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Original poster

Weird coincidence - tell me yours

202 replies

RedPlumJammy · 21/02/2025 07:42

The weirdest thing happened to me today. I was waiting at an international airport terminal for a family member and getting coffee when I thought I spotted a famous sports player next to me. I spent a few mins trying to surreptitiously look sideways and eventually he got up and I realised it wasn’t him.

I then went to the arrivals gate to wait for family member. About 15 mins later - I kid you not - the actual real life famous sports person exited the arrivals gate and walked past me. It was 100% not the same man from earlier.

Am I insane - or is that an insane coincidence?! I’m sure you'll all think I’m crackers but I’m always looking for a meaning or sign from the universe too 🤣

OP posts:
Lilly11a · 21/02/2025 07:45

On Tuesday walking to the train station in Hertfordshire for work I found a wallet.

It had several business cards for a central London supplier of my central London company .

I messaged the owner to see if it was maybe a staff member and it was her wallet

mumyes · 21/02/2025 07:53

Sat on a bus in Africa & realised the person behind me used to work at the same company as me 5 years before.

I often meet people i know in random places around the world. I find it bizarre, but it happens more than you'd think!

Original poster
RedPlumJammy · 21/02/2025 08:08

mumyes · 21/02/2025 07:53

Sat on a bus in Africa & realised the person behind me used to work at the same company as me 5 years before.

I often meet people i know in random places around the world. I find it bizarre, but it happens more than you'd think!

What are the chances - wow

OP posts:
Shayisgreat · 21/02/2025 08:15

On a plane to Dubai I was sitting beside someone who turned out to have been my next door neighbour when we were babies, her brother's best friend's mother was my childminder when I was a baby, and she had been at that childminder's house the night before the flight. She had moved to a different part of the country when she was a child. We were starting jobs in the same school the following week ( which explained why we were sitting together)

TianasBayou · 21/02/2025 08:16

OP , it was probably a family member waiting for their famous relative.

ladymammalade · 21/02/2025 08:17

Years ago we went on holiday abroad and met a couple with two kids who had the same names as ours (bear with me, that isn't the coincidence). We spent a fortnight enjoying their company, kids played together/we had drinks/watched the shows at the hotel together etc.

Fifteen years later, MIL and FIL came back from a holiday abroad and told us about this lovely couple they'd met and spent a week drinking/dancing with who had grandkids with the same names as our children. After some investigation we found they were the parents of the couple we had met years earlier.

2chocolateoranges · 21/02/2025 08:17

We went to a caravan park mikes from our home on holiday one year and met one of dh’s childhood friends who he hadn’t seen for years, the next year we went to Paris (totally different time of year) and who did we meet at the top of the tower? That same friend. All so very bizarre.

Lovemybunnies · 21/02/2025 08:20

I once gave some money to a man begging at a supermarket in Cyprus. I worried about it afterwards and wondered if I had been duped but had a thought that there was nothing wrong with a random act of kindness. I started to drive home and on the radio they announced that it was ‘Random Act of Kindness day’ and I took that as confirmation that I had done the right thing.

Titasaducksarse · 21/02/2025 08:22

Happened to me a few times.
I worked in a customer facing role. I'd randomly have a specific customer pop into my head and by the end of the day either they'd called or there had been other contact about them.

Gliblet · 21/02/2025 08:23

Went to an English Heritage site on a day when they just happened to have a reenactment event on, we hadn't planned it, just wanted to go and see the site. When we got in, the longbow archery demonstration was being run by a chap DH went to secondary school with in Norfolk and hadn't seen since, and the catering was being run by someone I'd been to secondary school with in Oxfordshire and not seen since.

My parents' best one was making friends with a woman through a mutual hobby a few years back. Didn't know anyone in common, just completely hit it off from the first time they met, stayed in touch, visited each other, got to know each others' families. It later came to light that she is my dad's cousin, from a branch of the family that got estranged (no-one can really remember why 🙄) a couple of generations back.

Papadonut · 21/02/2025 08:24

I haven't watched the sound of music for ages or even thought of it. One night I felt the urge to watch that you are 16 song with Liesl. She died the next day or two.

Also I was at the national portrait gallery and I am not big on portraits. But I was very drawn to. Richard 3rd one. A couple days later they found his remains in the car park.

Original poster
RedPlumJammy · 21/02/2025 08:29

Papadonut · 21/02/2025 08:24

I haven't watched the sound of music for ages or even thought of it. One night I felt the urge to watch that you are 16 song with Liesl. She died the next day or two.

Also I was at the national portrait gallery and I am not big on portraits. But I was very drawn to. Richard 3rd one. A couple days later they found his remains in the car park.

Ok that is freaky

OP posts:
Original poster
RedPlumJammy · 21/02/2025 08:31

Titasaducksarse · 21/02/2025 08:22

Happened to me a few times.
I worked in a customer facing role. I'd randomly have a specific customer pop into my head and by the end of the day either they'd called or there had been other contact about them.

Also v weird. Are we psychic?! I genuinely need to know the connection 😆

OP posts:
Original poster
RedPlumJammy · 21/02/2025 08:32

TianasBayou · 21/02/2025 08:16

OP , it was probably a family member waiting for their famous relative.

For various reasons I’m confident it wasn’t but it hadn’t occurred to me 😆

OP posts:
AGreatUsername · 21/02/2025 08:33

We live in a house associated with a "famous" sea captain from the early 1900s. We knew of him but had never looked into the story.

Booked a holiday to a certain country on the other side of the world, about a month later we came across a book about this captain online and upon reading the story found that he had actually landed and come to fame 5 minutes away from our hotel on the other side of the world. We're going next week and planning to go and see his monument.

Titasaducksarse · 21/02/2025 08:37

RedPlumJammy · 21/02/2025 08:31

Also v weird. Are we psychic?! I genuinely need to know the connection 😆

Show quote history

I know, weird. It also wasn't a job where people had a pattern of when they'd make contact etc.
It still happens to me time to time...I said to OH when we were in a town about someone I didn't like in an old job lived there. Blow me, 10 minutes later she passed me!

AngelinaFibres · 21/02/2025 08:37

Years ago I was a single parent of 2 and absolutely skint. I bought my sons a pair of school shoes each but had no money to replace wellies that month. We went to the shoe recycling container at the local Tesco to put their old shoes in. When I pulled the big metal tray down there was a pair of brand new green wellies in my eldest sons size just sitting in the tray. It was one of those moments you never forget.

cortex10 · 21/02/2025 08:38

18 months after graduating DS took 6m out to travel in New Zealand. First day there he joined a backpackers tour bus and found himself seated next to a girl from his 6th form class.

Marylou62 · 21/02/2025 08:40

When I bought a newish car I traded my old one in. Same make and model and colour. I was parked in a supermarket that I don't usually use and when I came out my old car was parked next to me. The car park was huge and nearly empty. What are the chances eh?

suburberphobe · 21/02/2025 08:46

mumyes · 21/02/2025 07:53

Sat on a bus in Africa & realised the person behind me used to work at the same company as me 5 years before.

I often meet people i know in random places around the world. I find it bizarre, but it happens more than you'd think!

I had this happen to me twice, once in India and once in Kenya.

Small world, eh?!

FruitPoppet · 21/02/2025 08:49

Travelling hill country in Sri Lanka and took advise from a local to visit the less touristy waterfall a few miles from the big well known one. We walked the extra miles and when we arrived there was very few people, mostly local kids around.

Im swimming and hear a man exclaim 'Geddon!' a very well used phrase in southwest England6, where I am from. Turns out the man was from the same city as me and went to the same school, was just a few years older.

DinoLil · 21/02/2025 08:59

I moved to an area where I didn't know anyone but used to know someone from there 15yrs before via a common interest. I decided to look her up and see if she wanted to reconnect.

(I'd been in my last house for 20yrs and raised my family there. When I moved into my new house, there was a lovely letter saying they'd been there 20yrs, raised their family, they loved the house and hoped I would be as happy as they'd been.)

Anyway, I met up with the person I'd lost touch with 15yrs earlier. It was like we'd only chatted yesterday! She asked where I'd moved to. Turns out I'd bought my new house from her daughter!

WomanFromTheNorth · 21/02/2025 09:08

I have not really ever seen or met anyone famous in real life. But I have seen James Nesbitt twice: once in Manchester and once in Tenby. Apart from that, nobody!

SharpWriter · 21/02/2025 09:11

I had a good friend that I'd known since school. In our 30s we hung around with two other friends until my school friend moved up north. I didn't see the other friends again until I bumped into one of them completely randomly walking by the Thames in 2019 (she'd also lived 40 miles away and we hadn't kept in touch - i hadn't seen her for probably 10 years). We swapped numbers and met up once just before Covid hit but we didn't speak again after that. In August 2020 she messaged me to tell me our mutual friend (my school friend) had died, aged 47. I was devastated. We haven't spoken since, but I firmly believe she was brought back into my life to deliver this dreadful news to me. Bumping into her like that was just too much of a coincidence.

Snowmanscarf · 21/02/2025 09:13

My dh and I were coming back from Wales, travelling along M4. Decided to stop of at IKEA rather than motorway service station area for a break. I think it was Bristol area. As I was walking back to the car, heard my name being called and it was a friend from uni who I hadn’t seen for several years.

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