Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Weird coincidences. Please shate yours.

353 replies

malificent7 · 20/08/2024 22:09

I find it really strange that the codefendant of the tech billionaire that is missing from the yacht in Sicily was killed in a road accident on the same day in a different country. Two totally different accidents. Both were aquiited of fraud and involved in the same case. Totally bizarre.

On a more personsl note a met someone from my year at school at a remote waterfall in Nepal about 20 years ago.

Please share your stories.

OP posts:
Helloandgoodmorning2 · 21/08/2024 03:37

DH and I moved several hundred miles to the Welsh borders from a south eastern town. We were at a singing workshop in Wales for a weekend and met a local woman who commented on our accents. When I said where we were from she replied that she had lived there many years ago. I described the part of town I had lived and she said that she had lived in that part of town. When I told her the name of the small road, it turns out she had lived there too.. There we were in the middle of rural Wales and 25 years ago we had lived in the same street. I suddenly remembered her jogging past my house every morning.

Salumthecat · 21/08/2024 03:52

I’m always having random coincidences.

I was telling my DP about a weird dream that I’d had, he stopped me halfway through so I assumed I was just boring him because it is boring when people talk about their dreams!

He was shocked because he had an identical dream, he told me about it and started to say how it ended, he didn’t get a chance though because I had almost exactly the dream with the same ending and when I told him how his dream ended he was seriously freaked out.

It wasn’t the first time we’ve had really similar dreams and it was completely random, not like watching a tv programme about lions and dreaming about lions, or something we’d had a conversation about. It was really abstract nonsense but made sense in the dream.

Another one about dreams…
A few days ago my friend told me about a dream she’d had about witnessing a plane crash and how she stood and watched it fall from the sky. She described the plane and mentioned other details, I used to have a similar reoccurring dream right down to the colour on the plane logo she mentioned.
I had the dream almost every night when my dad was dying, it went away but came back when my mum was dying until she died. I looked it up in an on an website about dream meanings online, apparently it can signify death and is also a common anxiety dream.
This really upset my friend because I had discussed it with her when I was having these dreams, she’s now terrified because her dad has just been diagnosed with cancer like my parents.
I’m hoping she’s just remembered me talking about that dream and so ended up having it herself.

On a more positive note - we also have the same birthday and our other best friend shares it as well!

My mum was born on the same date as my grandma - her mother, and they died on the same date. My other grandmother my dad’s mum also died on that date.

Me and DP were in a casino for the first time, we were playing roulette and I was moaning about what a waste of money it was. I put chips down on number 17 and turned to him and said “We’d be better off with red or black, there is no chance it’ll be number 17!”
It was number 17… that’s not really a coincidence just good luck. But then DP said ok one more time, think of a number… we both said “24” at the same time. It was indeed number 24!
We’ve tried to recreate that many times but unfortunately our luck stopped there 😂.

A lighthearted one…
My best friend’s husband cheated on her and she was absolutely devastated, it was years before she moved on and met someone else.
On their first date they went out for a meal and unfortunately ended up sat on a table near to her ex husband and current partner (who he cheated with) They hadn’t gone anywhere local and had driven over an hour to a random village but by coincidence her ex husband had been working nearby (unknown to my friend) and had stopped for a meal on the way back home.
Both men were wearing the exact same outfit with quite a distinctive patterned jumper.
My friend was totally over her ex at this point and found it a hilarious coincidence, she got them to stand next to each other for photos to show their kids.
Both men found it amusing how delighted she was with the coincidence and posed happily for photos and it broke the ice as they were likely to meet again with my friend and ex husband still in each others lives because of the kids.
My friends ex husband’s current partner was not amused and thought the whole thing was childish. We still giggle over the photos years later with both men pointing at each other with fake surprise and the ex husbands girlfriend sat with her angry little fizzog in the background 😂.

Coinkydink · 21/08/2024 03:54

Namechange as these are very specific.

  1. My sister’s best friend moved to our city from a European city when she was a kid, years later her and her dad were walking through the city centre and walked towards their next door neighbours from back home who they had lost contact with but had also moved to the same city not long after they had.

She told my sister who thought it was amazing, who in turn told her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was more shocked that her best friend’s long lost childhood friend was the guy he sat next to every day at work.

  1. when my husband was 2/3 he had his photo taken next to a boat with his name on it, 40 years later in a completely different port, I took our new puppy for a walk before we jumped on a ferry and he randomly pulled me to a corner of the carpark with some dry docked boats. There was sitting the same boat.
Waffle78 · 21/08/2024 03:59

I was first out of my 4 siblings to have a child. Every single member of my immediate visited us at the hospital the day after she was born. My sister had her first child 6 weeks later and on the same day nephew was born my brother and sister in law found out they were also expecting our niece. They were newly weds they were going to wait a couple of years before trying for a family. But meeting my daughter they got so broody they decided to start trying right away.

MistressoftheDarkSide · 21/08/2024 04:19

Ooh, brilliant thread - I'm a bit on the "woo" side but try to be a sceptic but coincidences / synchronicity fascinate me and I have loads.... as Dirk Gently would say, everything is connected...

My most recent one is quite bizarre to me .- I have recently moved into a flat on the outskirts of the large town I live in. I got chatting to the lady who lives in the flat above me. She was convinced she knew me from somewhere, but couldn't put her finger on it. We thought maybe it was through my now defunct shop, which she did recollect, but we finally nailed it down ..... she mentioned she'd seen someone who looked like me helping an elderly gentleman move into the sheltered accommodation where her grand father lives.. . Turns out yes it was me, helping my Dad move into the flat under her Grandads in the centre if town. So she lives above me, and her Grandad lives above my Dad.....

I'm not very fond of birthdays any more.

2.5 years ago my DP sadly died unexpectedly. He was in hospital for three weeks with brain bleeds (turned out to be undiagnosed virtually symptomless cancer which had metastised). On my birthday I got the news that he'd had a second brain bleed and wasn't going to recover. His birthday - the only day available on the council side to go to the cemetery and pick his burial plot. (We were born almost exactly one month apart and share the same Chinese horiscope). In fact, this may be outing, but it's also common knowledge so sod it - late DP was a body piercer of decades standing, and his birthday was Valentines Day, so i was picking a hole for his final resting place on a day symbolised by Cupid who pierces the heart ....

And I had to have the funeral on my late DMs birthday - she also died of cancer.

DP and I once went to view a flat together, and discovered the flat underneath was occupied by the girlfriend of a bloke who'd beaten him up... we didn't move in....

There are loads more between me and him, and I have a weird sense that while do chart our own Fate to a large degree, there are also "influences" at play, in a sort of "cosmic trickster" sense.

PercyTrevelyan · 21/08/2024 04:35

Not a huge coincidence but when I worked in the NHS, our offices were in the old local maternity hospital (no longer used and converted into offices).

My boss's office was the same room that she was born in!

Channellingsophistication · 21/08/2024 04:36

Exh started a new hobby and joined a club. The chap who ran the club was lovely and invited us to his house one evening. Exh said he’d like that but were just about to move house and perhaps once we’d moved? That turned out to be quite easy as we were buying house next door to them. (They were lovely neighbours).

WithnailOnTour · 21/08/2024 04:51

I went on holiday once and it was raining. I got off the plane at the other end and it was raining there too!!!
Goodness gracious me.

Kittensat36 · 21/08/2024 04:56

My DP, who lives in Surrey, did some family research and discovered that one of his great uncles served in the Auxiliary Fire Service during WWII. So did my DGrandfather. They both served in Islington - his Uncle in Caledonian Road, my DG in Essex Road and they almost certainly worked together, probably on a particularly nasty bombing on Boxing Day when a packed pub in Holloway was hit. My DG remembered it.

When I met DP, we never thought that there could be any connection as we came from opposite sides of London. But it was quite staggering to find there was something.

BarHumbugs · 21/08/2024 05:11

I met up with a friend for lunch. She'd moved away many years before but I was still local. We met in a place that was not that near to where either of us lived, we just both happened to be on holiday there at the same time. As we left the pub we bumped into a mutual friend's parents, it was in their house we first met!

One of my children was born at 6.36 on 02/10, the other at 7.37 on 20/01.

JudgeJ · 21/08/2024 05:14

I was once approached by two policemen, one very young the other an older Sgt,when I was parked on double yellow lines waiting for OH! It was when cars of military personnel and civilians had distinctive number plates. The young one asked where in Germany we were based and his face lit up when I told him! In a very long conversation it transpired that
He had lived in our town since birth until two weeks earlier.
He had gone to the school where OH taught.
His Mother worked in the school as a TA.
His sister was our friends' babysitter.
He had collected our bins until two weeks ago.
Eventually I asked if he was going to book me and the Sgt laughed, apparently he's been speaking to BFG driver's all week but I was the best!I
When OH returned to school a couple of weeks later he was pounced on by the Mum, did he look well, was he eating properly etc..

Tezza1 · 21/08/2024 05:15

My mum, who lived in Sydney, was sitting in a pub in Inverness by herself and got talking to a man (largely, I think, because she was impressed that he was wearing a kilt). When he heard her accent he told her about his daughter who lived in Sydney. They worked out his daughter worked at the Pathologists about 500m from her home and had administered a blood test on mum about four weeks before.

MistressoftheDarkSide · 21/08/2024 05:17

I once worked in a call centre doing "warm calling" to sell insurance, specifically over 50s accident plans.

Obviously the dialler was randomly generated, and it was back when "advised selling" was a thing, so while you had a script, you were encouraged to go "off piste" to build rapport.

One day I got a lovely chap who was located in a particular part of Scotland that I'd visited with my exDH as his family came from there and he still had relatives there. So I was able to chat about the area, and mentioned a factory where my exBIL had worked, which he knew. I then mentioned the name of ExDHs family.

It turned out that ExMILs younger brother, who had been killed in the war, had been engaged to the sister of the chap I was talking to, who was a child at the time and recalled being given sweets by him when he was home on leave. That was pretty spooky.

On another occasion, I was chatting to a lady who told me a few things about her daughter, who was around the same age as me. It was all in the context of not knowing what was around the corner and the usefulness of insurance. Her daughters situation was uncannily similar to mine in several ways - recently divorced, same number of children same ages same sexes, problematic ex husband etc. We both started to comment on the oddness of it and I even had to say I promised I wasn't just making this up to get the sale as we were getting into nervous laughter mode. I'd had to give my name at the beginning of the script but typically people would forget during a call and ask again which is what she did.... yep I and her daughter even shared the same name. She was so spooked she graciously declined to buy the policy and frankly I didn't blame her!

Imgoingtoaskthequestion · 21/08/2024 05:30

My DH has been writing a book on a very niche war that happened a long time ago in a different country. It’s been years and years of this topic and I am now very familiar with it. During this time I got a random job, purely for money, but I started to work on researching the person who set up the office I worked in 100 or so years ago as they had some unresolved issues that I had noticed (which I also thought were unrelated to this niche topic). These issues took over my imagination and it turned into a large part of my professional life to resolve them. After a few years of working on these I found out that this person had written a book about the exact same niche war as my DH.

31messages · 21/08/2024 05:31

Once pulled up at a service station on a motorway we’d never been to before and my best friend pulled up in the car next to us also never having been to it either. 100s of miles from both our homes and totally random.

MistressoftheDarkSide · 21/08/2024 05:32

A few months after DP died, a member of a group we were part of lost his DP to cancer as well. We started meeting for breakfast in a cafe near my old shop from time to time to commiserate and vent about our situations. On one particular day, while waiting for him, I was scrolling Facebook and saw it was the anniversary of the death of one of DPs close friends husbands, which was obviously very sad. I was still quite raw and emotional so got a bit misty eyed lump in the throat etc. Just at that moment the radio in the cafe started playing "I can't live if living is without you". Yeah, thanks for that Universe......

Pandamumium · 21/08/2024 05:33

We live abroad. My goddaughter lives in England. About 18months ago she sent me a picture of her with my son’s best friend.
Her husband and my son’s friend are related.

Al991 · 21/08/2024 05:35

I went on holiday with my family to a Greek island (can’t remember which!) and we made a joke of the fact everywhere we went we bumped into this nice British couple. There were loads of beaches/restaurants but we always ended up at the same spot place. Obviously the island was small and so it wasn’t that much of a coincidence so we just found it funny.

The following month we go to a gastrointestinal in the Isle of Wight, sit down at the only empty table and guess who’s next to us??!

cravingmilkshake · 21/08/2024 05:44

Theunamedcat · 20/08/2024 23:05

Back in the days when I had asolod front door I walked down my (windowless) stairs and flung open the front door to the postman who was just about to knock with a parcel I literally have no clue why I did it uts just a wierd coincidence that someone was there when I did 😅

Not me googling Asolod doors to see what I'm missing out on 😂😂

Cactusali · 21/08/2024 05:53

‘The following month we go to a gastrointestinal in the Isle of Wight’ Is this an obscure way of saying dinner?

HalleLouja · 21/08/2024 05:56

I was on a Mumsnet pregnancy thread with other mums due in the same month.

I was in and out of hospital at the end of my pregnancy.

One mum was telling us about how she was in hospital and some of the stories she was telling sounded weirdly familiar.

Yup we were in the same hospital. Even more weirdly my dd was early so it wasn’t even in the month she was supposed to be born.

FinalInstructionstotheAudience · 21/08/2024 06:00

NotaCoolMum · 20/08/2024 23:37

That’s amazing!!!

And uniquely outing!

FinalInstructionstotheAudience · 21/08/2024 06:06

LibertyPrime · 21/08/2024 01:54

the other one, at a friends wedding a photo was taken and the person who had their photo taken my head was above theres as i was in the background but yet years later we began a relationship

What?

Deipara · 21/08/2024 06:10

patchysmum · 20/08/2024 23:51

My grandad died on April 14th he was 65,my mum died on April 14th she was also 65.,my husband also died on April 14th

My mum was born 9th September 1950.
My aunty (fathers sister) born 9th September 1950.

My dad 9th March.
My brother 9th January.
Me 9th April.
My sister 9th May.

My childhood best friend was born same day, month and year as me.

My bestie now is 9th April (but 10 years apart).

You know what else is weird? My sons nickname is Patchy. So I am @patchysmum

TheKoalaWhoCould · 21/08/2024 06:12

@FuckThePoPo no, but you can pay someone to leave portholes open in rough seas…..