Share your amazing coincidence story

[CoolRich59]

Back when I was still at megacorp, a colleague of mine commented on the increased traffic in the area near our office due to construction.

She said she had been avoiding the construction by cutting through a residential neighborhood and had been stopped twice by the police but had avoided a ticket by saying she'd stopped at her sister's house at "123 Shady Lane". I laughed and said "That's funny because, not only is that my neighborhood, but that's my address!".

It turned out that her sister had actually owned our house before we bought it (with another owner in between).

 

[txtig]

Years ago, when I was traveling all over the world for various reasons, I would often run into someone I hadn't seen for decades. I'd say this happened at least half a dozen times, thousands of miles from home or from where I last saw that person.



It was such a weird feeling, especially if that person had been a homebody back then.



What was even weirder was that we would even recognize one another after all that time. Shades of the Twilight Zone.

This happened to me at least three times (that I can remember); London, Calgary, and San Pedro, Belize.

 

[pdxgal]

When I first met my ex-husband he offered me a ride home. My jaw dropped when I saw we had identical cars. Then we discovered we'd each saved molds of our teeth from the dentist. We also had identical travel toiletry bags, both purchased at REI. Our birthdays are one day apart (though not the same year). The odd similarities weren't enough to keep the marriage together but we've remained good friends.

 

[Tom52]

Many years ago for my job I had to travel about once a week to a pattern shop that supplied tooling for our company. It was about 75 miles each way. I had dealt with the owner of the pattern shop for a number of years so we became pretty good friends. During one of these trips I was about 45 miles from home and had a tire problem. I limped my vehicle into the nearest small town that had only one service station. I wanted to buy a new tire but didn't have enough cash, and the service station wouldn't take a charge card. I called my friend at the pattern shop, he said no problem, he would drive out and loan the cash for the tire. Then we could discuss our business while the tire was being changed.

Being a very small town about the only likely place that we could sit down to discuss business was the town's one and only tavern. Being mid afternoon I don't think there was anyone else in there beside the bartender and us. While sitting in the tavern I commented to my friend how embarrassing it would be if my boss caught me in a tavern during working hours.

It wasn't more than two minutes later guess who walks into the tavern, yup, my boss. When I saw him I thought I would be in trouble for sure. The boss had been visiting a customer in a different town about 100 miles away earlier that day. He was a bit of a drinker and he had just decided to stop along the road to buy a 6 pack for the drive home. Yeah, turns out he was a bit of a drinker. That was one strange coincidence, but a least I didn't get fired.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I ran into an ex coworker in the elevator in the Hyatt in Tokyo. Neither one of us still worked in the same industry.

On the previous overseas trip I ran into a guy who lived in the dorm room next to me freshman year. That was in Bahrain, and he was the client’s project manager. We silently agreed not to tell stories on each other. I hope he agreed, anyway.

 

[aja8888]

I had invited a really good friend of mine to my wife's 60th surprise birthday party (years ago). He then told me that it was his birthday too! And they were born in the same year.

When I got them together at the party, they figured out thy were born an hour apart. So now they call themselves "twin siblings each from a different mother". LOL

 

[Sittinginthesun]

My brother and I once bought the exact same make and model of bbq on the exact same day, living in different cities and had never discussed the issue beforehand. He called me the next day to tell me about his purchase after assembling it, just as I was putting away my tools.

 

[Koolau]

Was attending a national meeting of my trade association at the Anaheim Convention center. Roughly 2500 miles from "home." As I was descending an escalator, I saw a guy from the lab where I w*rked (maybe a total of 80 people in our department). He had nothing to do with my specialty, so he happened to be there to learn about handling personal finances elsewhere in the center.

 

[spncity]

During DH's parents' estate auction, one of their great-granddaughters bid on a random lot of her grandmother's books and kitchen things.

Among the books there was a plain spiral-bound notebook with very little writing inside. Upon inspection, it looked like my MIL had made a start at journaling.

The only entry was a couple of pages in her lovely handwriting, telling all about the food and gifts at the baby shower for the very granddaughter who won the bid!

 

[Alvin Tostig]

Here are a few:

Wife and I were staying at a hotel in Canton Ohio in 1985 (NFL HOF Weekend) when I'm walking down the hall to the ice machine and a close friend of mine and his wife were there. We never knew they were going.

Cut out of school with a couple of friends as a teenager to go to MSG for a Knicks-Hawks first round afternoon playoff game (1971 I believe). Sitting directly behind me was my math teacher and my gym teacher. They played hooky also! So we all had to keep it a secret.

In the development we live in now in North Carolina have been a few interesting coincidences. People we knew from NY/NJ are in the same community - including one person from college, one whose daughter and our daughter are good friends, and one who we knew who worked in the same industry in the same county as my wife.

I've also run into people at airports in other cities who I knew.

 

[Music Lover]

I've gone fishing maybe 3 times in my life...it's just not my thing. The last time I went was about 20 years with a good friend to an obscure lake. Part way through the day my line tangled badly so my friend let me use his brand new rod. I wasn't careful and dropped it into the lake. He wasn't pleased

Two weeks later he is in the work cafeteria...which he says he never uses and at the table next to him a couple people from the other office were talking about fishing and he hears, "So, last weekend my line got snagged and I pulled up a brand new fishing rod in perfect condition."

My friend says to him "Let me guess...you were at Black Lake and pulled up an XX model rod."
The guy says, "Yes, how did you know?".
My friend, "My idiot friend dropped it in the water 2 weeks ago."

He got his rod back.

 

[Winemaker]

I volunteered to work on an ongoing experimental project underground involving coal slurry, I had my choice to work one of three shifts, and at one of two locations underground. After making my choices, once I got to the place underground on the midnight shift, was a high school classmate who worked for the parent company also as an engineer, who was providing the money and research for the project. We hadn't seen each other in 5 years, but worked with each other 800 feet deep in a WV coal mine.


While working in WV, DW and I decided to get pregnant, and elected to have the baby born at the hospital near my parents home in SW PA. That way mom could help with the initial care after his birth, in 1985. Fast forward 6 years, and I was transferred to SW PA, and our son made new friends in school. His new best friend, we found out, was born 10 minutes earlier, at the same hospital, so they were bunk mates, of sort. They ended up going to grade school, high school together, college within 1 mile of each other, best men at each other's wedding, and my grandson was named after his lifelong friend. We are good friends with the parents as well.

 

[Souschef]

I have a couple:
We were having lunch in Harry's Bar in Venice (tourist trap), and we noticed another American couple at the next table. Since we were leaving Venice, we offered them our maps. In conversation, we discovered that they went to the same HS back in Pittsburgh as my late wife. After a few minutes, he recognized her.
A year after I graduated college in NY, I moved to CA. I was in the UCLA bookstore, and heard a voice behind me. I turned and called her name, and sure enough it was her. I had not seen her since 6th grade back in NY.

 

[Sunset]

Mine is a bit minor:

Back around 96/97 I wanted to go on a winter vacation around Christmas, so I told the travel agent somewhere warm and cheap. The agent picked Cuba.

During the vacation we were on the beach of a tiny 30->40 room resort and run into a coworker from the same office !

 

[Sue J]

My first year of college I lived on campus in a women's dorm. My roommate and I got friendly with the two girls living in the next dorm room. One time we were discussing where we grew up and it turns out that one of the girls in the next room went to the same elementary school that I went to, about 50 miles away. We had a good laugh about that!

The next time I was home I mentioned this to my Mom and she had a picture from my kindergarten class. It wasn't a formal class picture, my Mom must have been visiting the class one day and took it. And there at the next table, looking right at the camera was my now college neighbor. We were both 5 years old and very recognizable as the adults we grew up to be.

My dorm neighbor was shocked that we were in the same class and that a picture existed!

 

[Koolau]

In 1993 I bought my first video camera. The sales guy asked where I was going with it. "Hawaii, of course." He said "I used to live in Hawaii" and proudly showed me his old HI DL. I learned his name and thought nothing more about it.

FF to about 2009 when I had made my move to the Islands. I was sitting in a meeting, getting acquainted with some folks from our new church. As we introduced ourselves, I mentioned my home town. One guy said. "Hey, my best HS buddy lives there now - he works in an electronics store." I said, "you mean Joe Hashimoto?" (not the real name). The guy was dumfounded that I knew his buddy. I explained the circumstances. Small world. YMMV

 

[Rushmore]

Several years ago I was with siblings at a casino buffet. One of my brothers went up to get food and someone he didn’t recognize said, “your Tom *****, right?” It was his first and last name so he said yes. The guy said “you haven’t changed a bit! I’d recognize you anywhere. He introduced himself, said they lived not to far from us growing up. Talked about different childhood activities common to kids in the 60s. Said they’d moved here several years ago, asked when Tom had moved etc. then he asked about siblings and Tom told him, he said he was sure we had another brother, which Tom found odd.

Tom comes back and tells us this. None of us can remember the name. So, we call our sister, because she remembers everyone, but no she doesn’t remember the name either. So it was really bothering us so my other brother said he was going to go talk to him. Turns out he grew up in a totally different state. But my brother must look just like someone with his same name, because he would recognize him anywhere

 

[braumeister]

But my brother must look just like someone with his same name, because he would recognize him anywhere

Most likely a relative you didn't know anything about.
I had a slightly similar experience about ten years ago when I stopped in the town where my great-grandfather grew up. None of my relatives had been in that town since the late 19th century. I was looking for some genealogical information and walked in, unexpected, to the local historical society office.

I walked up to the first person I saw and said "Hi, I wonder if you can help me."
The lady looked at me and said "Well, obviously you're a [braumeister], I can tell by your face. So you must be looking for your family records."

I was completely floored, and it turned out that some branches of the family were still a major factor in that town. The woman introduced me to a second cousin I hadn't ever heard of, and when I met him it was like looking into a mirror.

Some years later, I googled my name and found a photo of a public official in the town where my father grew up. I had never been there, so I knew almost nothing about it, but the photo could have been of me. I showed it to DW and she said the same thing.

Our genes move around in strange ways, don't they?

 

[Ronstar]

We (a group of guys) were skiing in Vail in the late 70’s. We went to a bar where we met a couple of young ladies. It was getting late and most of our group wanted to go back to our condo in the next town.

A friend and I wanted to stay at the bar with the girls. Girls said that they would take us home, so the rest of the guys left.

As conversation went on, we indirectly found out that one of the girls was friends at college with my buddy’s girlfriend. Without my buddy exposing his identity. Not the coincidence that we were looking for. We had to call our friends already back at our condo to come get us. My buddy didn’t want his girlfriend finding out about our evening with her friend.

 

[48Fire]

We were restoring our 100 year old house, and trying to teach our 18 year old daughter the value of hard work, restoration, etc. There was some rumors and belief by some that it was haunted. We were blasting classic rock, and Eddie Money's song, "Take me home tonight" was blasting. As she strips 100 years of wall paper, she discovers a child's handwriting on the plaster wall with the words, "Take me home tonight." She screamed and ran from the house

 

[Koolau]

We were restoring our 100 year old house, and trying to teach our 18 year old daughter the value of hard work, restoration, etc. There was some rumors and belief by some that it was haunted. We were blasting classic rock, and Eddie Money's song, "Take me home tonight" was blasting. As she strips 100 years of wall paper, she discovers a child's handwriting on the plaster wall with the words, "Take me home tonight." She screamed and ran from the house

Okay, I'm putting this one up for "story of the thread topic" - until something better comes along, anyway. YMMV

 

[48Fire]

Okay, I'm putting this one up for "story of the thread topic" - until something better comes along, anyway. YMMV

I have another one, same haunted house in case this gets topped

 

[Koolau]

I have another one, same haunted house in case this gets topped

Heh, heh, looking forward to it!

 

[Rushmore]

Most likely a relative you didn't know anything about.
Could be, although we’ve done quite a bit of genealogy and that male line is pretty slim

 

[Qs Laptop]

Back in the summer of 2016 my wife leased a new car. About a year later my nephew bought a used SUV. We all met at my Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner. Both vehicles were parked in the driveway when I noticed they had the exact same license plate numbers except for one digit.