Can we have a thread where we share unlikely but true stories?

[letsgowiththat]

I'll start.

My (non English speaking) DGF received an email (in English) from the solicitor of a man who claimed to be the son of a long lost relative from Africa claiming he was basically of princely status and there was an inheritance waiting for my DGF and his siblings.
So basically like the Nigerian prince scam.

Except it was all true and it was a relative who escaped my DGFs home country as he did not want to be drafted into the war and ended up never contacting anyone again and building a small empire in Africa, getting married (multiple times) and having DCs. He willed a small part of his accounts to my DGFs by then deceased mother who was his cousin and then it got passed down and split between my DGF and his siblings by default. Not life changing money but one of our favourite stories to tell!

The majority of the emails was done through google translate as well

Does anyone have any "sounds like a lie but is true" stories they'd like to share?

Had a miscarriage unfortunately then when on to have my son. Son was 3 and we were all in bed one night when i heard a massive crash ran downstairs and my son followed down. It turned out plates had fell out od the cupboard. Oh thats ted he said the baby you never had he was climbing and opened the cupboard and they fell out he didnt mean to mum. Still gives me goosebumps...

I have been with my husband for 26 years - I come from Hampshire, he comes from Surrey. I moved to Devon when I was 8, he moved down when he was in his thirties. We started to do his family tree - all his ancestors from around London area etc., until we got to a great, great, great grandad in the 1800's who was a merchant. We looked up his death certificate and it turned out that I lived as a teenager in EXACTLY the same house in Plymouth! To think I slept in the same rooms as my husbands family all those years ago, Very strange!

My sister and her husband were born on the same day, same month, same year, same Hospital - in fact our mothers were in opposite beds at the Hospital. They never knew each other, met at 21.

An elderly friend found out aged 75 she was in fact a twin. She had been adopted, but her adoptive parents only wanted one child so her sister had grown up in an orphange. They met - sadly the sister had been treated very badly in the orphanage, and was illiterate.The elderly family friend then confessed that she had also had a baby out of wedlock - a secret she kept for more than 60 years.

When I was a toddler my mum had a friend who had a DD same age as me , so our mums were friends and me and her DD played together.
Then we moved away and my mum list touch with her friend.
When i was 10 we moved back to the same town where we had lived before.
I went to school and was seated next to a girl called 'Kailey Right' ,somehow it sounded familiar. My parents asked me about my first day at new school and I also mentioned the name of the girl i was sitting next to - this was my mum's friend'd DD from years ago!! My mum got back in touch with her friend!
I sat next to her for 3 days, then she fell ill, and died of appendicitis.

On my first date with my now DH, I was hungry after the comedy show that we had attended and asked if he'd like to go to a Chinese restaurant close to mine for a bite to eat.

All goes well and after the meal we were presented with our fortune cookies. I opened mine and immediately tried to discard/hide it from my date while trying not to die from embarrassment. I was not successful.

How could a generic fortune cause such emotion you ask? Well, it read "You will marry the one you are with". On a first date. With someone that I'd only known a couple of weeks.

We were married one year later almost 25 years ago and, although the fortune lived on my bulletin board for several years, I always wish that I had taken better care to save it. I also often think of the fortune creator who must have had a real laugh when he came up with that gem!

My nephew between the ages of about 1 and 4 would roar with laughter when he was in his room on his own. As he got older my sister could often hear him talking. She asked him who he was talking to and replied ‘the old man like grandad’ He told her there was an old man that used to talk to him and sit by his bed until he went to sleep.

I saw a peacock in my garden. This was about 16 years ago. I then went to school and told my friends and everyone made fun of me. My mum, my cousin and I all saw it. We were just standing there at the window transfixed and then it went into the neighbours garden and off... must have escaped from somewhere.

When I was a teenager, I would often hear my mum calling me from the front room. When I'd come out of my room to ask what did she want, she would say that she was just thinking about calling me and hasn't actually called my name yet.

@Iwantacookie Happened to me at my grandmothers house when I was about 10. She asked me to phone my aunt I picked the phone up no dial tone. I turned to my grandma and said " no tone?" and then my aunt went Hello?? She had called just as I went to call her.

When I was in year 5 we moved house. At the time I was living few streets away from my best friend (we had been best friends since nursery) and she was also moving. Despite us being best friends, our parents didn't really get along so they never questioned where each other were going. A couple of weeks after the move, we saw them in the supermarket. It turns out they'd moved a couple of streets away from us (brand new city). Anyway fast forward to year 9 and my parents had enough of the city life and wanted to move to a little village. 2 days after my parents bought this house (about an hour away from the current house) my best friend announced she was moving school their home was being repossessed. At my first day of my new school she was there; she has been rehomed in emergency housing close to the new school in the new village. She was my maid of honour at my wedding.

My first kiss was on holiday with a boy who I'd fancied and kept bumping into the whole trip. Well one night we went onto the balcony to watch some firework display and he was on the balcony next to ours!
Then we got chatting and discovered we actually lived five minutes down the road from one another.

My sister and I had our first children a few months apart, but we live at opposite sides of the country. My nephew went to Liverpool University, which isn't near either of us.

After he'd left he was showing us some photos - and in a group shot there was a very familiar face. Turned out that DN had unknowingly house shared with DS's best friend!

My grandmother once woke up to discover a burglar in her bedroom. She was a rather fierce woman, and attacked the burglar, who ran out of the house, and across the fields at the back of the house. When he reached the road, he flagged down a car, hoping the driver would unwittingly drive him away from the scene. The car that pulled up was a police car, so the burglar got in, presumably not wanting to arouse suspicion by rejecting the lift. As they drove along, the description of the burglar was read out over the police radio, and the officers were able to take him straight to the nick.

I’m not in the slightest superstitious or a believer in the afterlife/that sort of thing.

That said, about 15-or so years ago I knew a bloke through work and a few times he and his wife came to events we had organised. She was a lovely lady, but I probably only met her 4 or 5 times. We heard that she was ill with cancer and then a few months later I had a really vivid dream that this lady was in. She wasn’t the focus of the dream, just sort of in the background, and when I made eye contact with her she silently raised a glass of wine to me in a “cheers” gesture. I thought nothing of it until a few days later we found out that she had died the same night I had the dream.

Very odd and unnerving.

I had 2 cats who were pretty much identical that I called after my grandfathers. Had lived at the house for a couple of years when one of them vanished and never found out what happened to him. Move on a few months and a cat came to the patio door to be let in so I went to get up but only then twigged the other cat was sat on the sofa near me. The other cat was still at the.door as went to let him in but then was gone by the time I got there. The next day I was told that the grandfather whom the cat outside had been named after had died. I never saw that cat again and it was as if my grandfather had come to say goodbye.

My mother was born on the same day as Prince Charles and my maternal grandfather was serving on the same ship as Prince Philip at the time. He congratulated my gaga in person and sent my nana a very posh basket of fruit. In 1948.
100% true. I was going to put it on fb after watching all the bbc reminising but people wont believe me :(

Ooo now I am reading peoples dreams ones it reminds me of 3 that happened to me:

1. When I was 12 I had a dream my aunt was expecting so I told my mum and that day my aunt called to say she was pregnant
2. My cousin was pregnant and I had a dream where I walk into a room and there is a picture of my cousin her husband a little boy and a little girl (the girl being younger than the boy). She had a boy in that pregnancy and then went on to have a girl 3 years later
3. My other cousin was pregnant last year and to be fair she was near her due date I had a dream that the baby would be born that week on Sunday and that's when she arrived.

I have dreams about having kids myself but that's not come true so far...

When I was a teenager I was in a bad car crash with my mum. A truck hit us head on. Thankfully we weren’t hurt. It was on a dark twisting country road miles from anywhere.
Some passing drivers eventually stopped to help. One man took on the job of directing traffic.
The next morning I arrived into school ( no mollycoddling in those days!) and said I’d been in a car accident. Turns out the random helper was my best friend’s dad.

Just remembered another.

My gran had a stroke at home, my grampy found her on the sofa. She was taken into hospital.

They had 5 boys (my dad is one of them) and they were all married.

Between them they came up with a rota, so that she'd have a visitor each afternoon and night, and us grandkids would take turns to do weekend visits.

She was in hospital for weeks and everyone stuck to their visiting sessions.

One morning, everyone turned up all at the same time, none of them had pre arranged this, they all just decided independently that's what they wanted to do.

As soon as they were all in the room, granny was in a side room by then, she died with them all there together.

Flying back from Canada and I'd dislocated my knee prior to the flight, airline were excellent and moved the only other passenger from the row into first class so I could lie down fully, throughout the flight he kept coming to check on me and we got chatting, I was a student in Yorkshire at the time and it turned out the other passenger lived 3 streets away from me and we often went to the same pub quiz.

Also in Canada when attending a Christmas Party I got talking to a lovely Canadian lady, her husband was from the North East and we got chatting, I said I was from a small village no one had ever heard of and he was originally from the next village down, in 1500 people it felt like fate the to meet him

Many years ago, I lived in town A, and my neighbour was a really good friend, I'll call her Pam.
I moved away (200 miles north) to town B, and, after a while Pam moved about 300 miles south to town C, back to where she'd grown up.
I met my now dh 5years or so after I moved to town B, and we'd been seeing each other for a few months. He had a best friend (ill call him Dan) who'd I'd met a couple of times.
Pam was getting married, and I was invited to the wedding. Dh decided not to come, but mentioned that he thought Dan was from round about where Pam was getting married, and that he would be down there that weekend for his sisters wedding.
Sitting in the church, and the music starts, everyone turns around to see the bride and her brother, who was walking her down the aisle. You've guessed it, Pam and Dan.

Grew up in Northern Ireland and at 16 went on holiday to Cork for a week and met a load of people. Years later I had moved to London for work and although I worked in the suburbs was out in town during the week meeting a friend fir a drink, this was very rare as I worked shifts. Was on a tube platform waiting for a tube home and a guy walking up the platform and says ‘Hello Lozza70’. It was one of the guys I had met in Cork more than 10 years earlier. Even stranger he was in London for 3 days as he lived in the US as was only over sorting his green card.

My best friend's parents had divorced when she was a baby and they mutually agreed that her father would have no contact.

When she was old enough, my friend decided to track him down.
She eventually found him: he was my dad's partner at work: they'd been sharing a lorry long distance for over a year.
I don't know which of them was the more flabbergasted.