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?

I had a car stolen in 1987. It was completely wrecked and the cassette player was nicked out of it, along with all the cassettes. I eventually got the car back, but it was a write off. I was very sad, there were some of my favourite mix tapes taken. Under the drivers seat though, I found an Echo and the Bunny men tape. Seven years later, I was burgled, but I disturbed them. They managed to grab all the CDs in their storage units. But they'd failed to take the cd player itself (awkward separates arrangement. The Cd left inside the machine? Echo and the Bunnymen 😁
Not very interesting now I've read that back!

@FanPanCan - you have a very sought after music collection. When my car was broken into around 15 years ago, they stole my disc-man but left my CDs - I was slightly offended by that!

Cowbells I read once about someone who came out of a coma speaking fluent French, they didn’t know any before! I also saw a couple on TV where he’d been in a coma, she’s stood by him, nursed him...he came round with a totally different personality and they divorced because they didn’t get on any more!
The brain is very complex.

This happen around two weeks ago when I was working at a Covid clinic;

I went to the waiting room and called the next patient, took her into the treatment room and started asking her name, DOB etc when a manager came running in and said ‘stop, you have the wrong patient, yours is next door’

(Using different names due to patient confidentiality but it’s the same sort of theory) let’s say this woman was called ‘Clair Smith ’ A woman in the next room to us at that same time was called ‘Claire Smith’

However both of these ladies were Chinese and therefore much more unusual names than the ones given above.

They both have the same name (apart from one letter)
They both have the same date of birth.
Both Registered at the same GP practice
And had both come for their Covid vaccines on the same date at the same time.

Both of them are complete strangers and not related.

It was only because the team in the next room with the other ‘Claire Smith’ realised she was the wrong one we then realised we had each others patient and the huge coincidence.

I was on a cruise a few years back with my DH and my parents. We were sat chatting in a bar when an elderly gentleman commented that he loved our accent and that it reminded him of being an evacuee during the war when he was sent to a little village in The North East. We were laughing and chatting with him and his wife and said how we lived literally in the next village.
He started to tell us how it was one of the happiest times of his life, told us the address and then the names of the people he was evacuated to.
My Dad was amazed - it was his Auntie and Uncle who he had lived with .
The man was really quite emotional and it was just surreal to hear him describe his life as literally part of our family

Years ago my sister and I were travelling though France. We found ourselves in the middle of nowhere and we were starving.
We found somewhere to eat, there was a set menu but no prices, just some friendly people who said yes, come and eat. Looking back on it, they looked a bit confused and our French isn’t that great and strangely they didn’t speak much English.
We had the tastiest food ever, nice wine but it was a very strange atmosphere and very quiet like a big dining hall. We realised that everyone was looking at us a bit strange.
We paid up and were delighted that it was so cheap
It was only on our way out that we realised it was an old people’s home and we’d crashed their lunchtime!

Here's another mundane one.

I live in the UK. I attended law school in America.

Several years after finishing law school, I was with a friend in Paris. We were in a queue in the metro to get a ticket. The woman in front me me turned around - she was my law school classmate!

Gosh I have a few. Some are outing hence the new name for this thread.

We have a reasonably unusual surname. When we moved into our house, dh went round to the neighbours to introduce himself and came back stunned to find that not only did our neighbours have the same surname, their son has exactly the same name as dh including middle name. We still live next door but the namesake son has his own home now.

My son started secondary school and in the holidays was invited to a new friend's house in a neighbouring town. We knocked and were very surprised when the door was opened by someone who had babysat for us regularly for over a decade, and it turned out she was their nanny

I used to work for one of the big 4 accountants. At my first NCT class the teacher asked who I worked for, and when I responded asked if I knew Jane Smith. Jane Smith and I were one of 6 trainees who had joined my small department at the same time nearly 10 years earlier, in a firm with thousands of employees.

On the way to our holiday we had a minor "road rage" incident at the channel tunnel. It was a situation where two lanes were merging into one, and every one was alternating except this car decided he wasn't, and went to great lengths to keep us from merging in front of him. We were then behind him all the way through the tunnel as we were both routed to the same lane for boarding. That was awkward enough, but after 10 hours of driving across two days we arrived at our destination and yup, the same car arrived at the campsite just in front of us.

My third pregnancy was twins and I had a real sixth sense that it would be. I said it so many times, to different people, around that time, both before falling pregnant and in the early stages before my scan. They are identical so no inherited trait, just a fluke, and anyway we have no twins in the family.

Finally, someone I worked with closely for the best part of a year went to jail for a crime which I had read about in the news and saw featured on crime watch. I can't say I would have had a clue, and in the end his arrest was due to his accomplice bragging rather than the reconstruction. It was very sad, he was only young and threw away a promising career.

Mine's not that weird really but it only happened the other day so quite fresh in memory.

I was in Sainsburys and pulled out my phone to look at a text off my son with his shopping list on it. There was a notification for my Ring doorbell so I watched the video. It was of a woman with a young girl. I presumed it must be a friend of my eldest DD (28) as the woman looked a similar age, she was smiling/happy walking up the path and the young girl was pulling funny faces in the Ring doorbell.

I looked up and the woman and young girl were walking right past me in Sainsbury's!! I almost said something but would have just sounded weird - "Oh hi, you've just been on my Ring doorbell, who are you?!"

Showed the Ring video to my DCs later that night when we were all back home - they had no idea who they were!

Two separate times, one in my mid teens and one in my early 20's I thought to myself (as I'm stepping into a lift) "oh dear, shouldn't be getting in here". They broke down both times.

I've got a few:

**We moved into a victorian terraced house and decided to redecorate, imagine our surprise when we steamed off several layers of wallpaper and found someone had signed the wall with my first name and day and month of birth.

* I was living in France as a student before mobile phones were commonplace. When I spoke to family and friends I did so from a set of 3 phones shared by approx 200 other flats. One day I was by the phones checking my mailbox and a phone rang, it was a friend to tell me that one of our friends had died. Complete coincidence but the chances of me being there at that exact moment are slim.

*Shortly after the phone incident I was booked on a flight to return home as I was a witness in a criminal trial. I returned home to find my dad had suddenly died that morning, he was young and had not been ill.

*I was very ill in my first pregnancy and just about made it to a friends wedding (the same one that had phoned me). At the wedding one of the guests who I didn't know told me that I would have a son and his name would begin with J . I did. She also told me that we would have challenges ahead.but it would be ok in the end. He has had a very difficult childhood due to mental health issues and autism.

* The child whose name begins with J has never been wrong about the sex of any child when he has seen a pregnant lady.

Oh and my dad and the friend who died are now buried next to each other in the cemetery.

For four generations, on my mother's side of the family, the firstborn of each generation is (a) female and (b) born on a Wednesday.

When my aunt was pregnant with one of my cousins, she chose to announce it at the dinner table when my grandmother had managed to gather everyone together (which didn't happen often). Lots of excitement and congratulations floating around. I was 12 at the time and I remember turning to my mother and saying "he'll be born on my birthday". I turned 13, that year on a Friday the 13th - had an awful day at school, including (but not limited to) bouncing down the stairs in the French block on my backside, having slipped on the top one due to a puddle created by soggy students escaping the torrential downpour outside, then came home to find my grandmother there, a great big smile on her face and the news that... my aunt (who was very overdue by this point) had given birth at around the same time that I was sliding down those stairs on my backside. Oh, and yes; the baby was a boy.

I have a sixth sense, almost, for when one of my family members is unwell, or in trouble. I also know who's on the 'phone before I get to it (without caller id) and can kickstart electrical goods if they're playing up (lots of static electricity). Once, I caused a photocopier at college to start a cycle of copying, simply by walking past it - our school librarian threatened, often, to ban me from there because of it (and the computers which would shut down if I was sitting nearby and getting stressed out by homework/revision).

The dog I grew up with died when I was 10. She tried to say "goodbye" to me, I think, but I was busy talking to my mother and sort of brushed her off. When I came downstairs after a while, she'd been taken to the vet's on that final journey - no one had told me what was happening because I was "just a kid" and they didn't want to upset me. My father didn't tell me what was happening - just said that my mother had taken the elderly (she was 12), ill (she had cancer) dog for a walk. But I knew where she was. I could almost feel it. And the moment she passed, I swear I knew it. That night, muddy pawprints and scratch marks appeared on the pristine glass back door, on the outside, which were too big and too high to have been made by our other dog (who hadn't been in the garden in order to have made them anyway). I thought "oh, that's [dog] trying to get inside"... a week later, I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep when I felt something hit the edge of my bed. The mattress vibrated and I immediately turned the bedside lamp on. Nothing there. Thinking I'd imagined it, I turned the lamp off and settled down again. Then I felt something JUMP onto my bed and settle down behind the crook of my knees. I knew that it was my childhood companion - she'd found a way to say "goodbye" to me. Yes, I was terrified - because when I worked up the courage to turn the lamp back on, there was absolutely nothing there (my other dog had taken to sleeping in my parents' room for who-knows-why) - but at the same time? I wasn't. I knew it was her way of saying "goodbye" to me. Never happened again, even though I sort of wanted it to. I get told that I must have dreamt it, but I know I was wide awake at the time - and for me? It was a good thing.

I was born in the middle of a thunderstorm/torrential downpour. Every year, since then (all 40 odd of them) it's rained on my birthday. Sometimes it's just a light drizzle, once or twice there have been just a few drops, but usually, it's a downpour.

About 25 years ago, my boyfriend (now DH) and I had a meal in one of those chain Italian restaurants, Bella Pasta (now defunct) in our local town. The meal was disappointing and we complained to our waiter, who was very apologetic and we got some free drinks or something.

A few days later, we flew to Hong Kong to start a 4 month back-packing tour around South East Asia. Our first night in HK was in a small backpackers' hotel in Kowloon. We entered the lift to go to our room and inside the lift was the waiter from that restaurant. I said to him "You served us a cold meal the other day!". He was mortified but we all had a laugh about it. What a coincidence!

Really enjoying this thread. Here’s my story:

My Grandad died when I was three, so I didn’t know him terribly well. He had lived in Northern Scotland since the end of WW2.

Fast forward to being in my early thirties and I used to go and visit DH’s grandfather who was in a care home in Southern England and in his late 90s. He spent a lot of time reminiscing about his time in the RAF during WW2. I commented that my DGF had also been in the RAF although from the little I did know, we assumed they had been based in very different parts of the world during the war. DH’s GF was interested but didn’t ask his name or consider they might have known one another.

One day, DH’s GF had written down some stories about his war days and I was politely reading them. He kept mentioning a close friend with the exact same name as my DGF. DH’s GF had a photo of the two of them together and (although it was obvious it was my DGF because the man he was with looked exactly like my brother) my DF was able to confirm that it was definitely DGF.

DH’s DGF became very ill and incoherent soon after that event, and then passed away, so we sadly never got to find out any more information.

So interesting though!

"....sure you still get the gist. I have a higher power guardian angel looking out for me who manifests every 7 years as a shitting bird."
Love this!😂😂😂

Some years ago an ex partner died after a long illness. The funeral was a long distance from where I was living, in the countryside down narrow winding roads. I was thinking as I drove, about how I never got a chance to say goodbye, and regretting that and thinking about the (often difficult) relationship we had. I was getting concerned that I was going to be late as I got stuck behind a huge tractor with no way of overtaking. Then the tractor turned off and immediately ahead was a hearse, by itself (ie not part of a funeral procession), but with a coffin inside. I thought it would be bad taste to overtake it so followed, the only other car on the road. Of course seeing the coffin made me think of my ex and I 'spoke' to him in the car, telling him some things that I would have said if we had had a chance to say goodbye. The hearse turned off the road and my turning was next: as I came round the front of the venue, I could see at the back of the venue, the same coffin, which was of my ex, being taken inside. I was glad to have had the chance to say goodbye and in a way have what felt like some private time with him.

Hitch-hiking ones nobody believes, from the sixties and early seventies.

A friend's first:

He was hitching to Manchester from London, standing at Hendon, when he was offered a lift by someone he vaguely recognised but couldn't put a name on. The bloke was going about two stops up the road, but better than nothing so he got in. They started to chat and got on really well, and when they got to the turnoff the bloke said "Look, where are you going?" and on being told "Manchester" said, "I fancy a drive. I'll just have to ring my wife and tell her what I'm up to," found a phone at a petrol station and presumably did that after fuelling the car, then drove him to Manchester, talking all the way and having a wonderful time. It was Spike Milligan.

And some of mine (there are lots, hitch-hiking used to be like that, infinite possibilities):

I was walking towards the A64 in York carrying a Dansette gramophone in one hand and a bag in the other so I wasn't yet hitching, when a (really nice!) car pulled up beside me and the man in it asked if I wanted a lift. He was going out along the A64 so I said yes, and got in. When we got to the motorway turning he said he'd have to let me off there because he was going south (I hadn't told him where I was going, you didn't, that way you could say "here's where I get off" if you needed to), so I said, "But so am I!" and we went on down the motorway together. He was going to London, it turned out, and so was I. When we got to Scratchwood services and stopped for coffee he asked where I'd like to be let off, and I said, "Oh, anywhere near the West End, I can get a tube from there," but he said he'd take me to my home if I liked, and when we were nearing Camden he asked where to go, and turned out to live on the same street as me but he kept the car in a garage so I'd never seen it. I had a terrible time persuading him not to tell that story as a good joke all over the street: I wasn't meant to be in York that weekend, I'd been collecting the record-player illicitly and my parents didn't like me hitching.

Another time I was going North from Hendon and a coach pulled up beside me. There were several people there waiting for lifts (back then it was just before the motorway and the last safe place to stand with your thumb out, so people took turns) and he beckoned us all up to the door and explained he was driving a lot of tourists around, but they had taken a special train up to Edinburgh and he had to go to meet them there and was going up the road empty. Lifts for all! He stopped at every services up the road to pick up anyone hitching at them, and several turnoffs to drop people, and we had a wonderful time, with more than one guitar being played and so on. He left me at the A64 -- bit of a pattern emerging but I didn't live in York.

There was the time I got a lift wearing a new pair of jeans whose side-seam had gone all down the outside of one leg while I was away from home and had no spare pair with me, so it was held together with safety-pins. I complained about it a bit, and said I was going to take them back and try for a new pair but I didn't suppose I'd get one... He asked which shop and I said, "Millets in Oxford Street, so I don't think I have a snowball's chance when I've been wearing them," and he told me not to worry about it and took me there. He was the managing director of Millets, and there was no trouble about me getting replacement jeans from them!

Then there was the lift from a Scotsman with a set of bagpipes on the back seat, going down to Dartmoor for a fortnight's holiday because his mother wouldn't let him practise them where the neighbours might hear....

I enjoyed hitching. The only dodgy lift I ever had was going south out of London on the A23, a man whose driving was so terrifying that I asked him to let me out at a set of lights, suggesting once I was safely on the the pavement that he really needed to sleep it off. I got another lift quite quickly, and I saw his car in a lay-by a little further along the road with him asleep in it and was very glad he had taken my advice.

DH and I were visiting the Peloponnese in Greece but flew into Athens rather than a closer airport as we wanted to have a few days in Athens on the way back. It was a four hour drive from Athens to our self catering accommodation in a tiny little village, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

In queue for car hire, chatting to family behind us who, it turns out, own a small house in a small village in the Peloponnese and visited regularly. Turns out, they were the owners of the house next door to the house we were renting!

@SandrasAnnoyingFriend

When I was 19 and still living at home I did a big tidy of my room one day. Just after I'd finished I had a phone call on the house phone downstairs. It was a friend calling to say our mutual school friend had died. I went back upstairs and there in the middle of the floor was a passport-style photo of my deceased friend just sitting all alone in an otherwise pristine room.

Similar thing.

DP passed away. He was buried in another country. I never had any of the currency for his country. We lived together but I never saw any of his coins.

I cleaned and hoovered the house on the day I was due to visit his grave. I didn’t get any of his currency. Everything was paid for by card, including taxi and flowers.

Got home 3 days later, no one had been into house, no pets and family/friends didn’t have a key. Right in the middle of our bedroom carpet was a coin from his country! It definitely wasn’t there when I left.

There were other things that made me think he was thinking of me.

@Abfabfanjo

Being a racist isn't a personality trait, is it? Isn't it more likely she was always a racist, and the brain injury disinhibited her enough to voice her views? Getting married to a man of colour may have been her pre-injury way of showing the world she can't be racist because of her husband. Like the kind of people who claim not be racist because their best mate is from Zimbabwe.

No.

If the frontal temporal lobe becomes damaged eg in a form of Alzheimer's, the individual can have an entirely different personality.

As described in OP's story.

Kind of nasty to suggest those people are fundamentally (in this case) racist people, as opposed to being ill.

@Triffid1

DH and I were visiting the Peloponnese in Greece but flew into Athens rather than a closer airport as we wanted to have a few days in Athens on the way back. It was a four hour drive from Athens to our self catering accommodation in a tiny little village, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

In queue for car hire, chatting to family behind us who, it turns out, own a small house in a small village in the Peloponnese and visited regularly. Turns out, they were the owners of the house next door to the house we were renting!

I should add that it was 6 months after he passed away and I was living 70 miles away. (There was a problem with repatriation)

Was on holiday in Turkey, and in the hotel pool was a woman who looked exactly like my mum. Got chatting to her and recognised her accent and said that my mum now lived in that area. Told her the name of the town, and she had grown up there and asked where my mum lived. I asked if she knew a pub, she was a bit freaked out and said yes, I said she lived up the road opposite in a fairly new build. The woman said that the house my mum lived in was built in the field she used to play in when she was a child.

My mum and gran didn't get on at all. Gran died on my mum's birthday. My mum and dad divorced and really didn't get on. She died on his birthday.

I remembered another one.

My mother and I both lived in London, each in our own flats. One hot and sunny Saturday, on a whim, I drove to Brighton to go swimming in the sea. As I was walking along the pebble beach I saw a woman who looked exactly like my mum. It spooked me out a bit. As I got closer I saw it WAS my mum. She'd had the same idea for a day out yet neither of us had mentioned it to the other. Neither of us had ever been on a day trip to Brighton before, nor mentioned the idea to the other.

@TheHoneyFactory

they did this as a segment on the radio the other day.... lady called in and retold story about how she was bitten on the stomach by a spider - but hadn't realized it was a spider bite at the time, just was a large sore boil/bite on her stomach.

Doctor lanced the lump....lump was full of alive baby spiders... so gross...
she ended up with infections and was very ill for months (recovered now)
spiders never bothered me until now (we are in Australia)....

Not true.

There are no parasitic spiders that could physically do this.

There are flies that will lay eggs that burrow into the skin as they hatch, there are some who will inject eggs under the skin and the larvae will emerge.. but none, zero, no spiders can do this, this did not happen.