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?

@Ratched sorry I've just read the opening bit of your story. I'm sorry about your dad that obviously isn't lovely!

Years ago I was a student at Lancaster Uni. One weekend a friend and I travelled to London for some reason. As we walked down a side street, there ahead of us were two friends of ours from the same uni.

They weren't going to the same place as us, it was completely coincidental that we were all visiting London the same day, and were walking down the same quiet street at the same time.

39 years ago my family were relocating from another country to the UK and DF was looking for a property to buy. It was getting late as he was driving through a village and he stopped to ask a couple of old men where the nearest B&B was. One of the old men said ‘sometimes I take people in myself’. My dad stayed with the old man and ended up buying his house. They still live there. ‘Best plot in the village’, according to a local architect.

Similarly, as a child we lived in the Midlands. One holiday we went to a remote part of Northern Scotland. I was playing with my sister in a field when a voice shouted my name - it was a girl in my class at school, also on holiday in the same remote area!

When I worked in the US ( California ) on a medical contract I found a lovely old MG on the back lot of an Auto dealer. The hood was a bit ropey but it was spotless, rust free , drove really well and he only wanted $1000. Ran it for a year and decided to ship it home when I left only I could never get the glove box open. When I got it home I finally got it open. Inside were a load of parking violation tickets and a pistol , as in a gun !. The Police were a little snotty about it but the mechanism had jammed and it hadn’t been fired in years.

@mm40

I’ve seen a ghost

I woke up at 3years old screaming the house down that ‘Granny’s dead’. My mother had a phone call at 8am saying that granny had died and my mother calmly replied ‘Thank you, but I knew at 3am when my son told me, thank you for calling and I’ll be in touch later’.

I had very similar when my grandad died.

I heard the very unique chime from the clock in his sitting room even though my family home was 100 miles away. I told my mum he’d died and minutes later the phone rang to say he had.

@Confusedmeanderings I love your story! What grade did you get for it?! My theory is that the professor who wrote the exam had recently returned the book to the library (was it prominent on the shelf or on the top of a pile?) and because he/she had been working using it to write the exam it naturally opened at that page!

Happened only recently. Was selling some converse shoes of my DD’s on eBay- an unusual pair with a rainbow design. I set up the auction to attract international buyers too.

The buyer turned out to be my neighbour at a farm I own 300kms away from my city house. She was buying them for her DD, a little girl that mine often plays with- one equally obsessed with rainbows! I was able to deliver the shoes personally, since I’d planned to drive up there the same day as the eBay auction finished. Something I only do twice a year.

Strangest part was, we mums couldn’t get our DD’s excited about the coincidence. As far as they were concerned, one inherited the others shoes from a neighbour- the most normal thing ever.

With 182 million eBay members worldwide, I thought it was pretty cool!

I moved to the town where i lived from a city about 20 years ago. About 10 years ago I became good friend with a woman here . One day I was sitting in her kitchen and recognised from a photo on the wall a friend of mine from the city. I had lost touch with her.

Sadly I learnt she had come to live in this town, had got into huge debt after her divorce and had taken her life

When DS was around 2 (I think, he was cruising furniture but not fully walking and could say some words?) we were in my grandparents house and he kept going over to a dresser thing, pulling himself up and reaching up to a photograph on the top shelf.

When I went over to him he said clear as day "grandma".

It was a photo of my mum who died 5 years before DS was born but there were no photos of her in our house so no way of him knowing who it was.

@Confusedmeanderings

I had to defer the exams for one of my degree units for two years. It was Medieval French and I had not touched the subject during those two years. I was OK with the literature part of the exam, but for part of it I also had to translate a text into English. The night before, I panicked, went to the uni library, selected a book in Medieval French at random from the shelves, opened it at random and translated a page. Then I thought sod it and went off to the bar. When I got into the exam the next day and looked at the text, it was the exact passage I had translated the night before.

I love this! I hope you passed?

I have another.

One of my oldest and closest friends lives arounds 2.5hrs away so we don't see each other often but we text and chat every few weeks. One afternoon I remember thinking ooh I haven't heard from X I'll text her, but then I got distracted with work and forgot.

I remembered when I went to bed but it was quite late so didn't text, but I hardly slept a wink. All night I had this awful feeling connected to my friend. I had an overwhelming urge to speak to her so I text her as soon as I got up but she didn't reply all day which was completely out of character for her. The little ticks didn't even appear to say it was delivered and as the day went on I was getting more uneasy and upset.

She finally text me late that night to tell me her Dad had committed suicide the previous day.

Friend of mine was working abroad in France but was about to leave to start a new job within the same company in California.

Her mum was back in her home country and out to lunch with a friend one day, telling friend how her daughter was tying up loose ends in france and training in her replacement. Woman at the next table interrupted to say ....''its my daughter shes training in'' !
So weird.

I bumped into my childhood best friend in a super super remote part of the world thousands of miles away, not even a holiday or travel destination it was somewhere so completely random. I dont want to share location as I've told this story to many people so quite outing!

Have also bumped into 2 other people I know on holiday again in very random and non standard tourist places..

Oh I also once got one of those 'guess how many pennies are in the tub' thing right to the exact amount. Think I guessed like 1702 or something and it was exactly right. I put the lottery on that night. Didn't win.

@iwantacookie It happened to me! It was my mum, not a friend, but exactly the same thing.

My flat mate was a murderer who had escaped from prison and was on the run from the police.

@MojoJojo71

My dad was adopted and had struggled to find his birth mother for many years. My mum had a heart attack and while recovering in coronary care she struck up a friendship with the elderly woman in the next bed. They got chatting about their children and the lady told her she’d had a son who had been adopted and it turned out to be my dad. I was with him at home when he got the phone call from my mum to say ‘I think I’ve found your mother’

That's amazing

I moved a long, long way from home and one day started chatting to a lady who by bizarre coincidence grew up in the same small, isolated village as my husband. She asked if I knew of her family and had a very unusual surname from a family a relative of mine had married into.

I relayed the conversation to my family member and it turned out that the woman I'd chatted to, had disappeared 50+ years ago and nobody knew if she was still alive as they'd never been able to find her.

@Whoopsies

My cousin has asd and was non verbal for the first 6 years of his life. When he was 6 we were all sat round the big family dining table at my grandparents house for Sunday lunch and he piped up to ask 'can somebody pass me the ketchup?' There was absolute silence as he had literally never spoken a word before. When asked why later he said he had never had anything worth saying before!! He talked a fair bit after that and is now a normal talking adult!

I’ve heard that one before only it was the salt he wanted passing

At 18 I moved 300 miles away from my home town, got married and stayed here.

Im 45 now and have been here for 27 years. My husband needed a new employee for our business and we got loads of applications. I looked them all up on Facebook before we interviewed them, just to check they weren’t complete odd balls. Can’t really explain why but one of them just jumped out at me. We put him on the interview list.

He did well at interview and we decided to employ him. On the first day he was driven in to work by his wife. She was my best friend from primary school who I hadn’t seen since we were 11. She’d also moved to our little town a couple of years before. We’re best mates again now.

I found four four leaf clovers in one year after a good 20 years of looking.

My mum and grandad saw a ghost. Family of 6 sitting at dinner in dining room, the two of them heard a creak and looked up towards the open door into the hall. They both saw great grandma (maternal side) in a, as she describes it, still frame from a film, like a freeze frame, in the act of walking past the door. She'd died a few weeks beforehand.
My mum is the least woo person out there and that my grandad saw it at the same time, makes me believe it.

We've met one of ds's school mates and one of dh's work colleagues on the same seaside beach. We also were chatting one day to someone who turned out to know the owner of the cottage we were staying in - good job we didn't moan about it!!

@covidcorvid

It is a very bizarre situation. It is absolutely true - if people don’t believe it then so be it. It is what is it.

I also met a lady when I was working in Central London on an ‘anniversary night of a millennium boom company’ and she invited me into a cubicle in the ladies for a few treats (one involving a straw) and afterwards realising she was from a village in Wales 3miles away from where I was brought up and I actually knew her parents quite well, oops.

At the end of first year at university, I visited the family home of a new friend I had made there. She lived in another country.

One evening her mum got out some old photo albums of holidays they had had in England.

Looking through, I came across a photo of her aged 10ish and her older brother on trampolines at Lyme Regis. I was just saying ' I've been on those trampolines!' when I spotted myself, in a late 1960s brown anorak, in the background of her photo. I had my back to the camera but it was definitely me.

En route from Yorkshire to Oxfordshire, my middle-aged SIL stopped at the motorway services, where she got chatting to a young stag party in outrageous distinctive outfits. She took a selfie with the lads and sent it to our niece.

Later that day, niece was with her friend, whose fiance had gone north for a stag do. She described their outfits. Niece pulled out her phone and showed her the photo, saying, "My auntie met them a few hours ago. Here they are!"