The Strangest Coincidences People Have Ever Personally Experienced

Image of a globe in the palm of someone's hand
Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

The world is a really cool and often strange place. We meet all kinds of people and have different experiences. So many people take different paths. Why would these paths ever collide again, right? It makes sense, at least on paper.

A coincidence is defined as a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.

That means a bunch of little things had to fall in place for a coincidence to happen, which shouldn't be a surprise because life is often all about timing.

That'll be on your mind when you read the following entries.

People shared their thoughts with us after Redditor RichCauliflour asked the online community,

"Hey Reddit, what's the strangest coincidence you've ever personally experienced?"

"My dad..."

"My dad and his twin live far apart. Without even knowing it, they both bought, in the same week, the same car in the same colour."

Garaquarubyline

They're telepathic, aren't they? We love to see it.

"Lost my wallet..."

"Lost my wallet on a trip to Chicago. Found a wallet under the night stand in the hotel. It was not my wallet but belonged to someone who lived two blocks from me in DC."

voice_of_craisin

Hopefully you did a good deed and returned it once you got back!

"Here in my little town..."

"Here in my little town in northwest England there's a good kebab shop from which the lads and I have ordered for years. We've been in there after countless nights out and had them deliver to our doors, so we know the guys who work there pretty well. They're mostly Turkish."

"Once a few of us got together for a short break in Turkey. Having got off the plane, we waited in the car park outside for another pal who'd been on a different flight. As we stood, soaking in the ambience of a new country, none other than the tall guy from our local kebab shop walked across the road right in front of us, two thousand miles from home."

"That was weird."

Superbead

Plot twist: He was an undercover Turkish agent who was also good at kebabing.

"In 1999..."

"In 1999, took my girlfriend to Disney World for a graduation present. While at Epcot, we sat outside and ate while talking about the band I had previously been in. Just then, the guitarist walked up and said 'Hey!'"

codallas

This is so cool! Hopefully you all hung out right then. We are overdue for a cool buddy comedy.

"Seeing Paul McCartney..."

"Seeing Paul McCartney (The Beatles) on TV in 2001, and noticing he was tall. Next day I'm walking down a very quiet street, and walking towards me is a really tall guy, and it was Paul Mcartney. He must've seen my expression so he veered my way, stuck his hand out and said "Hi mate." I was shocked. 18 years later I'm still shocked lol."

[deleted]

What an experience! Apparently he's quite friendly like that.

"I drove 600 miles..."

"I drove 600 miles with my brother and a friend to climb a very remote mountain in the desert."

"None of us were mountain climbers, so this was not a normal thing for us, but we decided to give it a shot. We get there and after climbing a few hundred feet, I look back and notice someone coming up below us."

"I suggest we take a breather and wait for the newcomer and say hi."

"He gets within earshot after about 20 minutes and we start talking while he pauses to rest below us. Turns out we are from the same state (Texas), and both drove almost the same distance to the site."

"He asks where about in the state we live, and it turns out he knows the town."

"He asks if we know a certain family in that town. I point to the friend who came along with me and say, 'Here’s one of them!' ”

"It ends up this guy dated our friend’s older sister several years before that."

"When he finally climbs up the rest of the way we all recognize him! My brother had actually met the guy when he was dating our friend’s sister, but hadn’t seen him since."

"We all made the rest of the climb on this remote mountain almost a thousand miles from home together."

- Onomatopoeia_Utopia

This is a charming story—the world is so much smaller than we think!

"I started a new chapter..."

"I was sitting at the Raleigh-Durham Airport, waiting for my flight to Newark, NJ."

"I started a new chapter in the book I was reading; and it was about someone taking the flight from Raleigh-Durham to Newark."

"The book hadn't been about air travel or either of those locales up until that point, but about Astral projection."

"Definitely one of those moments that makes me think the universe has a sense of humor."

le4t

Indeed it does. We might as well roll with it, don't you agree? It's not like we have a choice.

"I used to get..."

"I used to get two buses home from work. I got off the first one having left my phone and keys on the front seat of the bus without realising. Got on the second bus, went to my favoured front seat and my possessions that I didn’t know were missing were waiting for me. The bus had changed driver and route. Still freaks my nut out to this day."

[deleted]

You really lucked out. This could have ended badly!

"On the way there..."

"I was in St. Augustine on vacation. On the way there I just happened to think about this girl I knew back in college in Orlando. Just sorta wondered what she was up to and the like. Sure as s**t I ran into her in a bar there the first night. She was there celebrating graduating from PA school."

Col_Water

And you got together, right? Or is this something we only hear about in romatic comedies?

Life can be very strange, don't you agree? There's nothing like a seemingly out-of-this-world coincidence to make you feel that the world isn't such a big place after all.

Have some stories of your own? Tell us more in the comments below!

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