What is the strangest coincidence you've ever experienced?

[kickly]

As above.

I have weird things happen to me all the time, I think I might be a white witch!

1. Years ago, on holiday in South America travelling around. Staying in a tiny town in Bolivia. Had a dream one night about an old friend. Next morning he turns up at the same hotel . Neither of us had any idea we were both in S. America.

2. Went out with a guy for a short while whilst I was travelling in Oz. He used to be a London Metropolitan policeman. Few years later started going out with a guy here. Turns out he used to be in the Metropolitan Police too. Turns out they used to buddy each other!

3. Also in Oz met a girl from the same city as me who was travelling to get away from all troubles and woes back home. She'd had a fling with this guy but it hadn't worked out. Years later bumped in to said girl with my hubby. Turns out my hubby was the man she'd run away from years earlier!

4. Finally always know when the phone rings and it's my mum (before I look at caller display!)

I'll just go and stir my cauldron now...........

In 1999 I live in a house share in London. A flatmate moved out and we advertised for a new one. Found an aussie girl who'd just arrived. She had two gay male best friends who she was travelling with. A year or so later I moved out and one of these guys B moved in to my room (we'd all intermittently hung out together during the year including momentously seeing in the millenium together and going to Glastonbury ). I lost touch with them all (shortly after they returned to Australia). Fast forward 17 yrs to last year. We live 100 miles from London. Been here 8 years. Have lovely retired neighbour who has for 8 years talked about Son who lives in Australia and married to lovely Australian man called B. We hear of them often including all wedding prep. Just before my neighbour moves away for good shes away and I am feeding her cats (as have done for yrs) and I notice photo of her sons partner...its the same australian guy! I find some photos of us seeing in the Millennium and sure enough it is..hes hardly changed in 17 years. When my neighbour returns i excitedly show her my photos....but she isnt in the least bit interested! (Crushing....its such a coincidence!). She does check though...and yes it is!

My life has been full of totally crazy coincidences. I used to be completely freaked out by them and seen a therapist for an explanation. He 'explained' it as synchronicity. Which didn't really explain what was happening AT All. There are SO many but I'll share a recent one. Sorry it's a bit long. I was at my friends hairdressing salon for a blow dry and we were discussing coincidences. She said that they happen to everybody but most people don't make a big deal out of them 😗 We then discussed a trip we were taking together in the near future and she asked if she was required to state her middle name on the passport she was about to order. I told her no and asked her what her middle name was. She said she hated it and never told anybody. After much cajoling & the agreement I would then divulge mine she told me. When I admitted that I didn't actually have one & she was mad 😂 I agreed to exchange her disliked one for my 'lack of' going forward. Shortly after the phone rang and she answered it. She looked at me (in what has become a recognisable manner 😂) and hung up on the caller. She seemed shaken and told me the call was for me. I explained that nobody knew that I was there & if it was for me they would call my mobile. The phone rang again and she insisted I answer it as it was 'him again'. When I did, it was a wrong number asking for a person with her middle name and my (very uncommon!) last name. I could see the funny side of it, she didn't. My DH has for the longest time explained these events as quantum physics which meant nothing to me, but recently I researched it further and found that Einstein called these occurrences 'Spooky action at a distance' .... I just LOVE that term!

My DM lived at the opposite end of the country to me. Her husband died and for two years she lived without him missing him terribly. Both my DM and DSF had periods of NC with family so relationships not great and added to the fact that DM had alcohol issues which made phone calls difficult as I was dealing with four small children and ranting calls at strange times. She was devasted when he died as although they had a tumultuous relationship they loved each other dearly. He died of bowel cancer on a day in January. During the next two years my DM was also then diagnosed with cancer but expected to make a good recovery. The day she went to start her treatment was the day her DH had died two years previously. She died that day. I'm not a spiritual person but I believe that he came and took her as she was so lonely and missed him so much.

A few years ago, we decided to drive from Bristol to Castlemartin on the South Pembrokeshire coast. We were heading for 'Freshwater West' where they filmed Harry Potter (where Dobby gets buried).
On the way there, we were followed by a familiar car. It was one I had traded in years ago! It was behind us for over five miles.
Then when we got to the beach, there was only one other family there and they had a DD who was the same age and same first NAME !
Really freaky day.

Years ago when DH was working away, about 200 miles from home, he went to the pub to watch a football match and got chatting to the guy next to him. The man in the pub turned out to be from the town where we lived. His mother was the cook at the nursery our daughter attended. So, basically, two random strangers meet and find that earlier that day, one's mum had cooked lunch for the other's child - 200 miles away.

I'm actually related to myself...

I was adopted at 5 days old. My parents moved from the city I was born when I was a baby and I grew up in another country. My birth mother and adoptive mother are the same nationality. A few years ago, my adoptive mother had asked me to do some research on her family tree...turns out my adoptive mother's great great great grandfather had a sister, and this sister is my birth mothers great great aunt.

Also, my birth mother married a man 10 years after I'd been adopted (not my birth father). Her husband and my adoptive Dad went to school together. My dad wasn't from that area but he'd gone to live there with his mother as WW2 broke out a few months after he was born. Dad returned to London with his mum after war had ended so really if it hadn't been for the war, they wouldn't have ended up going to school together.

Lastly, my birth mother has worked in retail in the city I was born at the university. Two of my friends went to uni here and back in 1997, I went up to visit them one weekend and we went into the universality bookshop, bought some books and then left. It was the shop where my birth mother works and she'd been there that day.

I should add that my adoption wasn't an open adoption, my birth mother only found me 6 years ago (when I was 32) so our paths really shouldn't have crossed at all seeing as I'd moved away from there as a small baby. She was very young when she had me and it wasn't acceptable to be a single young mum in the late 70s but we have a fabulous relationship now and we're still spooked by the coincidences (as is my adoptive mother!).

DP's parents and my parent have the same first names!

I went to school in the north but did briefly live in Oxfordshire and attend a school there when I was in my mid teens. I made some nice friends who I kept in touch with after I moved back north again. A year later I remember one of my friends from Oxford telling me our other friend was dating someone she had met online who was from the midlands. I didn't know anyone from that area at all (when I say I lived in the North I mean the proper North, the near Scotland bit ) Anyway I finished school and went to Uni in York where I became really good friends with a girl from Manchester and also her boyf who was at uni there too. This was around the time facebook had just started and was mainly used by students so we all were "friends" on that as well. After a year of being on facebook, more long distance friends joined up and I get a message from my Oxford friend telling me she had looked through my photos and the boyf of my uni friend was her ex boyf who she met online. Weird coincidence.

My brother, his wife and my other brother's wife all have the same birthday. Brother 1 and brother 2's wife, the same year.

I sat a GCSE at the other end of the country due to a family wedding being on the same day. I rocked up in hot pants and a vest (with the confidence only a 16 year old can have) to what was a conservative girls grammar school. Sat my exam, went on to bridesmaid duties.
Some years later whilst working in London I became good friends with a colleague of the similar age, became flatmates and eventually met her sister who was the same age. Somehow ended up talking about schools, they both went to the grammar school and the sister was in the exam and vividly remembered the girl in hot pants. Flatmate was a couple of years and very amused as I was somewhat of an urban legend, no one in subsequent years really believed some random girl turned up for an exam in hot pants when she didn't attend their school.
(In my defence it was boiling hot and they said I didn't have to wear my uniform.)

Sister was the same age as me, I meant.

My best friends mum has the same name as my mum and the same birthday. We were also born in the same hospital 2 days apart.

Couldn't really think of anything to add to this thread. Until yesterday...

Friend has just come back from holiday. My dp is a serious amateur (tm) pianist. Friend has sent me a picture of a poster of someone who bears some resemblance to my dp, sat at a piano, with my dp's full name above, and 'the pianist'. Apparently to be found playing every night from 9pm in the hotel bar. My dp's name is not particularly common in the UK, nor in the country she was in!

When I had my third child I met a new first time mum in the bed next to me,

When my son started school she recognised me ( God I must still look like I've just given birth!) She called her son the same name we'd been thinking of giving our son.. But thankfully didn't! ... And they lived on the same Rd we'd tried to buy a house so could you imagine how it could have worked out for the poor teacher, same name, d.o.b and same Rd!!!
I was also living in NY at one point and a fellow ' small home town ' resident bumped into me on a manhattan Street!!

I was talking to my nurse recently about a new job I had in a city several miles away, her son lived in that city and had just gotten a job there as well,
The Son was unsuccessful at first, but they called him a few days later to give him the job.

His new job was the first job I went for and got successfully, but turned down in favor of job #1 :D

Lots of other coincidences, By mum and Nan are born on the same day month, as is a cousin.
I think I was a disappointment I was so adamant I was not going to have my son on that day, he was born the day before, My poor Nan would have had a Daughter, Grandson and Great Grandson to celebrate with :D

On a walking holiday in Italy in a group of 18- our group of 4 and the others couples and singles who had never met before. One woman turned out to be the neighbour of a good friend of mine who lives about 125 miles from me. One of the couples found that a single chap had been married to their best friend in the years before they met her. Not bad for such a small group.
One time the good friend (S) my partner and I met up at a mutual friend's place in Somerset. S and my partner, who hadn't met before, got chatting and turns out her mother was renting a flat from Dp's cousin whilst looking for another place to buy in Cornwall. Then friend's neighbour, who had popped in to borrow something recognised S's mother's name (unusual surname) and she knew her from when she had lived in Cornwall years before!

A few weeks ago I dreamt about a silly crush I had years ago, I never knew his name and hadn't thought about him for years but his face was vivid in my dream. The next day I was looking at something on FB from the area I used to live and his face popped up. I now know his name, but strangely I think I preferred the mystery of not knowing.

Another frivolous one was when I was quite young I went to work in the Highlands. On my first night I got chatting to the family I was serving and it turned out the dad was friends with my friend's dad in our tiny village over 300 miles away.

Oh, and another silly one. My parents were visiting and staying in a local hotel. We went to see them at their hotel one night and there, in the hotel bar, was DC's lollypop lady from his primary school. Again, hundred's of miles away.

I was born in London and got married at a registry office in Hertfordshire where I had lived most of my life. The registrar who was officiating checked my birth certificate and said "God Lord, this is the first time this has happened, I actually registered your birth as well!"

Mine is a bit spooky. My dh's older sister was killed in an road traffic accident when she was nearly 18, dh who was 13 at the time was very close to his sister. Dh's brother had a daughter in 1996 (10yrs after accident) she was born on the birthday of the sister. Our own dd1 was born in 2011 on the same birthday as both her cousin and deceased aunt. Add to this a weird voicemail received by dh a few weeks after dd1s birth saying 'hi xxxxxx it's big sis I've been trying to get hold of you and xxxxxx (brother) as I have important news for you ' the voicemail got lost before we had been able to work.out if it was a cruel joke or something weirder.

On holiday in New Orleans with my sister (so two indian girls together). The hotel staff kept asking us where our mom was. Had no idea what they were going on about.

On the last day, we bumped into a PA from my work with her two half indian daughters who both looked abit like us in the lobby - the hotel staff had been mixing them and us up all week. Had absolutely no idea that they were there!!

And another holiday one.

DH whisked me off to Venice as a surprise 40th treat - our first day there I bumped into someone I did environmental work with in Africa 20 years ago, rapidly followed by bumping into an old uni friend and her husband who were randomly in Venice too that weekend.

I've loads. I was walking down the street in Amsterdam and bumped into a group of lads I had met exactly a year beforehand in America - they were on an anniversary trip.

My daughter goes to a primary school that had a hit or two in the seventies. I thought there was no chance of her getting into that school as we were out of area etc. The night before getting her place, I was feeling low and was forced by work colleagues to go to the pub for a drink. As I walk in the song the school is famous for starts playing in what was quite a townie sort of pub

Friend at uni in a different country chats up a girl who happens to be my first cousin I hadn't met yet.

Daughter finds my partners long lost ring belonging to late father in a weird place on his dad's anniversary.

Ooh I love this. Could go on for hours.

Resturant in Ulan Bathroom ( capital of Mongolia) I met a man and chatted with him. We spent a pleasant evening together and parted assuming that was that. He was Danish.

Two months later a man asked to share my table at local coffee shop 2 minutes.walk from my home..
Same man!!