Have you ever tried to guess what number someone was thinking and turned out to be correct? Did you ever have a friend who turned out to be born the same day, year, and at the same hospital as you? Have you ever dated someone only to discover that you shared a relative?
Coincidences can be a really funny and, sometimes, blessed encounter (with the exception of that last example). You never know when they will happen but, when they do, you rarely forget about them. People who have ran into such odd occurrences shared on Reddit their own stories that prove we really do live in a small world.
Unidentified Ailing College Student
“I was in an accident in college that lead to me not know my identity, due to a severe concussion. When they tried to notify my family, there was no information available since I was admitted alone and with no cell phone for contacts.
My parents were visiting family that week out of state on a trip without a set agenda for lodging. They were basically just going to find a hotel with vacancy. The night I was hurt, they got a call from the front desk that their son had been hurt in an accident. Now, there was no way they could have known that I was hurt.
Ten minutes later, the front desk called back apologizing profusely for the call. There were two families with the same (uncommon) last name staying at the hotel that night. They simply called the wrong family to tell them that their son had been in an accident the same night I had been.
My mom was still extremely uneasy and called my brother to check. They talked to him and he was fine. But when she couldn’t get a hold of me, she started to panic. Only when she got my roommate, who they found through the university housing system, did they discover it.”
The Birthday Buddies Club
“My birthday is October 11. My daughter’s birthday is October 11. My niece’s birthday is October 11. My husband’s cousin’s birthday is October 11. My cousin’s birthday is October 11. Her son’s birthday…. October 12 (stubborn mule). My son’s TSS’s birthday is October 11.
I’m not even shocked when I find a new birthday buddy anymore, It’s just like, ‘Welcome to the club!'”
The Duke Appears In Mysterious Ways
“My actual name is John Wayne, first and middle. Thanks, Mom and Dad. My whole life, my family nickname was Duke.
A little over a year ago I was getting lunch at a Chipotle and a man who appeared to be homeless, or down on his luck, was sitting near the door with a few bags and belongings. I didn’t think anything about it and I got my food and sat down to eat. Before I could take a bite, the man came over to me and tapped my shoulder and said that something told him he should come over to me and give me this folded piece of paper. When I unfolded the paper, I found out it was actually a poster of John Wayne, the cowboy, with the words ‘The Duke’ at the top.
I was so shocked, I had to pull out my ID to show him my name and he was blown away, almost brought us both to tears. I took him through the line, bought him a meal, and gave him a few bucks. To this day, it is the craziest sign from the universe I’ve ever received. Truly, everything happens for a reason. If my girlfriend had not have been with me, I don’t know if I would have believed the story myself. Stranger than fiction. I have the poster on my wall to this day.”
Virtual Enemy
“When I was a kid, around 13, I played a lot of a video game called Diablo 2. I started a clan with a few people I’d met on the internet and we played every day. At some point, we were helping some random person and he asked to join. We thought he was nice enough so we let him in. As part of this clan we had a shared account we used to store game items for each other. After about a month of playing, this new guy went in and changed the password, stole the account, defriended everyone, and completely disappeared off the map with all of our stuff.
Fast forward a year later, my family moved to Texas and it was my first day at school. I was sitting in algebra class talking to the person in the seat next to me and he mentioned he played Diablo. I said, ‘Me too,’ and mentioned that I ran a clan and everything. I asked his username and it was him.
Two thousand miles away from where I first virtually met this guy, he was sitting next to me in math class. When I told him my username, his face went into total shock and he didn’t know how to respond. It was awkward, for sure. I ended up telling him I didn’t care and was over it but, let’s just say we didn’t end up becoming friends.”
The Scar Twins
“I met a Canadian guy while on holiday in South America and we ended up going sightseeing together. At the end of the day, a person behind us tapped him on the shoulder and asked if the scar behind his ear was from cancer surgery. It was an odd question, but the scar was very obvious.
They got talking. It turned out that they were from the same small town in Canada, had the same type of brain cancer, and had been operated on by the same surgeon.
Both also had the same type of gnarly scar on their heads.”
Crazy Who You Run Into On Ski Lifts
“My sister, Emily, was on a ski lift in New Mexico when some younger girl across from her asked if her name was Emily. Apparently, the stranger, who kind of looked similar but underage, had found her lost ID the year prior and had been using it for a year to buy adult drinks.
I texted my sister about this and she reminded me that it was weirder. She was later hiking with friends for 17 hours. They got tired, thumbed for a hitchhiker, and got picked up by this first girl’s twin.”
Welcome To My Nightmare
“I don’t know if this counts as a coincidence, because it might be influenced by the commonalities between us, but I was reading through one of my dad’s old journals and found out that he and I share the same and reoccurring nightmare. The details are basically identical, even down to the frequency of it happening (once a month). It’s very trippy.
The dream involves being chased by wild dogs – three of them, all black, wolf-looking beasts. We run into the house (the one that I grew up in; he bought it before I was born) and into the same room (his bedroom). That’s where they catch us and tear us to pieces. It’s freaking horrible.
As far as I can remember, I never discussed this with my dad. I felt OK perusing his journal because he has been dead for quite a while now, but having nothing in common with the details of the dream. It was suicide. I guess you can make of that what you will.”
Strange Days
“Once, I was meeting someone for the first time at a restaurant. I stood at the entrance waiting, and I noticed another gentleman similarly waiting to meet someone. We exchanged a few awkward, glances, and he said, ‘Will?’ I replied, ‘Yes. Are you Matt?’ He said he was Matt and we began making small talk. A few minutes into the conversation, we realized that he was waiting for a different Will and I was waiting for a different Matt. At the same time. At the same place.
The following day: I noticed this really strange looking Toyota Prius parked directly in front of my apartment. It had some attachment on the rear (and other aerodynamic modifications) to make it solar powered. I got into my apartment, opened Facebook, and a friend had just posted an article about this super unique, 1-of-1 Prius parked in front of my building (which I had never seen prior).
The next morning: I was reading a ‘want to buy’ post in which the author at the end said ‘show me what you got.’ I looked up and the person standing across from me on the subway was wearing a Rick & Morty beanie.
Later that morning: I received an e-mail from Reddit about a thread on strange coincidences.
I’m fairly certain I’m living in Elon Musk’s simulation Matrix thing.”
It’s Like A Less Violent Version of “Looper”
“My husband and I were shopping around Walmart when we saw an older couple who happened to be shopping in almost all the same aisles as us. I made a joke to my husband that it was us 40 years in the future, because the wife was wearing Victoria’s Secret pink sweatpants, like me, and carrying a purse the same brand as mine. We ended up passing each other in the dog food aisle, as they picked out the same brand of dog food and treats as us. Noticing the humor in the moment, we struck up a conversation with them.
We ended up finding out that like us, they had one daughter with a very rare four-syllable first name, like our daughter. The had two dogs, one which was a German Shepherd/beagle mix… just like ours.
OK, this is getting weirder…
We live next to ‘xyz’ high school, they live next to ‘xyz’ elementary school a couple miles from us. We finished up our small talk, checked out, and went to our vehicle to load up the groceries. Next to our vehicle was a car with an identical make, model, and year. The only difference was this car was red and mine is blue. I joked to my husband again, ‘Oh, maybe this car belongs to our future selves from in the store.’
Sure enough, who came out of the store and got in the car next to us? You guessed it. Their car even had body damage on the right side of it, like mine. It was an absolutely eerie experience, almost like we met ourselves in an alternate dimension or timeline.”
The Miracle Worker
“I had a rare disease when I was 4-years-old which hospitalized me for months. I had a bad rash and super bad joint pain which kept me from walking. Doctors were dumbfounded and were unsure how to treat me. A Japanese doctor who was touring hospitals in the US walked in with a bunch of interns and other doctors. He recognized what I had immediately and helped to bring me back to normal. The disease was henoch-schönlein purpura.
Six years later, the same rare disease hit me with slightly different symptoms. I didn’t have the obvious rash just a terrible fever and a ton vomiting. That made it tougher to diagnose. I lost a ton of weight from being unable to hold down any food and more than sips of water. The same Japanese doctor at the same hospital walked in the door. Not sure how those stars aligned so perfectly.”
Immature Minds Think Alike
“One night in college, I was fooling around with my then-girlfriend and noticed that the brightness of the TV caused us to cast distinct shadows on the wall behind us. Being 19 and a fool, I took this opportunity to take a pic (using Snapchat) of the shadow my erect member made on the wall and sent the pic to my best friend.
I thought it would elicit an interesting reaction, but could not have prepared for what was next. You see, on Snapchat you can see when someone receives your message as well as when it’s opened. So, as my message was sending, STILL UNOPENED BY HIM, I receive a snapchat from the same best friend. I opened it and, low an behold, what did I see? A SHADOW DONG SNAP. This man decided, at the exact same time that I did, to send an identical pic of his wiener’s shadow on the wall. Both of our girlfriends were confused, thinking it was some inside joke when, in reality, we had never spoken of or sent shadow dongs ever before.”
Speak Of The Devil
“I knew a girl in high school who was just the worst type of person. It would take too long to explain all the reasons, but a big one was that she tried to drive a wedge between my bestie and I. She moved away after high school. My friend and I would bring her up occasionally, talk about some of her worst qualities, and say how glad we were that we never had to see her again.
One time, as we were doing so in a restaurant, suddenly, she appeared right next to our table. She had come back to visit someone and just happened to be right where we were right as we were discussing her. It was so awkward. Then, she left and we just sat there like, What the heck?
A Notoriously Weird Dream
“I had a dream that my friend and I ran into Biggie Smalls (he was alive in the dream world) and he invited us to a party that night. We decided that we were going to buy Biggie a gift and I suggested that we get him a water dragon (a big lizard) because Biggie would look dope rocking a water dragon on his shoulder. We started walking to the party with the lizard and we were at the local park. I looked down next to a bench and there was a snaplock bag with white powder. We took the white powder and partied with Biggie that night.
The next day, I woke up and went to make a coffee. I turned on the radio and a Biggie song was playing. I thought it was a strange coincidence considering I had a dream about Biggie, but thought nothing too much of it. I walked outside and froze. On my porch was a water dragon. A water dragon might appear around my house maybe two or three times a year. I spoke to my mate later that day and told him about the dream and joked that I might find a bag of coke later that day. Sure enough, as I was walking to my mate’s house at night, I humored the idea. So I walked over to the bench and found a bag of coke exactly where I dreamt it would be.
I definitely disposed of the bag, though. My friends and I definitely, hypothetically, did not snort the coke while playing Biggie Smalls songs all night and into the morning having the best time of our lives. That would be preposterous!”
Joke’s On You, Kid
“A classmate of mine sent a fake email that looked totally legit to select members of my class, saying that we had failed a really important exam which carried bad consequences for our career. After we freaked out, he let us know it was just a joke. When the results came out a week later, there was only one person who failed: my classmate who sent the fake email.”
The Number Of Her Nightmares
“I had recently moved cities and had a new local phone number. I had to make a lot of calls to various utilities, etc, to get everything all set up. I called one of them, and spoke with the customer service rep. All was going fine until she asked for my phone number. When I told her, she started freaking out on me.
‘Who are you?!?’ she exclaimed. ‘How did you find me?!? How do you know that phone number??!?’
Eventually, I managed to get her calmed down to the point where we could figure out what was going on. It turned out that she had been in an abusive relationship in which her ex had stalked and harassed her, including him and his friends making threatening calls constantly. Eventually, she moved to a different part of the city and took a new, unlisted phone number.
My new phone number was her old one and the moment I said it, she assumed he had tracked her down once again and the harassment campaign was about to begin anew. I’m not sure she truly believed me when I explained it all, but we eventually got through the phone call.”
“I Started Reading… And I Stopped”
“In tenth grade English class, the teacher didn’t have anything planned for us to do and it was close to the end of the year, I guess, so she went to the big cupboard in the corner and pulled out a stack of copies. They were examples of successful essays written during a final exam, so we could learn what a good one looked like and how to build a narrative, etc. They were anonymized.
The topic of these was, ‘what was the most pivotal moment of your life?’ There were three examples, ranging in proficiency. We read through the first two and I volunteered to read the last one aloud. I started reading… and I stopped.
The essay was about… me. My big sister had gotten a really good mark six years earlier on her final exam essay, which she wrote about the day I was born. I got pretty emotional about that one. It explained the exact details of the day of my birth from her perspective, a variation of the story I had heard hundreds of times from my mom. But this was super special because I was able to read how important the day was to her. It felt like hearing someone recount how genuinely they love you, to someone else, not at all knowing you’d ever hear it. I love her a lot.
We found out later it happened because we went to different schools at the same school board. No way the teacher knew though. She was just as shocked and happily surprised as I was.”
Music Brings People Together
“I was at a concert with my friend in high school and accidentally mistook some other guy for him. That guy’s friends also mistook my friend for him at the same concert.
About eight years later, I was roommates with my friend from the concert. One day, we were talking to our other roommate about the old concert. We suddenly realized that he was the guy from the concert eight years earlier.”
“His Look Of Shock Was So Incredible”
“I told my uncle I could speed read as a joke when I was about 11 or so. He handed me this enormously thick book that was super boring looking and was probably 1000-plus pages of very fine print. I took the book, trying to figure out a punch line to my prank. I skimmed through it obnoxiously fast, not even speed reading fast, but just fanning all 1000 pages in maybe three or four seconds.
‘OK, ask me a question,’ I said, ‘prepare to be impressed.’
He asked after some thinking, ‘What did Margaret order at the bar?’
Now, while I was skimming, I quite literally saw a single phrase flash before my eyes. I didn’t even think anything of it at the time. But, I said it then: ‘Bloody Mary with no ice.’
His look of shock was so incredible, I will never forget it. I walked away pretending I planned to do that but, inside, I died of excitement at what had just happened.”
The Giving Rivers
“My favorite coincidences occurred during separate canoe trips. The first was during a Labor Day weekend trip up and down the St. Croix river (two days paddling upstream, one down), which runs between Wisconsin and Minnesota and eventually joins the Mississippi river. Despite it being a holiday weekend, there was virtually no traffic on the river as we saw only one other boat and that was on the first day, shortly after we left.
On the second day out, the weather was quite warm. At one point I said, ‘Boy, a watermelon sure would be good right about now!’ My three companions told me to shut up and not even mention it, because we did not have one and weren’t going to find one in the wilderness. A little while later, we spotted a green object floating toward us that turned out to be… a watermelon.
Years later, I was on a river outing with several other people on the Whitewater river in Indiana. I was paddling my kayak and had just told the watermelon story to the people in the canoe next to me. It was a hot summer day and someone said something to the effect of, ‘Watermelons are fine, but I could really go for a cold one right now.’
A few minutes later we paddled around a bend and saw a cooler sitting on a sandbar. We stopped on the sandbar, opened the cooler, and found that it contained just enough cold ones for each of us to have one.”
What A Match!
“My girlfriend and I matching on Tinder turned out to be crazily coincidental. To preface this, my girlfriend lived in ‘City A’ and I lived in ‘City B,’ and my parents had lived in City A before they had me about 20-plus years earlier.
Anyway, it was Christmas time, I was going on a family vacay, and we had a layover in City A. I didn’t think much of it, but I went onto Tinder for a couple left/rights, then hopped on the plane, and thought that was that.
But, lo and behold, when we landed, I had one match (my now girlfriend). So, we started chatting and didn’t think much of it. In the end, we continued talking and finally a few months later, we were texting and her mom asked her who she was talking to because she had a goofy grin on her face. She mentioned my name. In response her mom was like, ‘Hmm, I had a great doctor [with my last name], but he moved to [City B] a long time ago.’
Nervously, my girlfriend’s response was, ‘He lives in [City B]… and his dad’s a doctor…’
So my girlfriend asked me, and the conversation went as follows:
GF: ‘Did your dad used to work in [City A]?’
ME: ‘Yeah he did, why?’
GF: ‘Did he have a patient named [her mom’s name]?’
MW: ‘I just asked him. He said “[Her mom’s name]? Of course I remember her! I delivered her daughter!”‘
Cue dramatic music and total shock.
It turned out, that my dad had delivered my girlfriend’s older sister, and would have delivered my girlfriend had he not moved to City B. So, pretty dang coincidental if you ask me.”
A Sign From The License Bureau
“My wife and I had been trying to get pregnant for a couple months. One amazing day, I came home to find out that she peed on a stick and guess what? We were pregnant. We scheduled an appointment with the doctor’s office to confirm and start our appointments.
On the way to that first doctor’s appointment, I ended up behind a white Lexus SUV. The license plate read ‘TWNBOYS.’
That’s a weird license plate, I thought. I turned to my wife and conveyed my thoughts. She laughed and we joked about it. We got to our appointment, and the doctor said, ‘Oh, goodness. Do you see what I see?’ My wife started crying in joy and I had no idea what was going on. There were two sacs. We were having twins.
Months later, we wanted to do a gender reveal. I’m a hockey player, so what better way than chalk hockey pucks. I shot the first puck and it exploded into blue powder. I took a moment and shot the second… blue powder. We are now six months along with our healthy twin baby boys.”
What’s Under The Rolls?
“I came home from work one night and went straight to the bathroom as my usual routine. Walking in, I realized my wife had been to Costco and purchased a big thing of toilet paper, but just set it on the floor in the bathroom to be put away later. For some reason, as I was sitting there staring at it, I had a thought about how funny would it be if I picked up this bag of TP and there was a frog under it?
So, I picked it up out of curiosity and there was a little green tree frog just chilling there. I have no idea how or why it could even happen. To this day, it is my most What the heck? moment I have ever had.”
Karma Has A Way Sneaking Up On You
“When I was a kid, someone in my family broke a glass vase on the wood floor. My mom cleaned it up as best she could, but wanted us to wear shoes in the kitchen for a few days just in case she had missed some. She continued sweeping to try and get the last little bits. I was loudly complaining about the injustice of having to wear shoes in my own house when I stepped on that final piece of glass.”