The Strange Coincidences Archive

Today, May 8th is the anniversary of my Fathers death, it is also by conincidence the anniversary of my Grandmothers death although my grandmother died 2 years after my father. I have also just been informed that my uncle died today May 8 2005. These are on their own are a rather strange and bizzarre coincidence, however my mother is an identical twin, my father was her husband, my uncle was the husband of my mothers identical twin and it was their mother who died on May 8. This has somewhat freaked me out and I have calculated their is a 1 in 48,627,125 chance of this happening, roughly 3 and a half times less likely then winning the lottery!!

In 1999 a local journalist asked me if she could borrow a couple of old photographs of the town for a Millenium feature. I said she could collect them at our house one evening after tea and when I gave my address there was rather a long pause at the other end of the phone. It turns out that she had lived in our house when she was a child. The next day she asked me if her mother could come with her and look at the house as well. They both came and the older lady enjoyed looking round. In the last few minutes before they left, she asked me where my wife and I had lived before. I said that we had only lived in one other place and named the district. I mentioned the road, which is about a mile and a half long, and the number. The lady looked at me really strangely and then said that that was where she and her husband had lived when THEY got married!

My daughter became close with a boy she met at a youth conference. They seemed headed for a relationship but suddenly he had a girlfriend and wouldn’t talk to her.She was devastated and took along time to get over him. Recently she attended a dance workshop in another state and was billeted with another girl also from out of state.The girl had the same unusual last name as this boy, the same sort of personality, wore the same brand of shoes,had the same sort of hairstyle, was the same age, worked at the same food outlet chain, was unsure of what she should be doing with her life like this boy, and called the hostess Sarah, the boy’s new girlfriends name, which wasn’t right. The cat at this place was called the boy’s nickname and was very affectionate towards my daughter and followed her everywhere. Really weird stuff!! Does it mean something?

I had a close girlfriend who I eventually lost contact with through circumstance. I stopped thinking about her until 5 years later when I had a dream in which a mutual friend of ours told me she had seen her and that she had just stepped off a plane from New Zealand. The next day the mutal friend rang me to say that my close girlfriend had called her and had just come back from New Zealand.

Saturday April 30th I planned a long day of birthday celebration for my girlfriend. The first stop was an elegant restaurant for lunch. We were seated in a beautiful open booth were we could view the entire restaurant. Soon after, two women were seated in a booth to the right of our booth. I took notice of one of the women because she reminded me of a classmate of mine in a class that I am taking presently at the junior college. Throughout the meal I kept noticing this lady. After lunch I took my girlfriend to a matinee presentation of the musical Lennon. We made it 10 minutes before the show started. We made it to our seats, when a lady sitting to my left says to me, “you made it”. To our astonishment and theirs we were seated next to each other in the theatre. Following the musical, we attend a restaurant for dinner. Seated next to us were two junior prom couples out for there evening. We slightly chatted with them. They left the restaurant before we did. Upon driving home, about a mile away we stopped at an intersectional traffic light. Low and behold, the two male members of the party walked thru the cross walk in front of us.

I can sort of “predict” what’s coming next in certain things. I’m interested in all this stuff and I read up on it a lot.

When I was in middle school, we were learning about the periodic table, and we were playing “Bingo” with the chemical symbols. In my head, I would be saying for a chemical symbol to be said, and it would be called out, and I won it! But the next time, I got all of them but the last one.

Another thing is, I would be thinking about an episode of a TV program (usually the Simpsons) and it would be on the next day, but, if I realised that if I thought about it, it would come on, then it wouldn’t come on. It doesn’t happen so often any more.

Another coincidence: I was talking to my friend and she said, if they ever did a re-amake of Alice and Wonderland, Johnny Depp would be perfect for the part of the Mad Hatter (we both like Johnny Depp) and then, I was imdb.com, on the Johnny Depp message boards and I came across this post that said he would be perfect for the part of the Mad Hatter! I didn’t know this person, had not been in contact previously to this person, and it was not my friend because she has a different account to the person who had posted it. Wouldn’t it be weird, if they did re-make the movie, if Johnny Depp was cast as the Mad Hatter?

I have another coincidence that I was not involved in, but my dad had read in the papers and had told me:

There were these two best friends, who had very rich families, and were celebrating their eighteenth birthday in some exotic country, and they were in their hotel room, talking, when all of a sudden, a drunk French man, Monsieur Clements (or something), came in, mistaking it to be his room. Ten years later, the same two friends were celebrating thier marriage with their new wives in South Africa this time, and they were in their hotel room, and guess who walks in, drunkly, through the door, thinking it was his room? That’s right, Monsieur Clements. They all had a good laugh together. Another ten tears later, they two friends, agin, were having a social gathering of some sort, this time in San Fransisco. They were in their hotel room and were saying how funny it would be if Monsieur Clements walked through the door, right then, drunk. Out of nowhere, Monsieur Clements came in, drunk. They all talked together and has a laugh about the other times. It turned out, Clements had been in town for a meeting and had given the taxi driver the wrong hotel name because he was drunk, but he was in the same number room in the other hotel. How weird?

I also have this thing with Irish people. It’s not that big but to me it is:

One of my good friends is Irish (well, half Irish), my favourite group is U2, and they’re Irish. My favourite lesson is art, and my teacher for that is Irish. My dad went on his honeymoon with my stepmum to Dublin (they got married this March) and they said they thought is was a great place, so they would take us (my siblings) sometime.

If anyone has any more interesting coincidences, feel free to email me.

I also would like to say, in connection with my Irish coincidences, I am not Irish to my knowledge. I live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in The North of England.

In year seven (the same as the seventh grade, I think) we had to do a project on a musical person, and my friend did one on Green Day. At this time, I didn’t know much about music really, and I asked her who Green Day were (this was two years ago). Little did I know that in a few years, they would become my second favourite group, and through no connection of her. It was another friend who introduced me to their music. The same thing happened to me with U2. When I was little, my mum loved U2 and played The Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum a lot. I din’t actually know it was them. Years later (when Vertigo cam out) one of my best friends said she liked it and made me listen to it. Now U2 are my favourite group! The same thing happened with Johnny Depp (my favourite actor). Ages ago, one of my other friends had Sleepy Hollow on the TV, so I was watching it. I was saying how much of a wimp Johnny Depp (I didn’t know it was actually him at the time) was because he kept on fainting. Then, when Pirates of the Caribbean came out, my sister got the DVD for Christmas. I watched it and thought is was quite a good movie. Then, the next day, my mum happened to have borrowed Sleepy Hollow off someone. I still had to be told it was Johnny Depp, though.

This may not be classed as a coincidence but whatever.

One time I was in York with my family in the half term. We were queueing up to get into this place, and I saw a teacher from my school walking down the road with his wife. May not sound that amazing, but when you consider that I live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, over 100 km north of York, it then sounds interesting.

I’ve had coincidences all my life but this one is worth noting. I met a guy through work in Sydney a few years ago who was from Germany. We worked together for about a month then stayed in contact on and off for a few years when he returned to Germany but then lost contact. About 3 years after our last contact I was walking through customs at Sydney airport after getting off a flight from Bali. I noticed someone was walking in step beside me and at the same time I looked at them, they looked at me. It was my German friend who happened to be on the same plane. We laughed at the coincidence as he was only coming to Sydney for two weeks. We didn’t swap numbers and I didn’t hear from him again. Another 3 years later I had an unexpected appointment in the middle of the day in the city. I was pre-occupied and rushed out of an arcade into the street and nearly bowled over a pedestrian. I looked up to apologies and you guessed it – it was my German friend who was only in Sydney for 2 weeks and had not been back for 3 years. Once again I have lost contact with him but I am sure we are destined to meet again somewhere. I’ll keep you posted.