Almost Unbelievable Coincidences that Really Happened

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I had this happen with my best friend. Then on another occasion later, I was watching his family’s house while they were with his dad who was in Tucson having heart surgery. About 6:00 one morning, I jolted awake, thinking something was wrong. I thought the house had been broken into or something. Walking through the house, checking it out, just as I passed the telephone, it rang. It was my friend on the other end to tell me that his dad had just died!

My favorite synchronistic event though follows:

Back about 19 years ago, I vacationed in San Diego. I decided to treat myself to my first massage and on subsequent visits, would see the same masseuse. We even had dinner together once. After a couple of years, I started going to Phoenix for vacation instead, where I could stay for free with the above mentioned friend and his wife.

I didn’t go back to San Diego for several years, until July of 1995, when my praternal grandfather died. My parents flew to Oregon for the funeral from San Diego and I was to pick them up at the airport there on their return. I arrived a day early to cut down on driving stress and decided to have a massage at my motel. I thought of calling the agency my former masseuse worked for but decided against it. I figured that after all that time, she had probably met some rich guy and gotten married and I’d be disappointed to not be able to see her.

I tried a couple of other numbers in the phone book and got disconnected lines. So I called another number, in which the ad said that it was owned by the same company that owned the agency I originally used. The number worked, but I had to leave a message on a machine.

After about an hour of waiting for the return call, I decided a massage wasn’t going to happen and that I would go to a movie instead. Just as I was ready to walk out the door, the phone rang, it was the agency rep returning my call. She said that there was a girl at my motel on another call right then, if I wanted my massage right away. I asked for about a half hour to take a shower first.

So about a half hour later, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find this woman with a strange look on her face. I thought something was strange too, but couldn’t figure out what. We talked for a couple of minutes and she hadn’t given her name yet. But when I named the town in Arizona that I’m from, she asked if we had ever gone out to eat together. It was the woman who I had known about 10 years earlier!

Another coincidence was when telling her that my grandfather had Alzheimer’s before he died, it turned our her mom has it too.

Now I don’t want to get into a “Great Debate” over fate, but with all the trouble I had booking the massage and the coincidences that happened, I felt that there was some kind of reason we got together that day. So I made it a point this time to get to know her and stay in touch. We have become really good friends and I consider her a “part time girlfriend.” Part time mainly due to the distance I live from San Diego and that I only have the opportunity to visit once or twice a year.

22

About a month ago my sister called me from Alabama (I’m in Ohio). She asks how I’m doing, and I tell her not so good, I just had a root canal done. She replies in shock “me too!”. A week or so later, we both find out that we had lost our temporary crowns, which is not that common. As we finished laughing about the wierd coincidence, I asked her when she got her permanent put on. When she said April 6th, the same day mine had been scheduled for, I almost lost it. Too wierd!

moejuck

23

Like the OP, I have always been interested with people’s perceptions to what at first seem unlikely circumstances but really (most) aren’t as unusual as we make them out to be. It’s all about patterns, and our perceptions of them.

For instance, is anyone familiar with the term “hot hands” as used in sports (like basketball) for someone really “on” his game? Well guess what: The phenomenum only exists in our minds; the ballplayer is simply shooting within his expected probability (really, even with the research I still have trouble convincing my friends of this).

Anyone who has read Stephen J. Gould’s Full House or Amos Tversky’s research may have already heard of this, but I just thought to share it.

You may find The Odds of That an interesting read as well.

24

I was driving on 35W one day last summer when a 18 wheeler pulled in along my side. I looked in the passenger side mirror and noticed that his right rear tire (on the trailer part) was really out of balance. I thought, “What would happen if that tire blew whil he was trying to pass me?”

No more than 5 seconds later, the right rear tire of the tractor side (which was right next to my passenger door) exploded in a puf of smoke and steam. There was rubber and steel from the belts flying all over the place.

The amazing part was, I didn’t even flinch.

25

Years ago when I was a pre-teen I used to go to a local riding school, one week they needed some help with young kids on a lesson later in the day, so I volunteered to assist, and was told [by the woman who ran the place] I could phone my mother to let her know I’d be late home. When I went into the house to ask if I could use the phone the woman’s mother said she’d dial for me. I recited my number off to her XXX960 pronouncing the 0 as Oh. She dials away (it was one of those old circular dials) and hands me the phone. A young male answers and I assume it to be one of my brothers and I proceed to have a heated debate with this fella, in the end I said “what number is that?!?” and he says “XXX961”. I was so embarrassed I put the phone down.
Many years later as a young adult I worked for an insurance company going door to door collection people’s premiums. I went to one house and the woman who answered the door seemed to know who I was - I didn’t want to be rude so I pretended I knew her too, she shows me into the living room and tells me to sit down while she finds her insurance book (for me to sign). The phone is next to the chair I’m sitting on and I glance at it. The number? XXX961. Ooooo the wrong number from way back when … the woman finds her book and hands it to me, on the front it has her full name (and not the Mrs whatever I had on my list) and I recognise her name - this is how she knows who I am, she’s the mother of one of my brother’s friends. So all them years ago I’d been arguing with my brother’s pal!
I keep meaning to ask my brother if Frank ever told him about the day he answered the phone to some lunatic female demanding to speak to her mother?! :o

26

On the three return flights I’ve taken from Europe, on three different airlines, in April 1998, July 2001, and December 2002, I’ve heard the Madonna song “Frozen” on the airline music channels.

I haven’t heard that song on the radio since it was popular (which I think was in early 1998). Either the airlines never change the songs on their music channels, or that song just wants me to listen to it. :slight_smile:

27

I was at one of my good friend’s house, and she was giving her phone number to somebody. Her phone number is XXXX316, my dad’s phone number is XXXX315. Yes, I know that story sucked.

28

About 15 years ago, my parents took my sister and I to Disney World. We were in Epcot Center at It’s A Small World near the Netherlands area. My mother was telling us stories of her summers in Europe as a college student when she turned around to find a woman she had stayed with in Sweden some 20 years earlier.

29

In our town, there used to be only one exchange (we’ll call it XXX), but when I was about 11 they introduced a new one (we’ll call it XXY). We got our phone number changed to avoid the repeated calls we’d been getting at 4 am, and it became XXY-0087. Since this was a new exchange, most people still were in the habit of dialing XXX instead of thinking about whether they’d need to dial XXY instead.

After a few wrong numbers, we discovered that a girl from my school, named Lynne, was at XXX-0087 while I, Lynn, was at XXY-0087.

To top it off, we both had brothers named Mark and fathers named John. Wrong numbers all over the place until people got used to it. But then, when XXY became more familiar, people would call our house looking for Lynne, Alternate Mark or Alternate John too.

(Once a friend of mine even mistakenly gave another friend of mine, from the internet, my phone number as XXX-0087, and he called her and tried to convince her that she knew him. “You know, it’s Ryan! From IRC? What do you mean you don’t know who I am?”)

I love reading these coincidence topics :slight_smile:

30

Standing outside the hotel waiting for taxis to take us away from a three day convention of foreign women living in Japan, another woman happened to overhear where I came from, and commented that it was very near to her hometown. We exchanged phone numbers, and went our separate ways. We hadn’t talked together the entire weekend - in fact I hadn’t noticed her at all.

On comparing notes, we married our Japanese husbands on the same day, we graduated from the same English university, but five years apart, and lived in the same dorm while at university.

We became firm friends, and when I called her to tell her I was pregnant, she said “I was just going to call and tell you the same thing!” Our boys were born three weeks apart and have similar names (one character sounds the same) - we did not discuss names beforehand to avoid that very thing!

Then my parents came out to visit us and our new baby, and her friend in the UK wrote her a letter along the lines of “My Dad is looking after his neighbours’ house while they are visiting their daughter in Japan who has just had a baby. Here is her address - we thought you might like to call her” And it was my address! So her friend’s Dad is my Mum and Dad’s next door neighbour!

We had a teenager come out to stay with us in Japan for a few months, and while she was with us, our baby got very sick and was in hospital with pneumonia. In order to give the teenager a bit more of a holiday than she could have from us, we sent her across Japan to our friends. She was looking through photo albums at my friend’s house and found a photo of HER best friend’s parents and their house - they were friends of MY friends! EEEK.

There are three English cities involved in this story (Derby, Manchester and Nottingham) none of them small. What are the odds of all those connections?

31

Another one involving NYC. I was seeing a girl from Montreal, a world-travelling type, and I was taking her down to the city for a few days. She mentioned that her German friend, Bee, whom she had met while working at a hotel in Scotland a couple of years before, was also going to visit the city that summer - she had tried to email her to ask when, but hadn’t received a reply by the time we left. She said something along the lines of, “Well, maybe we’ll run into her somewhere. I’ll keep my eyes open.” (She wasn’t so much naïve as eternally optimistic, and I refrained from pointing out the odds. I grew up in the city, and I know sometimes people have trouble grasping the logistics of it all.)

Anyway, it’s afternoon on a beautiful midsummer’s Saturday, and we’re driving down 5th Avenue, quickly passing (literally) thousands of people milling about on the sidewalks. Suddenly she starts yelling, “Pull over! Pull over!” and is opening the car door while I’m still contemplating the “Pull over!” bit. She jumps out and sprints back uptown, and comes back a minute later with her girlfriend Bee. I couldn’t believe it then, and I still don’t believe it now.

32

A friend has a bulldog named Frances.

When another friend met the dog, she decided that it looked more like a “Nana” than a “Frances” and decided to give her that nickname.

I have a grandmother who I call “Nana”.

Her name is Frances.

33

I come from an eensy weensy excuse for a town. My best friend from high school, Baz, is from the same town. Her aunt lives down in Mobile. Baz used to go to Mobile every summer to visit her. She’d hang out with this girl, Stacy, whose grandmother lives next door to Baz’s aunt. She hadn’t seen Stacy since junior high.

So, I came to college orientation, and got tossed in with Completely-Random-Girl-Named-Stacy for the two nights we had to stay. I asked her where she was from. She said, “Mobile.” There are probably hundreds of Stacys in Mobile, so I thought nothing of it. She, being the polite little thing she is, asked where I was from. I told her.

She immediately sat straight up and shrieked, “Oh my God, do you know Baz McLastname?”

Yep. It was the Stacy whose grandmother lived next door to Baz’s aunt. How random is that?

34

As part of a job I once had, I had to travel to overseas military installations to maintain equipment. On one trip, I started out flying from Baltimore to Chicago, from there to Japan, then on to Korea, Singapore, Thailand, etc. After 23 days and 19 flights, I get on the plane to fly the last leg from Chicago to Baltimore, and the man in the seat next to me is the same man I sat with on the first leg of my trip.

I thought maybe he was a frequent business traveller, but according to him, he had only ever made those two trips to Chicago.

35

I think I’ve posted this before, but what the heck…

Mr Cazzle’s interest in old computers lead him to a guy named “Trevor” who shared his interest. Trevor had lived in New South Wales, about 800km or 500 miles from where we live, but had met a woman on the internet and moved to Melbourne to marry her. That put them a mere 160km or 100 miles from us. He drove down to visit and brought his wife “Helen” along, and I sat in the kitchen chatting with her. She was talking about a place called Bendigo, which is about 150km out the other side of Melbourne, making it roughly 300km from where I live. She told me her daughter had moved there. I thought “My brother’s friend Matt moved to Bendigo”. She told me her daughter had a boyfriend who was a bit of a wild man. I thought “My brother’s friend Matt is a bit of a wild man”. She told me that her daughter’s boyfriend cheated on her daughter all the time. I thought “My brother’s friend Matt cheats on his girlfriends all the time”. She said she told her daughter “Look, he’s just no good. You need to break up with Matt.” I said “Matt? Matt Lastname”, and she looked astonished and said “How did you know that’s his name?”.

I had a letter from a man who is an incredibly distant relative to me - something like 11th cousin. He still lives in England where our family is originally from, while my branch moved to Australia about 150 years ago. In one letter he asked I lived anywhere near a particular town because that’s where his cousin had moved to. The town is one of the nearest to my own.

36

My brother, grandfather, and cousin (from a different side of the family than my grandfather) all have birthdays on Christmas Eve.

37

This just happened to me about an hour ago–I walked into the video store intending to rent a copy of The Wizard of Speed and Time, and they have the damn thing playing on the store TV. (So I end up not renting it so they can finish playing it.)

Sure, it’s not the most obscure movie out there, but the store did have about forty thousand other titles to choose from, fer cryin’ out loud.

38

It can be a small world, can’t it?

About 35 years ago my family, including my maternal grandparents, were on a car trip/vacation together. Now my grandfather was a guy who seemed to know somebody, or at least have a mutual acquaintance, everywhere he went, and this time was no different.

We were in Colorado, visiting Box Canyon which had a nifty observation bridge. In the course of conversation with my grandfather his surname came up, why I don’t remember. A man standing nearby turned around and said “Surname? Are you related to Mike Surname in Kansas?” Mike was my grandfather’s nephew, a cousin of my mother.

I joined the Army, taking the oath, on the same day as another guy from Topeka, Kansas. Didn’t know he was there, or know him, it was a good sized group. We ended up with the same specialized military job, so we attended training in California together and met, and went on to the same post in Korea. Now that might not have been too surprising. But the guy that was our immediate job supervisor was also from Topeka, and he and I attended the same high school(He graduated two years ahead of me, and his picture was in one of my yearbooks.) Strange.

39

In November, I went on a 2.5 week vacation back down to Austin to visit some friends and family. I was staying with a friend of mine.

Now, I developed a pattern of my first few waking hours. Wake up, so sit on the patio in a chair, have my morning (or afternoon, heh) smoke, then go inside and check my Email.

On my 4th day there, I wake up (duh), and decide to check Email first, then go have my smoke. I sit there for a minute, then decide to stand up and lean on the railing to watch the parking lot below me. Dunno why, it’s a dull parking lot, and I like to sit (lazy!).

A few seconds later, I think I recognize a figure. Holy crap, it’s my good friend Kate! I hadn’t seen her in almost two years - we lost contact a few months before I moved to MI, and her phone number changed.

I yell to get her attention, then run downstairs to catch up.

Turns out that she was just leaving someone’s apartment. She’d never been over there before, and hadn’t wanted to go, but for some reason decided to go see this woman’s baby.

We spent about 5 minutes going, “Damn, THAT was weird.”

40

A friend at work invited me to accompany her at a Match.com party that evening, to be held at the Windows on the World restaurant/bar/dance floor in the World Trade Center. It was about two weeks before 9/11. I’d never been to the WTC before (and ditto for singles events), and in retrospect I’m really glad that I went.

But the timing wasn’t the strangest part. At the party, I hit it off with a personable guy in the insurance industry. The conversation drifted to the sad state of my career and my unwillingness to do the grinding commute into the city for a better job. Gesturing around us, he asked something like, “Well, how would you like working in this building, say? Isn’t this nice?” I immediately shot back, “No way! I’d be too afraid of another terrorist attack!” (I wasn’t even consciously remembering the truck-bombing in the WTC underground garage seven years earlier; my feelings of misgiving were fuzzier than any precise recollection. Still, I was completely adamant.)

He must’ve thought I was nuts; his reaction was unmistakeably one of shock and disbelief. “A terrorist attack! Like what? What do you think could happen to a building like this?” “Oh, I dunno. Somebody could set a fire, a big fire, or something? Anyway, there’s too many things that could happen.” (I had a fleeting mental image of shadowy men racing from floor to floor, deliberately setting lots of small fires using gasoline, so many they couldn’t be extinguished, and thus create a big fire, but I didn’t envision any airplane involvement. I also didn’t imagine this happening to both towers at once. I’m not psychic, just neurotic.) I didn’t go into any more detail, because I sensed how absurd I was sounding already and didn’t want to scare him off.

BTW, he didn’t work in the WTC, but in a nearby, medium-sized skyscraper.