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Original poster

What is the strangest coincidence you've ever experienced?

565 replies

kickly · 03/02/2017 22:48

As above.

OP posts:
Stormwhale · 04/02/2017 22:27

My mum met one of her best friend due to a strange coincidence. They originally met on the labour ward having their first children. My mum had complications so was still in hospital when friend arrived two days later. They lost touch afterwards. Nearly three years later, friend had 2nd child, but had complications so was still in hospital two days later when my mum came in to have me. They decided it was fate and have been close ever since.

kelper · 04/02/2017 22:30

Dh and I were in some random hotel in Dubai.
Lift opens one morning on the way to breakfast, we get in, the guy in the lift is someone DH has worked with in malaysia and hasnt seen for a year!
We have A Lot of random meetings of people, dh knows a lot of folk ;)

cherrycokehead · 04/02/2017 22:44

Not sure if this is best described as an amusing coincidence or just an attempted crime Blush... when my best friend and I were 16 or 17 we wanted to go to party in town but it was a few miles away and we didn't have the money for a taxi. So I came up with the idea of ordering a taxi to pick us up from a few doors down then doing a runner when we got to the party, so that they wouldn't trace us to my house. So the taxi turned up and the driver asks if it's our house and we of course replied yes.

"Are you sure?" he said

"yeah!" we replied, a bit confused...

"Well that's funny... because that's where I live"

cherrycokehead · 04/02/2017 22:45

We ran away

Kaybush · 04/02/2017 22:51

My children, aged 10 and 13 years, were both born on New Years Day!

BigGap17 · 04/02/2017 22:56

Me and my partner have quite a large age gap, 17 years. Anyway, rumour has it, that when I was a baby, he was crashing on his mates sofa (completely out of it so has no memory) while his mate (was going out with my mum, my sort of step dad for a bit) and my mum were upstairs dtd. Also turns out we are very distantly related, not enough to matter at all, but still weird that we were drawn to each other, I met him at someone's house while my mums ex, his mate, was sitting with me and the other guy. Small world eh.

Forgetmenotblue · 04/02/2017 23:02

I moved from London to a town 60 miles away, to a house in a small close of 8 other houses. When we arrived here, it turned out that everyone in all 8 houses had moved from the same small London suburb to this close. We'd all been living within a mile of each other in London, and are now neighbours here, though none of us knew each other in London, we had mutual friends/ schools/ churches/ work mates.

littlefrenchonion · 04/02/2017 23:25

In a DIY shop picking up some bits for DH. The phone behind the desk and the guy picks it up and says to me "Um, are you Mrs F?" I say, yes, he says, "oh, ok good, I have your husband L on the phone?" So I nod that my husband is indeed 'L.F' and took the phone. Was very confused to find this person wasn't my DH but had the same name, and, I think he had actually phoned the wrong number altogether and was meant to phone another DIY shop. I left the shop trying to work out if someone was playing some odd pointless prank on me... very odd!

cherrycokehead · 04/02/2017 23:30

Just thought of another one... ex dp was showing me some photos of a festival he'd gone to several years before I met him and there was one of his best friend dancing in a music tent. There was a crowd behind him but all the people were too blurred to see properly except for one person dancing right behind him... my best friend.

littlefrenchonion · 04/02/2017 23:33

Also, growing up we saw two sets of my parents friends and their kids fairly regularly - holidays, days out etc. They are both like family. One set live in london and the other lived in Lincoln. None of them ever met each other to my knowledge.

On FB the other day, I saw a photo of the son of one family and the daughter of another. Turns out they are now a couple after meeting at uni. Such a small world!

SleepOhHowIMissYou · 04/02/2017 23:51

Friend's fiance had just joined a new band (he's a drummer), invited me to watch his gig in Camden with her. When we turn up my best friend is there as the guest of her friend who was going out with the lead guitarist!

Was a good night!

BikeRunSki · 05/02/2017 00:01

I have a fairly niche/specialist job, and there are only a few universities where you can qualify. I rocked up on site for a new project, introduced myself to the site supervisor who asked whether I was a product of the University of L or N. I told him N. a week later he asked me how I knew his aunt! Turns out his aunt was my ex bf's mum.

Tigger1986 · 05/02/2017 01:03

Was on holiday in Turkey with my dad and brother when I was 17, got chatting to a girl and her mum who lived in a town about 40 mins away, but I'd never heard of it. Stayed friends online but never met up again. I went to Uni a couple of years later and one of my best friends from my course went to school with her. Fast forward about five years and I start chatting to my OH on an online dating site. Comes from the same town as the girl I made friends with in Turkey. A couple of weeks later he tells me he showed my picture to his best mate - who turns out to be someone I also went to uni with. Eventually we get together and I go to watch him play rugby. Was talking to one of his teammates from rugby - turns out to be the girl from Turkeys stepbrother! I know live happily with my OH in the town she was from Smile

Tigger1986 · 05/02/2017 01:05

Meant to say 40 mins away from where I lived at the time (not in Turkey!)

NewgatesKnockers · 05/02/2017 03:48

Last year I was reunited with my biological mother. Turns out she married a man with the same last name that I gave my ds

steff13 · 05/02/2017 03:53

Mine is dull. I was leaving work one day, and a man came up to me and told me he needed to get the bus, but he was $.35 short of the fare. He asked if I had $.35 he could have. I told him probably not, as I rarely have any actual money with me. I reached into coat pocket and I did have some change there - exactly $.35. I said, "this must be yours," and gave it to him.

salsmum · 05/02/2017 04:11

When my husband passed away I had 2 poems that I was considering being read as part of the service one was a very well known memorial poem and the other ( even as a lover of poetry) I'd never heard of the vicar came and we spoke about the service and I said I'd like a poem read he said can I recommend a poem that's quite rare but my personal favourite? Yep you guessed it it was the exact same one.

CaoNiMa · 05/02/2017 06:47

I thought of some more! I'm honestly not making these up - they just keep popping into my head now I'm thinking about the subject.

At university in 1999, I was at a house party and got chatting to a guy who was a "townie" in the city, not a student. Seemed like a cool guy. Had a nice chat. Thought no more of it. Then, ten years later in a city in the Far East, I turned up at a "media networking" event, and ran into the same chap, who was working for a magazine out there!

This one isn't strictly mine, but it's a good one. My friend was hiking up a mountain in Borneo (as you do), and struck up a conversation with some guys on the summit. It emerged that one of them was the brother of a girl we went to uni with.

HappenedForAReisling · 05/02/2017 07:50

Visiting London with Canadian DH and his Canadian family. We were wandering around the Nike store when someone calls out his name. It was two of his friends from back home ( a married couple) who he'd known from childhood. They were on a stopover from their home in the Caribbean to Eastern Europe.

Middleagedmumoftwo · 05/02/2017 07:56

Years ago when our children were toddlers we went abroad and met a couple at the hotel who came from the same region as us and had kids with the same names as ours. The kids made friends so we ended up spending the fortnight hanging out with them and had a lovely holiday, but didn't stay in touch. Twenty years later parents in law went abroad and met a couple their age who's company they enjoyed for the week, and when they got back told us all about them and that they too had grandchildren called X and Y, a phone call to them established that they were the parents of the couple we had spent time with 20 years previously.

Diamondsandpurls · 05/02/2017 07:59

When I was 11 I went on holiday to Africa. During a walking safari in a dry rocky game park, I suddenly stopped and picked up a rock. What are the chances of it looking like this? Out of billions of rocks in that game park one had just so happened to be this hap (the photo doesn't do it justice, it is very similar).

Last year I went for a day trip with my parents and kids. On the way home we hit traffic and so got off the motorway and went a backroad way. Ended up driving through somewhere I'd never heard of except or 2 days before when I was listening to a true crime podcast. We then drove past the exact scene of the crime.

Summerisdone · 05/02/2017 08:14

When I moved into my current home a couple years ago, it turned out I already knew my neighbour. Neither of us are originally from this area though and actually grew up in another city an hour or so from here, which is where I knew her from as we used to occasionally hang out as kids when we lived just a street apart.
I hadn't seen or even thought of her since I moved away from there to somewhere else about 8 years previously though.

Also aunt and uncle went on holiday to India 15 years ago, there they met a man from Coventry who was also on holiday with friends. They all got along etc. but nobody kept in touch after the holiday, so imagine aunt and uncle's surprise when 6 months later my mum introduced them to her new boyfriend (now husband) who had recently moved all the way up to Manchester (where we live) and it was the same man they had met on holiday in India.

PrinceHansOfTheTescoAisles · 05/02/2017 08:26

Mine is a bit spooky... I had to take dd to a funeral in Milton Keynes and was anxious about getting there in time etc.. So the night before I dreamt about us going there as I often do when anxious about the next day. In my dream I bumped into Nick from the Apprentice. Next morning at Euston, guess who I spot? Nick from the Apprentice!

Trooperslane · 05/02/2017 08:36

Glum same as me.

Mum died 7 years later, on the same day.

1245am. She held on. StarHalo

Chipper47 · 05/02/2017 08:51

Many years ago, my mum was happily showing me the pictures from a wedding she and dad had attended; I knew the groom from our local pub vaguely, but not his wife.
Fast forward a few years, and I meet a long haired rocker and his cousin who have recently moved to my town from up north. Said rocker and I hit it off and we start seeing each other.
It gets to the "Want to come back to mine for coffee?" stage in the proceedings and I gladly go back to the flat he shares with his cousin.
There are a lot of family photos there and a wedding one catches my eye.

Turns out that the couple in that photo are the same bride and groom from my mum's pictures.
The bride is the sister of the rocker's cousin. (Obviously they are first cousins too!)

Said rocker and I have 3 DC and 3 DGC, 24 years onGrin, so we were obviously destined to be.
And he still has the hair