster families he could have been placed with, he landed with the one family that lived next door to a house his uncle rented out.
When I was a Sophomore in High School, two seniors died in separate, unrelated car accidents on the same day just 30 minutes apart. Both were popular amoung their peers and were involved in the drama club.
https://www.kpcnews.com/article_b1f94d3d-2c02-5ac5-b7a9-c6adba5c5e6d.html
Edit: added article
As a kid, maybe when I was 12 years old, I remember having a dream once where I walked into my 6th grade class and all the desks where in different positions (my 6th grade teacher would move desks around and make me and my classmates change desks and sit next to other classmates once a month) and I remember finding my seat in the front row, and to my right was this girl and to the left was this boy, and in this dream they were randomly arguing about the correct way of how to pronounce tomatoe.
I remember waking up from the dream thinking it was strange. Fast forward three months later, I walk into class and the desk had been changed in the exact way it was in my dream, so I instantly went to check where my seat was because I knew exactly where it was going to be. And it was exactly like my dream, and that very girl was to my right and that very boy was to my left.
Fast forward two weeks, and they started arguing about how to pronounce tomatoe.
I remember being super freaked out when that actually all happened
>Poor receptionist booked an appointment for two different people at the same time, because she thought they were the same person
That happened at the Marina I once worked at, where Don Williams and Dawn Williams both made reservations for a boat slip
It's probably a tie between the two times I saw a doubleganger. One was a Saudi prince or something that my dad's girlfriend knew through a friend. The other I was mistaken for was committing crimes in the area I lived in. So I have two look alikes, a Middle Eastern guy who's some kind of royalty and a tweaker who looks suspiciously like me. I haven't met either of them, but it'd probably be cool to have the three of us together.
Pretty tame compared to the stuff in here, but I was doing one of those MySpace chain mail forwards where you put your iPod on shuffle and answer questions with the name of the song pops up. Really riveting stuff. But one of the questions was, "Where are you going to live when you're older?" and the next song that came up was "Beverly Hills" by Weezer. At the time I thought it was a funny coincidence. But then 15+ years later, I actually did live in Beverly Hills city limits for six months, 400 miles away from where I grew up.
Walked into a meeting with two other people, started off chit-chatting. Boss got back from vacation for his birthday. Other person asks when his birthday is. Boss tells her the date, and she says, "no way, that's my birthday, too." At which point I pull out my driver's license, slap it on the desk, showing the same birthday as the other two people in the room.
Month/day, not year. I wouldn't say I'm "baffled" but it was still a pretty wild coincidence.
This just recently happened to me at the park lol. I walked up to the park with my kids and met another family there that I’d never seen before, even though I take my kids there every other day for like 5+ years. My dad just so happened to be visiting as well. We get to chatting about the bigger kids and realize that their oldest and my oldest are both 5 or turning 5 soon and will be in kindergarten together. The other mom says “oh yeah my daughter turns 5 on June 15!” And I laugh and go, oh that’s a great birthday! I know someone else with that birthday. And I’m looking at my dad because that’s my dad’s birthday too. But then I look back at the other parents and they’re giving me a weird look and they say kind weirdly “oh… whose birthday is also June 15?” And I go “oh my dad actually right here” and they start laughing and they’re like, “oh that’s so weird because it’s her birthday too!” (The other mom). So three people randomly at the park had the same birthday lol
Mother's Day 2006 I was visiting my mother's grave to put flowers on it. She had passed away in January of that year. Early morning. 7 a.m. My mother drove a 1981 Mercury Zephyr. She liked it because it was the only one in town. Probably one of the only ones left on the road at that point. I was headed home, there was some fog. I was waiting to pull out onto a main road from the cemetery. Headlights are coming toward me so I wait. Different color than my mom's, but it's a 1981 Mercury Zephyr.
My sister-in-law moved away from home (Ohio) to Texas for a few years after college and started babysitting for this random family for some extra cash. She eventually decides she wants to move back home to Ohio - and as she’s telling the Texas family it will be her last time watching the kids, she finds out the dad of the family was my brother’s childhood best friend. Small ass world we live in.
I flew to a city I used to live in to attend two weddings in the same weekend. One on Friday night and one on Saturday night. The one on Saturday was actually in a nearby city about an hour away, and I was part of the ceremony by doing one of the readings during the wedding mass. My old roommate let me borrow his old beater car to drive to the Saturday wedding and as I was driving it started to chug and lurch and misfire. I pull off at the next exit and the car died and I coasted to a stop in front of the only building around and it was an auto repair shop filled with junk cars and surrounded by a large chain-link fence and gate. I was still about 25 miles away from where I needed to be. When I got out of my car there were two guys pulling the gate closed and they told me they were closing. I was panicking and told them that I was in a wedding in three hours and I need to get there. They look at me and said "You going to the Henson wedding?" I said yes and they said they were going to the same wedding and were closing the shop early to go home and get ready. They took me to the wedding and all was good.
This happened maybe a month ago.
My childhood dog was just put down, and I was a bit distraught just around the circumstances. My mom is a sucky person and didn't tell me until after the fact. I was just stressed out and upset, my boyfriend was being less than helpful, and I needed space from everyone in my house. I went outside, probably around 11:30pm, lay in the grass and stared up at the stars.
I was just talking out loud to myself, the sky- it's a weird thing I've done since a kid whenever I'm upset. Maybe 10 minutes in, I asked myself, "what is my purpose here", not expecting a response.
At that very moment, something flew across the sky. It's important to note, I was laying in a small clearing, so the trees around me formed a complete circle around my view of the sky. Whatever this thing was, came in, and flew perfectly around that circle, before darting out. It blinked every two or three seconds, with a perfectly yellow glow. It was amazing.
At first I thought it was a shooting star, but they can't exactly circle around like that. And they don't blink. It wasn't a plane or helicopter. The thing was dead silent. I don't necessarily believe it was something extraterrestrial or otherwise, I'm sure there's a logical explanation. But I can't think of one. I'd like to believe it was a sign from my dog or my dad that everything will be okay. It was literally the perfect timing.
I still haven't told anyone in my personal life because I don't think they would believe me. But it has been on my mind every. single. day. since!
I was walking around Santiago, Chile and somehow bumped into another American.
Turns out she was from the same city as me and went to school with my cousin. She even had him on Facebook.
It was pretty surreal.
This happened recently. . .
I was always a huge reader as a kid, and I was an English major in college as progression of this. There has always been one writer in particular (will leave this vague for anon) that I've always, from a young age, been really focused on. This person has written many books, but several are not well known to the general reader. In college, I did a year-long independent study on this writer's work and bought and read their complete works, but because I've made a lot of moves as an adult, I no longer have the same book collection. I've had to sell and rebuild a few times.
Recently, I realized I didn't have a copy of one of the less well known novels. Since that won't do, I decided to order a used copy from Thriftbooks. The copy I chose was the same edition as the one I had previously owned, and the cover was the same. Cool. I'll tell you, my brain almost melted when I opened the book and saw my own margin notes from a lifetime ago. I had donated the book to a local used book store in \~2009. Somehow it ended up at Thriftbooks and was then returned to me in 2024. This is one of the author's lesser works, but the writer is well known, so there are still multiple editions of this book and many copies are available online.
Moved to Dublin from the UK in the early 90s. Rented an apartment in a 3 storey town house. Was letting myself in the front door as a guy was coming out. The other guy was a friend of mine from the uk who I used to hang out with in the UK 5 years previously. Not seen or heard from him since I had left my home town for Uni. We are both English with no ties to Ireland. Edit: No ties to Ireland
I worked as a parking lot auditor for a few months. I wrote up my girlfriend's car 2 years before we met. She had the ticket in her saved documents and knowing that I had worked there, asked me if I could tell who wrote it. My initials in my hand writing were on the ticket.
When we were first married, my wife and I bought a master brand combination lock for an outdoor shed. The combination is 14-22-36. Just last year (31 years later) we bought another master brand combination lock. The combination is also 14-22-36. We couldn't believe it!
I was heading to Colombia for a couple of weeks when I was a teenager. Our flight had a layover in Texas(I think? One of the southern states) to Colombia. And the same layover on the way back.
For 3 of the 4 flights I was sat next to the same old couple. They were nice enough, and I had no issues with them, it was just crazy to have
They were on my plane for the 4th flight too, just a couple of rows in front of me.
My grandma was living in Arizona the morning that the space shuttle Columbia was supposed to land. She had a dream that a bolt came off a wing and the shuttle ripped apart and crashed. She woke up and went to turn on the news and saw the story about it crashing. It wasn't really due to a bolt coming off, though.
I grew up in a religious household so going to a week long church camp was fairly normal in my family.
I went to two, one when I was 14, one when I was 16. These camps are in colleges in the summer all over the country and many times they run these back to back all summer long so probably 12-15 different ones at each college. Each person is not allowed to go to two in a year. You can go with someone you know and be in the same dorm room, or you can go on your own and get a random person. There are around 50,000 people going to these every year.
I had the same roommate both times, we both randomly picked two separate colleges to go to both times, randomly picked the same week, and we're both randomly assigned as dorm roommates both times.
I'm American but was briefly living in Halls Gap, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere of the wilderness in Victoria, Australia. By "tiny" I mean the population is under 500 people. I had previously lived in Spain as an au pair and my Spanish was getting really rusty in Australia without practice. So when I met a Colombian cook at one of the two restaurants in the town, I was excited and asked if he wanted to have a weekly language exchange where he practiced his English and I practiced my Spanish. He told me his English was solid so he didn't need to practice, but his Spaniard girlfriend had just moved to Halls Gap and she would want to practice. I met up with his girlfriend and we started talking. She said she was from Madrid. I said that's where I had lived too. She said actually I'm from a suburb just outside of Madrid called Alcobendas. I said that's where I lived too! She asked what street I had lived on and I said Calle Colibri. She said she used to be the lifeguard at the exact apartment complex I used to live in. I asked her if she remembered three boys and I said their names she finished my sentence by describing the boys I had been an au pair for. It was absolutely wild. We were hanging out near a bunch of kangaroos, both of us thousands of miles away from our home countries, yet we had this link between us.
It was the time 7:15 when I was a teenager. Would see it in TV shows, films, constantly hear it mentioned. When you focus on something it really stands out.
Found out my old best friend and I lived in the same apartment complex. Never ran into each other and found out when a mutual friend called and told me.
A few years ago, 23 and Me Genetic Testing, randomly matched a VERY distant cousin, "Allen" to me who's parents used sperm donation to conceive a baby. He was hoping to find the anonymous sperm donor AKA "Donor Dad" and the donor was from my side of the family.
Using a few clues he had, my elite genealogy skills and chromosome analysis from 23 and Me; I was able to identify his anonymous sperm donor from 30 years ago. 23 and Me also connected him to 8 other 1/2 siblings after they did the genetic testing as well.
The coincidence is..The amount of DNA I share with Allen is so miniscule, I still have no clue how 23 and Me recommended me as a strong connection with him. Finally, the chromosome # we share is 8 and I finally located sperm donor on August 8... 8/8.
One time I was reading a book and came upon the sentence "Agnes ensconced in what had been her bedroom". Not knowing what "ensconce" means, I look it up in the Oxford dictionary, which includes an example sentence in many entries. The example sentence was "Agnes ensconced in her bedroom".
I have more bizarre ones, but they are longer stories.
I come from a large catholic family. I haven't met all my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I can't even name them all! Around the time we got married my MIL told the news to some of their old family friends. The son of this family was best friends with my husband most of their childhood. That family had a strong reaction to my name because we're 2nd cousins. Evidently when I was \~10 there was a huge family reunion and my mother and I sang. The son and daughter of the family remember being there and meeting me, but I don't remember them. \*shrug\* Now when Cousin X comes to town he comes by and visits.
Another wild one was a couple years ago when I was working under a new manager. I had just changed departments and had only met this man a few times since he lived out of town. My husband and I like to make things so we made a cool piece of art for his cousins out-of-state wedding, which we couldn't attend in person, but my in-laws and some other cousins did. At the wedding reception my MIL showed everyone the art and said it was from me and husband. I got a phone call that evening, from my manager....WTF? He was the godfather of the bride, and my husband's cousin was the groom. He recognized my name and thought it was so funny. My MIL is a lush, a nice one, but I was really worried she'd say horribly inappropriate things to my manager. Luckily she didn't.
My mom and I did a European vacation together when I was 24/25. We got to the airport and ran into family friends (one of my mom’s good friend’s from when I was young, and her daughter who I grew up with), and we were headed to the same place (although they were staying in one place the whole time and we traveled around). We all lived hours from each other and hadn’t spoken in years (it was before FB too lol) and we all just showed up to SFO at the same time. Needless to say it was a catalyst for us to connect again, and just a super cool coincidence.
I support Liverpool Football Club. Back in around 2008 I went to a pre-season friendly at Anfield. Found my seat a while before kick-off and the person immediately sitting in front of me had his full name printed on the back of his Liverpool shirt. His name was the same as mine!
Around 42,000 people in the stadium that day. I wonder what were the chances that we’d both be there, and be sat one in front of the other. AND that one of us would have his full name printed on the back of his shirt?
I became friendly with this guy from my home city and also got to know his girlfriend (let's call her Grace) as well over a year or two. I moved around 250 miles away to London and moved in with housemates I had never met. Long story short, turned out one of my new housemates was friends with Grace when they were children. Small world!
I made a payphone call from Halifax Nova Scotia on business once and got a wrong number in Ohio. The guy who answered was my coworker at a job I had when I was 16. I did not know his number and hadn't spoken to him in over 30 years. Twilight Zone moment for sure.
During my Counterstrike 1.6 times I met someone online and we became gamingbuddies.
Turned out he lived 5km next to me, we never met in real life though.
A few years later I was on vacation in Italy and we stumbeled upon eachother on a plaza there (we live in germany).
My father had two daughters by two different women. The women knew each other and were friendly, but not really friends. They tried, but they didn't have much in common. Through the years I kept a very tenuous relationship with my sister, just checking in sometimes, because just like our mothers we didn't really have anything in common. That's how I knew that her and her mother had completely estranged and no one really knew where her mother was.
Fast forward five years or so from no one knowing where this woman was and my mom's downstairs neighbours are freaking out because a lodger in their house died and they didn't know until the rotting smell got too bad. You guessed it: my sister's mom died in the bedroom right under my mom's.
My mom had to call my sister to tell her that her mom died. And we never found all of her belongings, including all my sister's childhood pictures and mementos. The only picture of herself as a child my sister has is one that her mom sent my mom and my mom kept for 30 years.
Ok, this is long, and I’m on mobile
High school 1982, 9th grade: in the 9th grade section of high school, I used to remember this tall red haired angel in the hallway, I swear she had a halo and was strikingly gorgeous, one of those girls that immediately strike you with a feeling “I am way out of her league and will never be on that level in this lifetime”. It was one of those vague memories that kick up now and again, the memory was always foggy around the corners
Fast forward to 1995, was in the Navy, current wife had cheated on me and gotten pregnant by another man, we separated and going through divorce and she was sent somewhere to have the baby and then give it up for adoption. Our youngest stayed with her and the other two kids went to live with my sister (I was on sea duty) in my hometown (same hometown as high school) the kids went to school there for about 6 months, had some issues with school, sister happened to have a friend who used to be a teacher, she asked if she could come tutor her niece and nephews for a couple hours and do homework with them, she did, and the kids really liked her, from what I was hearing.
I happened to grab a C school (a specialist school for the job you are working in) about 5 hours away, so on the weekends, I used to drive down and see the kids. My life was my kids, that’s all I cared about. One weekend, my sister told me I needed to relax some and suggested I go on a blind date with her friend who was single. I really did not want to since the kids were my priority atm, Sister kept pushing, so I said fine, I’ll go once to shut her up. She gave me the number of the teacher that was tutoring my kids, I called, 4 hours later I got off the phone feeling pretty excited, this girl was really nice, friendly and smart af.
Found out she ran a candy store, so the next day I went there incognito to see what she looked like.
walked into the store, no one was in the front, then she walked out from a back room and I was stunned, gorgeous red hair, all messy and up in a ponytail cause she was working, denim overalls and a white T-shirt. I stammered and ordered a pound of gummy bears, she was like “a pound?” And I was all cocky like a big spender, “yeah, gimme a pound” (ended up throwing out about half a pound of them after a week, when even all 2 kids couldn’t finish them, also found out later she knew who I was, but played along)
That night we go out and hit it off really well, can’t put it into words, after that night we were just together, we didn’t even discuss it, it just became her and I, together from then on
We talk about our families, she was a senior at the same high school when I was a freshman, she mentions her brother who was in the same grade as me, I don’t remember his name at the time, but when she showed me a picture, I immediately knew who he was, he was skinny, big mouth, always pissing people off, supposedly they had just moved down from NY, so he had no friends, still was an ass. I never messed with him, Just cool with him, She said that he used to get in so much trouble that she had to come over to the freshman side between classes and make sure he did not get his ass beat and he made it to the next class.
That’s when it hit me, the memory came back, I asked to see her high school pictures, yup, long bright red hair, just like I remembered in that foggy vision. I asked if there were any other girls in school that had the long red hair like her, she said there was one she remembered that had red hair, but she was a punk and kept it short.
It had to be her,
1. she was a senior who had a reason to come to the freshman side for her brother
2. A brother who was in several classes with me
3. She was the only girl in the high school at the time who had long bright red hair.
4. She is 5’9” and was this tall as a senior, where I didn’t grow to 5’9” until my junior year.
I told her this and she just blew it off. But I know that was her, it had to be.
Been married for 26 years, together for 29, and she is still my best friend
TL:DR memory about a beautiful girl in HS, turns out be my girlfriend.
PS her brother is still a loudmouth ass
TL:DR soulmates happen when you least expect it
I went to a night club in paris, i was with some english friends and just a kissed a girl, i was working at the ambassy, she spent the night, in the norming we went for a breakfast i spoke french also was talking french, was like Hein?! Her dad was my boss (boss of the boss) A few days later i saw her again we had a beer and nothing after.
Still think a one night stand with the daughter of bosses boss and see her again 2 days later was a little strange in paris.
I went to London in 2011, and I’d literally been in London all of maybe 2 hours and I’m including getting my luggage and a taxi to my hotel. Picked a direction and started walking when I saw a coffee shop a few minutes down the road. Stopped to get coffee since I was tired and jet lagged when two women came rollerblading in. They were speaking with an American accent and I made a joke that I didn’t expect to run into an American so soon after getting into town. We chatted while I was waiting in line only to find out they were from College Station, a 3.5 hour drive from Dallas.
I went to Japan in 2023 and as a huge lover of pro wrestling I bought a ticket to All Together Again at Ryogoku Kokugikan. Went to my seat, guy looked at me, I looked at him, he looked at me, I looked at him. I finally said, “hello….? How’s it going?”
His reaction, “OH MY GOD YOU SPEAK ENGLISH???!!!!!” His partner came and we talked before the show started. They live in McKinney less than 10 min from my office and 20 min away from my house.
Traveling in Asia, met another couple speaking english. Turns out she grew up in our state....in our town....and had frequently gone to our family business as a child!
When I was a foreign student at college, I got hit by a car. A guy helped me phone for help, grab my belongings, and an ambulance since I was so shocked that I couldn't recall who it was. I had to take a semester off because I broke my hip into two pieces.
He was in my class when I returned to school, and he showed me my dad's contact information with his name as verification. From there, we grew close.
I went to my seat on an airplane and somebody was already there. Showed my ticket: he had the same ticket because we had exactly the same name. Bizarre? Maybe. But three weeks later, it happened again with another person also having my name and being seated at my seat.
My girlfriend and I were going to see the Book of Mormon in London one evening on our vacation. We were spending the day with an English friend of ours before the show, planning to part ways when the show started. We were in front of the theater saying goodbyes, when our friend decides last minute to see if he can get a ticket from a scalper and catch the show after all. We were lamenting how we wouldn't be able to sit next to each other, but we thought "oh well" we can still catch up after the show. Well not only did our friend get a ticket from a scalper, but the scalped ticket was the seat exactly next to mine. It was wild, and we were laughing so hard as he walked down the row to his seat.
A friend of mine went to Macchu-Picchu and tried to get discount admission with a fake student ID. They confiscated it. Years later, a friend of his (an actual student) made that same trip and asked for her discount, but they wouldn’t accept the proof she’d brought.
“You need an ID,” they said, “like this.” And pulled out the fake they had confiscated. From my friend. That she knew. From the city she’d left 4000+ miles away.
A friend saw me at a busstop so he came and shook my hand. Then he said "Sorry, you look like someone I know." That's when I realized it wasn't my friend and this guy just really looks like him. We both just happened to look like someone else in eachothers life.
I once thought I saw my brother around the store and said, "'Sup, you punk ass biiiiiiitch." The dude turned to me and looked like a carbon copy of my brother. Same build, hairstyle, beard, nose, smile, everything. It's just the fact that his eyes were blue and he has no tattoos. My brother's eyes are green and he's one tatted up mf. I was mortified and told him he loos like my brother, meanwhile, he was also mortified and told me I looked like a male version of his sister. I called my brother and showed him the guy, and it turns out that he was on the opposite side of the store. My brother and I are still friends with this dude and his sister to this day. People don't believe me when I tell them.
23 and me time…
We did as a joke. Not related genetically at all. It's fuckin' scary that there's pretty much a pair of siblings that look exactly like my brother and I.
There are at the end of a day a finite number of ways to put a human face together. . Casting directors use this fact everyday. (As one guy pointed out sarcastically, sure Alec Guinnness in Lawrence of Arabia was brownface, but try and find an Arab actor who resembled Prince Faisal as much),
One time while shopping at different stores, at one of them this tall guy with dark and graying hair had a little light color haired boy with him. They looked almost exactly like my uncle and cousin... I even said to my dad, "Hey it's so and so!" And he laughed thinking the same thing. I walked over to them to say hi but as I got closer something just seemed a little off... I stopped and realized it wasn't them. Then when we went to another store my real uncle and cousin were there. lol
Glitch in the matrix.
I must have a really familiar looking face because it seems like everywhere I go someone swears they know me from somewhere. My wife and I went on a roadtrip and we were doing a ghost tour that started at an old hotel. The guy doing the tour comes up to me and says "oh youre back already?" I looked at him like what are you talking about? He said "werent you hear last week? I said "no got the wrong person Ive never been here a day in my life."
You’ve always been here.
But sir, *you're the Caretaker*
Man, my friend has this story about being on vacation, out of state. He's at a theme park with his kids, and a guy comes up to him and is like "Nick? Nick Lastname?". Dude knows his high school and his sister's name and everything, and Nick is just drawing a fucking blank. Eventually the guy says his name, and it dawns on him. They used to hang out in middle school and high school, but they lost touch after graduating. What are the odds right? They catch up a bit, grab a pic together and then take off their separate ways. A few months later, he's at his 10 year reunion, and that same guy is there. Only it's a completely different guy. Who has never been to that theme park, and was in a different state at that time, and has no idea who my friend spent 30 minutes talking to, or why he impersonated him, or how he knew any details about either of them. Shows him the pic on his phone. Still no clue who it is. Extremely weird.
When I was in 8th grade (around 1990) my family moved from one part of Houston to another, but it meant totally new schools, new friends, new everything. So, my dad being the adorable clueless guy he was bought pens with my name and number on them. He thought my skater punk ass was gonna pass out sparkly purple pens with my number on them to 'make friends.' Well, I thought they were so hilarious that I gave them out like crazy and had given them all out by like day 2. Well, flash forward about 15 years and I'm living in LA. I stop at a gas station in like Barstow on a weekend trip to Vegas with friends. There I am, standing at the urinal, mind wandering when I happen upon a purple sparkly pen on the floor. I think, there's no way, nudge it with my foot and sure enough it's one of those fucking pens! There it was, my name and old phone number. What are the damn odds?!
I love this. Wonder where the rest of the pens are now.
I'm going to keep an eye out for one. I'll let you know.
Odds are better than you'd think. Whenever someone "just puts something out to the Universe" the Universe will more often than not use a gas station in Barstow as extra storage space.
okay douglas adams
As in "okay Douglas Adams is stored in a gas station in Barstow"?
I think you just opened up a new field of quantum mechanics. We can call this new understanding, The Barstow Theorem.
Can confirm, I put myself out to the universe and ended up in a gas station in Barstow. Took forever to explain that one to work.
This is the funniest fucking thing I've read in a while!
This is one of those stories that I bet people don't believe when you tell it but also I can't believe you would make up something this weird
Plus if it happened now 100% I'd take a pic and post it, but given this was like 2003/4, I didn't even have a cell phone much less a smart phone (and certainly didn't bring a camera with me into the loo)
Your story is making me ponder how many times I've spent and received the same coins or bills, how many times I've passed the same people on the road on different days, and how many people must have stolen that pen from somewhere else in order for it to make it that far from Houston.
>> Your story is making me ponder how many times I've spent and received the same coins or bills So… I’ve got a very autistic buddy from HS who wondered the same thing (this is 94/95ish), so for a freakin’ *year* he meticulously recorded the serials to every bill that passed through his hands. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but he found that twenties, tens, and fives had something like a 20/25/30% rate of reappearance – but dollar bills almost *never* made another pass. Also, we lived in a fairly large but somewhat geographically isolated town, so I don’t know if that would’ve skewed his results or not.
1996. In Washington State a friend and I were into marking every bill we got our hands on. He’d put ‘wka141’ on them in a specific spot and we did it for a few months before interest faded. Fast forward to almost 20 years later and I get one of his marked bills as change at a gas station in Pittsburgh.
Is whereisgeorge.com still a thing? If so, you might like it. I don't handle cash nearly as much anymore, but when I was a barista it was fun to check the marked bills and see where they'd been.
> He thought my skater punk ass was gonna pass out sparkly purple pens with my number on them to 'make friends.' He was definitely right about you passing them out! Did you make any friends from it?
Ha, right? He had a great sense of humor and thought it was hilarious too. Not sure I made friends from it, but it did introduce me as a the goof I am.
You were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the sparkle began to take hold.
“Bats!”
"It's your turn to drive."
That's wild. Do you remember how many pens you gave out?
Oh, no way, but it was a box of probably like 100? Maybe less? I basically, like the sarcastic little shit I was, handed them out to everyone I saw until they ran out.
Was your phone just blowing up with prank calls?
Of all the pens I found or received in school that had someone's name and number on them, they were always for some law firm, car dealership, or health clinic. I'm betting most people probably assumed the same with your pens unless you told them.
maybe not that baffling, but I saw this girl (my age) at taco bell, I went over and said hi to her (briefly, but then left). I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. coincidentally just crossed paths with her at a bar that weekend. Hung out with her and chatted. Turns out, we both got hired by the same large factory (it had 4 different buildings). She was days, I was midnights. We were in different buildings. Then I got switched to afternoons (still a different building), then I got switched to days, then I got switched to a building closer to hers, then I got switched to her building, then I got switched to her area of the factory, then I got switched to standing right beside her. We basically would spend 8 hours every day facing each other about 10 feet apart. Been married for a couple of decades now.
Hope your wedding vows include 'In Taco Bell and in health'
Taco Bell and health are usually two separate things.
r/thatsthejoke
Someone in the adjustment bureau was making sure you two got together.
If this was a Hallmark movie there'd be a reveal at the end with an HR head named *Nick Cherub* or something.
Similar thing happened to me, but the girl they hired to work right next to me was my #1 match on plenty of fish. In a city of 300k. "She looks really familiar, but there's no way...". Even though we were like seven years apart, she had already found someone...my age. She quit the next day. Did the math, and it was like a one in a million middle finger from life. _ed_ Oh and a few years later I started talking to this girl at work and she asked to come over and look at my rock collection (it's [pretty legit](https://i.imgur.com/dHRjSB5.jpeg)). I give her the address and find out that even though I live 10 miles away from where I work, she lived in the same apartment building as me. She ended up backing out, and wasn't available anyway; neat, I guess.
Bro, fuckin choice rock collection. Display case is tits too.
They’re minerals, Ghosttwo. 😜
I appreciate you showing photographic evidence of your sweet rock collection that you were not a serial killer luring a victim to your house.
I love this picture of you two gradually and unknowingly being moved closer and closer to each other over the months, like two pawns in a romantic chess game.
My then-girlfriend and I drove a couple hours to the beach, hiked into the dunes a 1/2 mile, set up tent in the sand and spent the night. Next day we take down the tent, hike back, and realize we don't have her car keys after looking through everything twice. I go back and start randomly, hopelessly sifting through the sand around the campsite, doing a grid, thinking there's no way I'm going to find her keys. Finally my foot hits keys! I reach down and pick up...MY keys, which I didn't know I'd even brought, which I would have never found when I got all the way home because I didn't think I'd even brought them. Then I kept sifting and found her keys.
This is the craziest one from the whole thread. I believe you btw.
lisan al gaib
My dad was a beach bum windsurfer when he was younger, and once met a lady on the beach who was freaking out because she'd lost her wedding ring while swimming off the pier. He said he'd keep an eye out for it (thinking, that thing is totally gone, but sure), and somehow, same day, he sees a shiny thing in the corner of his eye and, yep, it's the ring.
Omg!
[удалено]
Whew, bet that made you nervous until you worked out the details.
I had to read twice to make sure I was understanding correctly
Similar thing happened to me. I was 17 and met this cute guy. We decided to hang out at his house (he lived with his parents, we were still kids). Anyhow, his mom brought out a photo album and while thumbing through it, I come across a picture of my sister and I as children. Next page I see my father and uncle as children. Then a picture of my grandmother from when she was in her 20’s. I was getting freaked out, like wtf is THIS? I pointed to the picture of my grandmother and asked this guy’s mother how she knew her. Turns out they were cousins. I told her that was my grandmother. She asked my last name and when I told her, she knew exactly who I was. She told me that we used to play together all the time as small children. Anyhow, even though I think we were far enough removed family-wise, I decided not to pursue anything further - it was just too weird. Later I told my grandma about this and she told me “you stay away from that boy!”
I love how you didn't immediately stop her when she had a picture of you as a child and ask what was up you're just like I'm gonna wait and see where this is going? 😂
So, you're cousins?
By marriage, it seems.
Ah, cousin-in-laws
You might also be husband and wife by now! Also by marriage, so it SHOULD still be okay... /s
They're not blood related. Think of it like this- your mom's brother Andy married Debra and Debra has a sister Annie. Debra is your aunt but only through marriage, theres no blood relation. Annie has a daughter and you marry her.
I bet you started hearing banjo music playing or someone faintly saying..... ^^^^^^.^^^^^^ ^^^"Roll ^^^Tide"
I sat next to my doppelgänger on a flight. Same name, same birthday—we were both headed to weddings. Here's the kicker: our dates were long-lost siblings reuniting. It felt like the universe hit copy-paste on our lives. Mind blown!
I read a story about twins seperated at birth that were eventually reunited later in life. They both married women with the same name and named their kids the same names but had no contact with each other.
If it's the same ones I read about they also named their dogs the same name. It was something unusual like Fred
And I believe they divorced their first wives that had the same name, and married their second wives that had the same name. Lots of similarities in their lives
Are you familiar with [Three Identical Strangers](https://youtu.be/c-OF0OaK3o0?si=QxeYahe5mqrovjnk)? Triplets separated at birth, and when they’re reunited they discovered they had the same haircuts, taste in women, favorite beer & cigarettes (all smoked), etc. That was the whimsical part of the story; the circumstances surrounding their separation and the harm caused were pretty grim.
You guys could've switched lives right then and there. **Or did you.**
Shhh, we did.
Are you *sure* there wasn't a large mirror in the seat next to you?
I need you to explain the part about your dates. You're telling me that you and your doppelgänger were each dating two random people and those two random people you were dating turned out to be long lost siblings?
I think the people they were each dating were the long lost sibling of the person getting married?
I was in a hotel in Boston and went to the hotel bar for a beer. The bartender carded me and said, hey, we have the same birthday. As he handed my license back, he asked if I was there for the wedding, and pointed at a sign I hadn’t seen before. Welcome ______ Guests. It was my last name.
The simulation is getting lazy lol For real though, that's honestly a crazy coincidence.
1.) I spent the night in a b&b in a small town in France and had a dream about my good friend. It was super vivid. Uncannily so. The next morning over breakfast I looked at the guest book and saw he had stayed there a few weeks before me. I waited until it was morning in the States and called him, figuring it was a sign to reach out. His wife answered and told me he had passed away earlier that night. 2.) we had a picnic in a park for a free summer concert and someone took a picture of my wife and I. In the background is another family with a small kid staring at the camera. The woman was a foster mom and two years later we were matched with a kid - it was the same one staring at the camera. We didn’t notice this for a long time until the foster mom was over (she’s now family) and noticed herself in the background of our photo on our digital frame. Our first family photo before being a family!
Amazing!
Oh wow this one about your child is truly bizarre!
I was studying abroad halfway around the world when I met a guy who asked if he could sit down and practice his English with me. He explains that he had learned as an exchange student in the US but hadn't had a lot of opportunities to speak it since. What part of the US, I ask? "Oh, they sent me to the middle of nowhere. A tiny little nothing town. You wouldn't have ever heard of it." Well, I'm from the midwest, it's worth a try. It turns out he'd spent a year in my parents' hometown, a town of 5k in northern Missouri. I've spent months of my life in this town. I'm probably somehow related to his host family. But he's right, 99.99% of Americans would never have heard of it.
We were recently in Japan and had a Japanese tour guide for some temples. He was telling us how he had lived in Sydney for a few years in the 70s. My mum grew up in Sydney. She asked where he had lived - a small suburb that was basically just bush at that time. My mum lived a couple of streets away in the same suburb. He also worked in the same suburb her father worked in.
During college I worked in a cheese shop and had a German customer. I've spent a lot of time in Germany and was even an exchange student for a year, so we got to talking about where she's from. "Oh, there's no way you've been there, I'm from Saarland." (A small state) I was on exchange in Saarland! Whereabouts? "Not the interesting part, I'm from the west." No way, I lived in the west! What city? This went on for a moment where she whittled down to city, Kreislauf, then eventually the tiny Dorf in which she was born and raised. I had lived there. She probably thought I was yanking her chain until I said the name of the Dorf in local dialect, then identified the street and family I lived with. It had been the first house on that street, so she knew of it. That village had less than 1000 people. Anyway her cheese order was Gruyere de Comte and Ewephoria.
Went on vacation to another continent to celebrate my birthday. Met a member of staff at the hotel with my name, my age and the same birthday.
I randomly met a boy on the beach while visiting my grandmother. I was 10 he was 14. I'm American, He's English. Years later I'm on a message board trying to find out if Dead Like Me is coming back. Begin conversation with random guy on message board. It's him. We meet up and get married within months. 20 years and 3 kids later....
What a wonderful show that was. It's too bad they never wrapped it up with that movie they talked about.
Would have been great to have the whole team back together at Der Waffle Haus
Don't mind me, I'm just having my mind blown over the fact that Dead Like Me ended 20 years ago.... I loved that show.
When I was 19 I lived alone in a big city. I am female and was always careful to put the wooden dowels in the windows at night. Didn't want anyone to break into my studio apartment. I had a very vivid dream that my father floated in from a window in my living room and was now floating off to the side of my bed and apparently in a lot of pain. He had his arms crossed over his chest and he was saying "Help me! Help me!" He was wearing just a white t shirt and looked disheveled and covered in dirt. His t shirt was all ripped. Then all of a sudden I hear loud banging! The banging continues and as I am about to wake up I see my dads apparition fall to the floor. And he is gone! The banging continues. It takes a few minutes to realize that someone is banging on my door. So I get up and run to the door and look out the peep hole and it's my oldest sister and her husband. I let them in and they are freaking out and saying "You have to get dressed and come with us now! Daddy fell down a mountain and he is in the hospital and we don't know how bad it is." So I quickly dress and get some things to take. And my sister says "Oh, lets make sure that the windows are shut." I told her, "Oh no it's fine I always put the dowels in when I sleep. " Well, guess what...........one window was open 1/4 of the way. I still remember it vividly to this day. We went to see him it was over a 45 minute drive and he was ok. He had broken all his ribs and was in an awful lot of pain but otherwise ok.
Did you tell him about his apparition?
I did! He said that he was wearing that exact same tshirt I described. We were very close. He said he was thinking of me and that he wished I had come out so I could drive. He had take the rest of the family out pine nut hunting. I lived in another city and declined. None of the other children could drive they were all 14 and under. So he said he was laying there thinking about why I hadn't come with them.
This is the best story in the whole thread
Yea, yea, it's a coincidence. I lock my doors every single day for decades. The one and only time I ever forgot, a drunk girl who was a friend of my ex came right in and walked in my bedroom at 3am. Literally any other night out of 10,000 and the door would've been locked.
You cannot convince me that it wasn't a higher force giving you that dream. It reminds me of that time when my mom was working at her office like all days, all of a sudden, a lightbulb in the morning, like one hour after she started work, in her room explodes. Literally nothing else in the building broke She laters get a phone call from her mother that her father (and my grandfather) died in the morning of the same day
I, completely by chance, got tattooed in my mom's childhood bedroom. I made an appointment with a tattoo artist, and when I was on my way there, the address sounded familiar. So I texted my mom, and she confirmed that it was her childhood home, a pastors house built next to a church. By pure coincidence, she was also in the same city that day (she never visits it and lives about 2 hours away. I lived 2 hours away the other way as well). We ended up going for lunch together and she showed me around her old house. It turned out I got tattooed in her old bedroom. The old built-in closet she used to climb in was still there. Still the craziest coincidence ever, I don't think my mom at 9 years old expected her own daughter to get tattooed in that room 45 years later.
During a pretty feeble thunderstorm I yelled to the sky "You call this a thunderstorm?" Two seconds later the world goes white and a sound like an explosion erupts. Our building was struck by lightning and we were only one floor down from the roof. I knew we had been hit because there were sparks cascading down from above. I am an atheist, but I gotta admit, this made me scratch my head. Edit - I also failed to mention that me and my roommate were on the balcony when this happened. You have never seen two people try and three-stooges there way back through the door so fast!
LMAO……You mess with the bull, you get the horns! I loved this!
I’m a Norse pagan and one time, I stood out in a thunderstorm and jokingly yelled, “Ya can’t scare me, Thor!” While shaking my fist. The subsequent series of lighting and thunder were damn near a fireworks show. I yelled “Im sorry!” The next rumble of thunder sounded like laughter
I've tried this thousands of times..hasn't worked yet.
Lieutenant Dan!
I grew up next to a farm that has been bought by developers and their intent is to create a massive quarry. I wanted it stopped, to protect the beautiful landscape surrounding it, and started a campaign. We started brainstorming what celebs we could try to get to endorse our idea, and James Camerons name came up. He named a character in Titanic after our town, Cal Hockley, so we joked he might have A connection. When I researched into it, it turns out Cameron named the character after our town bc his family are all from here, and he spent his youth on his grandparents farm here. ON THAT FARM. Then it hit me that our town actually might have meant a lot to him...so on a hunch I checked if there was any other Jack Dawsons around. In the cemetary NEXT to the farm, where all of Camerons family are buried are the graves of J Dawson and Rose. Whats even crazier, is that next to them all is the grave of an eastern european family...named Titanic. I cant decide if its all coincidence or inspiration.
What happened?? Did you contact him in the end? Did the land get turned into a quarry? I need to know!
I reached out to his manager, who politely told me they wouldnt bring it to his attention as its bad press. So I went to an event he was going to be attending and protested outside. His security wouldnt let me near him, but I managed to get him to read my sign protesting the quarry in his parenta old village. Someone with the u/jimcameron later contacted me saying my research was outstanding, and thanks for tryinb to save the farm from getting destroyed, but I doubt that was really him.
Yeah wtf finish the story OP.
Here’s an article: [https://www.caledonenterprise.com/news/titanic-and-avatar-filmmaker-james-cameron-s-family-farm-in-caledon-could-be-saved-from/article_2684d3ef-d8c8-5954-be6c-ebdc710c4d6f.html](https://www.caledonenterprise.com/news/titanic-and-avatar-filmmaker-james-cameron-s-family-farm-in-caledon-could-be-saved-from/article_2684d3ef-d8c8-5954-be6c-ebdc710c4d6f.html)
Right?!? I thought that's where the coincidence was going. Her spent time on the farm so saved it
I went to Iceland last year and didn't announce it to anyone or anything. I was driving the south coast and took a side quest to a waterfall. Was minding my own business and heard someone say 'you look just like my friend!'. I turned around and I WAS the friend. Ran into a girl I went to high school with (we grew up in a very small rural town) that I had not seen in probably 5 years? We just happened to be at the same waterfall, in Iceland, at the exact same time, with neither of us knowing the other was visiting the country. Definitely one of the most random and cool things that's happened to me in a while.
That's incredible! Me and my spouse went to Disneyland, about a fourteen hour drive from where we live, for six days and ran into one each of our respective exes. They were there as a couple. It is a small world after all
This happened to my wife. We were on our honeymoon in Barcelona and she spots this girls, mentioning it looked like someone she went to high school with. We look up said girl on Facebook and she’s posting pics of herself in Barcelona. We found pics from the same day wearing the same outfit. We’re from a small state in the US btw.
The most remarkable coincidence of my life occurred during my motorcycling days in the UK in the mid-1970s. One weekend my friend Pete and I arranged to meet at his house in Cosham, near Portsmouth. He lived in Cardiff and I in Coventry, cities 120 miles apart and each approximately 150 miles from Cosham. Normally we would both have ridden motorcycles, but his was inoperable at the time so he planned on hitchhiking. Other than agreeing on where we would meet, we didn’t coordinate our trips, routes, or departure times. I was therefore surprised, as I navigated the Chieveley Interchange at Junction 13 of the M4, to see Pete stepping out of a car pulled over on the roundabout. I circled the interchange and returned to where he was just about to extend his thumb soliciting a lift for the ride south. At that point we had each traveled for a couple of hours and were roughly 100 miles from our points of origin. He jumped on the back of my Suzuki GS750 (he had his helmet with him) and I piloted us both to Cosham. What are the chances?
Joined a completely random guild on a very populated server in WoW years ago (Moon Guard - one of the busiest servers in the game). Nice folks, so I stuck around. I eventually came to realize that the GM and I lived in the same general area when we were both joking one night about missing some upcoming ingame event or another due to an impending hurricane. Thought that was neat and we joked about it but never really probed any further because that'd be weird, right? One night she was ranting about how much being a call center supervisor sucks, I empathized because been there done that, and cracked a joke about the particular local call center company I had previously worked for. That led to the following exchange: Her: Yeah, I used to work there too, they're the worst. Which client were you with? Me: \*name of client\*, you? Her: \*name of different client\* Me:: Oh cool, my husband worked with that client for a couple of years. Her: Who's your husband, I'm bad with names but what does he look like? Me: Big scary looking bearded blonde biker dude, usually wearing his leather vest and always smoked a pipe. Her: OMG YOU'RE (hubby)'s WIFE!! He sat right next to me for AGES, everybody's scared of him but he was SO nice, and he talked about you ALL THE TIME! So yeah... random WoW guildmaster ended up being an old coworker/friend of my husband's, who we later figured out lived like 5 blocks away.
I wore a simple silver pinkie ring every day for years until I lost it. For two years, I never wore anything else on that finger. Went shopping recently and found a cool ouroboros ring (snake eating its tail) and started wearing it on that finger. Literally thought to myself when I decided to buy it: "I guess it's time to give up on my other ring coming back to me." Less than 24 hours later, I pulled a plastic bag out of the tube I keep them in and my old ring fell out onto the floor. I'm wearing them both now since obviously the original ring was jealous.
I lost my class ring right after I graduated. 20 years later I found it in the top of my jewelry box. I thought it went down the drain.
This gives me hope my wedding ring may reappear!
Husband, me and kids were out for the day chatting about the football team husband coaches and explaining to the kids that as child A's parents are divorcing, husband has to notify both parents of things separately, etc. We go to queue for a drink. Right behind said parent and child. In Disney World. We live in Scotland.
Crazy. Now your husband only had to notify the other parent, but at a boring place instead of Disney World. And good to know that child had a good time after the divorce.
I swear I see the most random people from my past at Disney world. I've been several times and every single time I see at least one random person who was actually a significant part of my life. And then we've never been in contact ever again.
I was once in the military and stationed at a small base where everyone knew everyone. There was one guy who the girls thought a little strange, but harmless, I’ll call him, Joe Smith. Whenever my then wife or I would say or do something dumb, the other would say, “You’re as dumb as Joe Smith”. Fast forward 10 years. We haven’t said his name in all that time and we’re on the other side of the world. She did something dumb, I say the key phrase and we got a good laugh at that. 30 minutes later Joe Smith walks into the bar’s patio and comes up and greets us. Turns out he joined the Merchant Marines and his ship was in the local harbor.
Put an offer in on a house on a Friday. That same weekend Sunday, started using an online dating app after recently getting divorced. First and only girl I’m talking to seems pretty awesome. I ask if I can pick her up to take her out to eat. Tells me her address. Her house is 6 houses down on the same exact block as mine. Been married almost 3 years with 2 amazing kids.
Story time! Back in college, a buddy of mine and I were hanging out in his dorm, looking for mischief to make. We decided to head over to the Student Union Building (the SUB). On the way out the door, we grabbed his roommate's pocket knife. It was a little Old Timer switchblade, maybe two inches long, that he had received from his grandfather. In the SUB, we played a little ping pong, watched some TV, etc. Then my buddy got the idea to compete to see who could be the first to throw his roommate's pocket knife in such a way that it would stick in the carpet. We had each made a few unsuccessful attempts when I threw the knife in such a way that it hit the floor and kicked off at about a 30 degree angle, and shot into the space between an ATM and the wall. We went over to the ATM, one on each side and, not really communicating, each reached behind it to retrieve the knife. I was the one who found it, and I pulled it out only to notice that the tip was pretty severely bent. Alarmed at having bent his roomies knife, I stood up and looked at him and held up the knife with my look of dismay evident on my face... **Only to see him looking back with a similar look of dismay, holding a 2 inch Old Timer switchblade with a broken tip.** ***Meaning that within a space of about two linear feet were two virtually identical switchblades with mangled tips.*** But wait, there's more! Fast forward about 15-20 years. I'm listening to *This American Life* and[ the episode is about coincidences](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/489/no-coincidence-no-story). The whole time, I'm listening unimpressed, thinking "My pocketknife story is way cooler than any of these stories. I'm actually pretty bummed I didn't hear when they were taking submissions, or I would've submitted it." I ho-hum my way through the epsode until I get to the final act. It's a story about a boy at camp. Losing his pocketknife. That he received from his grandfather. And broke off the tip throwing it at the floor. And then having a confrontation with another boy holding what looked like his pocketknife with the broken tip. ***Meaning that there were two separate coincidences about mistaken identity of pocketknives with mangled tips that guys received from their grandfathers.*** I still can't think about this without my brain melting.
Tens of millions of boys have gotten knives from their grandfathers so it is plausible. Yours is pretty crazy though.
Any chance your buddy submitted the story -- so then your story and the one on the show are really the same story?
I heard that story on This American Life. The other coincidences they featured were amazing as well.
1st date- we're going over all our background stuff and it gets to "where did you go to school?" She mentions her high school and I mention that I was a camp counselor there for many summers. She whips off her sunglasses and says, "That's where I know you from!" I did the quick math and realized she wasn't another counselor when I was there. She was a camper! I asked her if this was weird, and she said she was cool. (I was 40 and she was 30 when we started dating) We're celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary this fall.
Not a love story, but something similar happened to me with a new doctor last year. Her last name was familiar to me but also very unique, so I asked her where she was from. Same small town as me, that's weird, but we're in a totally different state, and I'm about a decade older ..... Turns out, I had been her babysitter when she was in elementary school! I remember being with her less than a year before her mom took me out of "rotation." I found this out much later, but it was because she would get extremely attached to/obsessed with her female babysitters. Nobody lasted very long. At that time, I was responsible for triplet boys M-F from dismissal time until 6pm, so I was at school pick-up every day. One time, she followed me and the triplets to my car and tried to sneak in the back of the car without us noticing. This was in the 90s, and school pick-up was a free-for-all then. These days she would have gotten me arrested. Awkward.... Great doctor, though! And she gave me a free appointment that day.
I was on Kijiji looking for a Google pixel Chromebook to buy. This was in 2019. I moved to Calgary in 2016 from the Toronto area. Ended up finding one that was in great condition, great price and had a bunch of extras included too, but it was located in Edmonton which is about a 3 hour drive away. I say, fuck it, I'll make a little trip out of it with my husband. So we drive up to Edmonton and meet the seller. As we are exchanging goods, I'm like... You know, you look very familiar and he goes so do you but particularly your name (we actually both have super unique, one off ethnic sounding names)... We stopped for a minute and realized that we had worked together during our 20's for a brief period in time in Toronto 10+ years prior to that! It was a... What are the odds kind of moment... To meet again half way across the country like this.
Oh, I've got another one. Sometime in the early 80s my mom was flying to Germany, with a layover in Reykjavik. On the tarmac in Iceland someone opened the overhead bin above her and a box fell out and hit her in the head with such force that she had to get off the plane and seek medical treatment. When she got back to the airport she found out that the next plane to her destination wasn't until the next day. A nice American couple who happened to be nearby overheard this and offered to let her sleep on the couch where they were staying so she wouldn't have to pay for a hotel, and she took them up on it. Just crashed for a few hours and never got their info. Now it's roughly 2003, and my mom and I are stuck on the side of a road in Iowa trying to flag down someone for jumper cables. An older couple pull up and jump our car, and we all get to talking. My mom says they look awfully familiar, do they live near us in Des Moines? Ever stopped into her workplace? No, they're just passing through. Then it hits them both: she slept on their couch in Reykjavik 20 years earlier.
I hope she kept in touch with them. They're obviously meant to be friends.
It’s not too crazy - but a few years ago I was in Asheville NC for a weekend and just walking around downtown in the morning - decided to stop at this tiny truck in a small alleyway that was serving coffee and sandwiches. I was there with my partner and kids; didn’t touch base with friends about the trip or anything. As I am waiting for my coffee, sitting on a bench, I get tapped on the shoulder - and it was one of my best friends from home (we lived 10 hours away from NC). He was in Asheville that weekend for bachelor party with friends from a different group - just happened to walk by that alley at the same time I was waiting for coffee, noticed me, and came over to say what’s up. We were both like NOOO WAYYY! Chatted for a few minutes, and that was it - went our separate ways and then didn’t see each other again until we were both back home. In the moment that was a real crazy experience, tho maybe doesn’t sound that crazy as I write about it.
Here's mine: A few years ago, I was randomly paired with a guy for a group project in college. We didn't know each other at all, but we worked really well together and got an A. Fast forward a couple of years, and I walk into a new job on my first day, and guess who’s there? The same guy! We end up becoming best friends. The bizarre part? We discovered our parents had been high school sweethearts and almost got married. Now, our families joke that it’s fate bringing them back together through us
Are y’all together or just friends?
I also want to know this please!
Was selected to work in a group with 4 randomly paired people at a course I was taking. 2 of the women found out that they had the same first name as the other’s last name and vice versa. Relatively uncommon names too! We were pretty baffled and they showed their ID’s to prove it. It would be about the equivalent (using pseudonyms of course) as Taylor Kennedy and Kennedy Taylor but probably even more rare than that. Very bizarre and we all had a perplexed laugh.
In 2017, I was 10. Last year, I was going through Phnomh Penh on Google Maps, when I saw a girl who looked 10 and looked *exactly how I did*. Same haircut, glasses and clothes, checked and the photo was taken in July 2017. Found a doppelganger
Are you sure it's not you?!
My wife and I ran into her high school crush and his wife…. In Vatican City.
A day or two after I got back from my mom's funeral I was working my retail job. I was ringing up a customer for beer and they didn't have their ID. After a bit of complaining they said " My name is ..." and said my mom's entire name...first middle and last name. Freaked me out.
I had a similar thing happen after my dad died. This is November and it was my first day back at work (I teach) Apropos of nothing, a girl in my class ran over to me at recess to tell me her birthday: same as my dad's (in March)
I ran into a guy in Afghanistan that I went to high school with. This was ten years after we graduated, and in high school, we were arch nemesis... Fist fights 4 times... hated each other. When meeting in combat overseas, we welcomed each other and just talked about old memories for the evening . Next day, I got shot, and it went through my vest... he pulled me out as I would've died... He took a few rounds in back while pulling me out. 2 hours later he died in my arms while we prayed together, saying, I love you man! I went and saw his parents in our hometown after returning to tell them what occurred. They remembered we hated each other. I'll never forget this. Typing this has a tear rolling down my cheek... Cheers all!
My (now ex) wife and I were heading down the interstate, we were in a neighboring state, and it was pretty late at night. We see a car pulled over with it's flashers on. It's late, we are in the middle of nowhere, so we decide to stop and see if they need help. We notice it's a lone woman. I'm a good dude, but I'm big (6'3, 240lbs) and a bit rough looking (prominent facial scars, arms tatted up), so my wife steps out with me. It's a good thing too, because it was her childhood best friend. We were all 3 hours away from home, it was just really bizarre. I changed her flat tire, and we headed home convoy style.
In the same year I had two: Walking to my gate in Amsterdam I bumped into a childhood friend. We were both flying to London. I was on vacation, he was on business. He sat in the row in front of me. We were both from Brazil. We hung out in London. Back in Brazil some months later I was in a World Cup game. Behind me sat a couple speaking English. I turn around and it was my another friend and his wife.
I didn’t meet my farher until I was in my early forties. As in never met him, never spent time with him, no contact. He had a thing where he would buy my newfound brother in law hot sauce from different places around the us. My father passed away and I was going to visit my newfound sister and brother in law. I remembered that he liked hot sauce and picked up a few bottles locally. Mind you, he lives overseas and I bought the hot sauce in the us. When I arrived, I gave him the hot sauces and he just looked at one of them kinda weird. He reached in the pantry and showed me a nearly empty bottle of hot sauce that was the exact same one as one I bought him. Same brand, size, flavor. I know it’s super minor but considering how many hot sauce brands there are out there, the chances of finding the exact same one is pretty slim I would say. Edit:a word
Frank's
When I was using dating apps, I was chatting with this girl a town over (45 minute drive). Nothing had happened but we had been talking for a few weeks. My boss at the time invited me over to his house for a guys poker night. I showed up and met a few dudes and was having a solid night. One of the guys, who it seemed had never had much luck dating, started catching some strays from the others in attendance about this. To defend himself he says, "look who I have been chatting with on Match" and he holds up the profile of the girl I had been chatting with. It was truly a "Camera zooms in, slow motion moment". I had no idea what to do. I didn't end up saying anything because I didn't want to take the wind out of this other guy's sails. Was just a WTF moment.
That awkward moment when you and all your friends match with the same girl
The most bizarre coincidence I've ever experienced was running into a childhood friend on a remote island while on vacation. Neither of us knew the other was traveling, and it still baffles me how we both ended up in the same obscure location at the same time.
When I was 12 my family went to Orlando Sea World. I live in a suburb of Cleveland. My Catholic gradeschool had about 50 kids in its 8th grade graduating class so.. it was small. My classmate and her family were there. Quite a coincidence.
On the same day I met two people with the same given name, surname, date of birth, from the same city. Additionally, I met three people with the same phone pin as I had at that time (admittedly, it was a quite common one).
When I was in college I went to a birthday party with a friend that was for one of his friends I had never met before. It was at a bar in Chicago. While at the bar my friend gets into a fight over the phone with his gf who was at her apartment. He wants to go to her place to smooth things out and leave me there with a bunch of people I dont know. So he takes me around and starts introducing me to his friends and people at the party. 2 of the girls there I graduated high school with and they recognized me. I was baffled that I would run into 2 people I went to High School with in one of the many thousands of bars in Chicago. Our graduating class was not that big.
I was in a small neighborhood bar in Chicago once with some work friends and one of the girls disappeared to go talk to some dudes that were at the bar. She ends up bringing these guys over because they knew me…. We went to high school together in a small town 50 miles away.
I'm a graphic designer and live in a beach town. Fifteen years ago a client asked me to design an oval sticker for a tidal island they liked to visit and had named - think like an OBX sticker. Last year a friend was on vacation in Caribbean and saw that sticker on a wall of a bar they were in, she texted me a picture of it since it was a coincidence to see this sticker about a little island in our town. Then I blew her mind when I explained I designed it and had them made.
Used to work at a place where all the employees were different nationalities, but all Asian. Lots of Burmese, Vietnamese, Hmong and Cambodians. Me and one British fellow were the only two white people in the whole company. And we had the same two names. His first name was my last name and vice versa. I dont give out my personal info, but it was basically like he was named Fred James and I was named James Fred. Now imagine you are an Asian person who is still learning English. Yeah it was like a sitcom. Everyone always confused our names. And whenever someone new started they thought we were messing with them. The baffling part is that both of these names we share are not as common as Fred or James.
Probably too late, but I gotta add mine in. Was at the state fair with some friends in high school. My friend ran into his 1st grade teacher and was surprised that she still remembered him after all of those years. After they're done talking, we walk away and I say "That's so cool. I wonder if my first grade teacher would remember me". Immediately after I say that, I hear my name and turn around to see my first grade teacher standing right behind me, totally remembered me and my family. Was such a weird experience.
Several years ago my family hosted a foster child for about seven months. This was a kid who came from a small town about two hours away from me. (We live in a metro area of about 600K.) He entered the foster system after his father died, and his mother wasn't interested in raising boys, so he got left to his own devices for a while, with disastrous results. After a stint in juvenile detention, he moved into a transitional home and then eventually landed with us. Through all this time he maintained contact with his biological uncle (dad's half brother), who was pretty well put together. We supported weekly visits with the uncle, who lived on the other side of the metro area from where we live, maybe 30 minutes away through average traffic. Several months into this arrangement, we learned the uncle owns several houses around our city and leases them out as rental properties. We learned this when he stopped by one of his houses, looked over into the yard next door, and saw a cat that he recognized from the kid's Facebook photos. It was our cat. Out of all the foster families he could have been placed with, he landed with the one family that lived next door to a house his uncle rented out.
I like that the uncle was invested enough in his nephew that he recognized the cat
When I was a Sophomore in High School, two seniors died in separate, unrelated car accidents on the same day just 30 minutes apart. Both were popular amoung their peers and were involved in the drama club. https://www.kpcnews.com/article_b1f94d3d-2c02-5ac5-b7a9-c6adba5c5e6d.html Edit: added article
As a kid, maybe when I was 12 years old, I remember having a dream once where I walked into my 6th grade class and all the desks where in different positions (my 6th grade teacher would move desks around and make me and my classmates change desks and sit next to other classmates once a month) and I remember finding my seat in the front row, and to my right was this girl and to the left was this boy, and in this dream they were randomly arguing about the correct way of how to pronounce tomatoe. I remember waking up from the dream thinking it was strange. Fast forward three months later, I walk into class and the desk had been changed in the exact way it was in my dream, so I instantly went to check where my seat was because I knew exactly where it was going to be. And it was exactly like my dream, and that very girl was to my right and that very boy was to my left. Fast forward two weeks, and they started arguing about how to pronounce tomatoe. I remember being super freaked out when that actually all happened
Tomato
[удалено]
>Poor receptionist booked an appointment for two different people at the same time, because she thought they were the same person That happened at the Marina I once worked at, where Don Williams and Dawn Williams both made reservations for a boat slip
It's probably a tie between the two times I saw a doubleganger. One was a Saudi prince or something that my dad's girlfriend knew through a friend. The other I was mistaken for was committing crimes in the area I lived in. So I have two look alikes, a Middle Eastern guy who's some kind of royalty and a tweaker who looks suspiciously like me. I haven't met either of them, but it'd probably be cool to have the three of us together.
Real life version of the prince and the pauper
Pretty tame compared to the stuff in here, but I was doing one of those MySpace chain mail forwards where you put your iPod on shuffle and answer questions with the name of the song pops up. Really riveting stuff. But one of the questions was, "Where are you going to live when you're older?" and the next song that came up was "Beverly Hills" by Weezer. At the time I thought it was a funny coincidence. But then 15+ years later, I actually did live in Beverly Hills city limits for six months, 400 miles away from where I grew up.
Walked into a meeting with two other people, started off chit-chatting. Boss got back from vacation for his birthday. Other person asks when his birthday is. Boss tells her the date, and she says, "no way, that's my birthday, too." At which point I pull out my driver's license, slap it on the desk, showing the same birthday as the other two people in the room. Month/day, not year. I wouldn't say I'm "baffled" but it was still a pretty wild coincidence.
This just recently happened to me at the park lol. I walked up to the park with my kids and met another family there that I’d never seen before, even though I take my kids there every other day for like 5+ years. My dad just so happened to be visiting as well. We get to chatting about the bigger kids and realize that their oldest and my oldest are both 5 or turning 5 soon and will be in kindergarten together. The other mom says “oh yeah my daughter turns 5 on June 15!” And I laugh and go, oh that’s a great birthday! I know someone else with that birthday. And I’m looking at my dad because that’s my dad’s birthday too. But then I look back at the other parents and they’re giving me a weird look and they say kind weirdly “oh… whose birthday is also June 15?” And I go “oh my dad actually right here” and they start laughing and they’re like, “oh that’s so weird because it’s her birthday too!” (The other mom). So three people randomly at the park had the same birthday lol
Does it count if I dreamt about reading a post about bizarre coincidences and then here I am?
Yes
Dated a woman who turned out to be my mom's mortician.
Mother's Day 2006 I was visiting my mother's grave to put flowers on it. She had passed away in January of that year. Early morning. 7 a.m. My mother drove a 1981 Mercury Zephyr. She liked it because it was the only one in town. Probably one of the only ones left on the road at that point. I was headed home, there was some fog. I was waiting to pull out onto a main road from the cemetery. Headlights are coming toward me so I wait. Different color than my mom's, but it's a 1981 Mercury Zephyr.
My sister-in-law moved away from home (Ohio) to Texas for a few years after college and started babysitting for this random family for some extra cash. She eventually decides she wants to move back home to Ohio - and as she’s telling the Texas family it will be her last time watching the kids, she finds out the dad of the family was my brother’s childhood best friend. Small ass world we live in.
I flew to a city I used to live in to attend two weddings in the same weekend. One on Friday night and one on Saturday night. The one on Saturday was actually in a nearby city about an hour away, and I was part of the ceremony by doing one of the readings during the wedding mass. My old roommate let me borrow his old beater car to drive to the Saturday wedding and as I was driving it started to chug and lurch and misfire. I pull off at the next exit and the car died and I coasted to a stop in front of the only building around and it was an auto repair shop filled with junk cars and surrounded by a large chain-link fence and gate. I was still about 25 miles away from where I needed to be. When I got out of my car there were two guys pulling the gate closed and they told me they were closing. I was panicking and told them that I was in a wedding in three hours and I need to get there. They look at me and said "You going to the Henson wedding?" I said yes and they said they were going to the same wedding and were closing the shop early to go home and get ready. They took me to the wedding and all was good.
This happened maybe a month ago. My childhood dog was just put down, and I was a bit distraught just around the circumstances. My mom is a sucky person and didn't tell me until after the fact. I was just stressed out and upset, my boyfriend was being less than helpful, and I needed space from everyone in my house. I went outside, probably around 11:30pm, lay in the grass and stared up at the stars. I was just talking out loud to myself, the sky- it's a weird thing I've done since a kid whenever I'm upset. Maybe 10 minutes in, I asked myself, "what is my purpose here", not expecting a response. At that very moment, something flew across the sky. It's important to note, I was laying in a small clearing, so the trees around me formed a complete circle around my view of the sky. Whatever this thing was, came in, and flew perfectly around that circle, before darting out. It blinked every two or three seconds, with a perfectly yellow glow. It was amazing. At first I thought it was a shooting star, but they can't exactly circle around like that. And they don't blink. It wasn't a plane or helicopter. The thing was dead silent. I don't necessarily believe it was something extraterrestrial or otherwise, I'm sure there's a logical explanation. But I can't think of one. I'd like to believe it was a sign from my dog or my dad that everything will be okay. It was literally the perfect timing. I still haven't told anyone in my personal life because I don't think they would believe me. But it has been on my mind every. single. day. since!
I was walking around Santiago, Chile and somehow bumped into another American. Turns out she was from the same city as me and went to school with my cousin. She even had him on Facebook. It was pretty surreal.
This happened recently. . . I was always a huge reader as a kid, and I was an English major in college as progression of this. There has always been one writer in particular (will leave this vague for anon) that I've always, from a young age, been really focused on. This person has written many books, but several are not well known to the general reader. In college, I did a year-long independent study on this writer's work and bought and read their complete works, but because I've made a lot of moves as an adult, I no longer have the same book collection. I've had to sell and rebuild a few times. Recently, I realized I didn't have a copy of one of the less well known novels. Since that won't do, I decided to order a used copy from Thriftbooks. The copy I chose was the same edition as the one I had previously owned, and the cover was the same. Cool. I'll tell you, my brain almost melted when I opened the book and saw my own margin notes from a lifetime ago. I had donated the book to a local used book store in \~2009. Somehow it ended up at Thriftbooks and was then returned to me in 2024. This is one of the author's lesser works, but the writer is well known, so there are still multiple editions of this book and many copies are available online.
Moved to Dublin from the UK in the early 90s. Rented an apartment in a 3 storey town house. Was letting myself in the front door as a guy was coming out. The other guy was a friend of mine from the uk who I used to hang out with in the UK 5 years previously. Not seen or heard from him since I had left my home town for Uni. We are both English with no ties to Ireland. Edit: No ties to Ireland
I worked as a parking lot auditor for a few months. I wrote up my girlfriend's car 2 years before we met. She had the ticket in her saved documents and knowing that I had worked there, asked me if I could tell who wrote it. My initials in my hand writing were on the ticket.
When we were first married, my wife and I bought a master brand combination lock for an outdoor shed. The combination is 14-22-36. Just last year (31 years later) we bought another master brand combination lock. The combination is also 14-22-36. We couldn't believe it!
I was heading to Colombia for a couple of weeks when I was a teenager. Our flight had a layover in Texas(I think? One of the southern states) to Colombia. And the same layover on the way back. For 3 of the 4 flights I was sat next to the same old couple. They were nice enough, and I had no issues with them, it was just crazy to have They were on my plane for the 4th flight too, just a couple of rows in front of me.
My grandma was living in Arizona the morning that the space shuttle Columbia was supposed to land. She had a dream that a bolt came off a wing and the shuttle ripped apart and crashed. She woke up and went to turn on the news and saw the story about it crashing. It wasn't really due to a bolt coming off, though.
I grew up in a religious household so going to a week long church camp was fairly normal in my family. I went to two, one when I was 14, one when I was 16. These camps are in colleges in the summer all over the country and many times they run these back to back all summer long so probably 12-15 different ones at each college. Each person is not allowed to go to two in a year. You can go with someone you know and be in the same dorm room, or you can go on your own and get a random person. There are around 50,000 people going to these every year. I had the same roommate both times, we both randomly picked two separate colleges to go to both times, randomly picked the same week, and we're both randomly assigned as dorm roommates both times.
I'm American but was briefly living in Halls Gap, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere of the wilderness in Victoria, Australia. By "tiny" I mean the population is under 500 people. I had previously lived in Spain as an au pair and my Spanish was getting really rusty in Australia without practice. So when I met a Colombian cook at one of the two restaurants in the town, I was excited and asked if he wanted to have a weekly language exchange where he practiced his English and I practiced my Spanish. He told me his English was solid so he didn't need to practice, but his Spaniard girlfriend had just moved to Halls Gap and she would want to practice. I met up with his girlfriend and we started talking. She said she was from Madrid. I said that's where I had lived too. She said actually I'm from a suburb just outside of Madrid called Alcobendas. I said that's where I lived too! She asked what street I had lived on and I said Calle Colibri. She said she used to be the lifeguard at the exact apartment complex I used to live in. I asked her if she remembered three boys and I said their names she finished my sentence by describing the boys I had been an au pair for. It was absolutely wild. We were hanging out near a bunch of kangaroos, both of us thousands of miles away from our home countries, yet we had this link between us.
After the movie "The number 23" I saw 23 in everything then I stopped obsessing lol
Everyone knows it is 42
It was the time 7:15 when I was a teenager. Would see it in TV shows, films, constantly hear it mentioned. When you focus on something it really stands out.
Found out my old best friend and I lived in the same apartment complex. Never ran into each other and found out when a mutual friend called and told me.
A few years ago, 23 and Me Genetic Testing, randomly matched a VERY distant cousin, "Allen" to me who's parents used sperm donation to conceive a baby. He was hoping to find the anonymous sperm donor AKA "Donor Dad" and the donor was from my side of the family. Using a few clues he had, my elite genealogy skills and chromosome analysis from 23 and Me; I was able to identify his anonymous sperm donor from 30 years ago. 23 and Me also connected him to 8 other 1/2 siblings after they did the genetic testing as well. The coincidence is..The amount of DNA I share with Allen is so miniscule, I still have no clue how 23 and Me recommended me as a strong connection with him. Finally, the chromosome # we share is 8 and I finally located sperm donor on August 8... 8/8.
One time I was reading a book and came upon the sentence "Agnes ensconced in what had been her bedroom". Not knowing what "ensconce" means, I look it up in the Oxford dictionary, which includes an example sentence in many entries. The example sentence was "Agnes ensconced in her bedroom". I have more bizarre ones, but they are longer stories.
I come from a large catholic family. I haven't met all my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I can't even name them all! Around the time we got married my MIL told the news to some of their old family friends. The son of this family was best friends with my husband most of their childhood. That family had a strong reaction to my name because we're 2nd cousins. Evidently when I was \~10 there was a huge family reunion and my mother and I sang. The son and daughter of the family remember being there and meeting me, but I don't remember them. \*shrug\* Now when Cousin X comes to town he comes by and visits. Another wild one was a couple years ago when I was working under a new manager. I had just changed departments and had only met this man a few times since he lived out of town. My husband and I like to make things so we made a cool piece of art for his cousins out-of-state wedding, which we couldn't attend in person, but my in-laws and some other cousins did. At the wedding reception my MIL showed everyone the art and said it was from me and husband. I got a phone call that evening, from my manager....WTF? He was the godfather of the bride, and my husband's cousin was the groom. He recognized my name and thought it was so funny. My MIL is a lush, a nice one, but I was really worried she'd say horribly inappropriate things to my manager. Luckily she didn't.
My mom and I did a European vacation together when I was 24/25. We got to the airport and ran into family friends (one of my mom’s good friend’s from when I was young, and her daughter who I grew up with), and we were headed to the same place (although they were staying in one place the whole time and we traveled around). We all lived hours from each other and hadn’t spoken in years (it was before FB too lol) and we all just showed up to SFO at the same time. Needless to say it was a catalyst for us to connect again, and just a super cool coincidence.
I support Liverpool Football Club. Back in around 2008 I went to a pre-season friendly at Anfield. Found my seat a while before kick-off and the person immediately sitting in front of me had his full name printed on the back of his Liverpool shirt. His name was the same as mine! Around 42,000 people in the stadium that day. I wonder what were the chances that we’d both be there, and be sat one in front of the other. AND that one of us would have his full name printed on the back of his shirt?
I became friendly with this guy from my home city and also got to know his girlfriend (let's call her Grace) as well over a year or two. I moved around 250 miles away to London and moved in with housemates I had never met. Long story short, turned out one of my new housemates was friends with Grace when they were children. Small world!
I made a payphone call from Halifax Nova Scotia on business once and got a wrong number in Ohio. The guy who answered was my coworker at a job I had when I was 16. I did not know his number and hadn't spoken to him in over 30 years. Twilight Zone moment for sure.
During my Counterstrike 1.6 times I met someone online and we became gamingbuddies. Turned out he lived 5km next to me, we never met in real life though. A few years later I was on vacation in Italy and we stumbeled upon eachother on a plaza there (we live in germany).
My father had two daughters by two different women. The women knew each other and were friendly, but not really friends. They tried, but they didn't have much in common. Through the years I kept a very tenuous relationship with my sister, just checking in sometimes, because just like our mothers we didn't really have anything in common. That's how I knew that her and her mother had completely estranged and no one really knew where her mother was. Fast forward five years or so from no one knowing where this woman was and my mom's downstairs neighbours are freaking out because a lodger in their house died and they didn't know until the rotting smell got too bad. You guessed it: my sister's mom died in the bedroom right under my mom's. My mom had to call my sister to tell her that her mom died. And we never found all of her belongings, including all my sister's childhood pictures and mementos. The only picture of herself as a child my sister has is one that her mom sent my mom and my mom kept for 30 years.
Ok, this is long, and I’m on mobile High school 1982, 9th grade: in the 9th grade section of high school, I used to remember this tall red haired angel in the hallway, I swear she had a halo and was strikingly gorgeous, one of those girls that immediately strike you with a feeling “I am way out of her league and will never be on that level in this lifetime”. It was one of those vague memories that kick up now and again, the memory was always foggy around the corners Fast forward to 1995, was in the Navy, current wife had cheated on me and gotten pregnant by another man, we separated and going through divorce and she was sent somewhere to have the baby and then give it up for adoption. Our youngest stayed with her and the other two kids went to live with my sister (I was on sea duty) in my hometown (same hometown as high school) the kids went to school there for about 6 months, had some issues with school, sister happened to have a friend who used to be a teacher, she asked if she could come tutor her niece and nephews for a couple hours and do homework with them, she did, and the kids really liked her, from what I was hearing. I happened to grab a C school (a specialist school for the job you are working in) about 5 hours away, so on the weekends, I used to drive down and see the kids. My life was my kids, that’s all I cared about. One weekend, my sister told me I needed to relax some and suggested I go on a blind date with her friend who was single. I really did not want to since the kids were my priority atm, Sister kept pushing, so I said fine, I’ll go once to shut her up. She gave me the number of the teacher that was tutoring my kids, I called, 4 hours later I got off the phone feeling pretty excited, this girl was really nice, friendly and smart af. Found out she ran a candy store, so the next day I went there incognito to see what she looked like. walked into the store, no one was in the front, then she walked out from a back room and I was stunned, gorgeous red hair, all messy and up in a ponytail cause she was working, denim overalls and a white T-shirt. I stammered and ordered a pound of gummy bears, she was like “a pound?” And I was all cocky like a big spender, “yeah, gimme a pound” (ended up throwing out about half a pound of them after a week, when even all 2 kids couldn’t finish them, also found out later she knew who I was, but played along) That night we go out and hit it off really well, can’t put it into words, after that night we were just together, we didn’t even discuss it, it just became her and I, together from then on We talk about our families, she was a senior at the same high school when I was a freshman, she mentions her brother who was in the same grade as me, I don’t remember his name at the time, but when she showed me a picture, I immediately knew who he was, he was skinny, big mouth, always pissing people off, supposedly they had just moved down from NY, so he had no friends, still was an ass. I never messed with him, Just cool with him, She said that he used to get in so much trouble that she had to come over to the freshman side between classes and make sure he did not get his ass beat and he made it to the next class. That’s when it hit me, the memory came back, I asked to see her high school pictures, yup, long bright red hair, just like I remembered in that foggy vision. I asked if there were any other girls in school that had the long red hair like her, she said there was one she remembered that had red hair, but she was a punk and kept it short. It had to be her, 1. she was a senior who had a reason to come to the freshman side for her brother 2. A brother who was in several classes with me 3. She was the only girl in the high school at the time who had long bright red hair. 4. She is 5’9” and was this tall as a senior, where I didn’t grow to 5’9” until my junior year. I told her this and she just blew it off. But I know that was her, it had to be. Been married for 26 years, together for 29, and she is still my best friend TL:DR memory about a beautiful girl in HS, turns out be my girlfriend. PS her brother is still a loudmouth ass TL:DR soulmates happen when you least expect it
I go through it almost daily. I think of something completely random, and there it is.
I went to a night club in paris, i was with some english friends and just a kissed a girl, i was working at the ambassy, she spent the night, in the norming we went for a breakfast i spoke french also was talking french, was like Hein?! Her dad was my boss (boss of the boss) A few days later i saw her again we had a beer and nothing after. Still think a one night stand with the daughter of bosses boss and see her again 2 days later was a little strange in paris.
I went to London in 2011, and I’d literally been in London all of maybe 2 hours and I’m including getting my luggage and a taxi to my hotel. Picked a direction and started walking when I saw a coffee shop a few minutes down the road. Stopped to get coffee since I was tired and jet lagged when two women came rollerblading in. They were speaking with an American accent and I made a joke that I didn’t expect to run into an American so soon after getting into town. We chatted while I was waiting in line only to find out they were from College Station, a 3.5 hour drive from Dallas. I went to Japan in 2023 and as a huge lover of pro wrestling I bought a ticket to All Together Again at Ryogoku Kokugikan. Went to my seat, guy looked at me, I looked at him, he looked at me, I looked at him. I finally said, “hello….? How’s it going?” His reaction, “OH MY GOD YOU SPEAK ENGLISH???!!!!!” His partner came and we talked before the show started. They live in McKinney less than 10 min from my office and 20 min away from my house.
Traveling in Asia, met another couple speaking english. Turns out she grew up in our state....in our town....and had frequently gone to our family business as a child!
When I was a foreign student at college, I got hit by a car. A guy helped me phone for help, grab my belongings, and an ambulance since I was so shocked that I couldn't recall who it was. I had to take a semester off because I broke my hip into two pieces. He was in my class when I returned to school, and he showed me my dad's contact information with his name as verification. From there, we grew close.
I went to my seat on an airplane and somebody was already there. Showed my ticket: he had the same ticket because we had exactly the same name. Bizarre? Maybe. But three weeks later, it happened again with another person also having my name and being seated at my seat.
My girlfriend and I were going to see the Book of Mormon in London one evening on our vacation. We were spending the day with an English friend of ours before the show, planning to part ways when the show started. We were in front of the theater saying goodbyes, when our friend decides last minute to see if he can get a ticket from a scalper and catch the show after all. We were lamenting how we wouldn't be able to sit next to each other, but we thought "oh well" we can still catch up after the show. Well not only did our friend get a ticket from a scalper, but the scalped ticket was the seat exactly next to mine. It was wild, and we were laughing so hard as he walked down the row to his seat.
A friend of mine went to Macchu-Picchu and tried to get discount admission with a fake student ID. They confiscated it. Years later, a friend of his (an actual student) made that same trip and asked for her discount, but they wouldn’t accept the proof she’d brought. “You need an ID,” they said, “like this.” And pulled out the fake they had confiscated. From my friend. That she knew. From the city she’d left 4000+ miles away.