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Original poster

Biggest/spookiest 'coincidence' you've ever had?

94 replies

Trapordo · 14/04/2020 22:36

I thought I'd ask, it's interesting.

Mine off the top of my head - I thought of a boy I met as a young teenager. I couldn't remember his surname, only his first name. The day later, he appeared on my suggested friends for Facebook. No mutual friends etc. We met in Tunisia. I hadn't searched for him either. Last time I saw him was about 10 years ago.

I always had a gut feeling my dad would 'appear' into my life when I became an adult. I just always imagined it from as young as 8. He messaged me on my 18th birthday. Hadn't seen him since before I learned to walk.

Last one, my mum's good friend moved to Cornwall when I was little. I thought of her before going down there for sma weekend recently. It turns out that the person I hired wetsuits from was her husband. We took a photo together out for lunch. My mum said she almost choked as she thought she'd fallen off the face of the earth.

OP posts:
lubeybooby · 15/04/2020 08:26

I went to an event where dp and I had press passes and were doing photography. There were some fantastic costumes and we took pics of attendees who looked fab. The pics went up on the relevant website and were pretty much forgotten

2 years later I finally found my cousins on facebook. I moved away a long time ago and haven't seen any of their adult faces and can barely remember them as kids. One face stands out though and I recognise her... struggle to place it for a little while, then remember she was at that event

I called my dp to tell him what I thought and he found the gallery of pics, we looked through and there she was. I had tapped my own cousin on the shoulder, told her she looked amazing and asked if we could take a pic and had no idea it was her.

If we'd got into conversation and we'd said our names we would have known right then and there as both are unusual.

Casino218 · 15/04/2020 08:28

I was having highlights and cut and dry in a hairdressers in Leeds city centre. Just after the hairdresser had removed the colour and washed hair I started to become restless and just told her I couldn't stay for the cut and blow dry. She was irritated but I said I had to leave straight away but in myself I didn't know why. I told her I was feeling ill but I wasn't ill. I got home and found out that at the same time I became restless my primary school aged daughter had been physically attacked by some older secondary school pupils and hurt very badly.

boringbertha · 15/04/2020 08:35

I had a friend I met through our young children when we were in our 30s and we used to go on nights out to which my sister would come. For some reason she always called her Gail even though her name is Elaine. What she couldn't have known is that before my sister was born my mum was going to call her Gail and she was called that for about a week after she was born until mum decided it didn't suit her and officially named her Elaine.

I find that quite spooky.

CoronaIsComing · 15/04/2020 08:47

DH and I have almost identical national insurance numbers. The first 2 and last letter are exactly the same as is the last set of 2 numbers out of the other 4 2 numbers are the same but swapped around and 2 different.
So if my number was XX 12 34 56 Y
His would be XX 78 43 56 Y

We didn’t live in the same part of the country when they were issued, obviously we had different surnames at 16 and he is 8 years older than me so I do think it’s a massive coincidence!

DinosApple · 15/04/2020 08:52

There was a significant date in my grandma's life.
Her mother died on that date when she was two.
Both her living children were born on that date several years apart, one prem.
Her stepmother also died on the same date around 50 years later.

It's like a two in - two out policy.

StormBaby · 15/04/2020 09:01

Throughout my whole pregnancy with my first baby, I was going to call him Dominic after his father(its his dads middle name). Id told no one my name choices. His father turned out to be a rat and disappeared, so I called him something else. For my sons entire 22 year existence, people have accidentally called him Dominic constantly. At school, college, work. It happens on a monthly basis. His actual name couldn't be any different to this(its trendy and very of its time)

WaterIsWide · 15/04/2020 09:14

My Grandma loved a gin and tonic. Had to be Gordon's and Schweppes and she always had a dish of plain crisps in the evening with it.
The day after she died I had a shopping delivery. As I unpacked my order I found a knotted bag that contained two bottles of Gordon's gin a pack of Schweppes tonic cans and a multi pack of plain crisps.
I definitely hadn't ordered them, they weren't on the list and when I phoned the customer service they said it was a mistake and to keep them.

Wow !

Happywith2 · 15/04/2020 09:19

About five years ago me and my husband went to the Peak District on holiday.
After coming home one of my friends commented on her friends photo ( so it came up on my Facebook).
When I looked in the far distance stood me and my husband, could only just make out it was us by the clothes we was wearing. It was a very busy place and we only stood in that spot for a matter of minutes!

Aroundtheworldin80moves · 15/04/2020 09:21

Years ago, on an online forum, someone offered to do tarot readings- we could all ask one question. Not really a believer, but asked if I would ever move in with my fiancé (his job keeping us apart). She told me the only answer she could get was the letter G. Made no sense to any of us.

Two days later, I got a phone call from him- he was unexpectedly being posted to Germany, officially 2 days after our wedding. It was then changed to three weeks later because of the wedding to give us time to go on our honeymoon and move to Germany.

MIL and FIL are second cousins. They discovered this at their wedding, when various relatives worked it out. They have pictures together as very small children.

LuvMyBoyz · 15/04/2020 09:21

I have (fairly) often been reading a word just as someone/the radio says the same word. The last time it happened was just yesterday when I gave DP the crossword to finish while I checked my emails. I was just reading on BookBub about a book called ‘Manifest’ when he says ‘Manifest! That’s a ship’s cargo list’.

Sallycinammonbangsthedruminthe · 15/04/2020 09:42

I have a tendancy to know what is round the next corner...we can go someplace I have never ever been and never been aware of and I can tell you what it looks like. I am used to it now but its odd. Like I have been there but havent and couldnt have!.

alphasox · 15/04/2020 09:47

As others have said I have lots of experiences of bumping into people in surprising places/circumstances-

  • walking down the street in London with a colleague we were talking about friends and Uni and I mentioned a Uni friend I missed as she had moved home to Spain. We turned the corner 2 mins later and there was Spanish friend coming out of an office - she was over in London for 1 day for a meeting, and neither of us knew where the other worked.
  • DH and I were on holiday in Cape Town and earlier that day MIL had called and said she heard from her ex-neighbour friend that their Son had gone to work in Cape Town. Later we were waiting at a taxi rank when the neighbour’s son got out of a taxi, and he and DH immediately recognised each other though they had last played together age 10!
  • at the top of the Empire State Building on my only ever trip to NY, with a school friend. My friend literally bumped into her cousin, not knowing that each other was on holiday in NY!
Gammeldragz · 15/04/2020 10:07

The other day I was watching something on the laptop and a song played, at the same time the radio was playing the exact same song a few seconds out of time.

My best one - the day I found out (age 20) that I was pregnant, I desperately wanted to call my best friend but for some reason I didn't have her number. Thought I could remember it, so I dialled what I thought was her number while praying hard 'please be X, please be X' - lady answers the phone and I don't recognise the voice but say hopefully 'is that X?' She says yes. Turns out it's a total stranger with the same name.

As a child I had a vivid vision of a burned out field while on a car journey and a few minutes later came across it (no way we could have seen it from further away).

BearSoFair · 15/04/2020 10:38

My Grandad was a carpenter/woodworker and had made my Mum a little musical jewellery box when she was young which in turn was passed to me as a child. On the anniversary of his death I woke up late to the sound of it playing, it hadn't been recently moved or touched, just sitting on my bedside cabinet for years. I couldn't get it to stop and jokingly said "alright Grandad I'm up now, turn it down" and it stopped instantly! Never made a noise again and DD has it now. I haven't told her about that morning many years ago just in case it freaks her out at all!

Scardot · 15/04/2020 11:43

Some of these are fascinating!

I was once on holiday in Antigua, watching the six nations rugby in a bar, I took a picture as the bar was full of expats and had a wonderful vibe.

A couple of months later I was in a club in central London being wingwoman for my best friend she was talking to some guy and I was politely talking to his best friend, (they were from Birmingham, down for the weekend) turns out we were both in Antigua at the same time. Even weirder I’d mentioned the great day I’d had watching the rugby and he said how he’d watched it too, when I got out my picture to show him of the bar to reminisce over the atmosphere, sure enough there he was smiling in my photo!!
Very very odd!

Makes you think, how many photos are you in on strangers phones/cameras?

Original poster
Trapordo · 15/04/2020 12:32

Makes you think, how many photos are you in on strangers phones/cameras?

Not many Grin people seem v frustrated whenever I've accidentally wondered into their shot! Lol

OP posts:
bottleofbeer · 15/04/2020 12:43

The letters in my national insurance number are all of my kids first initials. Only noticed a year or so ago.

Levatrice · 15/04/2020 12:51

Love this thread! The G&T order how strange.

bellabelly · 15/04/2020 12:54

I was on holiday with my parents and my best friend in France, aged about 15. My friend and I had sat our maths GCSE (top set so took the exam a year early) and the results were due out the next day. We were a bit nervous about the results - it was the first year that anyone had sat the new GCSE exams. Anyway, my friend and I were queuing up in a bakery when a man behind us kept coughing, the coughs became more and more theatrical and annoying until we both turned round. It was our maths teacher!

Lyndassniff · 15/04/2020 13:08

The age gap between me and my husband is exactly the same to the day as the age gap between our children.

Rebelwithallthecause · 15/04/2020 13:11

I once typed in my pin code to a friends phone and it opened

We both had the same pin code (a totally tendon number, not a year or anything guessable)

wouldyouadamandeveit · 15/04/2020 13:13

Not a coincidence but just woo.

I used to share a bed with my then two and a bit year old son. Up to this particular day he would never, ever get out of bed by himself. If he woke before me he would either wake me or wait till I woke up and we'd get out of bed together. He was a proper mummy's boy :)

On this particular day, I hadn't yet fully woken up or opened my eyes. DS gets out of bed, walks to the lounge (we were in a flat at the time), came back and said 'mummy who's that lady in the living room?

ExDH's mum had passed away the day before.

ChicChicChicChiclana · 15/04/2020 13:20

I've posted about this before, so copied and pasted from my old post. But it's still one of the biggest coincidences I've ever experienced:

One day at work I heard loads of shouting out on the street. I looked out and saw a man lying on the pavement with blood coming out of a head wound. I phoned an ambulance (first time I'd ever done this) and my boss who was a first aider rushed out to help him. When my boss came back in she said "it looked like a mugging but he'd actually had an epileptic fit and fallen and cracked his head open."

Telling dh about this at home later on, dh started to look at me funny. I said "wassup, dh?". Dh had been working at a race course that day (he's a sports journo) and had witnessed a man suddenly collapsing and becoming unrousable. DH had called an ambulance for him on his mobile. The man had had an epileptic fit.

BeansOnToast4T · 15/04/2020 13:21

In a city with dh buying my engagement ring. We picked a ring but it needed to be resized so we arranged to pop back later. When we went back to collect the ring exDH came in with OW to buy an engagement ring - we had both travelled to the same city which was midway between where we both lived. Freaky!!!

TheGirlFromStoryville · 15/04/2020 13:24

When my Nan died me and DM sat up most of the night crying at the kitchen table. DM suggested saying a prayer that my Nan was safe and at peace and at that exact moment the light bulb above us dropped out and shattered on the floor.
I didn't attend her funeral Mass as I was looking after my younger brother who was only a toddler then. It was due to start at 2pm and at that exact time a light bulb fell out of the light fitting in the front room where we were sitting. I picked it up off the carpet and it was burning hot even though it wasn't on as it was daytime.

Parents had all the electrics and lights checked, all were absolutely fine and the electrician couldn't explain what had happened. Never happened before or since though!