This one just happened this morning:
My boss telephoned directory enquiries for details of Maplin Electronics (a chain of UK electronics component stores), was given a number and dialled it, asking the young lady who answered for the address so that he could pop down and collect some items, she replied “please hold while I transfer you to our warehouse” and he was put through to a bloke sitting in the office next door to him; turns out directory enquiries had misheard ‘Maplin’ as ‘Mapin’ - the name of a publisher whose distribution is handled by our company.
Probably not a coincidence but . . .
When I was 19 my best friend and I moved in together. Because I owned a clunker of a car and I was too poor to have someone else do repairs I had to do them myself. I was in an auto parts store getting a rebuilt altenator and necause I was planning to bring the old one back in for some cash, the cashier was putting my info into the computer. The cashier was a “good 'ol boy” with tattoos all over, a couple of teeth missing and was very amused at seeing a teenage girl playing mechanic. I was pretty creeped out by this guy to say the least. He already had my name and address but when he asked for my phone number I spit out the first three numbers and then hesitated trying to recall the last four as we had just got the phone installed two days ago. Looking at me with a half grin the creep asked, “Is it 6874?” It was!!! I have no idea how he knew - we hadn’t told anyone other than my friends parents. It freaked us out completely and we would have changed the number if we had gotten any weird calls at all but we didn’t.
Another creepy thing
I had been working at this company for a short time when I was in my boss’s cubicle talking to him about something. He had one of those calendars that show all the months at once. Naturally my eye went to my birthday and I was shocked to see my name written in there. I asked my boss why he had my birthday on his calendar and he told me that his girlfriend and I not only had the same name (not a real common one) but we must have the same birthday too. Yeah right, sure. I told myself to stay as far away from this weirdo as I could. A few weeks later when I was in his office again I was looking at the calendar and noticed that on October 5th he had written in “Dad”. When I asked him about it he said it was his dad’s birthday and I said it was my dad’s birthday too. Okay . . . since my dad worked at that company too I was really wondering if my boss was some kind of psycho or what. But as the months moved along and I worked with him more I realized he was really on the up and up. I even met his girlfriend and we laughed at having the same name and birthday.
One more
When I was about 9 years old I was spending the night with my grandma and we were sitting in the living room watching the 10 o’clock news before going to bed. It was dark with only the TV on and I was not paying attention to the news. All of a sudden I had a vision of my mom lying in her bed at home with her hand laying next to her head on the pillow and it was all bandaged up. My mom was only half-conscious. I was so upset by the vision that I told my grandma about it. She laughed at me and made fun of me as she wasn’t exactly the sweetest person in the world. Well my mom worked nights and that night while my mom was repairing a broken machine at work some idiot saw that it was turned off and flipped the switch turning it on and crushing my mom’s hand. She had surgery that night and the next time I saw her she was in the hospital. Oddly enough in the excitement of it all I had forgotten about my vision until the day my mom had came home from the hospital. I walked in her room to see the vision in real life. She was laying just as I saw her and she was out of it because the pain medication. :eek:
I never did talk to my grandma about it though and giggle to think of how shocked she must have been. BTW, I never had another experience like it. As a kid I imagined all kinds of terrible things, of course, and was scared they may come true but they never did. Only that one time and I never found out if her hand was crushed before, during or after my vision.
Here is one that really made me think. The veteran actor (Harry Morgan) who played the wizard of Oz in the 1930’s movie was researching his part. He dicided to pop into a Hollywood pawnshop to look for a 19th century frock coat (as would be worn by the wizard). He purchased an old coat, and took it home…in the pocket was a receipt with the name “L. Frank Baum”-the authorof the WIZARD OF OZ!
That has to be one of the most amazing coincidences ever.
Actually, it was Frank Morgan who played the Wizard. Still a neat story, though.
The “L. Frank Baum’s jacket” anecdote comes from the radio show Good News of 1939’s special episode promoting the release of The Wizard of Oz. If I recall correctly, it was asserted that the property department had acquired lots of coats, and that particular one was discarded as being “too natty,” but they decided to go with it after finding the pawn ticket in the pocket and figured it must be good luck.
There are several things that make me reluctant to take it at face value:
The claim that Mr. Baum had pawned the jacket in his lean years before the Oz books became popular, and then it remained unclaimed and unsold for almost forty years?
The difficulty of how the pawn ticket ended up in the pocket: He was wearing it, was given the claim ticket before surrendering the jacket, absent-mindedly put it in his pocket, and then took the jacket off and gave it to the proprieter?
During this program, Frank Morgan (even as ‘himself’ in the interview/banter portions,) remained in character as a “charlatan,” humourously bluffing his way through several obviously dubious anecdotes. The one I remember best is his claim to have some connection to the hugely popular stage version of the Wizard of Oz, (either as the author or as one of the performers- maybe the Scarecrow?) with listeners being “in” on the joke that the person he was trying to put this whopper across on was the person Morgan was posing as, while his fellow cast members try to interrupt him to bail him out.
I don’t remember if the jacket anecdote was put across by Morgan or by another guest (maybe a costumer?) – I’ll check when I get home today.
At any rate, I think it was invented to promote the movie.
I love doing this stuff and freaking you all out!
:: turns back to the Coincidence-O-Matic, rubbing his hands and cackling with glee ::
I grew up in a small town in Missouri where everyone knows each other. I’ve been living in Virginia for 11 years now. About 3 years ago, I was at my local Food Lion grocery store and I saw two older ladies, one of whom I recognized. The lady I recognized was one of my grandmothers friends and she was visiting her sister in my city. We talked for a long time and were all flabbergasted at the chances.