To think everyone has at least one weird coincidence story

[hazelnutpraline]

These are mine:

I was showing DP some old photos from before I met him and came across one of my best friend dancing at a (big, thousands of people) festival. We both noticed at the same time that the only other person in the picture, dancing behind her, was HIS best friend. We hadn't met at that point, it was several years before we did, and none of us lived in the same part of the country.

Years ago when I smoked, my friend and I were sitting on the steps of a nightclub wanting a cigarette but neither of us had a lighter. We asked a man walking towards us for a light but he just gave us a dirty look and ignored us. As he walked past where we were sitting, a lighter fell out of his back pocket without him noticing, right in front of our feet.

Please tell me yours!

I found out that my husband had been cheating with his ex fiancé so I started divorce proceedings. My lovely work friend’s daughter is a solicitor and recommended me an excellent solicitor who specialised in family law. Turned out her legal secretary was none other than… THE EX FIANCÉ. It still makes me smile when I think about it

When I was about 12 my mum allowed me to go into town for the first time on the bus with a friend. On the same day my 14 year old sister was also going into town with her best friend (my friends older sister) but of course they wouldn’t be caught dead with us so we went separately at different times. We never bumped into each other and came home at different times.
I was in before my sister and I was proudly showing my mum my black platform boots from c&a when my sister came in…..she had bought the exact same boots And the label stitched inside the boot said “sisters”.

I've had 3 long term relationships where the guys lived in different areas and didn't know each other whatsoever had 'links' to one woman. First boyfriends uncle was in a relationship with said woman, second boyfriends stepdad used to be married to said woman and they had grown up kids together (so woman's kids and my ex were step siblings) and then my third (and current) boyfriends ex girlfriend and this woman used to be sister in laws - said woman's brother was married to my partners ex and also had kids together. Really confusing and random I know 😅😅 I've never even met said woman! All these man lived miles apart and didn't know of each other. Just total coincidence and bizarre!

Also, when I met my partner (3rd boyfriend ^^) he and his mother was looking through old photos and come across a whole year school photo which I turned out to be in in the earlier 2000's, which was bizarre as neither dp or any of my siblings were in the same school year at school. Turns out now mil contacted photography company and ordered a year photo for his sisters year group and they sent the wrong one and she never returned it or anything. At least I could claim it 😅

Loving this thread.

My friend's uncle is married to my cousin.

They live in Australia and I hadn't seen or spoken to my cousin since I was a child. We only found out following my uncle's funeral, when I learnt my cousin's married name and put 2 and 2 together (it's a very unusual surname)

It turns out another of my cousins is my friend's godfather, and her dad's best mate.

I once bumped into one of my DBs and his family at a wildlife place which was nowhere near where either of us lived.

My aunt was at a fayre talking to a stall owner who did a certain craft.
Took photos. 1970s. U.K.

Fast forward and her grandchild starts dating someone from Australia who happens to do the same craft.

She invites them round for tea and gets the photo album out. Shows them a photo of the craftsman from the 70s and his stall of goods.

It’s the granddaughters boyfriends dad!

So the (potential) mother of the bride and father of the groom met in the 70s and the kids only started dating now.

The craftsman and his family moved away in the 80s and this was their first time back. Weird. What’s the chances.

My parents (from the UK) went on holiday to Europe (Spain or Greece I think) and, whilst sunbathing one day, just down the beach from them on the next set of sun loungers was my Dads Uncle and Aunt who had emigrated to Australia about 30 years before and who my Dad hadn’t seen in person for about 20 years. They were both very shocked to bump into each other. Small world.

Sent a new client an invoice and he recognised my address because he used to live in my flat. In the same room!! He lives about an hour away now so it was a huge coincidence!

I was completely refitting my bedroom and put the freestanding wardrobes on Freecycle. The lady who responded was gobsmacked when I gave her my address for her to collect the furniture. My house was the one she grew up in and we had bought it from her mother 15 years earlier. The house had been empty for some time before we bought it so we never met them.

Looking round a small graveyard on holiday in Cumbria. There was a gravestone for someone who had died on my OH’s birthday. Same year, same date.
Found out on our wedding day that we were married on the same date as OH’s parents . They hadn’t mentioned it in the lead up to the wedding.

Doing some family research recently. Great great great grandparents had lived on the same street several doors down from my sister’s flat in London. We don’t come from London.

We took a "Last holiday before kids" to South America,including a week going round the Galapagos islands. There was one other British couple on the boat.

"Whereabouts are you from?" "Just outside London." "Which town?" "X". "Oh. Where in X?" "Such and such a road." "Where on such and such a road?" We lived just off that road, less than half a mile away.

Husband and I have a friend who we each knew independently before we got together. I remember introducing my husband (then boyfriend ) to him and him being shocked as he never introduced us in the years we had been friends. I knew my friend by his pub nickname and my husband working with him knew him by his actual name! So when we maybe mentioned in passing didn’t click it was the same person!

We all still friends some 20 years later we don’t live close to each other BUT we seemingly bump into each other at concerts or festivals!! All those thousands of people & sat in completely different places but bumped into him in toilets , bar queues, stairways!!!! Very strange! We planning to go to the same concert next year and actually meet before for once!!!

@penguin23

In the early 90s I went on a residential trip with school, I was 10, took my favourite children’s poem book with me to read before bed, I’d had it since I was 6, I then completely forgot to bring it home with me after the trip. I was so upset as it was an unusual book that I wouldn’t have found anywhere else. Six years later my sister went on the same trip when she was 10, family were allowed to visit for the evening half way through the trip, I spent most of it looking through the books in the dormitory hoping it might have been put there all those years ago, but didn’t find it. Two years ago I was telling my 6 year old daughter about said book, how I’d have loved for her to have had it. Decided to have a look on the internet for second hand books and I found a used copy of it to order, only a few pounds. When it was delivered, I opened it up to find my name on the inside cover. Now it sits in my daughter’s bedroom with her books, found again 27 years after losing it ☺️

Oh my! I've just read this and found it to be MY weird coincidence story. A few years ago I was moving house and had to downsize quite a bit, including about 300 or so books. I donated them all to a charity who sold all manner of books - craft, fiction, biographies etc, in order to raise funds to buy new books for teaching children to read. Perfect.. By accident I included one of my favourite childhood books bought for me as a christmas gift.....I have several from then which I will always keep.

Some months later after my move, when I realised I'd accidently given this book away I decided to research its writer and artists, and Google popped up several copies of this book on a well-known selling platform, so I had a look.

Reading the descriptions of conditions, one was said to have been very well looked after but had a personal inscription written on the flyleaf, so I messaged to ask what it said. I was sent a photo back, of the actual inscription that had been written in my book.

It was my book! I cried so much as this and my other special books of the time were beautiful stories, with fantastic illustrations which enabled me to 'read' the stories in my own way. This was because at that young age I was practically deaf and so couldn't learn to read, and didn't begin to do so for several more years until after surgery at almost high school age.

It's now back with it's little family of others which I still like to browse through occasionally, and which have instilled in me a love of reading for over 60 years and a lifelong career .

@penguin23 - I'm so very glad your beloved book found its way back to you too.

One morning during a scorching hot summer I had an unexpected day off work so on a whim got on my motorbike and went for a spin with no destination in mind. After riding around for a bit I saw a sign for the A23 to Brighton and just found myself zooming towards the coast and 50-odd miles later I arrived on the seafront.

As I rode along the seafront I saw the beach to my left was absolutely crowded, must have been 10,000 people there that day.

I figured I'd get some fish and chips, eat them on beach then go home. I had to ride about a mile along the seafront before I finally found a chippy. I parked outside it, got my meal then crossed the road and went down the steps to the crowded beach. As I looked around to find a few square feet of space to park my bum I spotted my mother stretched out on a towel, sunbathing, not ten feet away! We were both gobsmacked. She'd gone down by train from Victoria.

Neither of us had ever gone to Brighton before, nor ever discussed wanting to go there for a day trip. We hadn't even been on touch for a week. And for me to have ended up on exactly the same bit of beach amongst such huge crowds was astonishing.

I have two.

One was the fact my husband and I were accepted on to the same course at Uni, but I had to change at the last minute and take a course at my local uni. I finally met him ten years later.

When my sister was pregnant, I lived hundreds of miles away and called her to ask what colour outfit she wanted me to buy for the baby, as I was standing in mothercare looking at a rack of cute clothes. She was at that very moment, standing looking at the exact same rack, in Mothercare, hundreds of miles away.

First time I was pregnant I went into Superdrug and got a pregnancy test to confirm. The lady at the till asked if I had a Superdrug card and I remember having one but not using it that often. The lady swiped it and said "oh free basket for you". I was quite surprised as I've never won anything in my life but annoyed that I didn't do a bigger shopping 😁

I ordered a book online about evacuated children during World War II. I was interested to read the story as my beloved (late) Mum had also been an evacuee sent from London to a small farming hamlet in the countryside. As I read I realised one of the children she mentions (4 times) was my Mum and there were also 3 photos of her as a child which I had never seen before. What were the chances?

Many years ago I bought an antique Islamic corner cabinet in a shop in Portobello Rd. I also paid a delivery charge but on the way to me the van was hijacked and some furniture, including my cabinet, was stolen. Fortunately the purchase was insured.

A few years later I was in the antique quarter of Brussels and passed a shop full of Islamic furniture. Something made me look inside. Right at the back was MY Islamic corner unit. I recognised it at once by some of the features which the shop owner had pointed out. There was also a pair of chairs in matching style. I bought them on the spot and had them shipped back to the UK. I still own them. It was as though the corner cupboard knew my love of Islamic furniture and was determined to somehow make its way back and belong to me, even from another country.

I have another one...

For a course I did a little history project about a local woman who survived the Titanic disaster. I'd managed to find out quite a bit about her from the newspaper archives and Ancestry, but after the 1911 census there are no records of where someone lived. I submitted the project and got on with my life.

I bought an old house an.d became curious about its history. One day I went to the local studies room at our little museum and they had the rate assessment books from the 1920s. I looked up my house and nearly fainted when the books listed the owner in the 1920s - and it was her!

This was in a town with 40,000+ houses.

Wow these are great to read.

Mine is: drove with then DP and DS1, who was a toddler, from Manchester to Blackpool to see the illuminations. It was only when we parked up on a pay and display that I realised I had left my bag with my purse behind and DP didn’t have his wallet as that was also in the bag.

Walked to the pay and display machine to check if there was anything change left in it, and there was a load of dog shit round it, so I had fo go to the one a bit further away….which had £2 worth of 20p coins in the metre. So we paid and took the rest of it to the arcade, where we won lots. We had fish and chips from the winnings and still had £34 to take home! Money for nothing

I have lots. Mostly holiday based.

I stood behind an arguing couple in a queue at DisneylandParis. The man turned around and it was a work colleague. Made for a lot of awkwardness for the rest of the queue.

On the ‘rapids’ at Centreparcs. Smash into a man. We turn to apologise to each other and it was my next door neighbour.

On a sail boat trip in Tunisia, first people to arrive. Second couple arrive and the man had been at school with my husband and the woman was a teacher at my old school.

On holiday in Majorca as students and meet up with group of other students. One of the girls from the other group went to same uni as my friend and had been to her house. A different girl from the other group and I grew up in the same home town.

Waiting outside rows of portaloos at Live8 concert, a lady steps out of one, holds the door open for me and it’s my son’s class teacher.

I dated three men in a row with same birthday.

I started a new job and the burglar alarm was the same code as my previous job’s phone extension.

I think that’s it but I’m sure there are others.

One of my daughters best friends was born the day after her and in hospital we were in the bed across from her and her mum.

It's coincidental because we now live over 100 miles away from that hospital and after several meet ups where me and the other mum were thinking we recognised each other it took a birthday invite to realise where we recognised each other from. Also neither of our girls go to the primary school that is officially their catchment school.

I love little coincidences.

My friends daughter was born on the same date, not hear, as the child I au paired for.

My friend had a baby girl on the same date as my daughter was born, two years later.

My FIL, DH and DS were all born on the same number in three consecutive months, FIL then DS then DH.

My FIL, DH and DS first names fall in order of birth consecutively.

Year*