I was doing a periodic sorting of the clothes in my closet, and I found a black sweater dress that I could swear I’d never seen before. The tags were still on it, it was from a fashion brand with their own stores - a chain of stores that I did not recall ever shopping.
It was not something that I considered to be my style, but the dress fit and looked really good. And I had sorted through the stuff in this closet pretty thoroughly a few months before.
My only guess is that I had purchased it at a discount fashion liquidator outlet, one I used to shop in regularly. Occasionally - not often, but it did happen- clothes from there would still have their original paper tags. My other clue was in the fit of the dress, loose through the top but tightly fitted at the hips. As I pulled it on, it felt like it was at least a couple of sizes too small, it was only after I got it on completely that I realized it fit.
I’m guessing that I bought it at the liquidator some years before without trying it on, took it home, started to pull it over my head, deemed it too small, and stuck it back in the closet. Which still doesn’t explain how it survived so many of my clothing purges (I clean my closets regularly) without being noticed. Or why I would buy it at all, the dress really wasn’t my style. Maybe it was really cheap -stuff on clearance could be under $5, which would also explain why I didn’t return it.
Oh, and this happened at a time when my mom was having one of her serious medical crises, I remember thinking “If she dies I’ll be even more freaked out about the black dress but at least I’ll have something to wear.”
She survived that one, I still have the dress but I’m still not totally sure where it came from.
When I was 6 or 7 years old my mother had heart surgery and I was sent to some family friends while she was at hospital. They lived in the outskirts of Madrid and had an enormous garden with a swimming pool and a well. It was winter, the pool had frozen, so I decided to walk on it. Of course I fell through. My granny claimed till the end she heard me scream and call her name. The friends did not tell my family anything about that until much later, they felt my family had enough to worry about. But when they did, my granny said immediately something among the lines “I knew it!” or “I told you so!”. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but she was sure she heard me. Hm.
When I moved to Berlin I first lived in a student home where I met my then girlfriend. We both moved to two different appartments when we finally found something better to live than the student home, which felt too small after a while. One day a letter adressed to me in my new direction appeared in her letterbox. We never found out how it arrived there. Our appartments were several kilometers apart from each other, my name was not on her letterbox. It was just a normal letter, duly stamped, from some administrative department. It wasn’t even personal or otherwise remarcable. If it was a prank I don’t know who pulled it or how. Left us scratching our heads.
About a week ago one of my slippers disappeared from my room. No one has any idea where it went. I had worn them all day one day, taken them off before going to bed, and when I woke up, I could only find one of the slippers. There wasn’t much of anywhere the other slipper could have gone, but it still hasn’t turned up. I checked everything conceivable. It must have just went through a wormhole somewhere.
Interestingly, while looking for it in my closet, I found a slipper of the correct foot, but it was definitely not the one that was lost, which had a hole in the toe. It’s very similar in color. The other one of the pair was in my closet as well, and had a much larger hole in the toe, which is why I got new slippers. So now I have two very slightly different slippers, one missing slipper with a small toe hole, and one slipper with a large toe hole in the trash.
I went to school in South India. The trains do not have automatic doors. It is fun to stand on the doorway gripping the handles with the wind rushing past your face. After a while we tend to sit down with our legs dangling outside. We draw them up when passing culverts, bridges and station platforms.
This happened in my presence, but not directly to me.
My mother loved buying antiques and preferred cheaper stuff that needed a repair or two. My father invariably got pulled into regluing, recaning, repairing wood pieces, etc. One day my mother brought home an small oak end table that had a drawer. The front of the drawer had split in a way that it could not be reglued. While I was standing there, my father went over to his stack of scrap wood to see if he had something that could be cut and stained to match. There was one piece of oak, so he brought it over to the table to see if it was large enough. That piece fit the hole perfectly…it had an even gap on all four sides and did not have to be trimmed a bit. What was really odd was that the drawer was a size that did not correspond to any normally dimensioned lumber. I still have no explanation for this.
When I was a baby, my hair was reddish gold and my grandmother saved a lock of it in an envelope. Years later, the hair in the envelope had turned the color my hair was then: dark brown.
I was driving on the highway in rush hour traffic, probably 50 or 60 miles per hour, at least. Traffic was heavy. My car started to skid. I couldn’t correct it, lost control, and ended up turned around facing the wrong direction in the breakdown lane. I sat there, stunned, for a moment, until a semi truck passed by and honked. I snapped back to attention and was amazed to see that I was sitting on an empty highway. A voice in my head told me to start driving. I pulled out, started driving in the right direction, and was suddenly again surrounded by cars.
I read a story of a guy telling a story of another guy telling a story about how he answered the phone and it was someone who was trying to get a hold of him.
Shortly after I graduated from college, I was driving from the town were I went to school to my parents house, about a four hour drive -east to west. I little more than halfway there, I passed the exit for the town where my best friend from junior high school had attended college. We had grown apart a little bit in high school, and I hadn’t seen or spoke to her in four years.
I was thinking of her a little bit, and I pulled off at that exit to grab a fast food lunch. Probably because my old friend was on my mind, I picked the fast food brand that had been our favorite as teens.
I got in line at the counter - and guess who was in line right ahead of me - my old friend from junior high school and her new husband. They had just finished visiting her family and were traveling in the opposite direction, west to east.
We sat down and had a nice lunch together and caught up. It was one hell of a coincidence.
I don’t have any great ones but it happened to me once, maybe twice. I got a call on my mobile and when I answered it was my own answering machine from home calling me with the outgoing message: " We can’t answer your call right now… blah…blah…blah…". There was nobody home at the time.
Just to expand a bit, all of the other stories are charming tales of things that happened to the people who posted them. I have no doubt you are all being honest, even if these stories have mundane explanations. But the story Velocity told is a tale told to him by a pastor. I am absolutely certain the pastor made it up completely to get people to give him money.
Here’s my story.
One night before bed I read a story in a Cthulu mythos anthology. The story was by Colin Wilson and featured some kind of underground monster(s). It took place in Wales and involved the Voynich manuscript. At the time I’d never heard of the Voynich manuscript and figured it was made up, like the Necronomicon. The next day I went to my job in the used book store. Sitting in the “to be shelved” area was a guidebook to Wales, right on top of a copy of the Voynich manuscript.
Crazy coincidence? Of course. But it freaked me out at the time.
What? A pastor with a website selling, among other things, a $15 DVD instructing you how to open your mind to the miracles God has planned just for you may actually be lying?
