We’ve all had experienced odd coincidences in our lives: one time in middle school, I submitted the correct answer to an online raffle that, if I won, would let me skip a class – except I didn’t know I needed to be there, and so I missed it anyway. I didn’t find out that I had permission to miss it until after I had already unknowingly missed it, and I briefly thought that I must be the universe’s favorite person.

My story’s not so scary, but these 25 AskReddit users had some seriously bizarre shit go down, way weirder and creepier than my silly raffle win:

1.  …happy birthday?

“I was walking through a graveyard yesterday, and stepped on a broken piece of headstone with just my birthday inscribed on it.”

2. “No one was there…”

“When my cousin and I were babies (we’re just under two years apart) we were sleeping in my room while our moms were wrapping Christmas gifts. They were downstairs when they heard a woman on the baby monitor saying to my cousin who was starting to cry, ‘Don’t worry, your mom will be here soon.’ My mom and aunt run upstairs and no one was there…”

3. Dreaming the Future

“Last December, I had a bad dream early-ish in the morning that my dad had stopped taking his liver medication and that he was going to die. In the dream, I asked why he had been so careless but he said that it was just his time. When I woke up, my sister texted me that dad was in the hospital. He passed away 3 weeks later due to, of course, liver complications from not taking his medication.”

4. Postcard

“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 met these people.’ I kept it next to my computer for a few years.

After a few years pass, 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 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.”

5. Follow Your Gut

“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 up by a gang less than fifteen minutes after my friend and I left.”

6. Dreaming Death

“A couple years back, I had a dream of my grandfather, who I was not particularly close to by any means. In my dream I saw his casket formally covered by an American flag – he served in the military. He stood next to me in a room full of mourners and held my hand. He told me not to follow him out of the doors when he left. I watched him leave. When I woke up and went downstairs to get breakfast and call my father to tell him happy birthday, my older brother informed me that my grandfather had just passed away in his sleep.”

7. Seeing a Soul

“My best friend died via assisted suicide at my house. After she drank her lethal cocktail, she slipped into a coma and then it took about 40 minutes for her to finally pass. We kept taking her pulse every two minutes or so. Finally, my Great Dane who had been sleeping bolted upright and let out one muffled ‘woof,’ and then stared directly at my friend, then her eyes tracked slowly up from her, through the air, up towards the ceiling. We leaned over to take her pulse again, and this time she was gone.”

8. Proof

“After my great-aunt Lynn passed away, my other great-aunt Cynthia was walking home in the rain. Obviously she was pretty sad. She said, ‘Lynn, show me some proof that you’re still here.’

My aunt Lynn collected these rare things called medicine bags, originally worn by some Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Somehow, Cynthia found one on the ground in the rain. Inside there were six paper dolls – four girls and two guys. One of the girls was wearing pants.

The coincidence? In her family, there are four sisters and two brothers. Aunt Lynn always wore pants.”

9. “Written in the clock”

“My husband and I bought an antique clock at a flea market. It wasn’t until we went home and looked at it more closely that we realized on the inside of the door on the back it had our wedding date written in pencil. Our anniversary is 9/22/2009, 9/22/1924 was written in the clock.”

10. Nighttime Graveyard

“When I was 17, I worked at Red Lobster. I closed the kitchen, so I was one of the last people to leave somewhere between midnight and 1 AM. Being as late as it was, some of the city’s bus routes were already done for the day and only the heavy traffic ones were still running. Due to this inconvenience, I had to take a bus that dropped me off several city blocks away from home, leaving me with a twenty minute walk home.

This led me through a graveyard in the middle of a neighborhood, one of the oldest in the city. It had a small street that ran through it with streetlights, but both ends had a gate stopping vehicular traffic, only allowing pedestrians through, and headstones line either side instead of sidewalks. Creepy enough at night, but it was faster than walking around, especially since the cemetery was wide and narrow.

At this particular point, I had been walking through here at least once a week coming home from work, so I grew fairly comfortable there and would even sometimes just check out headstones instead of walking straight home. This one night, however, things changed.

I was walking up to the cemetery’s street, cutting through a grocery store parking lot, just wanting to get home to bed. As I walked up the side street leading to the pedestrian entrance, the streetlights in the cemetery shut off. All of them. At once.

‘Weird,’ I thought, but I carried on. My bed was calling me. I walk through the gate and the first light turned on, basking me in it’s glow. I slowed, looked around and saw nothing unusual so I continued. Coming to the edges of this lone lamp, the second light flickered on, stopping me in my tracks. I pull my already quietened headphones out of my ears, getting scared and searching for an answer.

Still nothing. I pick up my pace, briskly walking through this second pool of light, noticing that the first pool has disappeared as I leave it behind. Getting up to the third light, it flashes to life while the second one dims out, much like my bravado by now. This continues on all the way through, the lights turning on and off as I enter and leave them, jogging out of fear.

As I make my escape, the lights all off for now, I think about how creepy it would be if they all turned on now…But they didn’t. At least, not until I was across the street from the graveyard, causing me to break into a run for the rest of the way home.

I’ve told this to many friends, and always get the ‘it was probably just motion sensors.’ It wasn’t. I continued to use that path and had a couple of other less freaky experiences, but never again did I have the lights protect (?) me in such a way.”

11. Witch? Witch.

“When my mom was pregnant with me, an old woman came up to her and told her she was pregnant and poked her in the stomach. My mom was only about 2 weeks along and she nor anyone else knew for a while. And she wasn’t even trying to get pregnant.

My mom was fairly thin at this time and didn’t have a baby bump.”

12. Doppelgängers 

“There were these two kids that lived in my now hometown, a brother and a sister. The brother and sister were the same ages as my brother and I, respectively. The boy and my brother’s names both started with “T”, and the girl and my names both started with “A”. The boy was more of an athletic type, while the girl was more into art; also like my brother and I. I was a girl scout in my town in MA before, and I joined one of the troops when I got here, and it was the troop that the girl had been in.

Three days before we moved in, the two kids were hit by a drunk driver and killed.”

13. Sharing a Name

“I was around ten years old and my mom took my siblings and I to an Elvis impersonator show. After the show, he was signing scarves and things. The person in front of me had the same uncommon name as me and was about my age. I said that was my name, as well. We thought it was cool but never saw each other again.

A few years later, I’m camping with my family in New Hampshire. The campground has a small playground and I’m on the swings. I hear someone call my name, turn and see this same person was there, telling their family they were going to the playground.”

14. “Inspiring nonetheless”

“When I was eight years old a man walked up behind me, called my name and said, ‘You won’t remember me, but we are proud of you. We are watching you. Be good now. You are important.’

I ran inside the barber shop to my mom and told her. She went outside, but there was no one there. Ever since then I’ve felt like I’m being watched, but that I’m destined for something special. Epic troll possibly, but inspiring nonetheless.”

15. Helmet Wizard

“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 was 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 kinda 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 was a little freaked out but we just assumed he was a weirdo and just forgot about it.

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 he was just standing there, looking disappointed and shaking his head. He shook his index finger at me and said, ‘I told you to wear a helmet.’

At this point I just sh-t myself 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.”

16. 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 – 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.'”

17. Passport

“I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington when I was 12. When you first go in, they give you this passport thing which tells you the story of someone who lived during the Holocaust. The one that I got had a young man whose birthday was the same as mine, except 50 years prior. The day I went to the museum was 50 years to the day since his death.”

18. Bad Joke 

“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 (something about there not being enough of us to do something) 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 dorky 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 (a useless one apparently). I’m assuming he did not get the girl either.”

19. This story is legit amazing.

“Three years ago I was interning at an company that specialized in Green Energy and their mission was to provide electricity to remote villages in Africa. I get assigned to work with a team of engineers, on my way to meet up with them after arriving in Africa I am asked to stop at said address and pick up an utility trailer that is waiting at a local store. I cannot reveal the name or location but its an old store, fairly large with a second floor that was residential, where the man and his family lived. The shop had everything from product, food and medical supplies to a MASSIVE junkyard in the back full of automobiles and planes.

When I arrive at the store he is working on a outboard motor for a customer, he was very friendly and shook my hand as asked how he could help me. I said I am with X company and we have a utility trailer that I am supposed to pick up and take with me to X village. He asks for identification and I hand him my company ID and Tennessee driver’s license, which is in the little holder below the company ID. When he looks at my name his face went from happy to confused. He said ‘I have a question, do you have a father, or sibling that you are named after, that also lives or did live in Tennessee.’

Okay at this point every thought I had came to halt and I was dumbfounded, I am named after my dad and he lived in Tennessee all his life and there aren’t too many people with our name either. After a long pause, I said ‘yes, I am named after my dad, how in the hell do you know that?’

He then said he met a man in the late ’70s that stopped at his store, his name was Jeffrey X____ also and that I resembled him. I said well it couldn’t be the same person, as far as I know my father had never been to Africa, he said no, it was, it was your father, he was in the military and came here to get something from his store.

He then goes on to tell me that my dad offered to help the man work on his car, after they fixed it the man tried to give my dad some money but he insisted that the man keep it. The man then asks my dad to join him and his family for dinner, it was they least he could do, they eat and during the conversation the man’s son overheard my dad talking about a guitar that he had with him. The little boy wanted to see the guitar and for my dad to play it so my dad brings it inside and start to play, the boy was very fascinated with it and told his father he wanted to learn to play someday. Well after dinner my dad has to leave, when he is about to walk out he handed the boy the guitar and told him that he could have it if he promised to practice every day and one day he would try to return to hear him play it.

I am overwhelmed at the emotions I am feeling, the man invites me to dinner as he did my father, I accept and go upstairs where the man hands me a guitar case and said this is the guitar. He said that guitar changed the course of his son’s life, I said where is your son now? He said that he moved out and went to college for music and now lives in another town and teaches guitar for a living, along with some other instruments. We start to eat and he asked my about my father, how he was these days, I then had to tell him that he passed away when I was a still a child. We both started crying and he picked the guitar up and said this is why you came here today, nothing else explains such a phenomenon, your father’s spirit lives within this guitar, it was meant for you to show up here. We ate and when I finished the man asks if I knew how to play. I said I know only one song in its entirety, he requested I play it before I leave. I start to play and his wife and him started crying, they said that it was the last song my dad played before giving the guitar to the man’s son and leaving…”

20. Doppelgängers 2

“In high school there was a kid who had the same middle and last name as me, the same birthday, and our parents had the same names. Not even kidding. It blew my mind.”

21. LeMutt

“Six years ago, because of my drinking, I’d been homeless for about 8 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. I was ready to kill myself. That prior August my mother had passed away, 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, us bums waited for showers and bedtime. That evening the shelter had more residents than usual and many of them needed clean socks or underwear, etc.

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. That’s where 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 3rd 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 the junkies and drunks. I don’t know where the dog came from, but I kept him. Still got him. Anyway, 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.”

22. The Nick of Time

“When I was a teenager, my maternal grandmother would come over every day after school and sit at our kitchen table while my mom cooked dinner. My dad worked late into the evening, and my grandfather was sick and heavily medicated at the time, so the two found company in one another. Being a self-absorbed teenager, I would usually do my own thing – homework, going to movies with friends, etc. – and would rarely feel compelled to sit down with her and my mom. One winter evening, my grandmother was sitting by our fireplace. I saw her sitting on our living room rug, short legs outstretched so she could warm her toes. Looking at her made my heart break a little. I felt pushed by something to go and sit with her. I lied my head in her lap.

And I asked her to tell me about what it was like to grow up in Greece during WWII. I learned so many amazing things about her life. I learned that her family of seven hosted three German officers in their home while she and her four siblings slept on the floor. The conversation got lighter toward the end. She told me that my grandfather had a lot of redeeming qualities, but she married him largely because ‘the sex was amazing.’ I learned more about my grandmother in that hour than I had my whole life. That night, around 3 a.m., I woke up to my mom sobbing on the kitchen floor, holding the phone to her ear. My grandmother had passed away suddenly of a heart attack.”

23. Dreaming Death 2

“When I was about 12 I had a terrible nightmare in which two planes collided in mid-air. It was extremely vivid and I woke up in a panic. My bedroom was right next to the family bathroom and after about 30 mins of lying in bed freaking out I noticed the landing light come on and knew that a parent was heading to the bathroom. Now by twelve I wasn’t the sort to bother my parents about nightmares any more, but I was convinced there was going to be a plane crash, so I rushed out to my mum and told her everything.

She said I was being stupid and that I should just read and try to get back to sleep. The next morning my mum comes rushing into my room and pulls me out of bed and has my dad with her. She asks me to tell him about my nightmare and then they both looked freaked out. They insisted that I went downstairs with them to watch the news. I thought they were pranking me or something but when I got down breakfast news was running a story about this. We later worked out that I’d woken up around about the time the crash itself took place. Nothing like this has happened since.”

24. Another witch? Another witch.

“My friend had told me that I would find out within 3 weeks that I was pregnant and it would be a boy. 3 weeks later, to the day, I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t find out that I was having a boy until 3 days before I had him. And my friend called me a month and a half before I had my son to tell me that I would have him on the 20th. Sure enough, after 36 hours of labor I had my son on Nov. 20th. I always thought it was kinda creepy that she got it right.”

25. “I was speechless too”

“It was nearing Christmas and one day when I came home from school my mother asked me to guess who we got a Christmas card from. Without hesitation I said, ‘From the people who ran the little motel on our summer trip to Michigan.’ She was speechless. I was right and I was speechless too.”

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