Over the course of our lives, most days go down pretty much like we expected them to. We wake up, we grab coffee, we work and talk to some people and love on our family, we go to bed and get ready to do it all over again.
Sometimes, though, a coincidence so bizarre happens that it makes us sit up and wonder what else we might have been missing all of this time.
These 18 people faced down moments so wild it made them question reality itself.
18. A continuing connection.
I had been at my youngest sister’s soccer (football) game. I made conversation with one of the soccer moms for the opposing team (I think she thought I was an adult), they won, we told her we’d beat her next time, yada yada yada. It finished kinda late, but we were hungry and decided to stop at souplantation. As I’m getting in line with my tray, I look up and see this exact same woman reaching for the same corn at the same time. I chuckled and thought nothing of it.
A year later, I decided to treat myself with a smoothie. As I’m stepping up to order, in an entirely different state, I s%*t you not this lady and her kid come into the shop. We chatted, then I was on my way.
17. Are you sure it was him?
Had a friend who wasnt crazy weird, just did absolutely everything backwards and was hard to get along with quarky weird. He stayed at my school for a year then just up and disappeared. My family traveled a lot and had sometimes been up rooted in short notice I didn’t think anything of it.
Years later, in A DIFFERENT STATE, he flies by on a bike, a half sub sandwich in one hand, soda in the other, not touching the handle bars, says “Hi Vroomped, long time no see”…. and then I never saw him again.
16. A lucky guess?
Several years ago I was at a coffee shop with some friends and one of them had an ipad, another friend went to unlock it and asked him what his 4 digit unlock code was, so I just blurted out 4 random digits pretending like I knew it, and it actually worked.
I had never unlocked it before or knew of the same numbers being used for anything else, or his phone number, etc.
15. I guess they needed to keep being vigilant.
I was crossing the street after leaving a store and had the strangest feeling I was going to break my ankle, so carefully avoided a vehicle coming my way.
That evening I went to pick up Thai food, fell leaving the restaurant on less than a 4 inch step, and shattered my ankle to the point of needing surgery and after a year haven’t fully healed.
14. A bizarre turn of events.
I dialed my mum on my mobile when I was on public transport and accidentally swapped two numbers around.
The person I called was on the same carriage.
I was listening to my phone and at the exact moment it started the ringing sound I heard a phone start ringing and I thought it was a coincidence but then the phone answered and it wasn’t mum.
All I said was “Oh, are you on the Upfield train?” and they said “Yes, who’s this?” but I got shy and I hung up.
Poor guy must have been so confused.
13. Now that’s random.
My dad lives in a national park here in Australia. It’s farmland that’s grandfathered in. It’s the remnants of a volcano that blew itself up very violently, so it’s very hilly terrain.
One day we were sitting out on the deck, when we see a hang-glider come down halfway down the valley, and it didn’t look like a nice landing. “We better see if he’s alright, they don’t land anywhere near here”
So we get in the car, drive for about 10 minutes to reach the spot. We head over to the guy who is standing by a very damaged glider. The pilot is staring at us incredulously, he stammers “Jack, is that you?”.
My dad, who hasn’t seen his childhood friend for 35 years shouts “Tim, is that you?”.
They both grew up in Greymouth, NZ. Found each other randomly after a glider crash in NSW, Australia.
12. Your jaw just drops.
One time, me and my dad were discussing his friend while out driving at night without many other cars on the road.
As we were talking, we pulled up to a red light, and the car waiting in front was my dad’s friend. He didn’t even live close to there.
11. That’s pretty random.
About 15 years ago or so I was playing Counter-Strike 1.6 and tried joining a password protected server with a few people in it. I typed in “yellow” for the password and it worked. First try. I’ll never forget that.
10. Wishing made it so.
I remember being 6, and my family was driving in rush traffic to my grandmothers house to spend some of our summer. I was really sad because I had just finished kindergarten and my best friend were going to attend another school than me.
I was crying and looking out the window when a car tried to overtake us, but the traffic were moving slowly so the car ended up driving next to us for a little while. And there sat my best friend, looking out the window at me.
Weird coincidence, and my parents did not believe me at first, but they recognized the driver, otherwise I would dismiss this memory as a dream or false memory.
9. It’s like a sitcom episode.
My friend and I were on a road trip a few years ago and needed a place to stay. We both told each other we had a friend in the city we were going through, so we figured we’d be able to crash with one of them.
Turns out our two friends were roommates and had both been telling each other that they had a friend coming to town soon.
8. A family affair.
When I was younger my family and I went to a Zoo (it was like 6 hours trip from our home town) and we sit on the dolphin aquarium ready to watch their show.
When the show was ready to start, a couple sat down on our left, they were my aunt and her boyfriend.
7. It was meant to be.
My wife is a nurse. In her first nursing job she had a preceptor who showed her the ropes of the job. They have remained best friends to today. That preceptor was my first kindergarten girlfriend. Didn’t know until my wife wanted us to all go out to eat together. I went to school in a different city than where she works.
Also, my wife is originally from 8 hours away outside Detroit. I did some community theatre stage acting in my teens. Turns out she came to visit her family in this area one summer and they took her to see the show I was in. This was probably 15 years before we met.
6. Maybe it’s not a joke.
Mate my mum does that all the time. She talks/thinks about people and they somehow appear in one way or another (in person, phone call, etc.) in the next 24 hours.
It’s a running joke between us that she’s actually a witch.
5. A familiar view.
We are new to the city we moved to. One of our best friends here was video calling with a girl friend of hers (yes this is in COVID times) and paused focusing on that girl friend’s view out the window thinking “that looks familiar”.
Turns out that girlfriend is our next door neighbor – and now a friend of ours as well.
4. Mom is always welcome.
I passed out after receiving a flu shot when I was 28. The nurse who helped me up kept asking if I wanted my mom. It seemed like a really weird thing to offer an adult woman – the option to have her mother phoned and brought in – so I was really confused and getting progressively more annoyed at her repeatedly asking…
…until my mom walked up to me. She had the appointment after mine to get vaccinated. The nurses assumed we had come together, but neither of us knew about the other’s appointment, and we lived an hour away from each other in different cities.
3. I bet they were freaked out.
This isn’t as crazy as other ones I read, but it’s mine
We probably scared the crap out of some poor old couple while on a road trip.
We were going to my grandmother’s, and we followed the SAME freaking car for over 4 hours, and eventually stopped at the same restaurant, and the same gas station, and only ever stopped when we pulled into my grandma’s residential neighborhood.
2. Twins for life.
The Jim Twins. Look it up. Two twins who were given up for adoption at birth, given the same first name by their adoptive parents, took family vacations to the same beach, married women with the same name, divorced, their second wives’ names were off by one letter, both served as volunteer sheriffs, both were into carpentry, both smoked the same brand cigarettes and drank the same brand beer.
1. Chance meetings? Or?
This guy I went to- school with, an acquaintance at best. I’ve seen him in 5 different locations in different countries throughout the last 15 years.
Disney World when I was a kid.
Some beach bar in Thailand.
The Bean in Chicago.
A pub in Budapest.
A library in San Jose, Costa Rica.
We’ve become friends due our love of traveling, but neither of us post on social media and neither of us communicated with each other our plans to travel. We never talked outside of the random meetings. Now if I see him, its like the world wants us to have a beer together.
Man, I love stories like these. So many great thoughts.
What story would you add to this list? Tell it to us in the comments!
