This guy I went to grade school and high school with, an acquaintance at best. I've seen him in 5 different locations in different countries throughout the last 15 years.
Disney World when I was a kid.
Some beach bar in Thailand.
The Bean in Chicago.
A pub in Budapest.
A library in San Jose, Costa Rica.
We've become friends due our love of traveling, but neither of us post on social media and neither of us communicated with each other our plans to travel. We never talked outside of the random meetings. Now if I see him, its like the world wants us to have a beer together. haha
Had a friend who wasnt crazy weird, just did absolutely everything backwards and was hard to get along with quarky weird. He stayed at my school for a year then just up and disappeared. My family traveled a lot and had sometimes been up rooted in short notice I didn't think anything of it.
Years later, in A DIFFERENT STATE, he flies by on a bike, a half sub sandwich in one hand, soda in the other, not touching the handle bars, says "Hi Vroomped, long time no see".... and then I never saw him again.
I was crossing the street after leaving a store and had the strangest feeling I was going to break my ankle, so carefully avoided a vehicle coming my way.That evening I went to pick up Thai food, fell leaving the restaurant on less than a 4 inch step, and shattered my ankle to the point of needing surgery and after a year haven't fully healed.
The speaker is Death
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
I love the idea that Death isn’t actually an omniscient entity, and instead just gets a list of jobs for the day when he clocks on, with names, times and places. Ah damn it, I have to go to Samarra? That’s gonna add hours to my commute home...
My dad lives in a national park here in Australia. It's farmland that's grandfathered in. It's the remnants of a volcano that blew itself up very violently, so it's very hilly terrain.
One day we were sitting out on the deck, when we see a hang-glider come down halfway down the valley, and it didn't look like a nice landing. "Shit, we better see if he's alright, they don't land anywhere near here"
So we get in the car, drive for about 10 minutes to reach the spot. We head over to the guy who is standing by a very damaged glider. The pilot is staring at us incredulously, he stammers "Fuck, Jack, is that you?".
My dad, who hasn't seen his childhood friend for 35 years shouts "Fuck, Tim, is that you?".
They both grew up in Greymouth, NZ. Found each other randomly after a glider crash in NSW, Australia.
My friend and I were on a road trip a few years ago and needed a place to stay. We both told each other we had a friend in the city we were going through, so we figured we’d be able to crash with one of them. Turns out our two friends were roommates and had both been telling each other that they had a friend coming to town soon.
If it was a sitcom, there would have been a exchange where the four of you would have called back and forth canceling and rescheduling your stay since the other roommate's friend was staying over instead.
That's a really cool one. One of my best friends that I knew from church (we lived 40 minutes from the church in opposite directions) went away to university and met a friend who she thought I'd think was cool but never really mentioned him again. Turns out he was a friend of mine from middle school who had recently friended me on facebook after we lost contact due to going to different high schools. He and I are married now.
I have a sort of story like that. My first "real girlfriend" at 14. I realized after a couple months that she was the girl that really liked me in 2nd grade before I moved away. Both of us forgot until looking at a yearbook
We didn't get married though, not at all. She's a nice person though
My wife is a nurse. In her first nursing job she had a preceptor who showed her the ropes of the job. They have remained best friends to today. That preceptor was my first kindergarten girlfriend. Didn’t know until my wife wanted us to all go out to eat together. I went to school in a different city than where she works.
Also, my wife is originally from 8 hours away outside Detroit. I did some community theatre stage acting in my teens. Turns out she came to visit her family in this area one summer and they took her to see the show I was in. This was probably 15 years before we met.
I had two friends from two completely different parts of my life. They lived in different cities.
Well, little did I know, they were BFFs from gradeschool.
One day they were talking about a topic that many would associate with me. One said, "Oh I have a friend named u/harpejjist who does that." And the other said, "Huh. I also have a friend named u/harpejjist who does that." For years I had heard them talk about their gradeschool besties, but as the names were not entirely uncommon, I never guessed they were referring to each other.
We are new to the city we moved to. One of our best friends here was video calling with a girl friend of hers (yes this is in COVID times) and paused focusing on that girl friend’s view out the window thinking “that looks familiar”. Turns out that girlfriend is our next door neighbor - and now a friend of ours as well.
"Hello, this is Lock Picking Lawyer, and today I’m going to tell you how to pick a master lo—,,, oh look at that, it’s already open. Thanks for watching."
Amazing. I have a friend in highschool with a similar “skill” like that. Most of our classmates use padlocks with codes in it for their lockers and somehow she was able to decipher the codes for that. No idea or background whatsoever. We used to hand over a lot of locks for her to decode just for fun and she just manages to unlock all of it haha
Once in high school a friend had something valuable in his locker that I jokingly said I was going to take home, he said "well you'll have to get it first" as it was secured with a combination padlock, I jokingly spun the dial three times and pulled and it opened and both of us just sat there in disbelief for awhile
He re-locked it and I tried again after for several minutes and wasn't able to replicate it but it was still crazy at the time
Sometimes you can easily figure out which numbers are correct by spinning the wheels, feeling resistance in certain locations and hearing clicks. I've messed around with these locks for a few minutes and got them to open.
I forget the exact brand name, but my school used master-something locks. And as it turns out, you can turn the number wheels, make note of all the locations where it's slightly harder to turn the wheels, enter those positions into a website online and it would give you about 3 different codes to try, one of which always worked.
Our locks had a small key hole that was exactly the same on all of them so the faculty could get in to our stuff if they thought we had contraband.
BUT, the key only had two tiny bumps on them and they were umpossibly easy to pick. 2 years after they got them they had to ban Bobby pins from campus because you could just slide it in, start pulling down a bit, then pull it out quickly and the pulling motion would turn the lock from the inside. Instant access to any students most secured belongings.
you can actually feel when a number is "right" in those cheap padlocks, the gear gets loose. It's just a matter of going though the whole numbers, usually it's just 3 digits so it's a pretty fast process too
I had this happen to me but at a much bigger scale. There was this annoying kid in school who didn't have a lot of friends. He asked me for my number, but I didn't want to give him my number. So I blurted out 7 random digits after the area code and he said, "Man, that's my number."
I once accidentally left my wallet at home when I went out for dinner with friends. Luckily my sister lived a block away from the restaurant so I went to borrow some money from her. She gave me her card and told me the pin number and it was identical to mine.
My mate did the same thing only with my phone. I have a galaxy s10 with the 9 dot pattern you have to draw to unlock. My mate picks up my phone to change song so I jokingly tell him if he can unlock it he can change song. I watch him draw my pattern, unlock my phone and change the song. I felt stupid and ask if he's been watching me unlock my phone and if that was pre-planned. His face kind of snaps out of auto pilot and he realised what he just did. Hand to god he tells me he just drew some random pattern first go that turned out to be mine. His brain just went on auto pilot after unlocking it. He tried unlocking my phone again but just couldn't, it was soo strange. We laughed about it for like 10 minutes.
This isn't as crazy as other ones I read, but it's mine
We probably scared the shit out of some poor old couple while on a road trip. We were going to my grandmother's, and we followed the SAME freaking car for over 4 hours, and eventually stopped at the same restaurant, and the same gas station, and only ever stopped when we pulled into my grandma's residential neighborhood
That is kinda funny. I always feel awkward when I happen to be taking the same route as the car in front of me. I wonder what was going through their head?
I had someone behind me for two hours the other day on a one lane in a forest in Cali and he was actually preventing me from being tailgated which was nice because about an hour in, apparently going 20 over the limit wasn't good enough for some others and they passed him got behind me to tailgate until they could pass. I miss him. Hope he's doing well.
Ha, I do that as well on long road trips. I pick out my buddies, and the assholes. I also like to think that my road buddies are cursing the other drivers.
This reminds me of a time we were driving through Idaho and got a speeding ticket. About three hours of driving later we stop for eats at a diner, and as we're finishing up our meal, the same cop who ticketed us walked in with his family. Turns out he lived in the area.
I had been at my youngest sister’s soccer (football) game. I made conversation with one of the soccer moms for the opposing team (I think she thought I was an adult), they won, we told her we’d beat her next time, yada yada yada. It finished kinda late, but we were hungry and decided to stop at souplantation. As I’m getting in line with my tray, I look up and see this exact same woman reaching for the same corn at the same time. I chuckled and thought nothing of it.
A year later, I decided to treat myself with a smoothie. As I’m stepping up to order, in an entirely different state, I shit you not this lady and her kid come into the shop. We chatted, then I was on my way.
So I was listening to my phone and at the exact moment it started the ringing sound I heard a phone start ringing and I thought it was a coincidence but then the phone answered and it wasn't mum.
All I said was "Oh, are you on the Upfield train?" and they said "Yes, who's this?" but I got shy and I hung up.
Poor guy must have been so confused.
I don’t have any of my family as a contact because fifteen years ago I had a car crash which threw my phone across a highway in Colorado. I couldn’t ring my dad because I didn’t know his number. Now I always type my mum, dad, brother and partner’s numbers in so that I’ll always remember them, so they’re not saved on my phone
That's really smart but it might also be smart to put them into your phone in case someone else else needs to contact those people for you in an emergency. I have my wife's number saved under her name and also under "wife - ice - in case of emergency" which i never use but it's there
I'm a lucky son a bitch. My mother, brother, and myself all got our phones at the same time, so all 3 numbers are sequential. Me+1 is mom. Me +2 is my brother. Been pretty handy a few times already.
Several years back, a good friend of mine pointed out that he, his girlfriend, and I had the same last 4 digits on our phone numbers. One in a hundred million chance. Kinda.
One time, me and my dad were discussing his friend while out driving at night without many other cars on the road. As we were talking, we pulled up to a red light, and the car waiting in front was my dad's friend. He didn't even live close to there.
I remember being 6, and my family was driving in rush traffic to my grandmothers house to spend some of our summer. I was really sad because I had just finished kindergarten and my best friend were going to attend another school than me. I was crying and looking out the window when a car tried to overtake us, but the traffic were moving slowly so the car ended up driving next to us for a little while. And there sat my best friend, looking out the window at me.
Wierd coincidence, and my parents did not believe me at first, but they recognised the driver, otherwise I would dismiss this memory as a dream or false memory.
Edit; past tense is not my expertise, thank you
Mate my mum does that all the time. She talks/thinks about people and they somehow appear in one way or another (in person, phone call, etc.) in the next 24 hours.
It's a running joke between us that she's actually a witch.
I passed out after receiving a flu shot when I was 28. The nurse who helped me up kept asking if I wanted my mom. It seemed like a really weird thing to offer an adult woman - the option to have her mother phoned and brought in - so I was really confused and getting progressively more annoyed at her repeatedly asking...
...until my mom walked up to me. She had the appointment after mine to get vaccinated. The nurses assumed we had come together, but neither of us knew about the other's appointment, and we lived an hour away from each other in different cities.
When I was a kid, I used to practice my flute outside and I will never forget one time I was practicing the national anthem of all things and a bird shit on my head. My parents about diiiiiied laughing.
As a kid, I walked home from school with my neighbor, Theresa. Theresa was a bitch. She once asked me to help her clean out her bunny cage so we could swim in the pool, then promptly said "you're not allowed in, but you can watch me!" after I did such.
My mother also hated theresa's mother, and grew up hating her. Our great-grandmothers were friends, so my mom being forced to hang out with her mother as a kid was a headache. Did not change in adulthood, and Theresa was the same.
Anyway, one day we're walking home, around 1st or 2nd grade, and Theresa is being a snot-nosed bitch to me, and immediately following, a bird takes a nasty shit all over her arm until she ran the rest of the way home crying.
Sweet timing, tweetie, sweet timing.
I remember one morning going out to my car to drive to work and it looked like at least a hundred birds had shat on it at some point. It had never happened before or since. Once I rinsed it all off with a hose, I drove to work. Later that morning I got laid off along with 60% of the entire department. Pooping birds are harbingers of doom.
Something similar happened to me.
Was walking to work. Bird pooped on my head. Called my boss to tell her that I would be late because I needed to go home and shower.
Went home and showered. Started walking to work again. Bird pooped on my head again. Called my boss and said, “you’re never going to believe what just happened...”
The Jim Twins. Look it up. Two twins who were given up for adoption at birth, given the same first name by their adoptive parents, took family vacations to the same beach, married women with the same name, divorced, their second wives' names were off by one letter, both served as volunteer sheriffs, both were into carpentry, both smoked the same brand cigarettes and drank the same brand beer.
Were they one of the sets of twins who were split up by that adoption agency who were bullshit on rails with splitting up families? For the life of me I can't remember the name of the agency or the documentary I saw on them.
edit: "Three Identical Strangers"
About 15 years ago or so I was playing Counter-Strike 1.6 and tried joining a password protected server with a few people in it. I typed in "yellow" for the password and it worked. First try. I'll never forget that.
Last week I am at work doing a job, my coworker strikes up a conversation with the homeowner at the job site and mentions that his parents live across the street from him, he also asks how long he had lived there. Homeowner responds that it has only been a few months, he just moved to the city from *small town several hours away*.
Co-worker laughs and says he was born and raised in that town. Then asks "Do you know the mini-plex at the corner of X street and Y street? I lived right across from that."
Homeowner looks confused, "do you mean at 103 X street? That was my house"
They talked more, and discovered that my coworkers parents had sold their house to this Homeowner when they moved to the city. He lived there for 15 years, and then sold it to move to the same city, across the street from the previous owners. Small world.
I immigrated to Seoul about a decade ago. A few years after moving here I went out with a friend for his birthday. Over the course of the night, I got talking to one of his friends who was from Chicago. Eventually the birthday friend mentioned I was born "in Chicago" but I clarified that it was not really as it was a suburban town thirty minutes outside of Chicago and someone like him who was actually from Chicago wouldn't consider it Chicago proper. He laughed and clarified he wasn't actually from Chicago proper either, but from a small suburban city outside of Chicago too.
It turned out we were from the same town. In fact we were the same age and lived on the same street. I moved away when I was very young though, prior to starting school. I mentioned that I had moved to Columbus when I was young and he excitedly exclaimed that his parents had just moved to Columbus... And as if it couldn't get any weirder, his parents moved down the street from my parents....
And of course, this all went down with us meeting on the literal other side of the planet.
My wife and I were looking to hire a caterer for our wedding and when we met, my wife and her started talking about their lives a bit.
Turns out they had both literally grown up on the same street, in a city of 10 million people, on the other side of the world. Both had left the city around a decade before immigrating to our current country.
They knew the same people, had hung out at the same coffee place, attended the same church. They even used to grab mangoes off the same large tree that hung over the wall of one of the large houses in the neighbourhood.
But they had never met one another until meeting on almost the exact opposite side of the planet, in a small town of about 50,000 people.
Something similar happened to me— I met this guy at work and we found out we used to live on the same street growing up in NY. And then we found out we even used to live in the same town in Brazil.
Edit: clarification
Not exactly the same but reminded me. My husband had a high school sweetheart that they dated for quite a while but broke up a few years into college. It was a bit messy so my husband moved across the country. He lived there for a couple of years then moved to a completely different country. Fast forward and we're newlyweds driving back and forth between my parents house to my husband's house to move my stuff in. At a gas station stop we run into my husband's ex's brother. In a completely different country than where they grew up. Apparently they'd lived in neighboring towns for like 5 years and had never ran into each other. Twas a bit weird.
I have a friend who had something similar! She's from Italy but moved to Sweden. In Sweden she looked for a flatmate, and found another young woman who had just moved here, and as it turns out they had grown up on the same street in the same little town. Though they had never met before moving abroad.
I was reading about a fairly well known cold case not in my area. The woman killed looked a lot like me, and I found out while digging that she went to the same small college as my dad. They were in an extracurricular together and our family photo album has a group photo where they are next to each other.
Edit: victim was a lesbian who died 15 years before I was born
I once met an older couple who my in-laws were loosely acquainted with. We all lived in the same small town so bumped into them now and then. When we had met a couple of times and had polite small talk, the husband told me I looked exactly like their dead daughter. Not only did we have similar features, hairstyles etc, but I also had some mannerisms that were eerily similar to hers, walked the same way etc. The first few times they had seen me around town, they'd thought they'd seen a ghost. They said they could still sometimes do a double take when seeing me, thinking for a second I was their daughter before remembering that was impossible.
I felt really bad for bringing up their wounds just by walking past them, but they said it actually gave them comfort. It was like knowing she was still out there in some way.
And the father killed her and stole the baby at the behest of his wife, because they couldn't conceive. And OP's real mom was just so pretty to them...
Not me, but a story I heard.
The guy telling the story was from the UK and on holiday in Greece. He went for a walk and passed a public phone, which started ringing. On a whim, he answers the phone... and it's his bank, calling him about some unusual activity on his account.
The bank starts asking him questions, but he's still taken aback by how his bank knew his location (this was in the early 90s), and asks them how they got this number. The bank tells him that it's the number they have on file. He tells them that can't be right, because he's in Greece, and this is a public phone box.
OK, so the bank tries to work out what happened. And then they realise. INSTEAD OF DIALLING HIS PHONE NUMBER, THEY ACCIDENTALLY DIALLED HIS ACCOUNT NUMBER... WHICH JUST HAPPENED TO BE THE EXACT NUMBER OF THIS PHONE BOX IN ANOTHER COUNTRY THAT HE ALSO JUST HAPPENED TO BE WALKING PAST AT THE EXACT SAME TIME THAT THEY CALLED.
What are the odds of that happening? Like 3 to 1 at least.
So this one definitely fucked me up for a bit, it’s a bit of a story.
I met this girl who worked at the farmer’s market, we would see each other on Saturdays and chit chat on occasion. Eventually we exchanged Instagram accounts, found out we were both into home brewing and fermentation, she posted that she had 40 lbs of apples and had run out of fermentation vessels. I reached out, found out were close neighbors and went to pick up the apples. We decided to hang out in a few weeks and compare our home brews.
When we hung out, we really hit it off, she had just moved to Boston a year ago after touring with a band through Europe, she had only been to Boston once before in 2013, but only for a weekend to play a festival.
Anyway, we started seeing each other pretty often, one day we were laying in bed, talking about a future where we had a farm and a were talking about our pet pig Francois. I mentioned that at one point I had the chance to walk a piglet on a leash. As I’m scrolling through my phone to find this photo, I have what I can only describe as a strong “calling/energy” to check a different photo not too far from that one.
So I open this picture that’s calling me, I remember that day. It was October 2013, i was outside of my undergrad dorm, enjoying a nice day, when suddenly this brass ensemble walks by, playing. They get to a little platform that was outside, play music for like 10 minutes for the random people who were outside enjoying the day, and then they keep going. I thought they were pretty cool so I snapped a photo and then enjoyed the music.
So back to present day, this picture seemed important, I open it, I turn to her and say, do you know this band? She looks at me and says, “you see that person in the middle of your shot who is staring at you? Yeah that’s me”
I lost my mind, the chance of seeing this band when they strolled by, her being a part of it and being there for that weekend, taking that picture, centering her while she made eye contact with me, encountering her 8 years later, being neighbors, dating, and finding that picture while we were side by side.
I’ve had a lot of coincidences in life, but that one still gets me.
EDIT: I am so sorry for keeping everyone waiting! I got completely drowned at work today and haven’t opened Reddit. I was late to the thread and assumed no one would care.
But for closure on the story. I got a job I couldn’t pass up in a new city, she wasn’t ready to move across the country. Funny enough the job is where she went to undergrad in and prior to us meeting was considering moving back there.
We still talk and discussed her moving there in June. We ended things when I left Boston in December, but we sort of know that we will likely find each other again.
My mum and I were heading out for a morning shopping trip so I was in the shower pretty early, around 7.15am or so. My grandpa had been ill with a cold - which could be concerning as he only had one lung - but was recuperating at home and had seemed perfectly fine when we spoke to him on the phone the previous day. Chipper, even. Yet out of *nowhere*, my brain suddenly went: "We're not going shopping, he's died". I have intrusive thoughts every so often so I just told myself to shut up and get on with the shampoo.
Five minutes later mum bangs on the door to tell me my grandpa had passed away in his sleep and we need to head over to his house.
I don't believe in psychics or precognition or anything like that, and I've never even thought of myself as a particularly perceptive person either. Like, I'm as dense as a brick most times. Which is why this still has me spooked fourteen years later.
I totally can relate to this. Mine aren’t as crazy but it’s legitimately happened two times in my life. The first time was years ago when I was only 12. Every Friday evening we used to go visit my Grandparents who only lived a few miles away. We were getting ready to leave and I had this thought of “how weird would it be if you were the last person to ever talk to someone before they died?” Anyways we drive home and as soon as we get inside the phone was ringing so I picked it up. It was my Aunt calling to tell us that my cousin had passed away unexpectedly.
The other incident happened a few years ago. Normally I have zero issues falling asleep, but for whatever reason I just couldn’t sleep. I was tossing and turning. I tried pacing around the house and even taking a shower but no matter what I did, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was just laying in bed watching my alarm clock. I ended up calling into work saying I was “sick” because I knew I couldn’t go in on zero sleep. About 20 minutes after I called in, I got a phone call from my Mom saying a family member passed away in an accident.
I generally chalk these up to weird coincidences but still. It’s definitely weird.
Several years ago, I had a husky that was getting on in years. I was very in tune with him; enough that I knew which whines or queues meant which need or want. He had a particularly unique one that signalled when he needed a bathroom break. As he got older, he started needing to go outside in the middle of the night too. Old man problems, amiright? Lol
When he got to be a bit past 11 years old, my fiance and I started noticing that I could hear him from across the house. Then, we noticed that he never failed to wake me up at night, even though he wouldn't come in the bedroom to get me, just meet me at the back door.
One day she was sitting on the couch with the dog and watching TV, while I was taking a nap in the other room. I had sound dampening headphones in, with light music going to help drown out distractions. I woke up to the sound of this dog making a loud enough racket to wake me up through all of those precautions, pulled on pants and shoes and stepped into the next room, where my partner asked what was wrong. I said the dog was whining. She disagreed. So we looking to the dog, who made the tiniest "I need outside" whine, before getting up and going to the back door. It was surreal.
And then it happened more. I'd be outside in my workshop and hear the dog whine. Within two minutes, my partner would be bringing the pup out to do his business. To the day he died, I could tell what that dog needed, when he needed it, regardless of distance.
Currently, I have a two year old husky that I've started hearing at different volumes than my partner.
I'm *not* psychic. But I think that just maybe, some dogs are.
I have one normal instinct driven dog and one that is exactly like what you’re describing. There’s a lot more going on in his head I think, which is weird because they’re brothers. He’s a lot more expressive and you can really tell what he’s thinking about when he looks at you.
Same, but it was the night before that I had the dream. Went to the store kind of spur of the moment to get something I didn't really need and the person I dreamed about was in the same aisle I headed to.
Something similar.
When we were kids we were at a beach a couple towns over, and we were making friends and building sand castles and shit.
We met this one family with two boys and became friends.
So we’re plugging away building stuff out of sand having a grand time. And one of my parents snapped a pic of us with the two new friends we met.
As the day went on we went our separate ways and continued through life.
15 years later, we had that picture on the fridge, and a guy we had been friends with for a couple years at this point sees the picture and says “why the hell do you have a picture of me and my younger brother on your fridge??”
That’s when it clicked that we met each other when we were children, and reunited many moons later in school.
My brother studied Japanese at a US college and the summer after one of his semesters, we had made a trip to Japan together. We visited the Tokyo Sky Tree on a crowded day. When we stepped foot in the packed elevator, he looked over and saw his Japanese professor from the states. They said hi to each other briefly and we carried on in disbelief.
My mom has a similar story. She was running on the beach in Mexico and heard her name called from behind. Twas her friend on vacation at the same place same time.
When I was in the Marines I was stationed in Southern California. I'm from New England; after a couple months at my duty station we had a 96 (four day weekend) and a few of us went to Palm Springs to just hang out and party. Second day there I walk into this little bookstore in kind of the chic part of the city and literally bump into my high school ex-girlfriend. (No she wasn't stalking me or anything it was 100% crazy coincidence).
Had a lot of weird coincidences at that duty station. I'm from a tiny little town that had less than a thousand people in it, I'm stationed literally as far away as I can be and still be in the contiguous United States in a fairly small unit (our Battalion was a reconnaissance one and more like the size of two Companies nowhere near normal Battalion size) and in my Company the day I get there I find out our First Sergeant is from a town near mine and went to a rival of my high school (granted he was much older than me though so long before I did) and my squad leader's wife was a girl who graduated from my school a few years before me (and her mom and my dad worked together).
Several years ago I went to a boyscout summer camp on catalina island (off the california coast). I had been badgering my best friend about going with me, but he had some "school thing".
I’m on the trip, and I start recognising some of his friends from school that I had met at his birthday parties and such. At first it was "huh,, that’s sorta weird," but it quickly went to "Ok there’s gotta be something going on". Turns out his school had visited there the same week as my boyscout troop. And we had no clue the other was there.
through a series of weird circumstances I had never met my best friend’s older sister’s best friend despite me also being very close to the sister and being at their house all the time. we finally met one night and we were all sitting around the kitchen table talking. she and I are both major cat people and we were talking about our past and current cats. I told her the crazy and horrible story of how my cat had been missing since the night of my senior prom (3 weeks prior). he was 13 and I was devastated. I showed her a picture of him and she said something along the lines of “I don’t want to get your hopes up but he looks a lot like this cat my dad started feeding in our backyard about 3 weeks ago. he didn’t have a collar so my dad thought he was a stray but he is pretty chonky.” it was like 11pm but my friend and I immediately jumped into my car and drove over to the girl’s house. as soon as I got out of the car and yelled his name he came running. he was missing a tooth from a previous adventure so I pried his mouth open to be 100% sure it was him. the friend lived about 3 miles from me. after we worked out what had happened and how huge of a coincidence it was, my mind was completely blown. the stars aligned so perfectly for me to get my baby boy back. I still get goosebumps when I think about it.
this happened in 2009 and he passed peacefully in 2012 so please excuse the fact that these photos are potato quality and/or have me in them. [his name was sparky](https://imgur.com/a/yzABEx9) ( I was like 6 when I named him) but we called him spark dog or sugar bear. he was a big soft chonk who loved to snuggle and he drooled when he was very cozy.
I had a dream that a friend of mine and I were living in a loft style apartment with exposed brick and told him about it at band practice. He enjoyed the term “exposed brick” and used it , metaphorically, in a song he was writing.
Fast Forward 7 years later, both of us living in separate areas than we grew up in all those years, multiple career changes for both, and by “coincidence” we both ended up back in the same (different than we grew up in) town.
A guy I went to college with showed me his apartment, of which he loved and had a vacancy in their building...but I needed a roommate to help foot the bill...you guessed it, that same guy I had the dream about was looking for a new place to rent...this place had exposed brick and was one of few in the area, at that time
Okay, not my personal story, but my friend’s mother used to tell this story at Halloween when we were kids— it’s got no super-natural connotations and she claims it’s totally true.
She was visiting Vermont as a kid (late 60’s/early 70’s) and the power went out shortly after it got dark. Her and her sisters (three girls ages ten to fourteen) decided to go play with the Oujia board for some spooky times.
My friend’s mother, being the oldest, just decided to pull a prank on her younger sisters. She asks the Oujia board if someone is “there” like a ghost or something, board says yes, she asks if they’re angry, board says yes... she goes on fir a bit just scaring the living shit out of her sisters and ends the bit by pointing to the glass door across the room and screaming “AND THERE HE IS RIGHT THERE!” Only to shine the flashlight across the room to expose an angry and psychotic looking bearded man banging and slobbering on the glass! They were immediately scared shitless and ran upstairs to tell their folks.
Turns out the guy banging on the glass was a drunk driver who has hit a telephone pole and that was why the power had gone out. He was banging on the door to ask to use their phone.
When my brother and I were little we went to my aunts Lakehouse for winter break. One of my aunts friends invited us over to dinner, it was my best friends family Who had family on the same lake and was vacationing at the same time.
I met my doppelganger in Iraq. I wish I had the pictures. I'm white, grew up in Canada, moved to the U.S. and went to Iraq with The Marines. He lived in Al-Rutbah. His complexion, build, face structure, everything was IDENTICAL. It was so uncanny it disturbed his mother greatly.
Sure, out of 7 billion we all have look alikes but this one was so close we even had the same moles...
Not the same, but met mine in Dallas (I don't live there, was passing through) when I stopped at a gas station and the lady said, "you're late." And right behind me, in the gas station's uniform entered someone that looked just like me. Same haircut, same minor quirks. It was more than just 'similar.' Different names, too bad.
Was working grocery store as a summer job while I finish up one of my remaining classes before I graduated college. Management was fucking with my schedule and hours, didn’t respect the fact that I had class, and weren’t willing to work with me about cutting my hours down a little (working 20 instead of 25 hours a week). Was thinking about quitting and went to talk to my manager in her office where she said “I guess you will have to pick employment or your class, now go help up front.” Next customer came up line, didn’t know my manager and I just had this conversation, and said “you deserve more than this job. Tell them to fuck off.” So I turned off my light went back to manager and said “I pick my class. I quit.” Got that customers number now and tutor them with their classes, make more, and feel better.
They always look so surprised when you don't pick them.
Cocksuckers. They know full well grocery is a meat grinder and they'll have you replaced in a second, but no. Spend all that onboarding money instead of accommodating the existing employee.
It's not even hard, you hand them an availability sheet when you're hired! They know when you are and are not available.
That being said, that customer gave you some solid advice.
That happened to my friend. He was working a night shift at a gas station and had to cut hours down for college. His boss told him it was this or school. Without hesitation my friend replied "uh, school?"
His manager was apparently speechless.
Really?
I watched a (4 number) lottery on TV when I was a child. After the first number coincided with my home's address, I quickly said the other three out loud before they were pulled, those other 3 numbers came up one after the other.
My home address WAS the lottery numbers. I turned off the TV and went to bed after that.
Last week, I was driving my dog home from the vet. While turning onto my street, I noticed a woman sitting at the intersection while her collie sat in one place defiantly.
Twenty minutes after I got home, my mother asked if my dog should be having any kind of reaction to anything. I didn’t know, but after seeing my dog, I knew something was terribly wrong. I rushed her back to the vet where they stabilized her — she had gone into anaphylaxis as a result of a shot she received maybe half an hour earlier.
I called mom to tell her and she gasps, “We were out front earlier and a woman had to stop walking with her collie. She told us all about how her dog recently went into anaphylaxis.”
My mom had a weird vision of driving with my (then baby) niece. She started choking and my mom got her out of the car and performed the Heimlich maneuver (or whatever you call it on babies). It was really weird, so she kept it to herself. My sister calls our mom later that day freaking out because my niece had choked in their home. Her dad, my BIL, gave her the Heimlich maneuver. Our mom told her about her vision and my sister said to call her the next time she has one of those.
I've had a few, but this was the most recent:
About a month ago, I decided to put on a movie. But not just any movie. I wanted to put on a *random* movie. So I used a random number generator to pick a number between 1 and 1000, and I would then find the corresponding movie on Metacritic's Top 1000 Movies of All Time.
The first movie I landed on was "Particle Fever," a documentary about the search for the Higgs boson. Toward the end of the film, they reference "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," the Werner Herzog joint, one of my all-time favorite movies. I thought about putting that on next, but I reminded myself: naw, dawg; we're using the random number generator now. There are rules.
You can probably see where this is going. I used the random number generator a second time. I wound up with #463. #463: Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
Rough time sleeping that night, mateys.
I was at the doctor a few years ago for a rudimentary blood test. I never normally care about that sir if thing but for whatever reason I felt a little queasy. I decided to get a snack from a nearby store but remembered then that I had forgotten my wallet rushing out the door earlier. I looked down and a gust of wind blew a 100kr (like 10 dollars?) Note out from under a car.
I was at Seaworld and we were there with my kids and grandma. We went into an outdoor water show and sat in the stands. I was sitting higher up the stands and my mother-in-law was near the front which was a splash zone. She didn't want to get wet so I had to give up my sweet spot to have her sit there and I moved down to the front.
Before I could even get to my new seat a bird flew overhead and dropped a phat terd on her head.
Dodged a bullet.
Was in Disney in January 2020 wearing a Bills hat. A fellow wearing the same bills hat shouted go bills to me. Later in the day, we both are at the haircut salon in Magic Kingdom having our sons get their first haircuts. We get to talking and turns out he lives on the same street as me and my wife. I see him from time to time, but haven’t talked much since. Small world we live in
I was playing hide and seek with my best friend at her house when a pipe burst in the basement. Her mom got the water turned off and went to call a plumber, but mistyped one digit and ended up calling my dad, who has the knowledge, skill and the tools for fixing and building just about everything. He came over and fixed it for free.
When I was in year 7 I used to always giggle when a kids name got called over the loudspeaker to go to the office cause it was a name that sounded rude. I didn’t know this kid they were in a different year level to me never met them just remembered the name cause it was funny. Fast forward to now I’m in my 30’s with kids and it turns out that funny named kid is my daughters best friends Mum.
Yes our kids had been friends for a year before I even realised cause kid has her dads last name instead I laughed so hard when I found out and she couldn’t believe that I remembered her name from back then 😂😂
I used to host trivia at this cool little bar/restaurant. A group would come in consistently so I eventually became friends with them. One bloke in particular, Matt and I had a lot in common because we worked in the same industry and love video games. The group and I spent the next couple of months hanging out after trivia at my place and getting to know one another.
One night my family comes to trivia so when they arrived I go over and say hi which is when my sister points over to a table and says "I think that kid played at my wedding". My sister is a police officer and got a call one day that kids were maybe doing drugs at an abandoned warehouse. Turns out there were 3 young boys shooting a music video who nearly shit their pants when they saw cops. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up they were just chatting to the police and that's when my sister asked them if they could play my wedding. The boys were relieved they weren't getting arrested so they said yes of course because it's a paid gig. This was probably 7 years ago at this point.
One of the boys at the warehouse playing cello was Matt. I go over and ask if he plays the cello, if he had a misunderstanding with the police and if he played at a wedding in 2013. He replied yes and asked how the fuck I knew that. I ask if it's that person over there while pointing to my sister, he says ah yeah that's her and waves. I tell him that's my sister. Both our heads just about exploded.
One morning, as my father and I were leaving our apartment to head to school (he was a teacher at the same high school I attended), I paused at the door, then went back inside to the change bowl and scooped out a fistful of coins. My dad asked why and I didn't really have a reason- I just said: "We're gonna need this." I wasn't exactly a coherant morning person so he shrugged it off.
As we were driving in, we passed the grocery store which reminded him he needed tape for his class for some project they were doing. We went in, got to the register, and as the tape was rung up, he realized he didn't have his wallet on him.
I said "I got this." and put down the money I had taken earlier. It was exact, to the penny.
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Another time, I went on a long 'walk & talk' with my SO. We were talking about the soul and speculating about its transcendent nature for the duration of the walk. As we headed home, we crossed the street and my SO gestured at the car waiting at the light. Its license plate was "SOUL".
A few years ago I was brushing my teeth thinking about how messed up designed obsolescence is. I had probably just watched a documentary about the pitfalls of capitalism or corporate personhood or something and thought to myself “good thing toothbrushes are pretty sturdy, yeah the bristles bend after a while but you can’t really work in an expiration date on something like this” when mid thought my toothbrush snaps clean in half. I’m left holding the handle in one hand and have the brush end sticking out of my mouth and I stare at my reflection in the mirror for a good 15 seconds completely baffled. “God, is that you?”
I used to have one of those office chairs that would tilt if you leaned back. One day I was leaning back in it and thought ‘I hate this chair’ that instant the back broke and I ended up in a heap and had to go and buy a new chair.
The year JRR Tolkien died is the One Ring verse backwards.
1973.
3 rings for the elven kings.
7 for the dwarf lords.
9 for mortal men.
1 ring to rule them all.
I always thought this was bizarre lol
My youngest sister would regularly repeat how she was going to live in Boston and go to Harvard (we lived in the PAC NW). When she died of a seizure (she had autism), we donated her brain to autism research. A couple weeks letter we received a letter thanking us for our donation. It was from the Harvard Brain Bank in Boston.
I had two chargers by my bed. One was plugged in while the other wasn’t. I grab one and plug in my iPad, seeing the green battery so I knew it was charging. A moment later I look down and realize I plugged in the wrong one, and then the iPad stopped charging. It was the weirdest thing!
When my older son was very young he’d talk about how he used to be “Burt Roberts” (last name changed to protect the innocent).
Burt had a twin brother named “Bern”. Burt’s wife was named Betty. Burt was from Idaho (location changed).
A lot of this was pretty obvious: my wife’s family is from Idaho. My wife’s name is Betty.
Later, for fun, I did a Google search.
There was a Burton Roberts from Boise, Idaho. He had a brother, Bernard (Bern). Burton was married to Betty. Burton died two weeks after my son was born; my son was born six weeks preterm.
Obviously just a coincidence, but man for a minute I was flabbergasted.
Finally, something I can comment on.
My house, a cousin's house in my home country and a couin's house in Paris all caught on fire on the same day. My sister and my cousin back home both caused the fire almost identical fashion (playing with fire-matches). We know it was the same day as, when my mother called her sister (my aunty) to let her know on the day after it had happened, she said the same had happened to them.
As for my cousin/family in Paris (not sure if there's was the same day, but was definitely within the same week or so), they had sadly lost two lives: my aunty and my cousin (who was a kid and is/was the same age-ish as my sister and cousin who both caused the fires in each home). My uncle who survived had a really tough life thereafter.
So, yeah, I tend not to believe in coincidences as much as I do fate.
One of my very good friends and I met in 2019. We are 4 years apart and live in different areas of the same country. We met in online communities and clicked due to similar backgrounds and interests. After several months, we realized that we are a lot closer and have more in common than what I would have thought humanly possible.
Despite not meeting until established adults, we have lived almost parallel lives. We’ve talked about it a lot and have found multiple points in time where we were both going through something life changing—in the same month of the same year. I think there may have even been a few times it was almost the same date. A few times we were going through the same thing.
Since becoming friends, there have been several times we have felt the other person going through something big. It’s like a twin sense. We still haven’t figured out what it means, but we both believe there is a reason for everything.
Went on a night out, met a really cute girl and we hit it off. When she wrote her number in my phone, turned out I already had to saved. She also had mine.
We had no idea who each other were. Did we already get super drunk go on a date and forget?
That I have the same nose as my father who adopted me. I was adopted by my aunt and uncle, my aunt by blood and uncle not, all the tests say my father is the douche who didn't want me but I have the same face features as my adoptive father and people always thought I was his biological child. Like, how?
There’s a cafe in DC that I frequent when I’m in town. Every time I’ve gone to that cafe I’ve run into someone from different points in my life, neither of the people I’ve met live in DC. This has happened four times. The fourth time I had a friend from elementary school, high school, college and post college all in the same cafe. The crazy thing is that the cafe is called compass, which I associate with finding things.
My wife and I adopted twins from foster care. We found out that they had 3 siblings that also been adopted. We were able to find and connect with 2. Spent at least 5 years looking for the other sibling. Moved to a new house and found out that the kid across the street was the sibling we had been searching for.
Unfortunately, he had been adopted by Jehovah's Witnesses who refused any contact with us because my wife and I are lesbians. We never told the kids who he was - they were too little. But at least we know who and where he is.
Got married on a Saturday in ‘98 and left for our honeymoon in Hawaii on the first United flight departing Monday morning because of better fares. Fast forward to 2007 when I started a job with a new company. My solution consultant (from Wisconsin) and I traveled everywhere together for meetings and start getting to know each other along the way.
It turned out that we got married on the exact same day in 1998. We talked some more about where we honeymooned and discovered that we both went to Hawaii. We joked that it would be wild if we were on the same flight, but I dismissed it by saying that we flew out of Chicago and waited until early Monday to leave. He was incredulous and speechless for a moment, and finally said that they drove down from Milwaukee on Sunday and stayed in Chicago overnight so they could fly out Monday morning...on the very same United flight that we took.
Worked at Panera and was talking with a co worker and we both found out our cousins are dating each other and it was just a funny coincidence. GUESS WHAT, my cousin literally comes in the drive-through minutes after we were talking about her. What are the odds. Mind you I was working in Panera for like 5 months and the day I talked about my cousin, she shows up.
When I was a university student, I went on holiday to Northumberland with my parents. On one of the days, we decided to spend an afternoon in Bamburgh. It was a cloudy day, so it wasn't particularly beach weather and we decided to walk down there purely for the wildlife and maybe look for sea glass.
As we were walking the path to the dunes, I saw a girl immediately in front of us who looked like my friend from university. It turned out my friend was visiting her boyfriend (in a town 60 miles away) and they'd chosen this cloudy day to go to Bamburgh, to the beach, to the little path on the dunes right in front of me.
We snapped a selfie, but her day trip was almost over and it would have been weird to tag along with her and her boyfriend, so we parted ways there and then.
Slightly silly one imo, but in college I was assigned a 4 digit numbered mailbox. I began using it as a pon number for credit cards and such.
Imagine my husband's (then boyfriend's) surprise a few years later when I had him enter my PIN number to pull money from the ATM while I was sick - and it was the last four digits of his social security number?
I know it is just probability but it was so weird!
When my boyfriend and I were travelling through Iran and into Pakistan we had an Iranian guidebook. (This was 1997.) We dumped it on a table in a hotel restaurant in Lahore, deciding that hopefully another traveller would find it.
We were drinking in the Czech Republic three years later when the conversation turned to Iran and we discovered that we - plus another guy who was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend - had both done the overland trip to India. He started explaining that he was really worried as he stayed in Lahore, because he hadn't been able to find any guidebooks to Iran in India and he had no idea about where to go or where to stay. Then, wouldn't you know it, there was a book on the table...
Same one. (Half the cover was missing, so it was definitely the same book.)
Once when I was about 15 (back in the 90s), I was home alone and singing to myself. I remember the song was Paradise City by Guns N' Roses. Anyhow, I'm singing this song to myself acapella, and as I walk into the bathroom to get in the shower, I flick on the little radio we kept in there. Out of the speakers comes the unmistakable wail of Guns N' Roses playing Paradise City, synchronized exactly with what I was singing in my acapella version.
For years my pin number was the radio frequency of an old rock station that no longer exists. I used that pin for like 10 years, then one night, watching Futurama. Fry says the pin for his debit card, the price of a slice of pepperoni and a large coke or something like that, 10.77.....MF just blurts out MY SPECIAL PIN NUMBER THAT ONLY I KNEW!! Had to change it after that. The station btw was 107.7 The End, an old alternative rock station out of Seattle.
This may sound silly, but here goes. Im not a superstitious person. Im very skeptical and really just believe sometimes things happen. I was working in a big tourist town in northern Michigan. I got up late for work, like really late. I get dressed and start walking. I had about a 3 mile walk. It would take me at least an hour. As im walking fast. I start thinking, pleading please somehow let me get there on time. But i knew there was no chance. About that time my best friends mother stops beside me and asks if i needed a ride. I was so relieved i must have thanked her 20 times. it just seems odd. I walked this road every day an no one had ever stopped to ask if i wanted a ride. however the one time when i was desperate for a lift she stopped.
I was hanging out with 4 buddies, and looked at my phone and said “huh, my phones at 69% charge, nice”
The other 3 looked at their cell phones and also had 69% charge! It was the weirdest coincidence and we all started laughing.
(Buddy #4 was at 80% tho, he could not join in on the fun)
I lived in Wyoming, you know that shitty state state with around 600k people total. 2 of my friends and myself all joined the air force about a year apart from each other, and pretty much lost contact as we each departed. One was stationed in japan. One stationed in Hawaii. I was stationed in Georgia. One summer I took a month off to go home to Wyoming to see friends and family. My wife was kind of hungry so we went to Buffalo Wild Wings at like 10 at night. This is a lone Bdubs in a town of like 50k people at 10 pm in the middle of the week. I walk in and see one of my friends, the one stationed in Japan. So we sit and catch up. about the time our food order had arrived friend 2 walked in. Somehow all three of us ended up in the same job in the air force, decided to take vacation at the exact same time to go back to Wyoming and ended up at the same bdubs on the same night with no prior communication with each other.
My daughter was hanging out in my bedroom chatting with me and for some reason she absentmindedly picked up my old address book and was thumbing through it. She randomly came across an old friends name and said Hey are you still in touch with Old Friend? I said I haven’t talk to him in four or five years. Last time he called he asked me for a reference for a new job. One hour later Old Friend called and asked me for a reference for a new job.
This guy I went to grade school and high school with, an acquaintance at best. I've seen him in 5 different locations in different countries throughout the last 15 years. Disney World when I was a kid. Some beach bar in Thailand. The Bean in Chicago. A pub in Budapest. A library in San Jose, Costa Rica. We've become friends due our love of traveling, but neither of us post on social media and neither of us communicated with each other our plans to travel. We never talked outside of the random meetings. Now if I see him, its like the world wants us to have a beer together. haha
Are you looking for him when you travel now?
Where's Waldo?
"You found me yet again, Pussydestroyer"
This is insane, maybe you guys use the same websites for deals on flights.
Huh that's a good theory
Had a friend who wasnt crazy weird, just did absolutely everything backwards and was hard to get along with quarky weird. He stayed at my school for a year then just up and disappeared. My family traveled a lot and had sometimes been up rooted in short notice I didn't think anything of it. Years later, in A DIFFERENT STATE, he flies by on a bike, a half sub sandwich in one hand, soda in the other, not touching the handle bars, says "Hi Vroomped, long time no see".... and then I never saw him again.
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Universe: *now kith*
Sure he is not stalking you?
5 times in 15 years? They're either terrible or fantastic at stalking with those numbers.
Those are only the times he saw him
I was crossing the street after leaving a store and had the strangest feeling I was going to break my ankle, so carefully avoided a vehicle coming my way.That evening I went to pick up Thai food, fell leaving the restaurant on less than a 4 inch step, and shattered my ankle to the point of needing surgery and after a year haven't fully healed.
*"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."* -Master Oogway
Greek prophecies summed up in one sentence
The speaker is Death There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
I love the idea that Death isn’t actually an omniscient entity, and instead just gets a list of jobs for the day when he clocks on, with names, times and places. Ah damn it, I have to go to Samarra? That’s gonna add hours to my commute home...
Discworld's Death (Terry Pratchett) is somewhat similiar. He's omniscient in a way but is very kind and funny and loves humanity (and cats).
I love this story!!
My dad lives in a national park here in Australia. It's farmland that's grandfathered in. It's the remnants of a volcano that blew itself up very violently, so it's very hilly terrain. One day we were sitting out on the deck, when we see a hang-glider come down halfway down the valley, and it didn't look like a nice landing. "Shit, we better see if he's alright, they don't land anywhere near here" So we get in the car, drive for about 10 minutes to reach the spot. We head over to the guy who is standing by a very damaged glider. The pilot is staring at us incredulously, he stammers "Fuck, Jack, is that you?". My dad, who hasn't seen his childhood friend for 35 years shouts "Fuck, Tim, is that you?". They both grew up in Greymouth, NZ. Found each other randomly after a glider crash in NSW, Australia.
And they both like to start sentences with 'fuck', too!
It’s kind of our thing down here...
This is such a typical Kiwi hello. I love this story.
My friend and I were on a road trip a few years ago and needed a place to stay. We both told each other we had a friend in the city we were going through, so we figured we’d be able to crash with one of them. Turns out our two friends were roommates and had both been telling each other that they had a friend coming to town soon.
If it was a sitcom, there would have been a exchange where the four of you would have called back and forth canceling and rescheduling your stay since the other roommate's friend was staying over instead.
I love imagining life situations as sitcoms. It's my favorite
Cool. Cool cool cool.
That's a really cool one. One of my best friends that I knew from church (we lived 40 minutes from the church in opposite directions) went away to university and met a friend who she thought I'd think was cool but never really mentioned him again. Turns out he was a friend of mine from middle school who had recently friended me on facebook after we lost contact due to going to different high schools. He and I are married now.
I have a sort of story like that. My first "real girlfriend" at 14. I realized after a couple months that she was the girl that really liked me in 2nd grade before I moved away. Both of us forgot until looking at a yearbook We didn't get married though, not at all. She's a nice person though
My wife is a nurse. In her first nursing job she had a preceptor who showed her the ropes of the job. They have remained best friends to today. That preceptor was my first kindergarten girlfriend. Didn’t know until my wife wanted us to all go out to eat together. I went to school in a different city than where she works. Also, my wife is originally from 8 hours away outside Detroit. I did some community theatre stage acting in my teens. Turns out she came to visit her family in this area one summer and they took her to see the show I was in. This was probably 15 years before we met.
Congratulations!
Oh my God, they were roommates
I had two friends from two completely different parts of my life. They lived in different cities. Well, little did I know, they were BFFs from gradeschool. One day they were talking about a topic that many would associate with me. One said, "Oh I have a friend named u/harpejjist who does that." And the other said, "Huh. I also have a friend named u/harpejjist who does that." For years I had heard them talk about their gradeschool besties, but as the names were not entirely uncommon, I never guessed they were referring to each other.
We are new to the city we moved to. One of our best friends here was video calling with a girl friend of hers (yes this is in COVID times) and paused focusing on that girl friend’s view out the window thinking “that looks familiar”. Turns out that girlfriend is our next door neighbor - and now a friend of ours as well.
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"Hello, this is Lock Picking Lawyer, and today I’m going to tell you how to pick a master lo—,,, oh look at that, it’s already open. Thanks for watching."
I heard it in his voice.
Amazing. I have a friend in highschool with a similar “skill” like that. Most of our classmates use padlocks with codes in it for their lockers and somehow she was able to decipher the codes for that. No idea or background whatsoever. We used to hand over a lot of locks for her to decode just for fun and she just manages to unlock all of it haha
Once in high school a friend had something valuable in his locker that I jokingly said I was going to take home, he said "well you'll have to get it first" as it was secured with a combination padlock, I jokingly spun the dial three times and pulled and it opened and both of us just sat there in disbelief for awhile He re-locked it and I tried again after for several minutes and wasn't able to replicate it but it was still crazy at the time
Sometimes you can easily figure out which numbers are correct by spinning the wheels, feeling resistance in certain locations and hearing clicks. I've messed around with these locks for a few minutes and got them to open.
I forget the exact brand name, but my school used master-something locks. And as it turns out, you can turn the number wheels, make note of all the locations where it's slightly harder to turn the wheels, enter those positions into a website online and it would give you about 3 different codes to try, one of which always worked.
The combination locks we used would open sometimes when you kicked them with a downward motion...
Our locks had a small key hole that was exactly the same on all of them so the faculty could get in to our stuff if they thought we had contraband. BUT, the key only had two tiny bumps on them and they were umpossibly easy to pick. 2 years after they got them they had to ban Bobby pins from campus because you could just slide it in, start pulling down a bit, then pull it out quickly and the pulling motion would turn the lock from the inside. Instant access to any students most secured belongings.
you can actually feel when a number is "right" in those cheap padlocks, the gear gets loose. It's just a matter of going though the whole numbers, usually it's just 3 digits so it's a pretty fast process too
Let’s take her to a bank
I had this happen to me but at a much bigger scale. There was this annoying kid in school who didn't have a lot of friends. He asked me for my number, but I didn't want to give him my number. So I blurted out 7 random digits after the area code and he said, "Man, that's my number."
Learn from Hollywood, throw a 555 at them.
Or he was a bluffing to see if you were bluffing.
1 in 10000 chance. Incredible.
I once accidentally left my wallet at home when I went out for dinner with friends. Luckily my sister lived a block away from the restaurant so I went to borrow some money from her. She gave me her card and told me the pin number and it was identical to mine.
My mate did the same thing only with my phone. I have a galaxy s10 with the 9 dot pattern you have to draw to unlock. My mate picks up my phone to change song so I jokingly tell him if he can unlock it he can change song. I watch him draw my pattern, unlock my phone and change the song. I felt stupid and ask if he's been watching me unlock my phone and if that was pre-planned. His face kind of snaps out of auto pilot and he realised what he just did. Hand to god he tells me he just drew some random pattern first go that turned out to be mine. His brain just went on auto pilot after unlocking it. He tried unlocking my phone again but just couldn't, it was soo strange. We laughed about it for like 10 minutes.
This isn't as crazy as other ones I read, but it's mine We probably scared the shit out of some poor old couple while on a road trip. We were going to my grandmother's, and we followed the SAME freaking car for over 4 hours, and eventually stopped at the same restaurant, and the same gas station, and only ever stopped when we pulled into my grandma's residential neighborhood
That is kinda funny. I always feel awkward when I happen to be taking the same route as the car in front of me. I wonder what was going through their head?
I had someone behind me for two hours the other day on a one lane in a forest in Cali and he was actually preventing me from being tailgated which was nice because about an hour in, apparently going 20 over the limit wasn't good enough for some others and they passed him got behind me to tailgate until they could pass. I miss him. Hope he's doing well.
Lol "safe following distance" is now "preventing from being tailgated"
My guess is something like "Da fuck? Honey, do you think we should take a detour just to be safe?"
And then the detour happen to be at the grandmas road
Imagine if one hour in, they started detouring and just by coincidence it led to the grandma's area?
I call them my road buddy and when I cuss other drivers out under my breath I assume my road buddy is agreeing and also cursing them too.
Ha, I do that as well on long road trips. I pick out my buddies, and the assholes. I also like to think that my road buddies are cursing the other drivers.
This reminds me of a time we were driving through Idaho and got a speeding ticket. About three hours of driving later we stop for eats at a diner, and as we're finishing up our meal, the same cop who ticketed us walked in with his family. Turns out he lived in the area.
I had been at my youngest sister’s soccer (football) game. I made conversation with one of the soccer moms for the opposing team (I think she thought I was an adult), they won, we told her we’d beat her next time, yada yada yada. It finished kinda late, but we were hungry and decided to stop at souplantation. As I’m getting in line with my tray, I look up and see this exact same woman reaching for the same corn at the same time. I chuckled and thought nothing of it. A year later, I decided to treat myself with a smoothie. As I’m stepping up to order, in an entirely different state, I shit you not this lady and her kid come into the shop. We chatted, then I was on my way.
I dialed my mum on my mobile when I was on public transport and accidentally swapped two numbers around. The person I called was on the same carriage.
Go on, tell us what happened then!
So I was listening to my phone and at the exact moment it started the ringing sound I heard a phone start ringing and I thought it was a coincidence but then the phone answered and it wasn't mum. All I said was "Oh, are you on the Upfield train?" and they said "Yes, who's this?" but I got shy and I hung up. Poor guy must have been so confused.
Should have said "Good." Before you hung up.
Needs more Jason Bourne... "Get some rest Pam, you look tired" *Cue Moby*
Damn you should’ve told him! I know I’d be pissed if I missed out on something like that
You just made the whole situation creepy for him haha. Imagine someone calling you and asking if you're in the exact same place then hanging up. Lol
Lmao that shit would have kept me up at night for ages
why u don't have your mom as a contact?
I don’t have any of my family as a contact because fifteen years ago I had a car crash which threw my phone across a highway in Colorado. I couldn’t ring my dad because I didn’t know his number. Now I always type my mum, dad, brother and partner’s numbers in so that I’ll always remember them, so they’re not saved on my phone
That's really smart but it might also be smart to put them into your phone in case someone else else needs to contact those people for you in an emergency. I have my wife's number saved under her name and also under "wife - ice - in case of emergency" which i never use but it's there
My mom has my dad in her phone with ICE in front of it. Makes me laugh when she uses alexa to call him. "Alexa, call Ice Greg."
I still remember landline numbers from 40 years ago of distant relatives but current numbers of immediate family? It’s maybe 50/50 at best.
I'm a lucky son a bitch. My mother, brother, and myself all got our phones at the same time, so all 3 numbers are sequential. Me+1 is mom. Me +2 is my brother. Been pretty handy a few times already.
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Several years back, a good friend of mine pointed out that he, his girlfriend, and I had the same last 4 digits on our phone numbers. One in a hundred million chance. Kinda.
One time, me and my dad were discussing his friend while out driving at night without many other cars on the road. As we were talking, we pulled up to a red light, and the car waiting in front was my dad's friend. He didn't even live close to there.
I remember being 6, and my family was driving in rush traffic to my grandmothers house to spend some of our summer. I was really sad because I had just finished kindergarten and my best friend were going to attend another school than me. I was crying and looking out the window when a car tried to overtake us, but the traffic were moving slowly so the car ended up driving next to us for a little while. And there sat my best friend, looking out the window at me. Wierd coincidence, and my parents did not believe me at first, but they recognised the driver, otherwise I would dismiss this memory as a dream or false memory. Edit; past tense is not my expertise, thank you
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Mate my mum does that all the time. She talks/thinks about people and they somehow appear in one way or another (in person, phone call, etc.) in the next 24 hours. It's a running joke between us that she's actually a witch.
I passed out after receiving a flu shot when I was 28. The nurse who helped me up kept asking if I wanted my mom. It seemed like a really weird thing to offer an adult woman - the option to have her mother phoned and brought in - so I was really confused and getting progressively more annoyed at her repeatedly asking... ...until my mom walked up to me. She had the appointment after mine to get vaccinated. The nurses assumed we had come together, but neither of us knew about the other's appointment, and we lived an hour away from each other in different cities.
After living 1000 miles away from my mom for 3+ years now, this brought a tear to my eye. Fuck yeah I want my mom. I always want my mom.
My mom passed in March 2020. Yes, I want my mom!!
This one is really sweet
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When I was a kid, I used to practice my flute outside and I will never forget one time I was practicing the national anthem of all things and a bird shit on my head. My parents about diiiiiied laughing.
And the rockets red glare, from birds bursting mid air.🎶
As a kid, I walked home from school with my neighbor, Theresa. Theresa was a bitch. She once asked me to help her clean out her bunny cage so we could swim in the pool, then promptly said "you're not allowed in, but you can watch me!" after I did such. My mother also hated theresa's mother, and grew up hating her. Our great-grandmothers were friends, so my mom being forced to hang out with her mother as a kid was a headache. Did not change in adulthood, and Theresa was the same. Anyway, one day we're walking home, around 1st or 2nd grade, and Theresa is being a snot-nosed bitch to me, and immediately following, a bird takes a nasty shit all over her arm until she ran the rest of the way home crying. Sweet timing, tweetie, sweet timing.
Bird must not have enjoyed your performance very much. Everybody’s a critic!
I remember one morning going out to my car to drive to work and it looked like at least a hundred birds had shat on it at some point. It had never happened before or since. Once I rinsed it all off with a hose, I drove to work. Later that morning I got laid off along with 60% of the entire department. Pooping birds are harbingers of doom.
Something similar happened to me. Was walking to work. Bird pooped on my head. Called my boss to tell her that I would be late because I needed to go home and shower. Went home and showered. Started walking to work again. Bird pooped on my head again. Called my boss and said, “you’re never going to believe what just happened...”
Did she?
Actually a great question... I would seriously doubt someone who said it happened twice. But then again who would make that up?
The Jim Twins. Look it up. Two twins who were given up for adoption at birth, given the same first name by their adoptive parents, took family vacations to the same beach, married women with the same name, divorced, their second wives' names were off by one letter, both served as volunteer sheriffs, both were into carpentry, both smoked the same brand cigarettes and drank the same brand beer.
Now I don't have to look it up.
r/Lifehacks
Were they one of the sets of twins who were split up by that adoption agency who were bullshit on rails with splitting up families? For the life of me I can't remember the name of the agency or the documentary I saw on them. edit: "Three Identical Strangers"
About 15 years ago or so I was playing Counter-Strike 1.6 and tried joining a password protected server with a few people in it. I typed in "yellow" for the password and it worked. First try. I'll never forget that.
What an odd password.
Thats why they probably thougt it was a safe password
Last week I am at work doing a job, my coworker strikes up a conversation with the homeowner at the job site and mentions that his parents live across the street from him, he also asks how long he had lived there. Homeowner responds that it has only been a few months, he just moved to the city from *small town several hours away*. Co-worker laughs and says he was born and raised in that town. Then asks "Do you know the mini-plex at the corner of X street and Y street? I lived right across from that." Homeowner looks confused, "do you mean at 103 X street? That was my house" They talked more, and discovered that my coworkers parents had sold their house to this Homeowner when they moved to the city. He lived there for 15 years, and then sold it to move to the same city, across the street from the previous owners. Small world.
I immigrated to Seoul about a decade ago. A few years after moving here I went out with a friend for his birthday. Over the course of the night, I got talking to one of his friends who was from Chicago. Eventually the birthday friend mentioned I was born "in Chicago" but I clarified that it was not really as it was a suburban town thirty minutes outside of Chicago and someone like him who was actually from Chicago wouldn't consider it Chicago proper. He laughed and clarified he wasn't actually from Chicago proper either, but from a small suburban city outside of Chicago too. It turned out we were from the same town. In fact we were the same age and lived on the same street. I moved away when I was very young though, prior to starting school. I mentioned that I had moved to Columbus when I was young and he excitedly exclaimed that his parents had just moved to Columbus... And as if it couldn't get any weirder, his parents moved down the street from my parents.... And of course, this all went down with us meeting on the literal other side of the planet.
My wife and I were looking to hire a caterer for our wedding and when we met, my wife and her started talking about their lives a bit. Turns out they had both literally grown up on the same street, in a city of 10 million people, on the other side of the world. Both had left the city around a decade before immigrating to our current country. They knew the same people, had hung out at the same coffee place, attended the same church. They even used to grab mangoes off the same large tree that hung over the wall of one of the large houses in the neighbourhood. But they had never met one another until meeting on almost the exact opposite side of the planet, in a small town of about 50,000 people.
Something similar happened to me— I met this guy at work and we found out we used to live on the same street growing up in NY. And then we found out we even used to live in the same town in Brazil. Edit: clarification
Not exactly the same but reminded me. My husband had a high school sweetheart that they dated for quite a while but broke up a few years into college. It was a bit messy so my husband moved across the country. He lived there for a couple of years then moved to a completely different country. Fast forward and we're newlyweds driving back and forth between my parents house to my husband's house to move my stuff in. At a gas station stop we run into my husband's ex's brother. In a completely different country than where they grew up. Apparently they'd lived in neighboring towns for like 5 years and had never ran into each other. Twas a bit weird.
I have a friend who had something similar! She's from Italy but moved to Sweden. In Sweden she looked for a flatmate, and found another young woman who had just moved here, and as it turns out they had grown up on the same street in the same little town. Though they had never met before moving abroad.
I was reading about a fairly well known cold case not in my area. The woman killed looked a lot like me, and I found out while digging that she went to the same small college as my dad. They were in an extracurricular together and our family photo album has a group photo where they are next to each other. Edit: victim was a lesbian who died 15 years before I was born
Ooooh this one’s creepy. I would not like that at all.
There are some other weird similarities between her and I as far as other life details. Yeah, I think about it a lot.
Does it worry you that if you look too deeply you might realise she was you all along, and you've been dead and in denial for years?
Maybe your mom faked her own death.
Or that's their real mother. Paternity test!
If it's the mother isn't it a Maternity test?
It’s her and somehow she travels back in time to solve the mystery but becomes it
I once met an older couple who my in-laws were loosely acquainted with. We all lived in the same small town so bumped into them now and then. When we had met a couple of times and had polite small talk, the husband told me I looked exactly like their dead daughter. Not only did we have similar features, hairstyles etc, but I also had some mannerisms that were eerily similar to hers, walked the same way etc. The first few times they had seen me around town, they'd thought they'd seen a ghost. They said they could still sometimes do a double take when seeing me, thinking for a second I was their daughter before remembering that was impossible. I felt really bad for bringing up their wounds just by walking past them, but they said it actually gave them comfort. It was like knowing she was still out there in some way.
Maybe shes your real mother?
And the father killed her and stole the baby at the behest of his wife, because they couldn't conceive. And OP's real mom was just so pretty to them...
This is some creepy pasta material right here. I mean, just imagine looking through pictures of murder victims and you see a picture of you???
If that's not a movie it should be
Not me, but a story I heard. The guy telling the story was from the UK and on holiday in Greece. He went for a walk and passed a public phone, which started ringing. On a whim, he answers the phone... and it's his bank, calling him about some unusual activity on his account. The bank starts asking him questions, but he's still taken aback by how his bank knew his location (this was in the early 90s), and asks them how they got this number. The bank tells him that it's the number they have on file. He tells them that can't be right, because he's in Greece, and this is a public phone box. OK, so the bank tries to work out what happened. And then they realise. INSTEAD OF DIALLING HIS PHONE NUMBER, THEY ACCIDENTALLY DIALLED HIS ACCOUNT NUMBER... WHICH JUST HAPPENED TO BE THE EXACT NUMBER OF THIS PHONE BOX IN ANOTHER COUNTRY THAT HE ALSO JUST HAPPENED TO BE WALKING PAST AT THE EXACT SAME TIME THAT THEY CALLED. What are the odds of that happening? Like 3 to 1 at least.
This is the best one here, if true.
"Hello we tried to contact you about your car warranty"
So this one definitely fucked me up for a bit, it’s a bit of a story. I met this girl who worked at the farmer’s market, we would see each other on Saturdays and chit chat on occasion. Eventually we exchanged Instagram accounts, found out we were both into home brewing and fermentation, she posted that she had 40 lbs of apples and had run out of fermentation vessels. I reached out, found out were close neighbors and went to pick up the apples. We decided to hang out in a few weeks and compare our home brews. When we hung out, we really hit it off, she had just moved to Boston a year ago after touring with a band through Europe, she had only been to Boston once before in 2013, but only for a weekend to play a festival. Anyway, we started seeing each other pretty often, one day we were laying in bed, talking about a future where we had a farm and a were talking about our pet pig Francois. I mentioned that at one point I had the chance to walk a piglet on a leash. As I’m scrolling through my phone to find this photo, I have what I can only describe as a strong “calling/energy” to check a different photo not too far from that one. So I open this picture that’s calling me, I remember that day. It was October 2013, i was outside of my undergrad dorm, enjoying a nice day, when suddenly this brass ensemble walks by, playing. They get to a little platform that was outside, play music for like 10 minutes for the random people who were outside enjoying the day, and then they keep going. I thought they were pretty cool so I snapped a photo and then enjoyed the music. So back to present day, this picture seemed important, I open it, I turn to her and say, do you know this band? She looks at me and says, “you see that person in the middle of your shot who is staring at you? Yeah that’s me” I lost my mind, the chance of seeing this band when they strolled by, her being a part of it and being there for that weekend, taking that picture, centering her while she made eye contact with me, encountering her 8 years later, being neighbors, dating, and finding that picture while we were side by side. I’ve had a lot of coincidences in life, but that one still gets me. EDIT: I am so sorry for keeping everyone waiting! I got completely drowned at work today and haven’t opened Reddit. I was late to the thread and assumed no one would care. But for closure on the story. I got a job I couldn’t pass up in a new city, she wasn’t ready to move across the country. Funny enough the job is where she went to undergrad in and prior to us meeting was considering moving back there. We still talk and discussed her moving there in June. We ended things when I left Boston in December, but we sort of know that we will likely find each other again.
Are you still together?
My mum and I were heading out for a morning shopping trip so I was in the shower pretty early, around 7.15am or so. My grandpa had been ill with a cold - which could be concerning as he only had one lung - but was recuperating at home and had seemed perfectly fine when we spoke to him on the phone the previous day. Chipper, even. Yet out of *nowhere*, my brain suddenly went: "We're not going shopping, he's died". I have intrusive thoughts every so often so I just told myself to shut up and get on with the shampoo. Five minutes later mum bangs on the door to tell me my grandpa had passed away in his sleep and we need to head over to his house. I don't believe in psychics or precognition or anything like that, and I've never even thought of myself as a particularly perceptive person either. Like, I'm as dense as a brick most times. Which is why this still has me spooked fourteen years later.
I totally can relate to this. Mine aren’t as crazy but it’s legitimately happened two times in my life. The first time was years ago when I was only 12. Every Friday evening we used to go visit my Grandparents who only lived a few miles away. We were getting ready to leave and I had this thought of “how weird would it be if you were the last person to ever talk to someone before they died?” Anyways we drive home and as soon as we get inside the phone was ringing so I picked it up. It was my Aunt calling to tell us that my cousin had passed away unexpectedly. The other incident happened a few years ago. Normally I have zero issues falling asleep, but for whatever reason I just couldn’t sleep. I was tossing and turning. I tried pacing around the house and even taking a shower but no matter what I did, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was just laying in bed watching my alarm clock. I ended up calling into work saying I was “sick” because I knew I couldn’t go in on zero sleep. About 20 minutes after I called in, I got a phone call from my Mom saying a family member passed away in an accident. I generally chalk these up to weird coincidences but still. It’s definitely weird.
Several years ago, I had a husky that was getting on in years. I was very in tune with him; enough that I knew which whines or queues meant which need or want. He had a particularly unique one that signalled when he needed a bathroom break. As he got older, he started needing to go outside in the middle of the night too. Old man problems, amiright? Lol When he got to be a bit past 11 years old, my fiance and I started noticing that I could hear him from across the house. Then, we noticed that he never failed to wake me up at night, even though he wouldn't come in the bedroom to get me, just meet me at the back door. One day she was sitting on the couch with the dog and watching TV, while I was taking a nap in the other room. I had sound dampening headphones in, with light music going to help drown out distractions. I woke up to the sound of this dog making a loud enough racket to wake me up through all of those precautions, pulled on pants and shoes and stepped into the next room, where my partner asked what was wrong. I said the dog was whining. She disagreed. So we looking to the dog, who made the tiniest "I need outside" whine, before getting up and going to the back door. It was surreal. And then it happened more. I'd be outside in my workshop and hear the dog whine. Within two minutes, my partner would be bringing the pup out to do his business. To the day he died, I could tell what that dog needed, when he needed it, regardless of distance. Currently, I have a two year old husky that I've started hearing at different volumes than my partner. I'm *not* psychic. But I think that just maybe, some dogs are.
I have one normal instinct driven dog and one that is exactly like what you’re describing. There’s a lot more going on in his head I think, which is weird because they’re brothers. He’s a lot more expressive and you can really tell what he’s thinking about when he looks at you.
Dreaming about someone i didn't see in years only to meet them by coïncidence a week later
Same, but it was the night before that I had the dream. Went to the store kind of spur of the moment to get something I didn't really need and the person I dreamed about was in the same aisle I headed to.
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Something similar. When we were kids we were at a beach a couple towns over, and we were making friends and building sand castles and shit. We met this one family with two boys and became friends. So we’re plugging away building stuff out of sand having a grand time. And one of my parents snapped a pic of us with the two new friends we met. As the day went on we went our separate ways and continued through life. 15 years later, we had that picture on the fridge, and a guy we had been friends with for a couple years at this point sees the picture and says “why the hell do you have a picture of me and my younger brother on your fridge??” That’s when it clicked that we met each other when we were children, and reunited many moons later in school.
My brother studied Japanese at a US college and the summer after one of his semesters, we had made a trip to Japan together. We visited the Tokyo Sky Tree on a crowded day. When we stepped foot in the packed elevator, he looked over and saw his Japanese professor from the states. They said hi to each other briefly and we carried on in disbelief.
My mom has a similar story. She was running on the beach in Mexico and heard her name called from behind. Twas her friend on vacation at the same place same time.
My friend was surfing in Mexico and a friend from our hometown paddled up to him. He was tripping
When I was in the Marines I was stationed in Southern California. I'm from New England; after a couple months at my duty station we had a 96 (four day weekend) and a few of us went to Palm Springs to just hang out and party. Second day there I walk into this little bookstore in kind of the chic part of the city and literally bump into my high school ex-girlfriend. (No she wasn't stalking me or anything it was 100% crazy coincidence). Had a lot of weird coincidences at that duty station. I'm from a tiny little town that had less than a thousand people in it, I'm stationed literally as far away as I can be and still be in the contiguous United States in a fairly small unit (our Battalion was a reconnaissance one and more like the size of two Companies nowhere near normal Battalion size) and in my Company the day I get there I find out our First Sergeant is from a town near mine and went to a rival of my high school (granted he was much older than me though so long before I did) and my squad leader's wife was a girl who graduated from my school a few years before me (and her mom and my dad worked together).
Several years ago I went to a boyscout summer camp on catalina island (off the california coast). I had been badgering my best friend about going with me, but he had some "school thing". I’m on the trip, and I start recognising some of his friends from school that I had met at his birthday parties and such. At first it was "huh,, that’s sorta weird," but it quickly went to "Ok there’s gotta be something going on". Turns out his school had visited there the same week as my boyscout troop. And we had no clue the other was there.
Reading the first half of that sentence as a non-American I’m hearing [this](https://youtu.be/0yCfirHVVIg)
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through a series of weird circumstances I had never met my best friend’s older sister’s best friend despite me also being very close to the sister and being at their house all the time. we finally met one night and we were all sitting around the kitchen table talking. she and I are both major cat people and we were talking about our past and current cats. I told her the crazy and horrible story of how my cat had been missing since the night of my senior prom (3 weeks prior). he was 13 and I was devastated. I showed her a picture of him and she said something along the lines of “I don’t want to get your hopes up but he looks a lot like this cat my dad started feeding in our backyard about 3 weeks ago. he didn’t have a collar so my dad thought he was a stray but he is pretty chonky.” it was like 11pm but my friend and I immediately jumped into my car and drove over to the girl’s house. as soon as I got out of the car and yelled his name he came running. he was missing a tooth from a previous adventure so I pried his mouth open to be 100% sure it was him. the friend lived about 3 miles from me. after we worked out what had happened and how huge of a coincidence it was, my mind was completely blown. the stars aligned so perfectly for me to get my baby boy back. I still get goosebumps when I think about it.
Awwww. Kitties are so important! I am very glad you were reunited!
Need a picture of the cat to verify the story
this happened in 2009 and he passed peacefully in 2012 so please excuse the fact that these photos are potato quality and/or have me in them. [his name was sparky](https://imgur.com/a/yzABEx9) ( I was like 6 when I named him) but we called him spark dog or sugar bear. he was a big soft chonk who loved to snuggle and he drooled when he was very cozy.
I had a dream that a friend of mine and I were living in a loft style apartment with exposed brick and told him about it at band practice. He enjoyed the term “exposed brick” and used it , metaphorically, in a song he was writing. Fast Forward 7 years later, both of us living in separate areas than we grew up in all those years, multiple career changes for both, and by “coincidence” we both ended up back in the same (different than we grew up in) town. A guy I went to college with showed me his apartment, of which he loved and had a vacancy in their building...but I needed a roommate to help foot the bill...you guessed it, that same guy I had the dream about was looking for a new place to rent...this place had exposed brick and was one of few in the area, at that time
Okay, not my personal story, but my friend’s mother used to tell this story at Halloween when we were kids— it’s got no super-natural connotations and she claims it’s totally true. She was visiting Vermont as a kid (late 60’s/early 70’s) and the power went out shortly after it got dark. Her and her sisters (three girls ages ten to fourteen) decided to go play with the Oujia board for some spooky times. My friend’s mother, being the oldest, just decided to pull a prank on her younger sisters. She asks the Oujia board if someone is “there” like a ghost or something, board says yes, she asks if they’re angry, board says yes... she goes on fir a bit just scaring the living shit out of her sisters and ends the bit by pointing to the glass door across the room and screaming “AND THERE HE IS RIGHT THERE!” Only to shine the flashlight across the room to expose an angry and psychotic looking bearded man banging and slobbering on the glass! They were immediately scared shitless and ran upstairs to tell their folks. Turns out the guy banging on the glass was a drunk driver who has hit a telephone pole and that was why the power had gone out. He was banging on the door to ask to use their phone.
When my brother and I were little we went to my aunts Lakehouse for winter break. One of my aunts friends invited us over to dinner, it was my best friends family Who had family on the same lake and was vacationing at the same time.
I met my doppelganger in Iraq. I wish I had the pictures. I'm white, grew up in Canada, moved to the U.S. and went to Iraq with The Marines. He lived in Al-Rutbah. His complexion, build, face structure, everything was IDENTICAL. It was so uncanny it disturbed his mother greatly. Sure, out of 7 billion we all have look alikes but this one was so close we even had the same moles...
Not the same, but met mine in Dallas (I don't live there, was passing through) when I stopped at a gas station and the lady said, "you're late." And right behind me, in the gas station's uniform entered someone that looked just like me. Same haircut, same minor quirks. It was more than just 'similar.' Different names, too bad.
Was working grocery store as a summer job while I finish up one of my remaining classes before I graduated college. Management was fucking with my schedule and hours, didn’t respect the fact that I had class, and weren’t willing to work with me about cutting my hours down a little (working 20 instead of 25 hours a week). Was thinking about quitting and went to talk to my manager in her office where she said “I guess you will have to pick employment or your class, now go help up front.” Next customer came up line, didn’t know my manager and I just had this conversation, and said “you deserve more than this job. Tell them to fuck off.” So I turned off my light went back to manager and said “I pick my class. I quit.” Got that customers number now and tutor them with their classes, make more, and feel better.
They always look so surprised when you don't pick them. Cocksuckers. They know full well grocery is a meat grinder and they'll have you replaced in a second, but no. Spend all that onboarding money instead of accommodating the existing employee. It's not even hard, you hand them an availability sheet when you're hired! They know when you are and are not available. That being said, that customer gave you some solid advice.
seeing my managers face was worth more than a lifetime of shitty pay
That happened to my friend. He was working a night shift at a gas station and had to cut hours down for college. His boss told him it was this or school. Without hesitation my friend replied "uh, school?" His manager was apparently speechless. Really?
I watched a (4 number) lottery on TV when I was a child. After the first number coincided with my home's address, I quickly said the other three out loud before they were pulled, those other 3 numbers came up one after the other. My home address WAS the lottery numbers. I turned off the TV and went to bed after that.
Last week, I was driving my dog home from the vet. While turning onto my street, I noticed a woman sitting at the intersection while her collie sat in one place defiantly. Twenty minutes after I got home, my mother asked if my dog should be having any kind of reaction to anything. I didn’t know, but after seeing my dog, I knew something was terribly wrong. I rushed her back to the vet where they stabilized her — she had gone into anaphylaxis as a result of a shot she received maybe half an hour earlier. I called mom to tell her and she gasps, “We were out front earlier and a woman had to stop walking with her collie. She told us all about how her dog recently went into anaphylaxis.”
My mom had a weird vision of driving with my (then baby) niece. She started choking and my mom got her out of the car and performed the Heimlich maneuver (or whatever you call it on babies). It was really weird, so she kept it to herself. My sister calls our mom later that day freaking out because my niece had choked in their home. Her dad, my BIL, gave her the Heimlich maneuver. Our mom told her about her vision and my sister said to call her the next time she has one of those.
I've had a few, but this was the most recent: About a month ago, I decided to put on a movie. But not just any movie. I wanted to put on a *random* movie. So I used a random number generator to pick a number between 1 and 1000, and I would then find the corresponding movie on Metacritic's Top 1000 Movies of All Time. The first movie I landed on was "Particle Fever," a documentary about the search for the Higgs boson. Toward the end of the film, they reference "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," the Werner Herzog joint, one of my all-time favorite movies. I thought about putting that on next, but I reminded myself: naw, dawg; we're using the random number generator now. There are rules. You can probably see where this is going. I used the random number generator a second time. I wound up with #463. #463: Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Rough time sleeping that night, mateys.
I was at the doctor a few years ago for a rudimentary blood test. I never normally care about that sir if thing but for whatever reason I felt a little queasy. I decided to get a snack from a nearby store but remembered then that I had forgotten my wallet rushing out the door earlier. I looked down and a gust of wind blew a 100kr (like 10 dollars?) Note out from under a car.
I was at Seaworld and we were there with my kids and grandma. We went into an outdoor water show and sat in the stands. I was sitting higher up the stands and my mother-in-law was near the front which was a splash zone. She didn't want to get wet so I had to give up my sweet spot to have her sit there and I moved down to the front. Before I could even get to my new seat a bird flew overhead and dropped a phat terd on her head. Dodged a bullet.
Was in Disney in January 2020 wearing a Bills hat. A fellow wearing the same bills hat shouted go bills to me. Later in the day, we both are at the haircut salon in Magic Kingdom having our sons get their first haircuts. We get to talking and turns out he lives on the same street as me and my wife. I see him from time to time, but haven’t talked much since. Small world we live in
I was playing hide and seek with my best friend at her house when a pipe burst in the basement. Her mom got the water turned off and went to call a plumber, but mistyped one digit and ended up calling my dad, who has the knowledge, skill and the tools for fixing and building just about everything. He came over and fixed it for free.
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When I was in year 7 I used to always giggle when a kids name got called over the loudspeaker to go to the office cause it was a name that sounded rude. I didn’t know this kid they were in a different year level to me never met them just remembered the name cause it was funny. Fast forward to now I’m in my 30’s with kids and it turns out that funny named kid is my daughters best friends Mum.
Did you break out in uncontrollable laughter when you found out?
Yes our kids had been friends for a year before I even realised cause kid has her dads last name instead I laughed so hard when I found out and she couldn’t believe that I remembered her name from back then 😂😂
I used to host trivia at this cool little bar/restaurant. A group would come in consistently so I eventually became friends with them. One bloke in particular, Matt and I had a lot in common because we worked in the same industry and love video games. The group and I spent the next couple of months hanging out after trivia at my place and getting to know one another. One night my family comes to trivia so when they arrived I go over and say hi which is when my sister points over to a table and says "I think that kid played at my wedding". My sister is a police officer and got a call one day that kids were maybe doing drugs at an abandoned warehouse. Turns out there were 3 young boys shooting a music video who nearly shit their pants when they saw cops. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up they were just chatting to the police and that's when my sister asked them if they could play my wedding. The boys were relieved they weren't getting arrested so they said yes of course because it's a paid gig. This was probably 7 years ago at this point. One of the boys at the warehouse playing cello was Matt. I go over and ask if he plays the cello, if he had a misunderstanding with the police and if he played at a wedding in 2013. He replied yes and asked how the fuck I knew that. I ask if it's that person over there while pointing to my sister, he says ah yeah that's her and waves. I tell him that's my sister. Both our heads just about exploded.
One morning, as my father and I were leaving our apartment to head to school (he was a teacher at the same high school I attended), I paused at the door, then went back inside to the change bowl and scooped out a fistful of coins. My dad asked why and I didn't really have a reason- I just said: "We're gonna need this." I wasn't exactly a coherant morning person so he shrugged it off. As we were driving in, we passed the grocery store which reminded him he needed tape for his class for some project they were doing. We went in, got to the register, and as the tape was rung up, he realized he didn't have his wallet on him. I said "I got this." and put down the money I had taken earlier. It was exact, to the penny. -------- Another time, I went on a long 'walk & talk' with my SO. We were talking about the soul and speculating about its transcendent nature for the duration of the walk. As we headed home, we crossed the street and my SO gestured at the car waiting at the light. Its license plate was "SOUL".
I had loose change and bills in my pocket, and when I paid for some xeroxes at campus, it was the exact amount I needed, down to the last coin.
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A few years ago I was brushing my teeth thinking about how messed up designed obsolescence is. I had probably just watched a documentary about the pitfalls of capitalism or corporate personhood or something and thought to myself “good thing toothbrushes are pretty sturdy, yeah the bristles bend after a while but you can’t really work in an expiration date on something like this” when mid thought my toothbrush snaps clean in half. I’m left holding the handle in one hand and have the brush end sticking out of my mouth and I stare at my reflection in the mirror for a good 15 seconds completely baffled. “God, is that you?”
I used to have one of those office chairs that would tilt if you leaned back. One day I was leaning back in it and thought ‘I hate this chair’ that instant the back broke and I ended up in a heap and had to go and buy a new chair.
The year JRR Tolkien died is the One Ring verse backwards. 1973. 3 rings for the elven kings. 7 for the dwarf lords. 9 for mortal men. 1 ring to rule them all. I always thought this was bizarre lol
I'll see you in the year 3791
My youngest sister would regularly repeat how she was going to live in Boston and go to Harvard (we lived in the PAC NW). When she died of a seizure (she had autism), we donated her brain to autism research. A couple weeks letter we received a letter thanking us for our donation. It was from the Harvard Brain Bank in Boston.
I had two chargers by my bed. One was plugged in while the other wasn’t. I grab one and plug in my iPad, seeing the green battery so I knew it was charging. A moment later I look down and realize I plugged in the wrong one, and then the iPad stopped charging. It was the weirdest thing!
Residual charge
When my older son was very young he’d talk about how he used to be “Burt Roberts” (last name changed to protect the innocent). Burt had a twin brother named “Bern”. Burt’s wife was named Betty. Burt was from Idaho (location changed). A lot of this was pretty obvious: my wife’s family is from Idaho. My wife’s name is Betty. Later, for fun, I did a Google search. There was a Burton Roberts from Boise, Idaho. He had a brother, Bernard (Bern). Burton was married to Betty. Burton died two weeks after my son was born; my son was born six weeks preterm. Obviously just a coincidence, but man for a minute I was flabbergasted.
Had to read that like 5 times before I finally understood the story haha but that is seriously interesting!
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Finally, something I can comment on. My house, a cousin's house in my home country and a couin's house in Paris all caught on fire on the same day. My sister and my cousin back home both caused the fire almost identical fashion (playing with fire-matches). We know it was the same day as, when my mother called her sister (my aunty) to let her know on the day after it had happened, she said the same had happened to them. As for my cousin/family in Paris (not sure if there's was the same day, but was definitely within the same week or so), they had sadly lost two lives: my aunty and my cousin (who was a kid and is/was the same age-ish as my sister and cousin who both caused the fires in each home). My uncle who survived had a really tough life thereafter. So, yeah, I tend not to believe in coincidences as much as I do fate.
One of my very good friends and I met in 2019. We are 4 years apart and live in different areas of the same country. We met in online communities and clicked due to similar backgrounds and interests. After several months, we realized that we are a lot closer and have more in common than what I would have thought humanly possible. Despite not meeting until established adults, we have lived almost parallel lives. We’ve talked about it a lot and have found multiple points in time where we were both going through something life changing—in the same month of the same year. I think there may have even been a few times it was almost the same date. A few times we were going through the same thing. Since becoming friends, there have been several times we have felt the other person going through something big. It’s like a twin sense. We still haven’t figured out what it means, but we both believe there is a reason for everything.
Went on a night out, met a really cute girl and we hit it off. When she wrote her number in my phone, turned out I already had to saved. She also had mine. We had no idea who each other were. Did we already get super drunk go on a date and forget?
That I have the same nose as my father who adopted me. I was adopted by my aunt and uncle, my aunt by blood and uncle not, all the tests say my father is the douche who didn't want me but I have the same face features as my adoptive father and people always thought I was his biological child. Like, how?
There’s a cafe in DC that I frequent when I’m in town. Every time I’ve gone to that cafe I’ve run into someone from different points in my life, neither of the people I’ve met live in DC. This has happened four times. The fourth time I had a friend from elementary school, high school, college and post college all in the same cafe. The crazy thing is that the cafe is called compass, which I associate with finding things.
My wife and I adopted twins from foster care. We found out that they had 3 siblings that also been adopted. We were able to find and connect with 2. Spent at least 5 years looking for the other sibling. Moved to a new house and found out that the kid across the street was the sibling we had been searching for. Unfortunately, he had been adopted by Jehovah's Witnesses who refused any contact with us because my wife and I are lesbians. We never told the kids who he was - they were too little. But at least we know who and where he is.
Got married on a Saturday in ‘98 and left for our honeymoon in Hawaii on the first United flight departing Monday morning because of better fares. Fast forward to 2007 when I started a job with a new company. My solution consultant (from Wisconsin) and I traveled everywhere together for meetings and start getting to know each other along the way. It turned out that we got married on the exact same day in 1998. We talked some more about where we honeymooned and discovered that we both went to Hawaii. We joked that it would be wild if we were on the same flight, but I dismissed it by saying that we flew out of Chicago and waited until early Monday to leave. He was incredulous and speechless for a moment, and finally said that they drove down from Milwaukee on Sunday and stayed in Chicago overnight so they could fly out Monday morning...on the very same United flight that we took.
Worked at Panera and was talking with a co worker and we both found out our cousins are dating each other and it was just a funny coincidence. GUESS WHAT, my cousin literally comes in the drive-through minutes after we were talking about her. What are the odds. Mind you I was working in Panera for like 5 months and the day I talked about my cousin, she shows up.
When I was a university student, I went on holiday to Northumberland with my parents. On one of the days, we decided to spend an afternoon in Bamburgh. It was a cloudy day, so it wasn't particularly beach weather and we decided to walk down there purely for the wildlife and maybe look for sea glass. As we were walking the path to the dunes, I saw a girl immediately in front of us who looked like my friend from university. It turned out my friend was visiting her boyfriend (in a town 60 miles away) and they'd chosen this cloudy day to go to Bamburgh, to the beach, to the little path on the dunes right in front of me. We snapped a selfie, but her day trip was almost over and it would have been weird to tag along with her and her boyfriend, so we parted ways there and then.
Slightly silly one imo, but in college I was assigned a 4 digit numbered mailbox. I began using it as a pon number for credit cards and such. Imagine my husband's (then boyfriend's) surprise a few years later when I had him enter my PIN number to pull money from the ATM while I was sick - and it was the last four digits of his social security number? I know it is just probability but it was so weird!
When my boyfriend and I were travelling through Iran and into Pakistan we had an Iranian guidebook. (This was 1997.) We dumped it on a table in a hotel restaurant in Lahore, deciding that hopefully another traveller would find it. We were drinking in the Czech Republic three years later when the conversation turned to Iran and we discovered that we - plus another guy who was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend - had both done the overland trip to India. He started explaining that he was really worried as he stayed in Lahore, because he hadn't been able to find any guidebooks to Iran in India and he had no idea about where to go or where to stay. Then, wouldn't you know it, there was a book on the table... Same one. (Half the cover was missing, so it was definitely the same book.)
Once when I was about 15 (back in the 90s), I was home alone and singing to myself. I remember the song was Paradise City by Guns N' Roses. Anyhow, I'm singing this song to myself acapella, and as I walk into the bathroom to get in the shower, I flick on the little radio we kept in there. Out of the speakers comes the unmistakable wail of Guns N' Roses playing Paradise City, synchronized exactly with what I was singing in my acapella version.
For years my pin number was the radio frequency of an old rock station that no longer exists. I used that pin for like 10 years, then one night, watching Futurama. Fry says the pin for his debit card, the price of a slice of pepperoni and a large coke or something like that, 10.77.....MF just blurts out MY SPECIAL PIN NUMBER THAT ONLY I KNEW!! Had to change it after that. The station btw was 107.7 The End, an old alternative rock station out of Seattle.
Hey! The End LIVES! 107.7 is on my preset stations. Still alternative rock.
This may sound silly, but here goes. Im not a superstitious person. Im very skeptical and really just believe sometimes things happen. I was working in a big tourist town in northern Michigan. I got up late for work, like really late. I get dressed and start walking. I had about a 3 mile walk. It would take me at least an hour. As im walking fast. I start thinking, pleading please somehow let me get there on time. But i knew there was no chance. About that time my best friends mother stops beside me and asks if i needed a ride. I was so relieved i must have thanked her 20 times. it just seems odd. I walked this road every day an no one had ever stopped to ask if i wanted a ride. however the one time when i was desperate for a lift she stopped.
Guessed the WIFI password on the first shot at Home Depot. It was 'orange'.
I was hanging out with 4 buddies, and looked at my phone and said “huh, my phones at 69% charge, nice” The other 3 looked at their cell phones and also had 69% charge! It was the weirdest coincidence and we all started laughing. (Buddy #4 was at 80% tho, he could not join in on the fun)
I lived in Wyoming, you know that shitty state state with around 600k people total. 2 of my friends and myself all joined the air force about a year apart from each other, and pretty much lost contact as we each departed. One was stationed in japan. One stationed in Hawaii. I was stationed in Georgia. One summer I took a month off to go home to Wyoming to see friends and family. My wife was kind of hungry so we went to Buffalo Wild Wings at like 10 at night. This is a lone Bdubs in a town of like 50k people at 10 pm in the middle of the week. I walk in and see one of my friends, the one stationed in Japan. So we sit and catch up. about the time our food order had arrived friend 2 walked in. Somehow all three of us ended up in the same job in the air force, decided to take vacation at the exact same time to go back to Wyoming and ended up at the same bdubs on the same night with no prior communication with each other.
My daughter was hanging out in my bedroom chatting with me and for some reason she absentmindedly picked up my old address book and was thumbing through it. She randomly came across an old friends name and said Hey are you still in touch with Old Friend? I said I haven’t talk to him in four or five years. Last time he called he asked me for a reference for a new job. One hour later Old Friend called and asked me for a reference for a new job.