The Strange Coincidences Archive

This coincidence is from the Paul Harvey book, “The Rest of the Story”
In 1939, while filming the movie, “The Wizard of Oz”, one of the main characters had a problem being fitted for one of his roles. The actor was Frank Morgan. Even though he played five different characters in that movie, making him appear to look like the Wizard character was hard to do.

The problem was that of finding a coat that would not only fit him, but also make him look like a wizard. The costume department wheeled in rack after rack of coats for him to try on. Finally, Frank Morgan tried on a coat that fit perfectly and actually made him look like a wizard. Everyone involved with the movie agreed and it was the coat that he wore in the movie as he played the “Wizard” of Oz.

Once it was determined that the coat was the right one to wear, with the coat still on Frank Morgan, he began to check through the pockets of the coat. Frank assumed that since he was going to wear the coat for the movie, that it was then his personal coat also. He said that he always goes through the pockets of old clothes that he tries on. Just a personal habit of his.

As he searched through the coat he was surprised to find an old dry cleaning slip left in a pocket by the original owner of the coat. The name written on the slip and the name of the original owner of the coat was “L. Frank Baum” who was the man who wrote “The Wizard of Oz”.

First of all, I’d like to pay respect to the person running this website. He/she is obviously doing an excellent job. Keep up the good work, whoever you are.
The title of my story is “There you go”. The title itself does not reflect any direct correlation to the content of my story, however.

Yesterday (8/21/03), I was surfing through the MIT Media website looking at the various, interesting researches being conducted at the place. One page had a picture of Yo-Yo Ma, the famous cellist, and the page described about the collaboration between him and the research group. One of my co-workers (let’s call him Ling-Xiao) suddenly came into the room, sat next to my chair, and said the following in verbatim: “Yo. Yo-yo. Not Yo-yo Ma.” Now, I was very much surprised obviously. After the initial shock wore off, I realized that he might have had a glimpse at my computer screen upon walking into the room. So I told him to look at the screen, and he seemed very surprised also (I came to this conclusion since he yelled out the words, Oh my god).

Hi! Im lily and this is a really small cionidence but me and my mom were listening to the radio in the car when i was listening to one staion there was a stupid comercial. so i changed the station to a diffrent station and to my amazment the same exact comercail was on as the previous station! It was freaky.

This week, I met someone whose mother had the same maiden name as my mother.On the same day, I bought the album ‘The Queen Is Dead’ by the Smiths, which is itself associated with many alleged unusual coincidences http://home.cogeco.ca/~veganmozfan/.
I wondered who was the girl who sang backing vocals on the track ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’on that album. It turns out it was someone called Ann Coates. That night a friend of my mother came round, who I don’t think had ever been round before, whose surname was Coates.

I was with my family in Northern Wisconsin a few weeks ago, and on our way back we decided to stop in on friends that used to live across the street from us in Illinois, but since moved just outside of Greenbay Wisconsin about 3 years ago.Not knowing if they would be home, we took the chance of suprising them. Upon our arrival, no one was home, so we decided to get back to the main highway about 2 miles away and head back home, planning to e-mail them after arriving home, and letting them know we had stopped by.
While driving back to the main highway, I made a wrong turn, and ended up in a section of the town where they were doing road construction and had a detour which brought me to the parking lot of a supermarket where I had to turn around to get back around the detour.
While driving through the parking lot we suddenly saw our neighbor bring in shopping carts….it turns out She works at the supermarket!
We had no idea she worked there. 1 minute sooner or later, and we would have never seen her.

I work at a museum and was just getting ready to close up when a woman came in. We got to chatting, I found out she lived in a city about half an hour away from where I grew up. She told me she used to have relatives that had lived in the same area, mentioned the last name, to which I replied people with that same last name had lived across the road from my parents and mentioned their first names. She then proceeded to tell me the names of my parents. Turns out, her ex-husband was a good hunting buddy of my father’s!

I’m from Atlanta, Ga., but in the summer of 1991 I had the opportunity to go to Los Angeles to help organize a political fundraising event.
The woman I worked with there, Joyce, was worried that I would be somewhat homesick, because she knew it was the longest time I’d ever been away from the southeast at the time. She told me that she knew someone who knew someone whose sister was also in L.A. that summer from Georgia. She thought we could meet and perhaps comfort each other about being strangers in a strange land.

The only fact she knew about the sister was that she had graduated from the University of Georgia in the spring, and that her name was Delia. I think she was actually trying to set me up for a date, but being gay, I wasn’t really all that keen on it. As far as I knew, all we had in common was that we were the same age and from the same state. I had never met anyone named Delia in my life.

Finally, just to get the hyper-enthusiastic Joyce off my back, I agreed to meet this sister of a friend of a friend. Joyce made the arrangements, and I was given Delia’s phone number.

Reluctantly, I called the number a few days later. It was answered by a smoky-voiced young woman who sounded instantly familiar. I identified myself by my first name and started to tell her why I was calling. Suddenly, she interrupted me, asking, “Is this Richard Swank?”

I replied, “Uh, yeah. How did you know my last name?”

She said, “This is Dee Dee Johnson! [last name changed] I go by Delia now!”

Her voice sounded familiar because it was. She was a high school classmate and friend of mine from Georgia. We had lost touch in the intervening four years; neither one of us had a clue that the other was in California. I had gone all the way across the country, and ended up being set up with a high school friend by my boss.

Twelve years later, I’m still trying to get my head around that one.

Two quick ones, not all that significant, but still pretty darn unlikely, if you think about them:
1) I had been reading several articles online about the White Eagle, a tavern in Portland, Ore., that is said to be haunted. I went into the next room to tell my roommate about some of the things I’d read, since he and I had gone together to the White Eagle several times.
He was watching “Antiques Roadshow” on TV. As I related a few of the tales I’d been reading, I happened to glance at the screen. They were examining an old document, which was on the letterhead of a company called Widmer and Sons.
That was kinda strange, because the White Eagle is located directly across the street from the Widmer Bros. brewery in Portland.

2) One day several years ago I was driving along Bolton Road in Atlanta, Ga., listening to the Grateful Dead song “Playing in the Band” on the radio. There’s a line in that song that goes, “Daybreak/ daybreak on the land.”
At the precise moment that line was playing, I was passing an old church. At the entrance to the church’s cemetery, there was a wrought iron gate with an arched top over it. The arch was formed with iron letters that spelled out the word “Daybreak.”
Thanks, Jerry.

Lesser coincidences of that type happen in my life with what I can only describe as alarming frequency.

this very strange ‘coincidence’ happened to me in 1994…my girlfriend and i were soon to leave for university and as i had just recieved a large tax rebate we decided to buy a new television. we took what we thought was enough money to buy what we wanted and then went shopping. when we arrived we decided to have a drink b4 browsing in the shops….we did not discuss televisions or anything and very soon we left the bar….as we did so a guy bumped into me, looked at me and asked me whether i was interested in buying a television set or a vcr??? turns out that this guy had storecards for an electrical retailer and as he was about to go to Australia for a few years and needed money he offered to let me pick any television set from the store and he would then buy on his card and sell to me for no more than Pounds 100.00 which, although maybe questionable legally, i did so! i had never bought a television before, never looked for a television before, never had the money to buy a television before and although i drink in that bar regularly no-one had ever offered me anything remotely of that nature before or since! the fact that i was there specifically to buy a t.v and i got offered one pretty much as soon as i got there blew my mind and i have never been able to explain why or how it happened – coincidence??

okay – I lost my job right after starting to build my home, I found another job but in the mean while ate up some of the money I needed to close, My builder told me I could close, I told her I had no money to close, she said I could close for 2,600 well the company I worked for I got a check for 1,000 that day, I had exactly 600 in the bank that day, and borrowed 1,000 off my car all on the same day. The same day I closed, I got my old job back! WOW