Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

What is the strangest coincidence you’ve had?

233 replies

Yoloohno · 07/03/2023 23:29

Mine was I met someone on holiday in place A and had conversations several times during the week.

Fast forward 6 months and I got talking to someone on another holiday in place b and thought I know them but wasn’t sure where from, but not from that holiday or home but it turns out it was from holiday A.

OP posts:
OverHereTryingToFigureItOut · 07/03/2023 23:33

Just after we bought our house my sister got to know someone (nowhere near this area) who it turned out had grown up in our house.

sevsnrems · 07/03/2023 23:40

Went to an international school with a boy in a Scandinavian country. He moved when we were 14. We have both lived in different countries since and none of us are English. Haven't seen him since I was 14, moved to England with my family 8 months ago to find out he lives down the street from me.

sevsnrems · 07/03/2023 23:41

We are both in our 40s now.

CuriousMama · 07/03/2023 23:44

These are fascinating. Mine are just I often say things that are then said on the TV or radio straight after. Or can read it straight after I've said it. Sounds mad but even dh comments on how often it happens 🤔 It's not pleasant tbh.

Moopsi · 07/03/2023 23:47

I was talking about a celebrity and as I said their name they walked right in front of me on the pavement (London).

rainbowlou · 07/03/2023 23:49

We moved 2 hours away, our next door neighbours grew up in the same village we did

shieldmaiden7 · 07/03/2023 23:52

When I met my exdh the car he had originally belonged to his dad and it was the car he had when exdh was a little boy. When I had my DS1 he was driven home from hospital in that car. The car was on its last legs after a while so we sold it to a friend for them to do one big journey in it then the plan was to scrap it. Fast forward 18 years, we move 50 + miles from hometown. DS1 is out doing some urban exploring with some friends and stumbles across a number plate in a field hedge. He brings it home and nails it into his wall. He visits his dad for the weekend, they were talking about the cars they had growing up and exdh talks about the license plate number of the car he had when DS1 was a baby and the memories he had going on holiday in it as a kid. Turns out the number plate DS1 found in the middle of know where, 18 years later was the plate to the car his dad had to drive him home from hospital.

GayforMoleman · 07/03/2023 23:52

Went on an excursion on holiday. A lady piped up with the band name on my hoodie and said she was going to see them in two weeks at x location. I was too. Sure enough, two weeks later (at a sold out venue back in the UK that held 40,000), we spotted each other.

2chocolateoranges · 07/03/2023 23:55

My new boss has a daughter who works with my son. Work places are totally different industries and different towns.

only found this out a few months into my new job.

PuttingDownRoots · 07/03/2023 23:57

DH came with to my cousins birthday party, in Scotland. And saw he his old English teacher there.

His English teacher, from a school in Yorkshire, was his wifes (from London) cousins (from Edinburgh) cousin (from Lancashire who had moved to Yorkshire for work....

PuttingDownRoots · 07/03/2023 23:59

And continuing the school theme... our DD has been taught by DHs childhood friend/neighbour... no where near where they grew up (and lost contact in between!)

Flittingaboutagain · 07/03/2023 23:59

shieldmaiden7 that has given me lovely goosebumps!

Mine is I met someone at a baby group who'd lived in the same small village as me 300 miles from where we were both living and only discovered this when someone asked where we were going for Christmas last year.

Helendegenerate · 08/03/2023 00:07

@CuriousMama

This happens to me very often and I'm used to it and both amused and puzzled as there's no explanation how it happens.

I do have another one though from years ago. In my twenties I applied for an office job which was vacant because the previous lady had just left. I got the job and worked there for four years. The business was closing so I looked around for another similar position. I was taken on by another firm and was told the vacancy existed because the previous lady had just left after four years.

Yes it was the same woman.

Noneyerbuisness11234 · 08/03/2023 00:09

I met my husband 5 years after my grandmother died and turns out she was his grandmothers best friend from childhood who was also dead around 3 years and my grandmother is his mothers godmother only discovered after I had my first child

RosesAndHellebores · 08/03/2023 00:19

I once had a job where three of us in a team.of 20 had the same birthday.

There are others but very outing.

patchysmum · 08/03/2023 00:20

my grandad mum and husband all died on the same date

bugsinmybrain · 08/03/2023 00:21

It's not a particular one but a frequent one

I regularly hear an unusual place name or person's surname in something that I watch

Only to soon hear the exact same name being said again by someone I know in an entirely different context (like they're going there to see family or mentioning they were talking with someone who had that surname) without me having shared I recently heard it

Saucepots · 08/03/2023 00:21

My dad was a hobby artist - he liked sketching beautiful views and dabbling in watercolours.

When he died, having never expressed a view or preference about burial or cremation, mum and I had to go with our feelings and work out what to do about the funeral. We decided on burial in a newly created eco-burial ground, and found a lovely spot for him in front of a duck pond with a beautiful view of the South Downs.

A few weeks later, flicking through his sketch books, we found a completely beautiful 20 year old sketch of the duck pond and that perfect view of the South Downs, made from the exact spot we chose to bury him in.

He’d thought that view beautiful enough to spend an afternoon sketching. It was the right place for him to end up.

24KaratCucumber · 08/03/2023 00:22

I lost touch with a cousin for over a decade as I moved away from my home town.
On a rare visit to my home town I randomly decided to have a walk into the town centre whilst my daughter was seeing her Grandparents.
It had been years and I wanted to see how much it had changed.
There was a new Sue Ryder charity shop where 'Our Price' the record store had used to be. I'd bought my first Albums from there in the 80s and 90s so I went in to the new shop to be nosy and see the differences.
About half way down the shop is a small cubicle with a curtain, as I walked past it, someone came out and we literally collided... It was my cousin.. turns out, she'd moved away from home town too and was also visiting that day. She'd had also randomly decided to pop in to town whilst her daughter were visiting grandparents and she'd gone into the new charity shop as she could remember when it was Our Price and she'd bought albums there as well.
We swapped numbers and have been in touch ever since.
And if that wasn't enough... Turns out that her daughter and mine share the exact same 3 initials.

Coincidences? Or fate? Blows my mind thinking about to this day.

Smineusername · 08/03/2023 00:25

Was in the chemist the other day and they had a local radio station on, the presenter was talking about how he'd been researching his family tree and discovered that he and the other presenter (colleagues for 25 years) had the same great grandmother. Neither had any idea

CuriousMama · 08/03/2023 00:25

Did anyone see the programme years ago where twin ladies raised separately met up? They wore the same outfit. Neither knew what the other was planning to wear.

EdHelpPls · 08/03/2023 00:26

My old front door key worked for one of my back doors even though they were fitted 20ish years apart. Weirdly back didn't work on front door! (I know you can get ones to match on purpose but we hadn't!)

My friend from high school lived in a quite remote place in countryside. We lost touch after school. 10 years later I made a new friend at a tots group who lived (and still does) in that same house.

Bumped into my first proper boyfriend who I haven't seen in over 20 years and turns out we each have 2 kids with same names and the birthdays of the kids are less than 2 weeks apart.

MaidOfSteel · 08/03/2023 00:27

We got talking to a man who had grown up in the house we were then living in when he was back in the area for a family reunion. Turns out he knew lots of members of my husband's family in the town he grew up in.

Dartmoorcheffy · 08/03/2023 00:31

I catered a dinner party for an 80th birthday last year. In Devon.

The man whose birthday it was, grew up on the road I did in greater Manchester, and worked with my dad, many years before I was born. I had a photo of him and my dad but never knew who he was as I found the photo after my dad died many years ago.

Catname · 08/03/2023 00:35

Sat next to a bloke in a queue for a visa to another country. Form was very complicated and the bloke needed a bit of help and my pen. Travelled a month later to said country of hundreds of millions of people. Walked into hotel restaurant, and there he was!

Swipe left for the next trending thread