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Original poster

Strange coincidences...

52 replies

WinterIsComing84 · 12/09/2018 08:33

I was reminded this morning of a holiday around 4 years ago, in the US. We were staying in San Francisco and went on an arranged day trip/tour one day. Got talking to another Brit on the coach. We were discussing where we lived, and when I told her where I lived, she said that her DD had just bought a house in the same town. I asked her whereabouts her daughter lived - after some to and fro questions, turns out her daughter was the lady who had just bought the house next door to us a few weeks prior.
Really bizarre.

Any other weird ones?

OP posts:
ALongHardWinter · 12/09/2018 17:09

Justmuddlingalong 'I see the thread police have arrived'. Grin

PuddleglumtheMarshWiggle · 12/09/2018 18:08

Years ago I was reading The day of the Triffids. Early in the first chapter it mentions that the date is Weds 8 May. I was reading it on Weds 8 May!
Another time I left Imperial College, walked down Exhibition Rd to South Kensington station and got onto the District line. I started reading my book which described the character travelling on the District line, getting off at South Kensington and walking up Exhibition Rd to Imperial College.
Thankfully I've never met a triffid!

Goostacean · 12/09/2018 18:15

I bumped into an English teacher from my school, at the end of a pier on the Red Sea during October half term. It was one of two little piers by our hotel, and she and her daughter were actually staying further along the beach in a different hotel, but had come along to explore. Same holiday, in the hotel we bumped into a lady from our village that my mum used to go to church with. Small world!

DerelictWreck · 12/09/2018 18:19

A friend of mine got engaged recently, and it was only when all the family of both sides met, that both sets of pil realised they had already met on holiday in Greece 20 years before, when the engaged couple were kids, and they dug out the photos that show them all hanging out together!

Original poster
WinterIsComing84 · 12/09/2018 19:07

Just thought of another one.

As a police officer (I've since left the job) I was with a colleague when we attended a concern for safety. Neighbours to an elderly chap hasn't seen him for days and there was an odd smell Sad

We gained entry, and it turned out that the old chap was my colleagues old teacher from 25+ years prior... There was even a photo of my colleague hanging up in the living room (the teacher kept photos of his entire class' yearly photo's, so nothing sinister)

Very strange anyway, but neither of them were even local to the area.

OP posts:
LostInShoebiz · 12/09/2018 19:39

Utterly shaken by some of these: people from the same area and/or same social sphere doing similar things at similar times. Who’da thunk it!

vdbfamily · 12/09/2018 20:01

We discovered my husbands best man shares the same birthday as me in the same year.

airedailleurs · 12/09/2018 20:18

OK here's a coincidence: I was going to start a thread on coincidences on account of this recent one of mine. For a couple of years now, a friend and I have been talking on and off about going on holiday together but not gone as yet. This summer I visited a very remote part of the UK and remember driving past an unusual-looking hotel. I found out a couple of weeks ago that said friend stayed in that hotel but a week after I drove past! I have many more involving this person but they may be identifying so won't share here.

Another one is that a number of years ago, a work colleague attended the same music concert as me in a city in the foreign country where I was living at the time and where she had gone on holiday.

My birthday is exactly the same day and year as the father of a friend of my DD.

There are more but that's it for the moment.

GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat · 12/09/2018 20:37

We have three children. They are born on

8th, 28th and 4th of the months.

So written in a line it’s 8284 (I found this out as I used it as a password) 82,84 to remember it easily.

Dh and I were born in 82 and 84.

LaDaronne · 12/09/2018 21:17

My birthday is exactly the same day and year as the father of a friend of my DD

and 360,000 other people...

And 8284 as a strange coincidence is really a bit of a stretch.

airedailleurs · 12/09/2018 21:32

Fair point LaD but the other two aren't bad!

Livedandlearned2 · 12/09/2018 21:57

My dc are all born at 10 o'clock. 2 are 10pm and eldest is 10am. Also two born on a Wednesday.

My sisters share a birthday, 2 years apart and their dds share a birthday, 1 from each sister.

theoriginalpineappletart · 12/09/2018 22:58

We live in a very small village and booked tickets for a concert venue around 150 miles away. The stadium was at capacity with around.82,000 people. We ended up sitting two seats away from three guys from our village. None of us knew the other was going.

GoodMorningSunshine · 12/09/2018 23:09

My children's names are hidden within mine!

I noticed the first borns early on but second is hidden in my maiden name so wasn't so obvious where I didn't see it written everywhere!

Lojama75 · 12/09/2018 23:23

When I was pregnant with my second daughter, we decided that she would be called Lola. No other choices - our minds were made up. Fast forward to labour, which was very short and intense, so much so that I found the radio playing in the room a real distraction. I asked for it to be turned off. After the birth of our baby Lola, I asked for it to be turned back on......The Kinks 'Lola' was playing - I remember thinking it was a sign that we had obviously picked the right name for her Smile

Sarcelle · 12/09/2018 23:36

During a time when I was feeling very low I started to think about guardian angels. I am a sceptical person, not religious, so this interest was out of character for me.

I read on a website somewhere somebody’s convoluted story which basically ended up with somebody saying that the proof their guardian angel was around was that the song Next To Me (Emile Sande) was playing. I bought myself a thin silver bracelet with an angels wing on it. As I said, this was out of character but for some reason I thought it would help with a situation I was going through. The very first time I wore it I got in the car, turned on the radio....and you guessed it, the record playing was Emile Sande Next to Me......coincidence or something more?

BelfastSmile · 12/09/2018 23:55

DH and I were in a hospital waiting room, and got chatting to a couple of women sitting next to us.

One of them happened to ask where I grew up - it turned out she had been evacuated there (a seaside village) during the war. Further conversation revealed that she had worked for my granny, and remembered looking after my dad and his brothers, and my aunt being born.

I then asked her which area of the city she was originally from... it turned out that she lived next door to my mum's parents, and she remembered my mum as a little girl.

So this lady knew both of my parents long before they met!

HeyThoughIWalk · 13/09/2018 00:00

@PuddleglumtheMarshWiggle

Years ago I was reading The day of the Triffids. Early in the first chapter it mentions that the date is Weds 8 May. I was reading it on Weds 8 May!

This happened me recently too, but with a different book. It was slightly exciting!

ColinsVeryJolly · 13/09/2018 00:31

We took our dc to butlins for a holiday, when we were checking in to our apartment another family were checking in next door.

It was our next door neighbour from home with her daughter and grandchildren!

We travelled nearly 200 miles to still be next door to one another Grin

nandaandm · 13/09/2018 00:42

When I was younger, I used to get the bus to my job, on the journey I used to pass a certain road and always wonder what was down there as it led to a dead end on an estate. A few years later I applied for a job, when I got the call for an interview it turned out the job was on that road. I worked there for 5 years.

Bloodybridget · 13/09/2018 01:23

DP and I came off a flight into the arrivals lounge of a small airport in France and bumped into old neighbours who had moved to that area from our street several years previously - we'd had no contact with them since they left London.

lonelyplanetmum · 13/09/2018 06:22

Bear with me ....my best ever coincidence is very complicated involving a generation gap and two continents!

In my 20’s in London I had two flat mates. One was a work friend originally from Bristol and the other was my University friend originally from Liverpool. I’ll call them ‘B’ and ‘L’. They hadn’t known each other before, I was the common link who got us the flat together.

In our flat L, B and I often used to have bit of a bitch about B’s closest friend because she was having a long term affair with an older, married man.We didn't approve!

From time to time L’s Dad (who was a retired academic) would stay with us when he was coming to London. On one occasion he came back to our flat after a conference he had been attending. He was keen to tell us that at dinner he’d had an amazing coincidence. He’d been sitting next to a man (J). When they got talking he realised that he had met J some 40 years before in Kenya. J had then given L’s Dad a few flying lessons and they remembered each other.He thought this alone was an amazing coincidence in a city of 8 million people to bump into this guy 40 years later.....

It seemed coincidental enough ...until he said J’s name and he was also the married man that B’s friend had been having an affair with!!!!A weird chain of links and a very small world!

airedailleurs · 03/10/2018 22:25

Here's another one from this week; I was in a shop one lunchtime and just browsing when I saw an unfamiliar product, picked it up off the shelf and asked the assistant what it was for. Decided I didn't need it and put it back on the shelf, whereupon a lady came up to the shop assistant and asked her if the shop sold that exact same product! We were all like Shock.

Cindersdonegood · 04/10/2018 13:27

In my life I have only ever had two very, very dear friends. They didn't know each other and were from different towns. I also knew them at different times of my life. They both had the same birthdays, same year and oddly enough, same hospital. Not the greatest of coincidences of course but at least it made remembering birthdays easy.

ManicUnicorn · 04/10/2018 14:02

I have a few.

  1. DM and I went to New York quite a while ago now and everywhere we went we'd bump into the same Scottish family. Not really a weird one, but given the size of New York it seemed strange this family wouldn't be at the same places at the exact same times as us.
  1. Another time we were in London to see a show, decided to go and check out the theatre earlier in the day and literally walked straight into some old friends of my dad who just happened to be walking past the theatre at that moment in time. We live 150 miles away and even though they live near us we never see them when out and about in our hometown.

Actually thinking about it Ive bumped into people I know on holiday a couple of times. Ive also seen people I know at Manchester airport, Liverpool airport, Alicante airport and Palma airport.

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