The Strange Coincidences Archive

Coincidences happen to me all the time, but this set I never stop thinking about. When I was in high school I fell in love with a classmate, but it was hard for us to get together as he was a different race and our school/neighborhood was particularly racist at the time. In order to break the ice and let me know how he felt about me he gave me a note with the lyrics of a song called “The Drowning Man” by U2. I loved the song and memorized it and we dated for a year and a half. He told me his parents had a son before him that had the same name as him, but the son died when he was a baby. I told him that it was bad luck for his parents to give him the same name as his dead brother. Things got too stressful what with being a teenager and also his mother hated me because I was not the same race as her, he couldn’t take the strain anymore and broke up with me. I saw him about 2 weeks later at the store and he gave me a ride home and on the ceiling of his!
car he taped a poem he wrote. In the poem he talked about being stressed with life and constantly feeling like he was drowning. We saw each other occasionally for the next 4 years, but never fully got back together, until he moved out of his mom’s house and went away to grad school. Then he started calling me and talking to me all the time like when we were seeing each other at the beginning. A couple of months after he moved one of his friends with the same name as him was murdered. Then two months later his roommate died in a car accident. When he came home for Christmas, we finally got back together again, after 4 years of an on-again-off-again relationship. Then 3 months later he drowned. I always think about how that drowning theme would keep coming up when he was making a significant change in his life, and I feel like the drowning motif and the friends dying were foreshadowing to me.

I live in Portugal, and I have a younger brother.

My father’s birthday is Feb 1

My mother’s birthday is Jan 25

My brother’s birthday is Mar 3

My birthday is Aug 11

My parents birthday is always on the same weekday (each year)

My birthday and my brother’s is always on the same weekday (each year)

Is that strange or what?

In our family, there are lots of coincidences with
birthdays.

Mine is the same as my great-grandma.

My dad’s is the same as his sister.

My sister’s is the day after my grandad.

My mum’s is the day before her uncle.

Also, I have the same birthday as one of my best friends.

I’m 30 years old and have had 3 “It’s a small world” type
coincidences, the first when I was 22. I am originally from Delaware and in
1991 I attended a small college in Pennsylvania for one semester. In 1993, I
enlisted in the Navy and went to bootcamp at Great Lakes in Michigan. There,
one class ahead of me, I ran into my college room mate. At college neither of
us had talked about aspirations of being in the military nor had we ever talked since college. That was the first one.

Next- In 1997, I was on deployment to the Mediterranean and my ship pulled
into Rota, Spain. I needed to cash a check so I went to the base bank and
standing right in front of me in line was my wife’s friend’s husband who was
doing his “two-weeks-a-year” Reserve training and happened to be in Spain, at
the same bank at the same time that I was.

And finally – My sister was in the Army. She went to bootcamp with this girl,
then they got orders to the same duty station in Georgia in 1993. I visited my
sister there and knew of her friend. In 2000, I was living in Tallahassee, FL
(still in the Navy). The apartment next to ours was unrented. The next month
who should move in? My sister’s Army friend who had gotten out of the Army two
years earlier and whom my sister had lost touch with. All these seem pretty
weird coincidences if you consider the timing variations and locality of the
events happening. For me, it really is a small world.

And she lived twenty minutes away! I know this dog Fred was there to watch over
me and when I read coincidence #31 I had to submit my story. I hope the person
who wrote it will see my story and realize that we shared the same guardian
“dog-angel” Fred! What else could it be?

Fred has since passed on.I’m sure he is helping another grieving soul (with a
red car?) somewhere in the world. Thank you for sharing your story, it warmed my
heart!

My son has Down syndrome and is labeled moderately
retarded.

He is not very active but what he does like to do, other than watching
videos, is play old tapes on his stereo in his room. He has a hundred or
more.

One day he came home from school and promptly started playing “The Best of
George Harrison,” or some similar title. It was one of my favorite tapes,
and he had not played it in over a year, I’m sure. I actually thought it was
lost or his tape player had ruined it.

I happened to fall asleep on the couch later that night and was awakened at
about 2:00 a.m. during an all night news program to hear that George
Harrison had just died of cancer, out in California. I was more astonished
at my son than I was saddened by the death.

When his sister heard the news, her first remark was a reference to the tape
her brother had been playing over and over. Their father, who does not
believe in things like this, was completely freaked out; he remembered
hearing the tape the night before. He couldn’t help but notice the
“coincidence” this time.

Or did my son know something about George Harrison eight hours before
anybody else, including the national news? That’s what I’ld like to know.

Back in 1980 my daughter died of SIDS in August (she was 6
months old). Before she died I took a bunch of pictures of her and had the
film sent off to be developed. In my grief, I had forgotten all about the
film. On her birthday (February 20), I was feeling sad and blue until I
checked the mail and there were the pictures (which made my day). That is the
biggest coincidence of my life.

How about this coincidence.This is a true story which I can
verify.You may edit this story anyway you please since I am horrible at
portraying events.

My family and I take many vacations and decided for our 1999 vacation we would
set out for Coure d’Lene, Idaho. We traveled a great distance and finally arrived in Kansas which became the halfway point of our trip. We awoke early and began
driving through the dry desert-like regions of Kansas which by location can be
characterized as the middle of nowhere. There were no vehicles on this road so
we felt safe to take a slower pace and enjoy the scenery. Part of the way down
the road however we encountered an 18-wheeler which through the rear-view
mirror seemed to be closing in on our car at an extremely high rate of
speed. Not able to pass us due to the road being too narrow he became determined
to aggressively push us off the side of the road. After he bumped our vehicle we
decided to pull off the road and let him pass us but not until we were able to
make note of the company for which he worked for and the major bend in his
bumper. Being that he was travelling at such a fast speed we were unable to get any information other than the name of the company and
were unable to follow his direction. Since we wanted to enjoy our trip
thereafter we decided not to bother with police involvement and the trouble of
having to locate the company so we left the incident alone and began our
journey to Colorado. Several days following the ordeal we produced good time and
left Colorado arriving in Wyoming in just 2 days and decided to take the scenic country highway to our destination. Several miles down the road we decided to
find the closest town so we can get some gas and something to eat. We kept going
until we saw a sign which stated that the closest town was several miles ahead
and then several miles down another road. We relunctantly decided this may be
the last chance we get before we run out of gas and headed towards this small
town not sure what this town may have to offer. We arrived at the area and found
the local Burger King to be the only place which was worth stopping at. We came upon the drive-thru to place our order and my mothe
r being curious made a slight glance at the company which was across the
street. It turned out to be the exact name of the company for which the truck
driver who had hit our vehicle belonged to. In shock we decided that we should
take advantage of the situation and initiate our complaint. We went inside and
through talking with the supervisor learned this was the only location of this
company and that the truck we identified fit the exact description of a truck
which belonged to an employee who had previous complaints sent through the
police on behalf of his driving. We could not have mistaken the name because we
wrote it down in a diary days before arriving at the business and had it on a piece of paper and the trucks parked outside matched that of the truck we
saw. We never found out what happened to the truck driver but at least we know
we were provided the opportunity to bring justice to a dangerous and often not
reported occurence of aggressive truck drivers.

Im from Charleston Sc. Back from 1995–96 I worked as a
bellhop in hotel in the city center. I had the opportunity to work with a
gentleman by the name of ‘John’ one of the finest frontdesk men. I worked at
the hotel with the aim to get money to fly to Japan to teach English.
Eventually I made it to Japan and left all my friends behind to embark on a new
life across the Pacific. As I was making friends here in Japan I met anothergentleman named ‘Victor’. We were chatting about where we were from, our old
jobs and such. It turned out that Victor and John had been bestfriends for
years.

I was working in Doncaster,
(England) and my new girlfriend was driving up
from Walton-on-Thames, about 200 miles away to
meet me from work. She lived in First avenue.
Upon arriving in Doncaster, she parked her car
in an underground car park, and having never
been to Doncaster before, she decided to ask
for directions. As she got out of the car, so
did the woman in the next car along, so she
asked this woman if she could tell her where
Fox’s was. ‘Sorry’ replied the woman, ‘I’ve
just driven here from Walton on Thames’.
Turned out she lived in Second Ave, one street
away. They had left Walton within five minutes
of each other and parked side by side.