Weird coincidence - tell me yours

[RedPlumJammy]

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 🤣

I was out with DH one Saturday evening shortly after we got married. We were having a lovely time when suddenly I had an overwhelming urge to speak to my mother. We'd been NC for years (we'd always had a difficult relationship and I went NC after she did something particularly awful - I did it for my sanity but of course I loved her). I felt panicky and suddenly so, so sad.

We went home early and I tried the last number I had for her. There was no answer and there was none for the rest of the evening and into Sunday. A friend of mine worked in a hospital in the city my mum was living in (300 miles away from me) so the next day I asked her, out of desperation, whether she could check to see if my mum had been admitted.

The phone rang at 5am on the Monday morning. My friend had found out that my mother had died a few hours earlier. She had been admitted after a fall a few weeks previously and had fallen into a coma at around 7pm on the Saturday evening - at the exact time I had suddenly felt the need to speak to her, and that overwhelming sadness.

Of course it was just a coincidence that I felt that way at that time - but sometimes I do wonder if something else was at play. When I was a lot younger and we were close, my mother used to say that if anything happened to me she would know, and if anything happened to her I would know, because we loved each other so much and were so close. Even though we hadn't spoken for years by the time she died, maybe when the end came she still felt that closeness.

A coincidence, 99.99%. But incredibly sad all the same.

When my brother and I were children, my grandmothers next door neighbours had a little boy the same age as my brother. They used to play together. Both grandmother and neighbours moved when the boys were 5.

Fast forward to University. My brother had a shared room. His room mate spotted his train ticket to Random Village (in the days if paper train tickets!) And mentioned he had lived there as a child. Asked his parents whether they had known my Grandmother...

Yes... it was the next door neighbour. Childhood friends sharing a room at University years 13 years after they last saw each other.

When I was a teenager, I had a dream about one of my mum's friends-- someone we hadn't seen or spoken about it several years, because we'd moved away. The next day my mum told me that she'd had some awful news, one of her friends had died suddenly.

I knew immediately it was this friend. Massive postpartum haemorrhage leaving a newborn and older children behind. Horrendous.

I had a dream that Robin Williams passed away, the day after, his death was announced. I was in disbelief, it really freaked me out!

Our friends were travelling around Australia and posting photos on Facebook.
At the same time my brother and sister in law were also visiting Australia.
These 2 couples do not know each other.
Friends photos shows my brother and sister in law on 2 in the background.
Looking at my brothers photos and these friends are in the background in 2 but all photos were taken at different places.
Neither were in organised tours.

In Corfu on the day we arrived on holiday, and the first person we talked to went to the same school as me, and her brother had been in my class.

One of the many schools I went to as a child was a small RAF specific one in Germany. Got a new colleague at work some 1000 miles and 30 years away from said primary school. She recognised me before I even looked up from the phone call I was on. We had been best friends at school for 18 months before her father was posted elsewhere.

@WhatTheFuckIsThisNow

Like you say 99.99% coincidence, but maybe there is something? In the 1960s, my father and his parents lived in completely different parts of the world - like 5000 miles apart. They weren't in that much contact, as technology of the time was those flimsy blue Airmail letters, telegrams and very expensive prebooked phone calls. My dad woke up one night and saw his father's ghost in his room. They had a chat! To the best of dad's knowledge his father was alive - he wasn't particularly old, and wasn't ill.

When dad got to work the next day he received a telegram saying that his father had died the previous day - UK time being the time he'd woken up in the night.

I'm a scientist and engineer. I can't compute stuff like this, but there do seem to be quite a lot of these coincidences.

Family member on an international flight going to visit relatives thousands of miles away, and the people in the seats next to her on the plane were flying home from their holiday. They lived next door to the relatives she was going to visit.

When I was about 6 I persuaded my mum to take me to Sunday School because a friend went and she said they got free biscuits. I went for about 3 weeks until it become clear it was more about religion than biscuits and sacked it off much to my mums relief.

About 15 years later my cousin got married in the church the Sunday school was in. I sat on the end of the pew near a box with various kids stuff in. On the top was a colouring pencil tin with Elmer the elephant on it and a faded sticker with my full name on jt in marker pen . ....The colouring pencil tin they allocated me in Sunday school!

My parents once went on holiday and got talking to another couple (I'm going back about 28/29 years ago)

The couple shared the same first names as my parents and a shorter version of their surnames

They both had one girl and 3 boys-we all shared the same first names,ages and had the same birthday months

They lived in a village not far from where my parents live,my parents live in an Ave that shares the same name as the village,both had the same house number and their phone number was the same as my parents but the last two digits where the other way around

Both couples did the same type of jobs and shared the same star signs

The women also drove the same make and colour car and both men rode the same motorbike

I was pregnant with my first baby at the time-and so was their dd

We both went on to have baby girls,we (unknowingly) gave them almost the same name (say Sophie lousia/Sophie louise) the same birthweight,both had a shock of hair and where born hours apart on the same day

We also had the same pram,cot,bedding,first baby outfit and gave birth in the same nighties (just different colours)

My mother was delighted and kept in touch but my father was that freaked out he refuses to speak about them!

A friend of mine was from a very tiny village in Ireland. He had an unusual nickname (Lettuce!).

He went off travelling for a couple of years and around 6 months in, was in Sydney in Australia and as a last minute decision bought a ticket for a tour bus and got on.

At the next bus stop a guy got on and said "Hey! Lettuce! What are you doing here?!" - yup - two people from the same tiny village in Ireland bump into each other on a bus in Australia when neither of them knew the other was in Oz!

One from me. My DH has a fully WFH role for a company based in Scotland (we're in the South of England). Went on a cruise last year and as we were walking round the ship, someone in a Scottish accent said "I know that voice - Dave? Is that you??".

It was one of DH's work colleagues from Scotland! They'd never even seen each other as any calls they've had about work have been voice calls only, so this colleague recognised DH purely from his voice alone on a random stairwell on a cruise ship, hundreds of miles away from home for both of us!

I had a number of my ex's friends wife in my phone, forgot it was there from about 5 years earlier. She messaged me randomly and said the party starts at 7.30, be there at 7 so as not to ruin the surprise. I messaged her back and said I think you have the wrong 'name'. She apologised and said sorry, wrong 'name', meant to message a different 'name'.

I was however going to a party that night with my new BF at the time, a family members 60th. Turned out it was this woman, who texted me, mothers surprise 60th birthday party.

I often have the same experience as you OP in that I think I see someone, on closer inspection it’s not them but later that day I will meet the actual person!

On the beach in the Carribean, my DP hurt his foot. The woman who came to help him lived in DPs home town and worked with his father before she retired!

I have a very big but not very close family on my mum's side, so I'm not in close contact with cousins.
At my uncle's funeral I discovered that my cousin, who lives in Australia, is married to the uncle of a good friend, and her godfather is another of my cousins. We never would have made the connection if it wasn't for the fact that she has a very unusual surname, which is obviously also the married name of my cousin.

One day I was having a daydream and was thinking about what job I’d love to do. I started to think about a very specific role that I had no experience or connections in whatsoever - think entertainment/showbiz. About 3 months later, I got a call from someone offering me this job with the exact company I’d imagined. I did the job for a year!

I have REM sleep disorder which means very vivid and realistic dreams.

One night I dreamed that I was watching a former nightmare neighbour return to his former home in the middle of the night. It was the most vivid dream I've ever had and made me feel absolutely awful for all sorts of reasons [long story with this person].

The next day I found out he died in the middle of the previous night, roughly the same time I 'saw' him return to our street.

DP's convinced its a coincidence, I'm convinced its neighbour's ghost.

This actually happens to me fairly often (at least it feels that way!) but with people I know. So I'll be out in town, catch sight of someone I think I know then realise it isn't them, but then actually see them a few minutes later. It's a really odd phenomenon. I suppose it's one of those things that doesn't happen a statistically significant amount of times, I just obviously notice it when it does happen.

About a week before Princess Margaret's death,I dreamt that I saw a newspaper headline announcing that she had died. Totally freaked me out when a week later she did.

my best friend lived in a flat in Edinburgh. Turns out my sister-in-law also lived in the same flat at a different time (of all the flats in Edinburgh….) and we only found out when they were talking at my wedding.

years ago I was backpacking round the world and I went into an internet cafe in the suburbs of Sydney where I was living. I went onto friendsreunited.com (who remembers that!) and the person who’d been on the website before me on the same computer hadn’t logged out of their account. Whoever it was had been in the year above me at my school in Glasgow and had a lot of mutual friends listed on their homepage.

My dad booked me tickets and choose the seats for me at a sports event.

I was sat behind my ex boyfriend from 12 years previous - who had no interest in the sport when we were together. He was their with his then new girlfriend

sat in a hostel back in the 1980s in Malaysia and there were three of us in the common area sat reading - no interest back then! One person came in and starting talking, it turned out we all (all 4 of us) lived in the same town before going travelling

My great grandma had a letter she never sent to a friend, saying one of her line would marry an American who was in the air force, named his job and everything, what he looked like etc, it was me who married him.
None of us knew about it til about a year ago!

I had kind of lost touch with one of my old school best friends. We still sent each other Christmas cards and liked each other's SM posts but hadn't met up in years.

December 2023, I'd ordered a couple of things from Amazon and asked for them to be delivered to a local pick up locker. I received an email from Amazon saying the parcel was too large for the locker and had been sent back to the depot and I'd get a refund. I was a bit puzzled and pissed off but hey ho, fine.

A couple of days later, my old school friend rang me out of the blue. Apparently she'd had a parcel delivered to the locker too but there was another parcel in with hers with my name on it and she wondered if it was mine. Well, it was!!! Absolutely bizarre!

We met up just before Christmas and had the loveliest, funniest catch up! We were supposed to meet in January to catch up on each other's Christmas but unfortunately me and my family had Covid and I couldn't make it.
She sadly died a couple of weeks or so later 😔 At first I was absolutely gutted that we didn't meet up again but then when I thought about it, I was so comforted in the thought that we'd been somehow brought back together for one last time together before she died.

We were on holiday in Turkey in a large family group with adults and children. We practically filled the minibus on our own for a day trip, and there was just another group of four on board.

Got chatting to them and two of them (brother and sister) grew up in the small village we live in and went to the local school and all had connections with the area.

DH got exactly the same O Level grades as my GCSEs, same A-Level grades and degree classification, we weighed exactly the same at birth and he was born at midday and I was born at midnight.