Everyone might have creepy coincidental experiences, like kids who talk about their past lives. Even it seems like coincidental experiences some people might think there is no coincidence at all as well. People shared their creepiest coincidental experiences and here are 30 of them.
1.
Six years ago, because of my drinking, I’d been homeless for about 8 months. I’d been at a shelter for a few weeks and one day, as I walked from the library back to the shelter for dinner, I decided I couldn’t take anymore. I was ready to kill myself. That prior August my mother had passed away, so on the street that evening I said to her, “I can’t take it anymore, mom. Help me.” Back at the shelter, after dinner, us bums waited for showers and bedtime. That evening the shelter had more residents than usual and many of them needed clean socks or underwear, etc. On this night, it wasn’t scheduled, but the shelter opened the basement where they kept donated clothes. I didn’t need anything, but I was bored, so I went downstairs. I browsed the racks and didn’t find anything to my liking so I headed for the stairs. That’s where I found ‘LeMutt’. ‘LeMutt’ is a toy, a little stuffed dog, and I’d had one when I was a kid. In fact, I clearly remembered my mother and I in the store, 20+ years ago, buying him. I was in 3rd grade then. I asked a volunteer if he knew where the dog came from. He shook his head. This was, and still is, a men’s homeless shelter. People were not dropping-off stuffed animals for the junkies and drunks. I don’t know where the dog came from, but I kept him. Still got him. Anyway, my life is much better, and different, today. I’m set to graduate with a BFA next month. Life is really, really good. Thanks, Mom. I love you.
2.
Back about 10 years ago, I went on a first date with someone I met online through match.com. I lived in the Philadelphia suburbs, she was in the city. I drove into the city for your typical dinner and a movie, or a movie (Memento) and then dinner in this case. We enjoyed the movie and while we were talking and walking to dinner afterwards, I told her what I did for a living, which was write image processing software at a small company she’d likely never heard of.
She paused and asked, ‘you don’t by any chance know [name of coworker/friend I’ve known for many years], do you?’ Why yes, yes I do, I say. Turns out she knows him through some online forum having to do with singing, and they’d actually met before at some event. We reflect about the unlikelihood of this.
But that is not the coincidence I am writing about.
We continue to the restaurant, having a great conversation, hitting it off. About halfway through dinner, I feel comfortable enough to tell her about having gone through colon cancer the year before, and the long recovery after having had my colon removed. Not your typical first date conversation perhaps, but she was interested. Anyway, after I mention the surgery, she asks where I had it done. Penn, I say. She pauses. ‘Who was your oncologist?’ she asks. Oh-kayyyy, I think, not the question I would have expected, but I tell her. She pauses even longer. Then she says, in fact demands, ‘Who. Was. Your. Oncology. Nurse?’ I tell her.
At this point she gets the most amazed expression I’d ever seen and says ‘You’re…you’re…that Jerry!’ And starts laughing uncontrollably. Every time the laughter starts to die down, says says ‘you’re that Jerry!’ again, which sets off another fit of laughter. She literally can’t get out anything coherent for at least five minutes, she’s laughing too hard. The suspense is killing me.
Maybe ten minutes and a dozen “that Jerry’s” later, I finally am able to piece together that about a year before, she was sharing an office at Penn with my oncology nurse (she’s not in medicine herself, it just had to do with a shortage of space, I think). The nurse used to tell her, ‘I have this one patient who would be perfect for you, if only he wasn’t recovering from surgery and going through chemo.’ She even told her the name of this patient.
Of course ‘he’ was me, and she and I ended up dating for a year or so and are still good friends to this day.
3.
Once on the Fourth of July, our dog Svejk escaped the yard and ran for it during the fireworks. He was missing for a couple of days, during which we plastered signs all over town with his photo.
A family called, thinking they had our dog. We drove over there (about three miles away, across a busy highway and on the other side of a major commercial district), and sure enough, it was him. They said they almost considered keeping him, as he was so sweet and they had lost their dog Norman on the same night.
The next day, an old woman two doors down the street from us called, having seen our flyer and thinking she may have seen our dog in her yard (also a black lab). We told her we already had Svejk back, but she called again and insisted we come over (she was a little senile).
We walked over, and on a whim, called “Norman?”. He immediately came running droolingly over and followed us home. We drove him the three miles back across town, and sure enough, it was him. We’ve always wondered if the two dogs met each other during their respective epic journeys
4.
In high school in Los Angeles I drove a friend down to Dana Point, CA to look at a car on sale on Craigslist. At the house of the car owner I shared a moment with the cute girl living next door via prolonged eye contact as she left her house. Friend bought the car. We left.
Five years later I move to south Orange County and take a job near Dana Point and start dating a girl I sort of worked with. When I went to her house for the first time I stopped cold while walking up her driveway as I realized where I was. It was the house. She was the girl. She asked me what was wrong because she could almost literally see my mind exploding. I told her the story, and we shared another moment on that same lawn from five years before.
We’re getting married next July.
5.
I’m adopted.
I’m about 18 and moving to the big city to start uni, looked at heaps of apartments and finally found somewhere nice. The real estate agent shows me around the apartment and I decide to take it. A couple of days later I’m in the realtor’s office to sign the lease, chatting away with the ladies. Just the usual ‘Where are you moving from?’ chatter as I filled out all the paperwork, and the nice agent who showed my the apartment gave me the keys.
Cut to a few weeks later and the phone at my new apartment rings. It’s my realtor calling to tell me that she’s my birth mother.
She swears to this day that she recognized my familiar family facial features on the day she showed me the apartment (and it’s true, I do look a lot like my cousins and her daughters), and the day I signed the lease she got all my details, birth date, etc. It took her a few weeks to contact me because she wanted to confirm with the Government Adoption agency and to let her family know what was happening.
Bit of a spin out.
6.
Around six or seven years ago, a large portion of my neighborhood burned down in the fires that swept through southern california. While helping my friend’s family pick through the rubble of their home for anything that could be salvaged, I saw a speck of white paper in the midst of one of the more blackened areas. I picked it up and read it–the only text on this bit of paper, left over after the rest of the page had burned away, was “from the ashes, new life is born”.
7.
My grandmother was in her first year of high school when the United States began sending soldiers over seas for World War II. She said it was very common for the young men to toss scraps of paper with their names and addresses onto the ground when they drove through cities – hoping someone would pick up the paper and write to them while they were deployed. One day when my grandmother was working at the local penny store, a convoy drove by. She rushed outside and snapped up the first scrap of paper she saw. She began to write the solider, and they quickly became interested in one another.
Several months later, the principal of her all-girls catholic school pulled her out of class, saying a young solider had come to see her. The principal allowed her to meet with the solider for ten minutes (supervised) in the school’s auditorium. It was the young solider that she had been writing too these past few months. He told her that he was in love with her, but he was going to go back to battle in a few days. He gave her a pocket watch, and reminded her to wind it every night before she went to bed. He promised that he would come back for her, and that he would continue to love her for as long as the watch ticked. He was soon sent back over seas, and they continued to write one another.
One night, the watch would not wind. My grandmother was heartbroken, but figured that she would save her money from her job at the penny store and have the watch repaired. Two days after the watch stopped working, my grandmother received a call from the solider’s mother. He had passed away in battle two days before, at the same time that the watch had stopped ticking. My grandmother was distraught, and soon mailed the watch back to the solider’s mother.
Two years later, she met a young man and fell in love again and eventually married him. He had the same first, middle and last name as the deceased solider. They also would have been the same age.
8.
My wife and her brother were traveling through Europe in the spring of 1986. I was home working in California. I knew their itinerary but did not know exactly where they were. I hadn’t talked to them in a couple of days. Got bored, called an overseas operator, and got her to call a pay phone outside of Monet’s Garden in Giverny. After about 15 rings, someone finally picked up the phone. It was my wife. Needless to say, it blew both out minds. One of the strangest thing that ever happened to me in my life.
At the time cell phones were still in the distant future. And the operator picked this phone, not me. Because of the itinerary, it was not a total shot in the dark, but the fact that the time and place lined up for the phone to ring will baffle me until the day I die. My wife said she and her brother were walking out of Monet’s Garden when they heard a pay phone start ringing. They ignored it, walked past it, and for some reason, my wife stopped, walked back and answered it. I have no explanations, just a very strange and cool experience. And a great story.
9.
I worked at a library for a very long time, and in an effort to not lose my soul, I collected stuff I found in books. My favorite discovery was a hilarious postcard between two friends. I immediately thought, ‘I’d like to meet these people.’ I kept it next to my computer for a few years.
After a few years passes, I’m going through my papers and find a postcard from my girlfriend that I don’t recognize. It takes me a few minutes to understand that I’m reading the postcard I’d put aside years earlier, between someone who was now my girlfriend and another person I’d come to know as a friend. It was probably the weirdest event in a series of events that defied probability regarding a ton of surreal linked events in our lives.
10.
My dad was visiting our summer house (he lives about 500 miles away). It was really windy one day and this random guy who was kayaking decided to come ashore and set up camp on the beach. We went and talked to the fella and offered him to stay at our guest house. Turns out this guy lives in the apartment under my father and had paddled the whole way. The cool thing is that my dad (he is in a wheelchair) is having trouble getting snow and ice of his car in the winter but for the last two winters his car was mostly snow and ice free in the morning. It turns out this guy was taking care of that every time he was doing it to his own car.
catatawizard
