February 22, 2019 | Miles Brucker

People Share The Strangest Coincidences They’ve Ever Experienced


Most of us have experienced odd coincidences in our lives; there’s a song in your head, and it comes on the radio. You’re thinking about a friend or family member, and suddenly, they text you. You want to learn more about a particular historical figure, and a nifty article about them happens to pop up on Factinate that very day. You know, mostly boilerplate stuff. But sometimes, when the stars align and the fates converge just right, we experience coincidences that veer from just plain interesting to flat-out strange. The universe works in mysterious ways—just ask these bewildered Redditors who’ve shared their stories of bizarre coincidences.


1. Praise Be The Bus Gods

I used to get two buses home from work. I got off the first one having left my phone and keys on the front seat of the bus without realizing. Got on the second bus, went to my favored front seat and my possessions that I didn’t know were missing were waiting for me. The bus had changed driver and route. Still freaks me out to this day.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

2. Shut Your Trap

When I was a kid, I was hiking with my dad and babbling. I said: “The teacher told us if you speak too much, a fly will get in your mouth.” In that exact moment, a fly flew into my mouth.

Forbidden Family Secrets factsPixabay

3. Hello Old Friend

My first semester of college, I moved out of state. I was first to move into the apartment and had a few days to myself. After orientation I found my new roommate sitting on his bed. When I introduced myself, he asked where I was from. When I told him, he said, "I used to have a friend named Simon." I said “I used to have a friend named Will.”

We were best friends in first and second grade, until his family moved.

Biggest Impact FactsShutterstock

4. Identity Thief

My sister, Emily, was on a ski lift in New Mexico when some younger girl across from her asked if her name was Emily. Apparently the stranger, who kind of looked similar but underage, had found her lost ID the year prior and had been using it for a year to buy alcohol.

Rom-com QuizShutterstock

5. A Meaningful Exchange

In freshman physics, I became friends with the Japanese kid next to me. After a while he was helping me with my Japanese homework—I did really well after that, by the way. But after that class, we kind of drifted apart. Fast forward two years, where I'm an exchange student in Japan over the summer and doing some sightseeing in Kyoto after the program.

I'm crossing the street in Kyoto and I hear my name being called out. I turn around, and there he is! Thousands of miles apart we meet again. We got some drinks and good food together. It was a blast. And no, his hometown was not Kyoto, he was also doing sightseeing while home for the summer.

Strangest Coincidences FactsFlickr

6. Smell-O-Phone

Just today I called my mum on the phone to ask if I could come over and she asked if I'll be there for dinner. When she said this I could smell spaghetti Bolognese. When I got to her house, guess what was for dinner. Spaghetti Bolognese. There was nothing around that could've possibly made me smell any sort of pasta dish, and she didn't say what we were having for dinner.

Strangest Coincidences FactsPxHere

7. Small Town, Small World

I met a Canadian guy while on holiday in South America and we ended up going sightseeing together. At the end of the day, a person behind us tapped him on the shoulder and asked if the scar behind his ear was from cancer surgery. They got talking. Turns out they were from the same small town in Canada, had the same type of brain cancer, and had been operated on by the same surgeon.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

8. Obliviously Compatible

I was at a convention and there were only a few people in the room. My friend and I wanted an autograph from a voice actor. He started singing in his character’s voice. There were two random guys next to me. One pulled out a video camera to record it. Years later, my husband and I are talking with friends, and the convention comes up.

The guy with the video camera was my husband. I also took a picture later that day of the crowds, and he is in that picture. I stood next to my husband years before I met him.

Unromantic Moments factsPixabay

9. Invisible Partners In Crime

About 10 years ago I tried to get into Six Flags with a tiny keychain Swiss army knife. It literally had a dull one-inch blade. They told me I could either throw it away, take it to my car a mile away or rent a locker for like 10 bucks. So I decided to hide it in the planter. I looked down and saw a big piece of bark laying in the dirt and figured it would be a good hiding place.

I picked it up and found another freaking mini Swiss army knife! I placed mine next to the first and went into the park. When I returned, the other knife was gone and a smiley face was etched into the dirt in its place.

Strangest Coincidences FactsMax Pixel

10. Excellent Book Choice

When I was in high school, I was aimlessly playing around our library one day. Like any large public high school, our library had literally thousands of books quietly tucked away in shelves, and rarely, if ever, touched. That day I pulled a book at random from a shelf in the back, and sat down to read it. After opening it, a slip of paper fell out, and I quickly recognized the dashed ten digits written on it as a phone number.

I hastily read the number, and it was my older sister's number, who had graduated my high school years earlier. Someone wrote her number and tucked it away into a random book in the back, until I found it years later.

Organized Crime FactsShutterstock

11. The Diablo Himself

When I was a kid, around 13, I played a lot of a video game called Diablo 2. I started a clan with a few people I’d met on the internet and we played every day. At some point, we were helping some random person and he asked to join. We thought he was nice enough so we let him in. As part of this clan, we had a shared account we used to store game items for each other.

After about a month of playing, this new guy goes in and changed the password, steals the account and unfriends everyone. Completely disappears off the map with all of our stuff. Fast forward a year later: my family moves to Texas and it’s my first day at school. I’m sitting in algebra class talking to the person in the seat next to me and he mentions he plays Diablo.

I said “me too” and told him that I’d run a clan and everything. I asked his username and it was him. 2,000 miles away from where I first virtually met this guy, now he’s sitting next to me in math class. When I told him my username, his face went into total shock and he didn’t know how to respond. It was awkward for sure. Ended up telling him I didn’t care and was over it but let’s just say, we didn’t end up becoming friends.

Men's Secrets factsPixabay

12. Who Are You People?

My partner and I ran into this Japanese mother and son traveling through Southeast Asia. We ran into them in Siem Reap at the Angkor Wat temples, then again in town that night. We left two days later to fly to Ho Chi Minh City and they were on the same flight. We politely nodded and smiled. We landed in HCMC and went our separate ways. We went to our hotel they went to theirs.

After dinner on the second night, we decided to go to a rooftop bar for a drink. We walked in and they were there. We all laughed and waved. Up to this point, we hadn’t actually spoken to each other. But we decided to sit down and chat to them for a short while. We didn’t actually discuss the rest of our travel plans beyond our departure dates from Vietnam.

A few days later we’re leaving our hotel to go back to the airport. A shuttle bus picks us up and the Japanese mother and son are on the bus. Turns out the two hotels shared shuttle service to the airport. We didn’t know where they were flying to, but turns out they were also flying to Nha Trang and were seated in the row opposite us.

We get to Nha Trang and decided to share a taxi into the city. We were staying at the same hotel. By this point, it was beyond ridiculous that our paths were crossing this much. So we just accepted it. And decided to hang out with them that night. Have dinner. And go out for drinks. We get to chatting about our lives. I grew up in a small rural town in Australia.

About 18 years earlier, we had a Japanese exchange student live with us for about 3 months. Turns out this Japanese exchange student was the brother of the woman sitting across from us! It was mind-blowing. After all the weird path crossing we had already encountered over the last 10 days this was just the cherry on top.

I went back to the hotel that night and sent my mum a Facebook message to send me a photo of the Japanese exchange student. She dug through our old family photos and found one of him and I (I was 10 or 11 at the time). The next night we had dinner with them again and I showed the mother the photo. She started laughing because it was her brother, and she thought I had been making a joke the night before! Crazy times.

People Share The Worst Things A Guest Has Done In Their HomeShutterstock

13. Pajama Pals

I wanted my husband to accompany me down to the parking garage in our building to grab something from our car. He was already in his PJ pants and didn't want to come. I convinced him no one would see us, and he reluctantly agreed. We got on the elevator and rode down one floor before it stopped to let someone on.

The largest, buffest man steps into the elevator wearing his own PJ pants. He said nothing, but gave my husband the dude head nod before getting off on the main floor and disappearing forever. We've never seen him since.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

14. Like A Boss

Back in the early/mid 90s the phone system changed and you no longer needed to dial the area code for a long distance in-state call—we're a small state with only one area code. One morning I woke up to the phone ringing and when I picked up, I recognized the voice on the other end as belonging to my old boss from a few years ago.

She had an unmistakable voice. We had a nice conversation for a bit before she realized she had dialed the wrong number. I lived in a different town in a different part of the state, but the number must have been off by only one digit from the one she'd tried to call. To add to the coincidence, I had overslept and would have been late for work if she hadn't called me and woken me up.

Strangest Coincidences FactsFlickr

15. Buy You a Beer?

Stumbled into a bar 4,000 miles from home, in another continent, and literally bumped into one of my closest childhood friends whom I haven’t seen since I was 12. Totally unplanned.

Strangest Coincidences FactsPixabay

16. Crush Rekindled

On my first solo trip to Europe during college, I attended a concert at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris. There I was in this packed cathedral, feeling a bit "alone" because of traveling by myself. When I looked to the right, I was amazed to see the person sitting next to me was my high school crush. She, too, was alone. From that point on, we shared everything together for the remainder of our stay.

Strangest Coincidences FactsFlickr

17. Funny Business

I worked in a video store. I was picking up the returns to put them back in the system when I found a business card in the returns bin. It's the only time in three years that I ever found anything other than movies. We were three employees on that shift, so any of us could have found it. It was one of my brother's business cards.

He lives in another city and had no idea where I worked and when. I asked him about it and he has no idea how it got there. What are the chances that someone dropped it in MY store, on MY shift and I would be the one to pick it up? It could have been someone who knew both of us playing a trick on me, but I moved to that city just two years prior and none of the people I knew there could possibly know my brother as well.

Adam Levine quizShutterstock

18. Meant To Be

In 1983, at the age of 12, I got a concussion horsing around with my brother. We were poor and homeless so it was a couple of days before my mom took me to one of several local hospitals. So, I wound up there for a few more days which were very foggy. Anyway, there was this one nurse who would stop by and be so sweet and brought me cookies and whatnot.

I was smitten but never saw her on my last day there. Fast forward about 7 years and I am delivering auto parts for a local NAPA. I get to be good buddies with the parts coordinator at a very large construction company and he keeps going on and on about his best friend’s wife. "She's so wonderful, sweet and all," and he wishes his wife were cool like this guy's wife.

I mean, I listened to this dude gush about her nearly everyday for six months. About 2 years later I met and soon after married my wife, who, incidentally, is 14 years older than me. Through talking, which is the great denominator in our relationship, I come to realize that my wife is not only the nurse 12-year-old me was enamored with, but also the then wife of the guy’s best friend.

In just one more unsubstantiated instance, I swear I saw her standing near the lakefront during the fireworks on the Fourth of July in 1976. She has confirmed that she was there that day but had been drinking and didn't remember which part of the lake she was standing on. There were thousands of people there that day. We have been married for 26 years now.

I am still very much in love with her and I truly believe she is my soulmate.

Unromantic Moments factsPixabay

19. Your Lucky Day

I was shopping with my mom and my grandpa and I saw a cool LEGO truck for €20 that I totally wanted. I asked my mom if I could have it. She said, "Only if you buy it yourself," fully knowing that I didn't have money on me because I was 11 years old and of course, normally my mom pays for everything. So instead, my grandpa gave me €1 to buy a lottery ticket—or rather he bought it, because of gambling laws—and I just picked it.

I won exactly €20, the highest amount anyone in our family ha ever won in a lottery to this date. And you better believe I bought that LEGO truck.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

20. Playing Along for Her

Once I got a call from a school friend's number. I was 15 then and wasn't particularly close to this person. Her little cousin spoke to me, as though we were close friends, using my name, etc. I was surprised but played along because she was little. Then when I spoke to this friend later, she said sorry, and that she must have called by mistake.

I got the call again the next day and played along again, and this time when I bumped into the friend, she sounded a little worried and said that she had to say something. She started crying. She said that the little girl was her cousin who used to live in the US, and she had a friend there with the same name as mine and similar age as mine, and that they were both the closest of friends.

Once she moved back to India, they discovered that she had a terminal illness for which she is being treated currently. Meanwhile, the guy with the same name as me died and they kept it from the little girl because it wouldn't have gone down well with her. And that she thought my number was actually his and spoke to me like it was him.

I spoke to her two more times that week, thus time very willingly and for a longer time. The last time I spoke to her, she was going for her surgery and I said that it'll all be fine. The next day, my friend breaks the news, she was hardly holding it together. But she was nice enough to bring me a few photos of her cousin. I was really glad I had the chance to keep her happy in her last few days.

Men's Secrets factsPixabay

21. The Name of the Game

Not a very big deal but it was the first thing that came to mind. I was babysitting two children, a boy (let’s call him George) and a girl (lets call her Charlotte). We were at the park and George found someone to play with, a little girl. Her name was Charlotte also. I noticed her dad nearby, so I said, “Oh that’s funny, his sister’s name is Charlotte.”

The dad asked what his name was, I said George. The dad said, “Oh that’s weird! My son’s name is George.”

Dumbest Patient FactsShutterstock

22. Family Friends

I've had several "small world" experiences, but the biggest was talking to a girl after my first university class and discovering through the course of a two-hour long conversation that our grandmothers had been each other's maid of honor, and that my aunt and her mom were best friends since childhood.

Strangest Coincidences FactsPixabay

23. Lady Luck Was Smiling

My truck’s gas gauge stopped working without me noticing—I didn't drive very far whenever I did drive, as I was living on campus at the time. It constantly stayed at full. One day, I took my boyfriend for a bit of a drive so we could go to a music shop. On the way back, we had to go over a bridge, and right at the top of the bridge I felt my power steering and gas pedal go limp.

Not only was I extremely lucky to have my boyfriend in the car and be at the top of the bridge when I ran out, but at the bottom of the bridge there was an exit. I coasted down and there was a gas station RIGHT after the off ramp. AND there was a limousine that had also run out of gas and he offered us the tiny amount I needed to get my truck to the gas station.

I didn't have a job and had no cash for gas, so my boyfriend paid. We had only just started dating and that was the nicest thing ever. It was THE LUCKIEST day of my life.

Marvel Cinematic Universe FactsMax Pixel

24. Extreme Tag

My family used to take little summer vacations. One summer (I was about 7-8) we stayed at a campground about four hours from home. There were a bunch of kids there and one day we all started playing tag. I was "It" and was chasing another young boy. When I tagged him, I pushed him too hard and he fell and broke his arm. I remember the scene vividly.

Fast forward to college. I became good friends with my neighbor in the dorm, and we ended up getting a place together our sophomore year. The following year—no longer living together—we went out for a few beers and the topic of broken bones came up. "I've only broken one bone, and it was my arm when I was 7. Some kid at a campground pushed me over while playing tag". It was me. Still can't believe it.

Strangest Coincidences FactsFlickr

25. Mirror Image

The person who sits next to me at work copies everything I do, except she has no way of knowing. I wear a blue sweater, she wears a blue sweater. I bring leftover spaghetti, she brings leftover spaghetti. It is so weird I almost hate her.

Cults FactsShutterstock

26. Long Tall Paulie

Seeing Paul McCartney of the Beatles on TV in 2001, I noticed that he was tall. Next day, I'm walking down a very quiet street, and walking towards me is a really tall guy. It was Paul McCartney. He must've seen my expression so he veered my way, stuck his hand out, and said, "Hi mate."  I was shocked. 18 years later I'm still shocked.

Strangest Coincidences FactsFlickr

 

27. What’s in a Name?

I had a kidney transplant last year. The nurse makes a comment about it having my name on it. He elaborated to say that the donor has the same surname as me.

Catherine The Great QuizShutterstock

28. Didn’t Even Get To Say Goodbye

A few years ago I got into a cab heading out for the evening in downtown Toronto. Shortly after being dropped off, I realized that I had left my phone in the cab. I tried calling it with no luck. I called the cab company, but because I had flagged the cab and paid cash they had no real way of knowing which cab I was in.

I figured the phone was as good as gone and went about my night. Many hours later and having moved around the city quite a bit, I am ready to call it a night, so I flag another cab. Sitting in the back seat, I start to think the driver looks familiar and realize that I'm in the same cab I took earlier. He hasn't found a phone, but I start looking anyways and sure enough there it is, jammed in the seat.

Me and my flip phone were happily reunited, only for me to put it in a washing machine two days later.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

29. Holiday Buds

An American friend of mine by the name of Tom took his family on vacation to check out Antarctica. He met an Australian guy named Paul on Christmas day in Antarctica. They didn't exchange contact info. A year later, Christmas day, they take their vacation to Machu Picchu. He is looking down at a map when he hears, "Hey Tom, how the heck are you?"

It was Paul, taking his family on their annual trip as well.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

30. Literal Lifesavers

I was once mugged by four guys on one of the main shopping streets of Nairobi, Kenya. One of the guys had me in a choke hold and just before I was about to pass out, they dropped me and ran. At the time, I didn't know why. 12 months later, sitting on a beach on an island in Thailand, I meet a British couple who did business in Kenya and we start to talk about how dangerous it was getting for foreigners.

They described an incidence the year before of turning a corner and seeing a white guy being mugged and a shopkeeper rescued him by hitting one of them over the head with a bat. They were on the same street, on the same day, at the exact same time I was there. It was me who they witnessed being mugged. What are the odds of randomly meeting up on a beach in Thailand a year later?

Benedict Arnold factsShutterstock

31. Have You Two Met?

When I was 18, I lived in a town a very long ways away from where I ended up moving. I struck up a friendship with this guy from work in that town, and we played Halo, watch movies, etc., and he was awesome. I ended up moving suddenly due to a family emergency, and never got his contact information. I didn't even remember his name a decade later, but I thought of him often. as he was an awesome guy through all the years.

11 years later, I'm working at my job, carpooling with someone from my training class, and one night he asks if I mind his roommate being in the car, as he was going to take the car after we got off at work to use it for the night. He introduces us, I turn around, and in the back seat is the guy from the town a very long ways away.

We reconnected immediately and now live together. He's my best friend, for sure, and the godfather to my children.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

32. Winnie the Pooh, Where Are You?

When I was 11 years old, I was in the park like half a mile from my house. I was flying a Winnie the Pooh kite. I was the only kid around with a kite at the time, and I was pretty zoned into it, and didn't notice when the string came loose. One hundred feet of twine zoomed away and out of reach, and Pooh Bear was gone.

Later that night, my family and I went out to eat, and when we came home, there was a string dangling from the gutter above our front door. My dad grabbed it and started pulling. The string seemed to go all the way up into the night sky, we couldn't see the end of it. A hundred feet of pulling later, there was my Pooh Bear kite. It came back to me.

Strangest Coincidences FactsFlickr

33. River Magic

My favorites occurred during separate canoe trips. The first was during a Labor Day weekend trip up and down the St. Croix river (two days paddling upstream, one down), which runs between Wisconsin and Minnesota and eventually joins the Mississippi river. Despite it being a holiday weekend there was virtually no traffic on the river, as we saw only one other boat and that was on the first day shortly after we left.

On the second day out, the weather was quite warm. At one point I said, ”Boy, a watermelon sure would be good right about now!” My three companions told me to shut up and not even mention it, because we didn’t have one and weren’t going to find one in the wilderness. A little while later we spotted a green object floating toward us that turned out to be…a watermelon.

Years later, I was on a river outing with several other people on the Whitewater river in Indiana. I was paddling my kayak, and had just told the watermelon story to the people in the canoe next to me. It was a hot summer day, and someone said something to the effect of “Watermelons are fine, but I could really go for a cold beer right now.”

A few minutes later we paddled around a bend and saw a cooler sitting on a sandbar. We stopped on the sandbar, opened the cooler, and found that it contained just enough cold beers for each of us to have one. Appalachian Trail hikers refer to occurrences like this as “trail magic.” I guess it happens on rivers too.

Strangest Coincidences FactsFlickr

34. What’s Up Doc?

I had a rare disease when I was 4 years old which hospitalized me for months. Doctors were dumbfounded and were unsure how to treat me. A Japanese doctor who was touring hospitals in the US walked in with a bunch of interns and other doctors. He recognized what I had immediately and helped to bring me back to norm. 6 years later same rare disease hit me.

Slightly different symptoms, but the same Japanese doctor at the same hospital walked in the door. Not sure how those stars aligned so perfectly.

Biggest Impact FactsShutterstock

35. Make Yourself at Home

I started dating this girl a few weeks ago. We get to talking about where we live, etc. Not only does she live in the same building I once lived in, but in the exact same apartment I lived in 2 years ago. It was so bizarre walking into the old apartment that I never thought I would see again. What are the odds?

Unromantic Moments factsShutterstock

36. Well It’s About Time

Went to college, met a cute girl. "Where'd you go to high school?" she asks. "You've never heard of it," I reply. I grew up in a town of 1,200 people and graduated in a class of about 90.  "Try me," she says. That was the beginning of finding out that not only had she heard of it, she had almost attended it, because her family had lived in one of the neighboring towns very briefly when she was growing up.

We shared dozens of mutual friends, and had apparently spent our young lives narrowly missing each other. Later, after we started dating, we learned that one of our mutual friends had been trying to set us up with each other for YEARS. She was overwhelmed with laughter when she saw that we were finally together, completely without her involvement.

I asked her to marry me, she said yes. We went out to dinner with our parents so they could finally meet. Her folks arrive at the restaurant and see mine. Her mom goes, "Oh hey, [my dad's name]. So this is your son, huh?" They had been coworkers years ago. Of course. We've been married for 11 years now. Got a good thing going. We intend to keep it.

Wedding Objections factsPixabay

37. It’s a Twin Thing

The wife and I went to Niagara Falls for a quick vacation before going to a city in southern Maine. While we were in Niagara I sat beside a woman on a bus, and I just sort of noticed her because she was talking with her daughter and it caught my attention. A few days later in Maine, we were in the checkout line of a grocery store and I saw a lady that looked just like her a few carts ahead of us.

I couldn’t resist so I went up to her and asked, “Were you at Niagara Falls just a few days ago?” She said, “No, but my twin sister was.”

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

38. Marching Madness

I live in Missouri, but was in London about 15 years ago because our college marching band was marching in their New Year's Day parade. I was marching on the left flank, dutifully playing my instrument, and decided to stop looking straight ahead like you're supposed to because I figured I'd never get a chance to enjoy this particular scenery again.

If I hadn't been on the left-hand side and glanced to my left in that exact moment, I never would have seen my cousin, also from Missouri and who I hadn't seen since I was a little kid, standing within an arm's reach with a shocked and confused look on her face. A lot of things had to coincidentally align for me to stroll past her on that particular street on the other side of the planet.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

39. Puppy Love

Early this year I adopted a dog. She was found and brought to the shelter the previous month and hadn't been chipped or anything, so it was just assumed she was born a stray or something. A few months ago my family and I went to Starbucks. We’d decided to take the dog with us to get some air and we went to the one my mom has frequented for years.

I was holding the dog in my arms while my mom was ordering the drinks and she noticed one of the male baristas looking at her (the dog) with a puzzled expression. He then tells us he thinks he recognizes her. The dog in question is a Chihuahua mix but she has a unique coat/color scheme that people comment on all the time, so it makes sense that someone who saw her before would recognize her.

He happens to be getting off work and says his family is coming to pick him up so we wait for them so they can see her and see what they think. The guy's mom and sisters show up and sure enough, it turns out to be their old dog. They tell us the story of how she ran away and the timeline syncs up—she had run away in early February, we adopted her in late March.

It turns out they live just down the road from us. They show us pictures and videos and everything. It is unmistakably her. They then have a big emotional reunion with her right there in the parking lot. My mom is crying emotional tears too. We learn the dog's original name—which she responds to—her exact age and date of birth, and what she is mixed with (Schnauzer).

The barista's sisters were elementary/middle school aged and they were ugly crying while holding her. I won't lie—yes, I was worried. My family had grown to love this furry girl so much. I did truly feel bad for the little girls but I love her too. However the mom assured us they weren't going to take her away from us or anything, as they had just adopted two new puppies for the girls to cheer them up.

They were just glad to know she was okay and with a new family that clearly loved and took good care of her. It really is a small world.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

40. A Couple of Stalkers

Nobody believes me when I tell this story, but one day my husband and I ran into the same couple at three different places, in two different states. So, my husband and I had an errand to run out of state. We leave early and stop to get breakfast. This couple was sitting across from us. The lady had on a funky shirt which is why she stuck out in my mind.

After breakfast, we drive the next state over to the office we have an appointment at. We're waiting in the lobby and the couple from the breakfast joint walks in! Weird! So we spend the day finishing up our errands and then we drive back home. I didn't feel like cooking so we stopped to get some dinner at the pub. We sit down at the table and guess who's already eating at the table behind us? The same couple!

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

41. Thanks Big Sis

In grade 10 English class, the teacher didn't have anything planned for us to do, and it was close to the end of the year, so she goes to the big cupboard in the corner and pulls out a stack of copies. They’re examples of successful essays written during a final exam, so we can learn what a good one looks like and how to build a narrative, etc.

The topic was “What was the most pivotal moment of your life?” There were three examples, ranging in proficiency. We read through the first two, and I volunteer to read the last one aloud. I start reading...and I stop. The essay was about...me. My big sister had gotten a really good mark six years earlier on her final exam essay which she wrote about the day I was born.

I got pretty emotional about that one.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

42. Daddy Doesn’t Know

When I was in high school, my best friend had just moved to town with her family, including her older sister who had a baby when she was 17. I spent a lot of time at her place and babysat the baby occasionally. She moved away a couple years later and we eventually fell out of touch. Cut to 2015, I meet a guy online, we hit it off and became friends with benefits and hang out quite a bit.

In 2017, he gets a Facebook message from a young man claiming to be his son. The time frames and people involved all add up and yes, it is indeed his son. He is telling me the story—he mentions the kid’s mother's name and holy crap, it's the name of my best friend's older sister. Turns out I was babysitting his kid he didn't know he had back in 1995. I had pictures of me with the baby and everything.

shutterstock_330353657 man surprised looking at mobileShutterstock

43. The Not-So-Great Grandma

When I was a little kid my folks used to make me and my younger sister visit our great grandmother in the nursing home. She was blind and like 98 years old. She was sort of scary as a kid, as her eyes were all frosted over, and she had papery skin, and would touch our faces to "see how big we'd gotten." She had a tiny sing-songy voice.

But what freaked me out more was her roommate who didn't talk at all except for reaching at me and saying my name. My folks never spoke to her other than to say hello and goodbye, or like "Merry Christmas" or whatever. Anyway, 20 years later I asked my dad what the fuck that lady's deal was. He casually mentions it was my other great-grandmother, who was senile and bedridden.

His family had a big falling out when HE was a kid, so they never really knew each other. I look just like my dad, and share his name. So she thought I WAS him, is the theory. They were roommates purely by coincidence. It was a pretty big nursing home in a pretty big city. To be honest I am more floored by my dad's complete indifference to the situation than I am by the coincidence.

Strangest Coincidences FactsShutterstock

Sources: Reddit, , ,


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