The Strange Coincidences Archive

Some years ago I was studying movie script writing techniques with a very important movie director of my country (Spain). The whole year I had to develop a movie script of my own, and I decided to write a story with this topic:

A man writes stories that then happen in reality. Then this man records this stories with a hidden camera and that’s how he makes his movies. The theory of that character was that anything you have dreamed exists in reality. Since there are so many people in the world, it is logic to think that someone is living or has lived the life you had dreamed for yourself. So, the character wrote the story and searched the people that lives his story to record the facts and make a movie with those facts. And now comes the important thing.

The first scene was about a man who is driving his car in a strong rain, at night. He sees a woman running under the rain and he thinks she is a neighbour and helps her. He asks her where does she want to go. But he don’t realize that this woman is a prostitute. They have a nice conversation until
the driver finds out the truth. He apologizes and tells the woman that he will invite her to a coffee and then he will take her where she was before to allow her to work. She accepts the coffee, a bit angry. But while having coffee they become friends, and that’s the beginning of the story the main character writes.

My teacher told me that that scene was very incredible. It was nice, but uncredible. I didn’t agree because we were talking about a story SOMEONE has written and then happens in reality. We ended the discussion without changing our points of view.

The year ended. After summer, I returned to the school to proceed with my second year of learning. I had the same teacher, who, when seeing me again, told me he had thought a lot about me in summer. I asked him why. He told me he had been making a movie in Madrid (i live in Barcelona). They were filming a night scene, and they sent a man to buy breakfast. Coffee, cakes, etc. That man went away and returned 5 hours later. Everybody was angry with him (they were very hungry) and asked him what happened. What
happened is that he had meet a woman while driving to the coffee shop. He thought the woman was a normal girl, but she was a prostitute. When discovered the truth, the man took her to a bar, and they talked for hours about their lifes and became friends. Just like in my movie script! So this is the pattern. One movie writer (me) writes a movie about a movie writer who writes stories that then happen in the real world. But then, the story of the movie script happens in the real world, to the person that didn’t believe the movie script was credible. Isn’t it ironic and uncredible? I can swear this happened. It is real. And coincidences like this are the
things that have make me study that phenomena. (I thought I was going mad)

Nowadays, a movie producer of my country is thinking about producing that script :)

In 1981 I was a student at the Lawrence Conservatory at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Many of my classmates were from the city of Evanston, Illinois. George Bernard Mandel (whose surname I have changed to protect the innocent) was a frequent visitor to our campus because he was a longtime friend of many students at the university, who came from Evanston.

In July of 1981, I was walking down Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee, and I did a double take to turn around and see George Bernard Mandel. We walked right past each other, oblivious, but turned around to find that we were acquaintances! We both lived over 100 miles from Milwaukee in opposite directions, but both of us had business in Milwaukee that same day. We proceeded to go to bars and drink British ales.

In 1995, after returning from my best friends wedding in Chicago, I had a 4 hour layover at the airport in Newark before returning to Palm Beach International Airport in Florida. I heard someone calling my nickname “Heavy,” which seemed very strange, considering that “Heavy” is naturally not a very common name. It turned out to be my manager at the “Pete Rose Ballpark Cafe,” a restaurant for which I’d worked in Boca Raton, Florida.

She was coincidentally returning from her sister’s wedding in Vermont.

On Feb.04,2001, my wifes grandmother passed away at 2:30 that morning, on that same day at 12:30 p.m., two of my children heard a crashing sound, only for the mirror clock to have fallen off the wall breaking a ceramic rabbit, then to their amazement, the miniature rocking horse was swiped off of the stereo speaker in front of their eyes, scared, they tried to contact my wife who was at work, but another daughter was on the computer, they enter the area only to see, a minature birdhouse located on a shelf on the wall, swiped off nearly striking, the daughter at the computer, scared she gets off the computer and goes calls my wife then they get out of the house and go to the neighbors, until my wife comes home to witness the damage created, I came home from work and witnessed it for myself, my kids are old enough they dont mess with their mothers favorite things…..Is it possible the grandmothers spirit was trying to tell the children something,
was there a pattern with the favorite things, or just a coincidence?

I am a comic fan. Sometimes in comics there are special seasons when the artists draw beautiful covers worth of hanging in a wall. In one of those seasons, I had to buy some comics twice because I wanted to keep a copy, and rip the cover of the other copy to hang it on my room’s walls. It was not a problem, but one day I ran out of money. I had to buy one last comic, but it was a special one, and it wasn’t cheap. I bought one copy, because I couldn’t afford to buy two copies. While walking home, I was happy to have all the comics I needed at last, but I was a bit worried because I didn’t have money to buy another copy of that special comic and rip its cover to hang it in my room. And now comes the strange coincidence: the comic I bought had two covers. It was a mistake that the print machine did. It put two covers in that exact copy of the special comic, which ended in my hands, one of the few people that specifically needed two covers.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony.

When I got married, I had lost track of all my friends from high school. The only one I wanted to invite was Carolyn, and I was just resigned to the idea that she wasn’t going to be there. After we mailed out the invitations, I got a call from somebody who said, “This is Carolyn Green. I just got invited to your wedding.” I didn’t recognize her voice until she pointed out her maiden name, which I recognized.

Turns out she had married a guy who worked down the hall from my wife, a guy who my wife thought was cool enough to invite to the wedding.

When I was in junior high school I made two new friends named Sean Olsen and Dan Olson. One day we were talking about our families and we were surprised to learn that both Sean and Dan had younger brothers named Steve. Then came the kicker: both Steve’s had the same exact birthday.

Steve Olsen – February 17, 1970
Steve Olson – February 17, 1970

The school district was always getting their records mixed up.

By nationality, I am a Pakistani. My parents have a house in the city of Lahore (population over 3 million).

After completing high school, I came to Moscow, Idaho (in the United States) to pursue a degree. The population in Moscow is about 20,000. Over here, I met another Pakistani – also from Lahore. He eventually became my roommate.

Later on, I discovered that he had lived within walking distance of my parents’ house in Lahore. However, our families did not know each other.

Not long after that, my roommate visited Lahore to get married. My parents were invited to the wedding. When they went there, they discovered that they knew quite a few of my roommate’s relatives.

Funny that both my roommate and I had to go thousands of miles away to know each other.

It also turned out that the bride’s father happened to be a student of my father’s.