Sometimes, coincidences happen that just can’t be explained. Maybe it’s reuniting with a friend under unexpected circumstances, a lucky break that saved a life, or something a little spookier... These Redditors share times when coincidences struck them that really made them pause and go, “Huh, that was really weird”.
1. A Gift From Mom
Six years ago, because of my drinking, I'd been homeless for about eight entire 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. That prior August, my mother had passed, 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, we waited for showers and bedtime. That evening, the shelter had more residents than usual and many of them needed clean socks or underwear. 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. Then I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. 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 third 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 them. I don't know where the dog came from, but I kept him. I’ve still got him today. 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. From The Ashes
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. Those words are burned in my mind.
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".
3. Santa Just Knows
My old work ran a Secret Santa once, the week before Christmas. It was a $10 limit and the person I was buying for I didn't know very well. I left my buying to the last minute because I just didn't know what to get her. So, I was in town and walking past some shops when lo and behold, I see an old copy of Oliver Twist in the window of the secondhand bookstore. It just called to me, so I went in and picked it up. I checked the first page for the cost and guess what? $10, the perfect price.
So come the day of the Secret Santa, we were all opening our gifts, all 150 people. Out of the corner of my eye, I see some people crowding around a woman who is crying. I keep listening and people are calling out for the person who was her Santa. I go over and reveal that it was me. The lady I had bought for was crying and hugged me. Then she revealed what was happening. She said that ten years ago, her house burned down along with all her of possessions.
The book that I bought her was her favorite and also the exact same edition so had the exact same cover she remembered. Because it was a secondhand book, it was even weathered in the same places she remembered, so it was as if I'd grabbed the book off her shelf before the fire and delivered it to her 10 years later.
4. Worldwide Kebabs
Here in my little town in northwest England there's a good kebab shop from which the lads and I have ordered for years. We've been in there after countless nights out and had them deliver to our doors, so we know the guys who work there pretty well. They're mostly Turkish.
Once a few of us got together for a short break in Turkey. Having got off the plane, we waited in the car park outside for another pal who'd been on a different flight. As we stood, soaking in the ambiance of a new country, none other than the tall guy from our local kebab shop walked across the road right in front of us, two thousand miles from home. That was weird.
5. You Forgot Your Stuff!
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 I did. Got on the second bus, went to my favored front seat, and I couldn't believe what I found. The possessions that I didn’t know were missing were waiting for me right there! The bus had happened to change drivers and route. It still freaks me out to this day.
6. All The Same Places
One day, my husband and I ran into the same couple at three different places, in two different states. My husband and I had an errand to run out of state. We leave early and stop to get breakfast. The couple was sitting across from us, and 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 where we have an appointment.
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! What a coincidence!
7. Stranger Danger?
When I was young in England, my mum would drive me to school every day, and every day we'd see a girl a few years older than me, walking exactly the same route to school with her mum. We always talked about stopping and offering them a lift but we didn't do it until one day when it was raining quite heavily. The mum agreed and thanked us, but the young girl pulled back and convinced her mum to not get in, so they walked instead.
We never understood why the little girl didn't want to get in, but we assumed she was just scared. Now I'm living in Amsterdam, and I saw on Facebook that a childhood friend of mine was here, so I messaged her and we met up. She was here with her lifelong best friend and we all got on really well. Her friend and I talked and found out we went to the same primary and secondary schools and I told her the story of the little girl and her mum and she started freaking out; it was her!
It turns out she was too embarrassed to get in the car with us because she didn't want us to think they were poor. She said her mum still laughs about it, and they always wondered who it was that stopped to offer them a lift that day.
8. Hearing The Music
The pastor of the church where I was a musician informed me that a wedding couple would be coming to see me after Sunday services to discuss music for their forthcoming ceremony. It turned out to be a girl I dated in high school that I hadn't seen or heard from since graduation and her fiancée. She remembered my organ-playing from back then and already knew what pieces she wanted. I didn't even have to demonstrate.
9. The Boss’ Number
Back in the early to mid-90s, the phone system changed and you no longer needed to dial the area code for a long-distance in-state call. 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.
10. Sudden Reconnections
When I was 18, I lived in a town a very long way away from where I ended up moving. I struck up a friendship with this guy from work in that town. We’d play Halo, watch movies, hang out, 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 and 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 way away. We reconnected immediately and now live together. He's my best friend, for sure, and the godfather to my children.
11. Biker Dudes
In the late 90s and early 2000s I went to college with a group of really cool dudes. We were all into bikes and ATVs, and there was a Yamaha dealership near school. So sometimes we would go there between classes to waste time and ogle at all of the cool stuff we couldn't afford. After we graduated, we kept in touch for a couple of years but eventually we all lost track. It happens.
A decade later, I was in the town near that same Yamaha dealership, passing time while my daily driver was receiving some warranty work. I needed an oil filter for our ranch ATV, so it was all good timing to be in the area. I'm looking around, again ogling all of the stuff I could probably afford but had become too impractical to justify. And I ran into Pete!
Pete, one of my college friends, lived within a few miles of the dealership and just happened to stop in looking for a chain for his bike! We were reminiscing about old times and talking about what a coincidence it was when we both heard a familiar voice—our friend Jim! Jim, another one of our buddies, was in town seeing his family and was also just passing time. Feeling nostalgic, he too stopped by to check out the inventory.
It felt like old times again briefly but we were all sort of weirded out by the coincidence of it all.
12. The Car Girl
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. My friend bought the car and 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. 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 5 years before. We're getting married next July.
13. Missing The Punch Line
When I was in 7th grade, I had a serious crush on a girl. One day her mom was driving a bunch of us somewhere and everyone was talking and making jokes. I can't remember the exact conversation, but I had a moment of silence where it was my chance to make everyone laugh. I made a super lame joke that brought silence. My moment to impress was ruined.
Come 10 years later. I am driving a car with the kids of family friends. In the same seat in the back sits a kid that reminds me of me, and there is a girl in the front seat he likes. The EXACT conversation starts progressing. I look into the rear-view mirror at the kid and was thinking "don't say we will multiply. Don't say we will multiply!".
I was going to intervene before he said it but BAM, he drops the same lame joke I did 10 years before. And it seriously had no context or comical value at all. I was in awe like I was psychic. I'm assuming he did not get the girl either.
14. So You’re The Thief!
When I was a kid, around 13, I played 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 defriends everyone. Completely disappears off the map with all of our stuff. Fast forward a year later, and 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 told him I did too and that I ran a clan and everything. I asked his username and it was him. I couldn't believe it. 2,000 miles away from where I first virtually met this guy, he’s sitting next to me in math class. When I told him mine 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.
15. I Just Know It Is
I was adopted before I was born. My mother would babysit me when I was 1 or 2, just so she could spend time with me, but that stopped when I grew up. I had a fine life, but the closest I had gotten to seeing her was when her family sent Christmas cards. Thing is, I'd never seen a picture of her. In college, I was helping out the high school marching bands at a festival when I went on break.
I was walking around the stadium to my friends when I saw this woman. I felt compelled to talk to her, so I walked up to her. She turns to me and her eyes turn wide. She throws her hands up to her mouth and walks up to me. She says "do you know who I am?" and I say, "I think you're my mom?" She cries and hugs me, and tells me about how I looked just like my birth dad.
It was super weird. Probably the weirdest coincidence in my entire life.
16. The Helmet Man
On my 12th birthday, I was on the way to the bike shop to get a new bike, I was with my dad, his girlfriend, and my brother. We were still about 10 minutes away from the town center, so nowhere near the bike shop. Some random, old, creepy-looking guy came up to us, looked down at me and said; "You buying a bike?" I looked at my dad, confused and kind of scared.
We told him that we were on our way to buy a bike. He then started going on about how I MUST get a helmet and wear it ALL the time! We were a little freaked out but we just assumed he was a weirdo and just forgot about it. But that wasn't the last I saw of him. A few hours later I was riding through the park on my new bike and I fell off. I didn't fall very hard and landed on grass so it was cool.
As I went to get up brush myself off, I looked up and the old guy from before was just standing there, looking disappointed and shaking his head. He thing shook his index finger at me and said; "I told you to wear a helmet". At this point, I just panicked and rode as fast as I could home! What is even weirder though is the fact that I have moved about 40-50 miles away since then and I still see him every once in a while. I don't believe in guardian angels, but it just creeps me out.
17. Travel Buddies!
Two years ago, I was in Tokyo on holiday. I looked on Instagram and saw an old friend post a story showing he was also in Tokyo. We hadn’t spoken in a few years, but I sent him a message letting him know we were in the same city. Not even five minutes later, we walked into a bar and he was standing there. This past November, I was in Toronto on business. After dinner, we went to a pub downtown. The first person I saw when I walked in, was the same friend from Tokyo.
We now both live in Winnipeg!
18. Finding Friends
Last summer, I went to New York with my family for a week. A friend of mine that I hadn't seen since she graduated from college was living and working in New York at the time, so we decided to meet up for drinks. As we were walking through Times Square at 11 p.m. on a Saturday, who did we see on the other side of the street but another friend of ours from college.
I knew he had been living in New Jersey, but he was in New York for a Grindr date. The three of us went to a bar and talked about life and how none of our friends live in Ireland anymore, and they've all moved abroad. It was bittersweet and a crazy coincidence that three friends from a small university in Dublin would serendipitously meet in New York City.
19. Mutually Passing By
When I went to college, I 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 challenges. And 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. But the coincidence was even crazier than that. 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, "So this is your son, huh?" They had been co-workers years ago. Of course. We've been married for eleven years now.
20. The Water-Skiing Scar
When my mom was about 13 years old, she lived on Midway Island with my grandparents because my grandpa was an officer in the Navy. She had a water-skiing accident where she basically slammed her face into the sea wall because she didn’t let go of the rope in time and had a scar on her forehead that she covered with her bangs. Anyway, fast forward 45 years and she is working at a retirement facility and her job is to coordinate outings for residents.
There was a new resident and she was talking to him about his life trying to get to know him. He said he was in the Navy and my mom thought that was cool since her dad was too. He said he was stationed at Midway Island which my mom thought was super cool since it’s a tiny island and he said he was there during the same time she was.
He went on to say he hated it because the only interesting thing that ever happened was when an officer’s daughter didn’t let go early enough while water skiing and slammed right into the sea wall and cracked her head open and he had to save her. My mom was totally shocked. She pulled her bangs to the side to show him the scar and said, “I was that officer’s daughter”. Coolest coincidence ever.
21. The Homework Helper
In freshman physics, I became friends with the Japanese kid next to me. After a while, he began helping me with my Japanese homework. 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 look around and there he is! Thousands of miles apart we meet again. We got some drinks and good food together. It was a blast.
22. Duplicating Dressers
I had recently graduated from a large state school and found a room in an empty house to rent. Since I was moving from my college apartment, I didn't have furniture, and I decided to grab a dresser a previous occupant had left in the basement. It wasn't anything crazy looking, but it wasn't a basic mass-produced Ikea dresser either. Something a bit older, but not antique.
Three of my friends helped me move it upstairs while we were waiting for a fourth. The fourth friend arrives, walks into my room and stares at my dresser for a long time before saying, "Why do you have my dresser?" It turns out her parents had donated her childhood dresser to Goodwill, and the previous occupant of the house was from the same tiny town she was and had got his dresser at that Goodwill.
23. Travelling In Parallel
When I was in university in Toronto, I was flying to England for a debating tournament. I booked my flight, then told my partner the date and time of the flight so he could book as well. The day before we left, we agreed to meet at a particular subway station and go to the end of the line to catch the bus to the airport. The next day, I go to the subway station at the agreed time, but he doesn't show up.
This situation was pre-cell phone days, so I can't call him. Eventually I have to go, so I take the subway/bus, get to the airport and go to the gate, but there's no sign of him. I have him paged over the loudspeaker – no result. I tell this story to the gate agent who looks up the passenger list, but he's not on it. Confused, I fly to London.
But I actually did find him the next day in London, England. It turned out that while I was on one level of the subway station waiting to travel north to catch a bus to Terminal One at the airport for my flight, he was on the other level of the same station waiting to travel to catch a bus to Terminal Two for his flight, which was at exactly the same time on the same day, but on a different airline. At every step of the way, we had been describing identical routes, but without ever having any overlap.
24. The Destined House
We moved into this house about a year and a half ago. While signing the rental agreement, we realized the landlord and his son have the same last name as me. We have no actual relation, so it’s a little weird. Then, last summer, my boyfriend started working as a car salesman. He's selling a car to a young woman, and gets her driver's license to make a copy.
The address on her license is OUR address. He asks her if the address is current, of course she says no, and come to find out she used to live in our house right before we moved in, and he just happened to be selling her a car almost exactly a year later. She tells him some stuff we didn't know about our landlord...including the dark secret he kept from us. Apparently, the landlord's brother, who used to own the home, died in our bedroom a few years ago and left the house to his brother, my landlord.
He had the same last name as me too, but we again had no relation. Before we knew anything had happened in there, we used to make jokes about there being a "ghost" in the bedroom due to a weird purple light in the ceiling fan that only shows up in pictures.
25. Sharing Dreams
When I was maybe around 9 or 10, my friends and I would always hang out in the woods behind our bus stop. There were four of us that would always go back there, but my friend Alex and I would go back there most often. There wasn't really anything inherently weird or creepy about the woods, but I remember feeling very calm back there, despite generally having attention and anxiety problems.
I had a dream one night that me and Alex were hanging out in the woods and an old woman came up to us to tell us that we shouldn't go back there anymore and that the woods were private property, and then she turns around and walks up into the sky. The next morning, I was telling Alex about the dream and I get to the part with the old lady. I say "And she told us not to go back into the woods behind the bus stop anymore—" and Alex finishes the sentence "—Because it's private property. And then she floated away".
Turns out Alex had been having the same dream every now and then for a few months at that point. He'd never told me about it.
26. The Graveyard’s Message
I was taking some pictures at the graveyard near me; it was for a class so my friends were there modeling for me. I ask one of my friends to try to look like she is crying while I adjust my camera, and when I go to take her picture, I see she is doing a GREAT job, she is sobbing it up and crying hard. I take a couple of pictures before realizing that she is looking at this big family grave.
The grave had the exact names and last names as her relatives. There were her dad's name, mom, sister, and brother, exact first name and last name. Thing is, her family lives in another state and they are alive. That was spooky, but it wasn't over. Later on we are all in my car, and we are listening to some music one of us had. we were listening to a song for like the third time, when the sound goes off and a horrible voice says 'get back from where you came from', and the song continues where it left off.
We were so creeped out we had to stop and catch our breath. To this day I still don't know what it was, maybe interference from another radio? No idea, but it was creepy.
27. Seeing The Seamstress
My sister and I have a good friend that we met around 2003-04. We were all living in the same city, but we grew up in different cities. A few years later, our friend met our immigrant mother who was a seamstress. One day she was with her own mother talking about us and where we were from, and our mother. Her mom suddenly said, "That's funny! I got married in that city and I remember I had a foreign lady make my wedding dress for me!"
A few days later, my sister was sorting through our old family photos and found a picture of a couple that she didn't recognize on their wedding day from around the late 70s early 80s. The bride in the picture was our friend's mother!
28. The Ouija’s Prediction
My grandpa has always been the type of guy to love science fiction and the paranormal. One time he told me a story that has always freaked me out: Years ago, when my mother and her sisters were little, my grandpa had a Ouija board that he liked to mess around with down in their basement. One day, he asked the Ouija board questions about himself that the board could answer.
He asked things like "Where am I from?" "What's my address?" And "Who is my mother?" just to see what it would say. He asked "How many daughters do I have?" and it responded with "Three". My grandpa said, "I have four," and the board responded with, "Not for long". Two weeks later, he lost one of his daughters in a car crash.
29. Pajama Partners
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, just like my husband.
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.
30. Precognitive Dreams?
For over a decade, I very rarely remembered any of my dreams. One night, I had a very vivid dream that I was busted by the authorities for possession and was sentenced. The dream itself was agonizingly paced as if in real time. Days turned to weeks, to months. The pain of losing everything and everyone in my life had sent me into catatonic despair when all of a sudden, I awoke.
I instinctually checked my phone only to find a ton of missed texts, emails, and phone calls from a friend who was busted that night for the same reasons while I slept and had been trying to get me to bail him out.
31. The Butterfly Effect
I got a new computer and was scrolling through pictures on the old one with my little brother. I had a picture of two butterflies, one blue, and one yellow, on a large purple flower. I loved this picture and always thought how lucky I was to get it. The colors were so vivid and the butterflies were so patient to let me get three shots in before they flew away.
My brother was in awe of it and I said "Wow you really like this one?" He pulled out his phone and said "No, I took this photo". Sure enough, he had been to the same park the summer after I took my picture. His had the same species of plant and butterflies, in the same park, and around the same area and time of day. What are the chances?
Wikimedia Commons, Joseph Lazer
32. Watching The Eclipse
A few years ago, I spontaneously decided I was going to go on a camping trip for a blood moon eclipse by myself. I had zero camping experience, so me deciding to do this was random enough as it was. I asked around for good spots and ended up being suggested one of the small lakes in the Adirondacks. Off I went. The night of the blood moon eclipse, I went to a nearby bridge way before it was even nighttime to make sure I had a good spot.
I stayed there the entire night. Lots of people came and stayed, but there were also a lot of people who just pulled over for a minute or two to look at the eclipse, and then just went on their way. A couple of months later, I'm telling one of my longtime friends who I always had a crush on about my adventures when he came home from college.
He pauses for a moment and just says "I know that bridge. Just past the town, over the river?" Turns out he had happened to be driving through that night and pulled over at that same exact spot, but he had been on the opposite side of the road. It was crazy. It felt like a really cool fairytale-type thing when we started dating afterward.
33. That’s What You Get!
When I was a kid, someone in my family broke a glass vase on the wood floor. My mom cleaned it up as best she could but wanted us to wear shoes in the kitchen for a few days just in case she’d missed some, and she continued sweeping every day to try and get the last little bits. I was loudly complaining about the injustice of having to wear shoes in my own house...right when I stepped on that final piece of glass.
34. Parade Pictures
When I started hanging out with my girlfriend, she invited me over to her house, and it ended up being the first house I ever lived in. Her grandmother, who lives down the street, was friends with my parents. She worked for the doctor who delivered me. Sometime later, we’re sitting around looking at some of her old family pictures and there’s this one of a 4th of July parade in my neighborhood.
There was a little boy in the picture that they didn’t really know who it was, but I had a weird feeling about him. It looked an awful lot like me. I ask my dad and he remembers that day where he took us to our old street to watch the parade. When I was a toddler, I had wandered into my future girlfriend’s family picture!
35. There Are Trespassers...
I was using a Ouija board in an abandoned house. Me, my girlfriend and five other friends were using one in the attic of this place when the door slams shut with no wind. We all glance around thinking one of us had locked us in. Wrong. We were all there. I tried to open the door with no luck. We had to take the door's hinges off to get out.
Once we did this, we inspected the door to find there was no locking mechanism or anything blocking us in. We decided it was best if we just left. On our way out through the open back door we all felt a strange resistance and sudden coldness when we passed through the doorway. I don't know what the heck was in that house, but I didn’t want to look into it further.
36. The Boss’ Last Trick
When I worked in college, I worked at a small independent arthouse movie theater. Like many men in his position, the owner was a real tightwad. He was also kind of a jerk, albeit a lovable one. We always messed with each other. A year or so before I graduated and moved away, he was diagnosed with ALS. It didn't take him long to wind up in a wheelchair, and then confined to a bed. About three years later, I found out that he passed.
Two days after I found out, I put on a coat I hadn't worn in a long time. When I put my hand in the pocket, I felt a piece of paper. I pulled it out and burst into tears. It was a paycheck from the theater for close to $200 that I somehow forgot to cash all of those years ago—with my boss's name and signature attached. I knew I could have cashed it if I made it to the bank quickly, or maybe made a claim against his estate...but I figured it would be fair to let him get the last laugh.
37. Moving Night
My childhood best friend had just moved into a new house. This was in the middle of a Texas summer and he hadn't had carpet installed onto his concrete floors or air conditioning. He invites me over for a late night of Tekken on the PS1 and junk food. I agree. He ends up crashing out earlier than I do while I go on for an hour or so longer, so I end up making a bed among his boxes from the move and closer to the open window as the breeze felt best there. I had no clue what I was in for.
At some point in the night, I feel a strong urge to open my eyes and stand up, but for some reason, I can't feel my legs or speak. I look down at my body and realize my legs are bent at a 90-degree angle and facing the window. I felt a rush of panic come over me as my body was being dragged toward the open window and I was physically unable to stop it.
I end up gasping and thrashing my body frantically to the point of this "force" or whatever giving up its grip on me and letting me collect myself. I immediately shoot up and look over to where my buddy was sleeping, thinking he was playing a joke on me as the room was pitch black. Nope. He was fast asleep. Nothing to indicate he had pulled a fast one on me as this whole sequence of events lasted several seconds.
But it felt like several minutes. I wake him up with everything still pitch black, to his annoyance, and tell him what just happened. He sits up and says to me to relax while he goes over to flip the light switch. The next part freaked us out bad enough to make us sleep in the same bed for the rest of the night. All of those boxes from the move, the ones that were scattered about and I found myself sleeping among?
They were moved into two rows, four or five boxes to a row, and separated to clear a pathway toward the window. We told his mother about it the next day. She immediately got a priest to bless and pray over the house.
38. The Missing Time
I was on family vacation with some relatives in a rented house. I was 15. I have an amazing family, so these trips are always filled with nonstop fun and games and whatnot. Anyway, one night we are playing Taboo and things are really heating up. The score is close and nerves are on edge. So, we begin to move on to the next person, and we discover that the timer, a mini hourglass, is gone.
Like, we had just finished one person's turn, and now it's gone. So, we search all over the room trying to find it, but to no avail. After probably 45 minutes, we give up and move on to something or other, and eventually go to bed at some ungodly hour. As we are prepping for sleep, I hear my older sister shouting, “I FOUND IT, I FOUND THE TIMER!" Of course, we all rush in, and lo and behold, there it is.
She, who was 27 at the time, explains that it was in her sock, and she only found it upon taking it off. Of course, we all accuse her of putting it there, as it seems the only excuse, but she adamantly denies doing it. Normally I wouldn't believe her, but it's so unlike her and outlandish that I don’t even know what to think. To this day, she denies doing it and it's a topic of heated debate at every family gathering.
39. A Familiar Face
I lost touch with my best friend after high school. She was a troubled soul and I worried and thought about her often. I looked her up all the time and just could not track her down. Eventually, I had a dream that I went to visit her and she had a daughter. The past year, SHE found ME on Facebook! I check out her profile before we really have a chance to chat or reconnect and...she has a daughter that looks exactly like what I saw in my dream! What’s more, I find out that I had that dream right around her daughter's birthday.
40. Finding The Flute
I used to play the flute in elementary school. I put these tie-dye hippie stickers on the case so I could tell it apart from everyone else's and scribbled my name under the velvet liner. I grew bored of it a few years later and let my parents sell it to a family friend. Fast forward 10 years and I'm over at my boyfriend's parent's house one day.
I'm sitting on the couch and his little sister comes in from school, plops down next to me, and shows me her new instrument. Lo and behold, it’s my old flute! It still has the stickers, so I pull back the liner and there is my name. Apparently, they had bought it off someone that lived fairly close to my parents. Well five years, a marriage, and a beautiful baby girl later, we still get to play on the flute sometimes.
41. The Guardian... Zombie?
Back in college I was poor as heck, so I often drove people to the airport during school breaks at $20 per way. Most of this journey is via highway near Bradley Airport, and is fairly well-lit. Anyway, one day I'm driving when I glance in my rearview mirror, and I see a man standing in the middle of the road. I glance back to the front of the car to make sure I'm not about to rear-end anyone, and mumble to myself, "What an idiot!"
When I glance back again, no one is there...but I'm traveling semi-fast, and who knows, maybe he was running across the road. Two weeks later, I'm driving to the grocery store and I glance in the rearview mirror and see this same man standing in the road again. It's broad daylight, and though it's just a glance I gather he's tall and wearing white, or at least I get that impression. Now I'm starting to get freaked out.
I see him again a few days later, this time at night. At this point, the movie from Tales of the Crypt with the weird roadworker fills my brain, and I start freaking out that a zombie man is following me around town, and one day I may look in the mirror and he'll be in the backseat with his face rotting off. So, I start checking my rearview mirror often, all the time, psychotically, because I develop a fear of the man following me around.
Now, I'm a pretty safe driver so whenever I check to see if he's there, I'm sure to look ahead for traffic, break, then look in the mirror. I am sufficiently scared about it to mention it to my mother, who points out that it might just be a homeless man or something. Anyway, a few weeks later is the end of Christmas break and so I'm driving tons of folks to the airport again.
One of these drives is a late flight, so it's nearly midnight when I pick up the girl. As I am driving her back to school, I get this irrational, overwhelming fear of seeing the man in the rearview mirror again. We're on the highway and I'm going at a pretty fast pace, so I look ahead, I tap the breaks, and then look in the rearview mirror.
At this exact moment, a car slingshots past me on the right, swerves across my lane, hits the median, and then rolls over several times at 80 mph. I slam on my brakes and pull over, and the girl calls for help. The driver, really intoxicated, would have struck my car and hit us into the median if I hadn't hit my brakes at that exact moment, checking for the weird man who stood in the road.
42. The Pull Of Family
A few years back, my dad went on a trip to Denmark for a business trip. My mom, being Danish, decided that she was going to come along. She had always heard stories about a side of the family she had that never moved to America, but she had no idea where they lived or if any of them were still around. Anyway, after a week in the country, my mom and dad are driving down a country road when their car got a flat.
There wasn’t really any cell reception so they actually wound up walking up a driveway a bit to ask the locals to use their phone. They walk up the steps of this little cottage, knock on the door, and an elderly woman came to the door. Her eyes lit up, fixed on my mom, and wound up giving her a hug. My parents were understandably confused as the old woman’s husband was also excited to see my mom.
The couple didn’t really speak any English, but they led my parents down the main hallway to their guest room. There, on the dresser, was a photo of my mom and her brothers from their high-school graduation. The old couple were my mother’s great aunt and uncle; the ones that never came to the USA. To this day, my parents still can’t explain how they ended up exactly there.
43. Eerily The Same
When I was a baby, I was given up for adoption by my mother. She had a 10-year-old son and was going through a very rough patch in her life. Fast forward 20 years, and I’m a junior in college. I’d never known anything about my birth family except for the first names of my brother and mother. I’d never even seen a picture of them.
Anyway, my adoptive mom bought me an AncestryDNA test kit for Christmas. When I got my results back, my number one match was this guy named Vincent. I looked him up on Facebook and thought, “damn, this guy looks like me.” I sent him a message explaining everything and he instantly knew that I was his brother. But this isn’t even the coincidental part.
After talking for a bit through messenger, we realized we only live 10 minutes apart. We decided to meet that night and reconnect. Turns out, we both attend the same university and have the same major AND minor. He decided to go back to school and finish his degree 10 years later and happened to choose my university. All this time we thought we were across the country from each other!
We have a great relationship now and it’s amazing to have an older brother!
44. Studying Abroad
I was in the process of moving to France for school and needed to get a visa from the consulate in Chicago, six hours from my hometown. I go there and my dad drops me off at the building. However, during the appointment, I realize I had forgotten a piece of paperwork. Now, the woman working says if I leave to go get it, I’ll have to reschedule the entire appointment but if my dad brings it up that’s fine.
So I go to call him and at that moment I realize my phone has completely stopped working. Like, completely out of battery and couldn’t turn on. So, I sheepishly as a girl about my age sitting in the lobby if I can use hers. She says yes and to my surprise, her case has the logo for my university. Turns out we go to the same school and she’s getting a visa for another city in France.
I thank her, talk to her about some professors, and then my dad shows up and I finish my appointment. But here’s where things get insane. A year later, I’m moving back home from France. I had bought a business-class seat because long flights suck otherwise. I notice a girl looking very puzzled at me two rows behind me and she looks very familiar.
Everyone gets off the plane and she comes up to me to ask if remember her. Then it hit me. It was the same girl from the consulate! She had extended her stay in France. We both have a good laugh about the odds of that happening.
45. Taking The Scenic Route
When I was about 11, my dad and I went fishing at a pond that's a short drive away from there. When we'd finished for the day, my dad wanted to go back the more direct way, which is about a five-minute drive. I wanted to go on the backroads, which are more scenic but take about 15 minutes. After being a frankly annoying little kid, my dad agrees to take the backroads instead.
So, we drive along and come out onto the road that leads to our cabin. As we crest a hill, we see a crowd gathered around a tractor-trailer that had careened off the highway, and jumped the barrier onto the access road. A crowd of people from our campground were around it. It was just in front of the entrance to the campground, on the section of road we'd have had to travel on to get back the direct way.
Dad asked some of the crowd what had happened, and they said that about ten minutes ago it jumped the barrier and crashed, rolling over. Ten minutes ago, it would have been roughly the time dad and I would've been passing through there.
46. Grandma’s Blossoms
When I was 13, my grandmother passed. We had a "sendoff party" for her to celebrate her life after the funeral, and the whole family was at my parents' house. I was feeling sad and overwhelmed, so I went outside to be alone. I'm standing on the driveway under a big cherry tree that's blooming with pink flowers. The tree is actually a huge pain, because the petals fall off, get crushed, and turn into a gross slippery pulp.
I'm standing there feeling kind of lost and guilty, because I hadn't gotten a chance to say goodbye to my grandmother before she went, and I sort of hold my hands open in front of me, in a "what am I even doing here" motion, wishing I had said goodbye. No sooner do I hold my hand up, a full flower drops off the tree and lands squarely in my palm.
It felt like a little message from my grandma and I still think of her when I see those trees.
47. My Sister’s Story
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 I guess, so she goes to the big cupboard in the corner and pulls out a stack of copies. It's examples of a successful essay written during a final exam, so we can learn what a good one looks like and how to build a narrative, etc. The topic of these was "What was the most pivotal moment of your life?"
There are three examples, ranging in proficiency. We read through the first two, and I volunteer to read the last one aloud. I start reading, then suddenly 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.
48. When Paranoia’s Right
My grandmother had schizophrenia and severe paranoia. One of her major fears was that she was being watched, and specifically that people were filming her. This is a common symptom, so we didn't think it was that strange. We would learn the truth eventually. One day, we were visiting a large city far from our home, and there was a man with one of those old hand-held cameras pointed at us.
This was making my grandmother quite upset, so my dad went up to ask the guy if he could put the camera away, but the guy took off running. About 10 or so feet into his run, he smashed into another guy and dropped his camera. He kept on running and after a bit, I think he realized he didn't have the camera, 'cause he looked back, had this big face of fear and anger, shook his head, and kept on running.
Dad picked up the camera and on it was about 3-4 hours of us walking around the city. Only us walking around the city. We never saw the guy again.
49. A Bad Omen
When we were kids a group of us used to hang around near a small stream. One night we were there I got a really bad feeling, and told my friends I was going home. I begged them to come with me, but only one did. I practically legged it up the hill from the stream, I was so afraid. The next day I found out the girls that stayed got beaten by a girl gang less than 15 minutes after I and our friend had left.
Still freaks me how I knew to get out of there.
50. Puzzling Postcards
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 now 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 linking events in our lives.
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