Ever Had a "Confounding Coincidence?"

[quote]So, somehow, this book had traveled through space and time in a loop, in a circle."

More like a circle jerk.

Fascinating story, OP. Thanks for posting.

Here's one I read years ago:

This is a coincidence story about the best selling author Richard Bach of such titles as Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.

Richard Bach was flying in a rare biplane, a Detroit-Parks P-2A Speedster, of which only eight were ever built. At the time he was barnstorming in the US Midwest. He loaned this to a friend who managed to upend the plane as he came in to land. He said of this, at the time, "They were able to fix everything except for one strut. That repair looked hopeless because of the rarity of the required part."

As he was pondering the problem a man, who owned a hangar nearby, came and asked if he could help. He said they could have any bits and pieces stored in his hangar. Bach explained what it was he wanted. The man walked over to a pile of junk and pointed to the exact part which was required!

Richard said of this, "The odds against our breaking the biplane in a little town that happened to be the home to a man with the forty year old part to repair it; the odds that he would be on the scene when the event happened; the odds we'd push the plane right next to his hangar, within 10 feet of the part we needed - the odds were so high that coincidence was a foolish answer."

Another story:

The world famous romantic poet Emile Deschamps who was living in a boarding school met M de Fortgibu, a Frenchman, who had recently returned from England and who also introduced Deschamps to a great English treat called plum pudding. At the first taste of this cullinary delight, Deschamps was over the moon with its delicate fruity taste.

Deschamps was passing by a restaurant on Boulevard Poissoniere on Christmas eve, ten years later, when he gazed over to the cozy decorated interior and the Christmas tree in the corner, he was about to continue his journey when he suddenly noticed a traditional English plum pudding in the window. Suddenly a deluge of happy memories came flooding into his mind, of his first and only taste of that delectable pudding and of his French friend Colonel M de Fortgibu. Un-able to contain his desire for another taste, he rushed into the restaurant and asked to buy a slice of the pudding in the window.

The hostess informed him that a customer had already bought the pudding He looked so disappointed that she went over to one of her customers, an old gentleman in a Colonels uniform sitting alone at one of her tables: "M de Fortgibu, she asked, would you have the goodness to share your plum pudding with this gentleman"? The two friends from Orleans were extremely pleased to become re aquainted after ten years, and to share their Christmas treat once again.

One Christmas eve, many, many years later, Emile Deschamps was attending a Christmas dinner party where the main feature was a traditional English plum pudding for dessert. At the mention of the pudding, he jokingly remarked to his hostess: "Then I know M de Fortgibu would be here". He then proceeded to tell the facinating tale of the only two times in his life, when he had ever eaten English plum pudding, and that it was, while in the company of M de Fortgibu.

Toward the end of the meal, the plum pudding was brought in and one of the guests was remarking that his friend seemed to have missed this occasion. Just then the butler opened the diningroom door and announced M de Fortgibu. Deschamps was at a complete loss for words at that moment and merely stared as an older version of his friend slowly walked into the room and seated himself while casting puzzled glances at the strangely unfamilliar faces around the table.

As it turned out, Colonel M de Fortgibu was invited to another dinner party held in the same building that evening and had knocked on the wrong door by accident. This lead to Deschamps later making the following remark: "Three times in my life have I eaten plum pudding, and three times have I seen M de Fortgibu! A fourth time I should feel capable of anything... or capable of nothing!"

No, but I DID have a Conscious Uncoupling. ™

Wasn't there a story that even the MGM publicity department thought was too unlikely and wouldnt be believed, about costume for the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz?

Supposedly, while looking for just the right, theatrical, but slightly worn and disreputable - jacket in second hand stores, the MGM costumers came across the perfect garment - only to discover from a name tag inside that it had belonged to L. Freank Baum - the author of The Wizard of Oz and the other Oz books...

Like I said - they assumed no one would believe the coincidence, so it never got any official publicity. Forget where I read the story - but always wondered if it really was true...

I LOVE these stories of Synchronicity. Please keep 'em coming!

Best. Thread. Ever.

I believe R6 that the costume department got the coat from their own closet having bought is years earlier, and only discovered the coincidence after having chosen it for the movie.

I definitely have. Here it is-

In 2005 I was working as crew on the ill-fated TV series Law & Order: Trial by Jury. One of the guest actors, Clark Peters, was playing an attorney. We chatted about my favorite city which is London, where he'd settled in back in the 1970s. He told me he was really feeling terrible about having to suddenly leave the cast of a play there which had been about to begin rehearsals. He felt awful about leaving the director, a guy named Che (memorable name), in the lurch. His American agent, however, made it known to him that if he wanted to jump start his career back here in film and TV he could do worse than a Dick Wolf show. So here he was (and he was cast in The Wire) not too long afterward.

A month later I was working on the equally ill-fated film The Producers. I became friendly with the assistant to the producer, a lovely young lady. One day I overheard her talking on her phone to her boyfriend, who was in London. After she ended the call I asked her if she'd been over there a lot, what areas, etc. She then said she had just been trying to help her boyfriend feel better because he was having trouble with one of the actors in a play he was directing. He said this particular actor had been a relatively sudden replacement due to someone bailing out for a TV gig here. Her boyfriend's name was Che and the bail-out was Clarke Peters.

Four years later I was in London and made plans to meet up with a wonderful actress who I'd become friends with on Facebook via mutual friends. We had a great time at brunch talking about theater, film and TV and eventually got around to discussing our families. She had two sons. One of them was named Che and he was a director.

On an obscure chatroom in the early days of the Internet, I found a long lost relative who'd been given up for adoption in the 1970s as a baby. Not sure if that would count.

Oh my God I love the pudding story, love coincidences.

That's crazy about the Wizard of Oz jacket!

Great stories. R10. Wow! It sounds like you have an interesting life.

When I moved to LA from NYC, I wrote my mother about life there. She sent me a humorous book called "The Serial," a collection of columns originally written in a freebie newspaper. Mom wrote inside "I don't know if this book is worth anything but it reminds me of the one-liners you used to write me from LA." I loved the book. And the writer was way better than I was, but I understood what my mother meant. I like satire.

About ten years later I was living in SF and (coincidentally) writing a satirical, serial-type column for a freebie newspaper when "The Serial" author (Cyra McFadden) happened to move into my neighborhood. One day I saw her on 24th Street in Noe Valley with an Afghan Hound, wearing dark sunglasses, looking elegant. I went over and introduced myself, we started talking, totally clicked, and we're good friends to this day.

When she saw what my mother wrote in her book a decade earlier, she wrote an inscription of her own, something like "We'll just have to wait and see" whether her book is "worth anything."

PS - Cyra if you googled this, you have to admit it was kind of a confounding coincidence. (smile)

I'm not sure if this counts but I enjoy telling the story.

I was in New York City, walking near City Hall. It was the first time I had spent the weekend in the city.

I and several other people were trying to find an open subway station on a Saturday morning. I told the strangers that there was another station on the other side of City Hall.

I struck up conversation with two woman from Minnesota. They said they were heading to Grand Central. I was too. We continued to talk on the train, parting ways at Grand Central.

The next morning, I was on the elevator in my hotel. The doors opened, and the two woman I had met the day before were standing there.

We laughed at the coincidence and had breakfast together in the hotel restaurant.

"Futility" (or "The Wreck of the Titan") was written in 1898 and reissued after the sinking of the Titanic.

It described in detail the sinking of an "unsinkable" boat named the Titan which strikes an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic. There aren't enough Lifeboats for the passengers resulting in a large loss of life.

And like the Titanic fourteen years later, the fictional Titan was trying to break a speed record.

The author, Morgan Robertson, went to sea as a youth. Unmarried, he was a "cabin boy" whose story, Futility, was his best known work. He hung around with a "bohemian" crowd in New York City around the turn of the nineteenth century.

[quote] He hung around with a "bohemian" crowd in New York City around the turn of the nineteenth century.

I think you mean the twentieth century, R16. The turn of the nineteenth century would have been 1799.

Thank You R17. It's cocktail time.

I had a trio of weird coincidences involving a friend of mine. One night I had a vivid dream that I was doing a play in a black-box theater on our local college campus. The next day, a old friend called and told me she was directing a play in that very theater and she had a part I might like to play. I replied instantly that I would do it. "Don't you even want to know what the play is?" she asked. I told her about the dream and said that I trusted it was telling me to do the play.

A few weeks later, it's the end of a run-through rehearsal. My friend is giving the cast some director's notes. She comes to me and she pauses and smiles wryly. "It's the darnedest thing..." she says, "As I was writing down this note, you began doing exactly what I was writing and as I continued to write you continued to follow me." We decided it was a case of great minds thinking alike.

Flash forward a few months later. It's a beautiful late afternoon and I'm riding home on the bus. I had lived in this lovely neighborhood for over a year but there were many side streets I had never set foot upon. On a whim I decided to debark at the next stop and walk home just to drink in the beauty of the day. Walking down an unfamiliar street, I heard a voice call out my name. It my my old friend, the director. She lived miles away but just happened to be picking up her son from a birthday party. Our paths crossed only because of my spur of the moment decision to explore my near surroundings.

Years ago I was working at my father's shop. Upstairs was an old residence that was now used to store boxes and machinery. There was plaster falling from the ceiling, and pealing wallpaper on the walls. The floor boards were bare and nothing was square due to settling of this very old building. When stocking boxes, I had an overwhelming thought that was so strong I almost said it out loud. "Patricia should have lived here". Patricia was my girlfriend, and I put that thought out if my mind, as it seems so peculiar to think it.

Later, at a party, I was drinking with her mother and mentioned the aforementioned thought. I don't know why I mentioned it, it must have made me sound crazy. Except Patricia's mother didn't think it strange. She said "That's odd, because I lived and grew-up in that apartment in the 1940s".

I've thought this over a lot, and there was absolutely no possibility I might have known about the coincidence beforehand.

R17, actually, the turn of the 19th century would have been January 1, 1801, and the 20th on January 1, 1901, and so forth. Just like the 21st century and new millennium didn't begin until January 1, 2001, despite many people anticipating "the year 2000."

R13, I love the Serial! It's one of the books I pull out and re-read every few years. What's Cyra McFadden up to now?

Was on a summer-long road trip with an old bf, no real direction or timetable, around the US. We left from the east coast. When we arrived in SF several weeks later, we took a walk around our hotel's neighborhood. One block away, while crossing to a sunnier side of the street, we ran into my two best friends (then a couple) from our east coast starting-point on a street corner.

We didn't know they were in SF, they didn't know we were (they knew we were road-tripping, but not where or when - no internet then). But somehow we ran into each other in a city 3,000 miles away from where we all started in what was then not even a very populous corner of SF.

A few months after we met, my then boyfriend and I went to NYC Gay Pride.

We ran into another couple. I immediately went up to one of them and hugged him, not having seen him in years, while he did the same with the other.

Turns out the first guy I ever dated was now boyfriends with my then partner's best friend from high school.

Neither I nor my first date guy were from NYC, and we knew each other from a third city far away.

R22, She is in her 70s now, living on a houseboat in Sausalito, and still the Dorothy Parker of the West Coast literati. I'll be in SF next week and we're having dinner together. She would LOVE that you remember her, by the way. Someone wrote a review of her memoir on Amazon, and Cyra wrote her and invited her to stop over someday if she ever gets to SF. Very open, warm, and authentic.

When I was sixteen my family took a trip from Colorado to Disneyland. We were standing in one of the maze-like lines for some ride and I realized some kid I kept passing as we went back and forth in the line was a kid from my school. He noticed me too. We didn't like each other so we just ignored each other. Well somehow our moms figured out they knew each other and were looking at both of us going "are you two friends in school?"

Back in the early 90's, I worked with a 18 year old girl in retail. It was tax time and there was a problem with her W2. The SS number was a digit off and the address was wrong. When she contacted corporate HR, there was much confusion because another young lady in a state 1000 miles away had the same problem. Turns out these two were twins who were separated shortly after birth by adoption. They worked for the same company in the same position. They both played softball, were in ROTC, had been in band and were joining the army. They reconnected after 18 years.

Fuck me, R27 wins.

I remember this one night I watched Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the movie Savages and mere HOURS later I found myself masturbating to pictures of Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

One time a friend and I attended a concert and we shared pot and struck up a conversation with the two girls sitting next to us.

After the concert, we said our good-byes - my friend and I took a little time but when we finally got to our car - in this huge, crowded parking lot - we saw that we were parked a car away from our new friends. We laughed about the coincidence and again said good-bye.

We went out to eat and about an hour later, as we were driving home, we realized we were stopped at a red light and in the car next to us were the girls.

That was too much so we pulled over and exchanged numbers. I stayed in touch with them (they were roommates) and we visited back and forth (different towns) for a year or so afterwards before I moved east and we lost touch.

I went to school with a friend whose boyfriend was South African. I'd lived in SA for a few years, so always felt a connection to this guy, but nothing too crazy... we fell out of touch when his girfriend (my friend) dropped out of school. At that time I often wore a thick Icelandic sweater my mom had knitted for me. (I went to school back east).

About 9 years after that I was going out with a guy who'd also lived in South Africa for a few years. One night he said he'd run into an old friend and wanted me to come along. It was a cold night, so I dug that Icelandic sweater out of my closet (I hadn't worn it in YEARS) and went to dinner with my boyfriend, to meet his friend.

Much to my surprise, it was the same guy I'd known nearly 9 years previously. He even commented on me "still" wearing my sweater. *blush*

A daughter of a woman I worked with was getting married in town. One of the bride's grandmothers and one of the groom's grandmothers lived on opposites sides of the US. They both bought the exact same dress for the wedding except in different colors.

When I was in junior high, I went to a Go Go's concert. I didn't know the girl sitting (standing) next to me, but we had a blast together. She was a couple of years older than me. Never saw her again after the show.

20 years later, I'm in NYC visiting, and the girlfriend of my friend's friend and I started talking about music and eventually she said she'd gone to see the Go Go's back in 1985 when she was visiting my city...we both paused for a minute and realized who we both were. It was pretty freaky.

We still keep in touch.

Here's one...

During college (Western MA) I went to a house party in Cambridge, MA. After graduation, a friend living in Cambridge allowed me to couch surf at her place for a few weeks when I first moved there. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the very same apartment where I'd attended that party several years prior.

Too bad my friend was a selfish slut.

I have one from this week.

I have to research an obscure historical topic - the lives of two men in the 19th Century. I didn't even know if their paths had ever crossed.

I entered their both names into google and a book title came up. The book was written in 1854 and the author's name...is also my name.

Love this thread

I have two stories, both involving eagles.

I was visiting my new lover on the small mid-coast Maine island where he had grown up. It was my fortieth birthday the following day, and he asked what I wanted for my birthday. I was so happy there on the island, being with him. The only thing I could think of that I truly wanted was to see an eagle. I'd never seen one in the wild.

He looked nervous, but said he'd do what he could. He surprised me by taking my birthday off from his job and taking us on his motorcycle for a picnic across the island on a remote cove. We stayed all day. No eagles.

Apologetically, he said he should get back to mow his property and suggested that I relax with the gift books he'd surprised me with that morning. I was so mellow I didn't feel disappointed about the lack of eagles.

As we drove onto his dirt road I heard the local osprey calling overhead. It was such a common experience I didn't look up. We got off the bike and the screaming of the osprey finally got my attention. I looked up to see the osprey with a large fish in its talons directly overhead. And close on its tail - directly overhead - was a mature bald eagle. The chase was a crazy high speed dance, but eventually the osprey lost its grip on the fish. The eagle was on that fish in a flash and then gone. We watched the osprey circle, screaming, for a minute.

Then my lover gave me a long look and said "fuck the mowing."

Most of mine have been bad...

Then I learned they were not coincidences...

One day I heard a song on the radio that I rarely hear and I immediately remembered it was the theme song to some show I used to watch back in the early 80s. For the life of me I could not remember the show but thought about it the whole 40 minute drive home from work. That night, I was watching Conan O'Brien and the band was playing the same song when returning from a commercial break. Then Conan stopped to explain that the song (Motherless Children by Eric Clapton) was the theme song to the first TV show he ever worked on, Not Necessarily The News, on HBO back in the 80s. Weird!

My second eagle story happened 13 years later.

I was volunteering at a raptor rehabilitation and education center in Conn, working with eagles primarily. The director and I were talking one day after a long spell when I hadn't been able to work at the center. She mentioned that there was an update that was good and bad news. The good news was that there was a golden eagle in rehabilitation in South Dakota whose injuries made it non- releasable. It might be a good candidate for education work. She had applied for consideration for placement of the bird at the Conn. Center. The bad news was there was another ed center who'd already asked for the bird.

I asked where the bird was in rehab, and realized the bird was at a facility in South Dakota run by my old friend and first falconry/wildlife ed teacher whom I'd met and worked with in Mass. I called my old friend and put in a good word for the Center where I was volunteering. She thanked me, explaining she was in a tough spot. The folks who called first had no eagle experience and this was a VERY strong eagle with a lot of attitude. The director of the Center in Conn. was very experienced with eagles and had a real gift for working with them. After very thorough consideration, the eagle was placed at the Conn. Center.

In gratitude, the director offered me the chance to name the eagle. Knowing the bird was originally from the area of the Oglala Lakota reservation area, Pine Ridge Reservation, I decided she needed a Lakota name.

A while back I was travelling in Malaysia and hung out for a couple weeks with a group of people on one of the islands. Six months later, I was hitchhiking in New Zealand and got picked up by two guys who'd been part of that group.

In the guestbook of a hostel in a village there, I came across the name of an Israeli girl I'd met in London 15 years before. She'd stayed there a month before me.

A friend of mine is the son of a guy who wrote a hit song in 1960s in the UK. My friend was born a good decade after the band's hit song went to number one and therefore had never heard it on the radio. The day his father died, around 40 years after the songs success, his mother called him with the bad news. As my friend jumped in he car to race over to his parents place the song came on the radio just as he started the car.

They were probably playing it cuz he died.

I went to my Cherokee friend who had a shop in my town and asked for her help. I knew she went to Sun Dance on Pine Ridge each year (and had done so faithfully for many years) and knew Lakota language dialects, so I asked for her help finding the right name for the bird.

She was honored I asked for her helped and told me to come back in a few weeks. Spur of the moment, I stopped in the shop one day. She said she'd just gotten the name that morning. She then said she hoped I didn't mind, but she went to the medicine man who is the Intercessor at the Sun Dances and asked, with traditional offerings (tobacco, sage, sweet grass, etc,) for a. Traditional naming ceremony for the eagle. She told me the Lakota name that was given during ceremony. I sent tobacco, sweet grass, and sage, along with a photo of the bird, to the medicine man. My Cherokee friend said he didn't speak much English so I should not expect a reply. Sure enough, I heard nothing.

Two years later, that medicine man and another, and a contingent from their spiritual community drove east (for many it was the first time away from Pine Ridge) to create ceremony here in Mass. My Cherokee friend was their hostess here. I had no idea the Oglala Lakota were appearing here to do ceremonies until three days before they arrived. I volunteered to help with preparations, and was invited to join the crew of organizers at a feast to greet the Oglala community. The feast was held at my Cherokee friend's home.

I was nervous about meeting a very traditional medicine man but excited. When I walked into the living room I was startled to look at him and realize I'd met him before, somewhere - I vividly recognized his face.

He listened carefully as I thanked him again for the eagle's naming ceremony, and giving him an update on her status. He said, "I found that bird. She was injured and couldn't fly. I could have let her die so I could have her feathers but I wanted her to live. My sons and I caught her, which was very difficult because she was so strong. Then the wildlife people came and took her. I told them I wanted to know where she ends up living. A long time later they said she went to live in Conn. "

I was stunned. And also still stunned that I recognized this man's face, his voice. After a while I remembered that the one time, 10 years earlier, I visited my old friend/falconry teacher in South Dakota. And at an opening show/exhibit of Indian art I had been introduced to the medicine man by my friend's lover, Joe. When Joe introduced us I looked into that guy's eyes (I had no idea he was a medicine man) and the weirdest, most unsettling feeling ran through me. It was intrigue, mixed with a strange unnerving expectation, and an electrical charge. I sort of wanted to run screaming way but I just couldn't leave, though we stood there in awkward silence. The Indian man just stood there, inscrutable, looking intently into my face and especially my eyes.

R44-

I'm loving this, but you better have a mix of "The Matrix" and "6th Sense" twist ending.

Get to the point!

A student who entered the same M.A. program at the same time I did completed her B.A. at the same undergrad institution on the other side of the country, in the same smallish program (she was a year ahead of me), and for an entire year we lived just 2 houses away from each other. We never knowingly met.

To add to my post at R46, that friend had a small party at her house just before Christmas break where I met a friend of hers from Toronto. Just in passing - pleasantries exchanged. A few days later I had some time to kill at the train station in Toronto (we lived in a different city), so I decided to visit the CN Tower. The security guard at the body scanner? The friend I met at the party a few nights before.

Umm, R45 the ending in R44 wasn't confounding enough? Fine. Yes there IS more but I DID get to the point and ended it where some would be satisfied. Regrettably, it didn't work for you.

R45 I didn't mean to sound snarky - I'm just sad if the story wasn't satisfying for you as is. It was a damned confounding experience for me.

I did. I used to see this man every day. After running into each other for such a long time, we realized we live together.

R43 I don't think anyone outside of the family knew he'd died at that point. Not to mention it had been several decades since the band had been famous. I'm not sure anyone would have known who he was anymore, let alone what song he'd written nearly forty years earlier.

When we were young and foolish a friend of mine cashed in his chips in rural Maine. He bought himself a brand new Yugo for $3990. Renouncing New England forever, he drove straight across country to Palm Springs, California. He pulled into the parking lot of a Carl's Jr.. As he was walking in, a voice called out behind him in a distinctive Maine accent, "What pahhhta Maine ya frum?"

Turns out he had parked next to another car with Maine license plates whose driver had also just driven straight across country from Maine to Palm Springs. Though perfect strangers, each was the first person either spoke to upon arriving in California.

years and years ago I had a bit of an adventure with a college roommate. We were sort of held hostage, for lack of a better term, by an escaped mental patient(cliche-ish but true. My classmate was a pianist and we were in one of the small rehearsal studios at UCLA. Someone came into the studio behaving very strangely, creeped us both out and when we went to leave, this person blocked the door and wouldn't let us out. Strangely, he had rocks that he was throwing at us. Eventually we managed to get out, called campus police and found out that this guy was a mental-patient at the UCLA hospital who somehow got out.)

Anyway, many many years later I was having a chat with a coworker when he started relating a story about a friend of his and his friend's college roommate who many years ago where held hostage in a rehearsal studio at UCLA. It was bizarre. I said "That's me you're talking about. I'm your friend's college roommate. This happened to me."

In my early 20s I rented a flat in Swiss Cottage, London with two friends. I lived there for about 18 months then left to go backpacking around Thailand and Australia. One night in Sydney I went to a gay pub in Newtown and got chatting to one of the most handsome men I've ever met. It turned out he was also from the UK and had migrated to Australia a few years years earlier. We did the usual where are you from, where did you used to work, live, etc. Not only had he once rented my old flat in Swiss Cottage he had also slept in the same bedroom, the small one at the back with wood panelling. We went through lots of detail about the flat, who was the landlord, what colour were the tiles in the bathroom, etc, to check if the other was lying but it all added up.

I'm a hardcore romantic and took the whole thing as a sign that he was the One and we were destined to be together but, though we swapped details and I sent him a couple of postcards, I never heard from him again.

I once got an old book about about a porter, who had been one at the school I went too 50 years ago. Thought it would be fun to read.

A fews hours later I went to a friend's place and wait before I went out to coffee with her.

I started reading the book while waiting. The author spoke about first travelling overseas and staying at boarding house when he first arrived 50 years before.

He said he wanted to thank the family that had helped him at the start of his journey. He then gave tbe address. It was the address I was standing in.

50 years before I found out. My friends house had been a boarding house.

Love this thread, too!

They're all terrific, but R35 blows me away.

I came home one lunchtime to find the normally quiet street full of activity: police cars, barriers, ambulance, officials of all sorts. The man in his sixties who lived opposite my house had been found dead. I was shocked and sad at the turn of events, but not entirely surprised. He had his demons.

As events continued a near neighbour called me to catch up. Yes we were 'rubbernecking', but each of us was acquainted with the man, who had in the course of street life visited us. No point in not witnessing what was going on.

The phone rang again after a time, and I assumed it was the same neighbour checking in. It was though (startlingly) a former neighbour who'd moved far away. We'd been pleasant acquaintances, no more. No reason to keep in touch. I was very surprised to hear her voice, for many reasons.

She had I knew tried sincerely to help the now dead man with his drink problem: through AA she had dealt with her own addiction. She was now it became clear trying to call another friend and former neighbour, who had been very close to the dead man.

She had though wrong-numbered to me (having never had reason to call me before). I therefore had to break the news of what was unfolding, what had happened that very afternoon, to the erstwhile friend she'd tried so hard to help.

When I was in college in the mid-90s, we were watching an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry dates a deaf girl. One of my dorm roommates made some pea soup. I reluctantly tried some and thought it was pretty good. So I said, "You know, I don't like peas, but I like pea soup". A few seconds later, Kramer said almost the exact same thing as he translated what the deaf woman was saying.

I went to visit the Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC. I came from a small town and as a kid, I remember how one of my classmates was crying after school. His brother was ready to return home but just before his departure date, he stepped on a landline and instantly killed. He was the only person I knew who died in the Vietnam War. I told my son it would be hard to find his name among all the thousands. When I went to the books to search, it was already opened and the first name I saw was his.

R34, I don't get it. What was the surprise?

This didn't happen to me but to the brother and uncle of an ex. They're now old timers but the uncle and brother both fought in the Korean War. They lost touch with each other for many years because of some family dispute and the uncle just went up and left and no one knew where he was.

One day, my ex's brother troop was injured and he was the only uninjured soldier so he was wandering in the snow, searching and waiting for rescue. He really thought he was going to die. In the distance he saw another soldier walking towards him, waving his arms. It was his uncle.

They both broke down in tears when they recognized each other.

[You do realize that this is a troll, right? It does not believe what it posts. It just craves attention. You might want to stop talking to it.]

Thanks R56, it blew me away too! My name is not a common one - have never encountered anyone who shares it.

Lovely ending, R62. I wish you both a "happily ever after"

not very datalounge of me, I know.

Today I was perusing some higgledy-piggledy used-book shelves. On the top shelf was "The Eye of the Eagle," and I thought, Drat! I'd rather "The Eye of the Needle." On the bottom shelf, after a bunch of Nancy Drews and assorted other titles, was, you guessed it!

Of all the gin joints: Once, during breakfast at a tiny and obscure B&B in Scotland, the owners' young daughter mentioned she had a U.S. pen-pal. "Oh? Where?" asked my husband. The very same h.s. he had taught at.

Some years ago I subletted my Manhattan apartment to a guy who worked in graphic design (we, actually, met at a film poster exhibit some weeks earlier). Once he moved out of my place we lost touch, but I knew that he was moving to Los Angeles.

A year later I was in Los Angeles. A friend of mine from Europe happened to be there as well, working on a short term project. I came to visit him in the place he was renting in Venice. He told me had another couple of weeks left on his rental.

The next day I was running on the beach in Santa Monica and decided to run to Venice. It was around noon. It was very, very hot. Hardly any people on the beach. When I got to Venice I saw a lone figure walking across a parking lot near the beach - it was the graphic design guy. We started talking. He told me he was moving into a new apartment in Venice, but he had to wait a couple of weeks for the current tenant to move out. He was moving into the apartment where my European friend was staying.

Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway: both born July 21, 1899, to women named Grace who came from Oak Park, IL; both became major American writers and killed themselves.

"All My Loving" was playing overhead in the hospital when John Lennon was pronounced dead.

Syncronicity is a psychic phenomenon, some of you are attuned to the holographic nature of the universe. The theatre guy and his director friend are straight up psychic.

I had an acquaintance who was on a PhD post-doc program with almost no money, and not really any concrete prospects. He was at the airport, waiting for a flight, and the Professional Help Wanted section of the NY Times was sitting there, all by itself next to where he'd plunked himself, so he decided, "What the hell, let me see what the market in my field looks like!" One ad's required experience had EXACTLY the duties he'd had at his job before going for the doctorate. He replied saying just that, and within months he was making $$$$ in NYC, not having thought such even remotely possible before he just *happened* to stumble across that newspaper listing ...

I lived on 21st and Guerrero in SF and my boyfriend and I were in the process of breaking up. We'd come back from a party in LA and he asked me to spend the night. I said I would come by after I finished some chores. I didn't really feel like staying over and was trying to come up with excuses.

I walked up 21st Street, and when I got to the top I noticed the sign on the hospital. "ST. LUKES" was lit up and then two odd thoughts entered my head -- "I've got to remember to write a thank you letter to the paramedics," and "I wonder what happens when you call 911." Then I went back to thinking what I was thinking about before that. But I made a note of the odd thoughts.

I ended up spending the night. The BF got up the next morning and was shaving in the bathroom when he came crashing through the bedroom door backwards, one hand in the air, one hand on his chest. He landed at the foot of the bed. I bolted up and went to him, cradling him in my arms . . . but he wasn't breathing. He finally took a breath and went into a deep sleep.

I called 911, the paramedics came, and took him off to St. Luke's Hospital.

It was a seizure. He has Meniere's Disease but is fine now.

I did indeed end up writing a letter thanking the paramedics which was published in the Chronicle and which the boyfriend said was corny and melodramatic. That's when we broke up for good.

But I never forgot the strange coincidences surrounding that event.

r62 So you're NOT long-lost brothers, separated as babies?

[You do realize that this is a troll, right? It does not believe what it posts. It just craves attention. You might want to stop talking to it.]

A sweet elderly couple of summer regulars in the bar I tend were traveling in Romania of all places. They met an American woman at a tavern in Bucharest. In the course of their chance conversation, they discovered that she was the far-flung sister of one of my co-workers.

Like r58, my synchronistic event came via T.V. I was working a crossword with the T.V. on in the background - Hollywood Squares I think. I had just alighted on a clue for a term that I can't for the life of me remember now, but I know it wasn't a very common word. I was speaking aloud to myself, generating possibilities, when someone on the T.V. said the word. I checked the answer key, and sure enough it was correct. I thanked the "T.V. people" with a nervous giggle.

It was this same T.V. that would shut off on its own when I would doze off while watching Friday Night Videos or some such. Very considerate, that machine. I've yet to meet its equal.

Fascinating tales in this thread. Let's have some more.

A long time ago, I was carrying a heavy bag of cat food up several flights of stairs and felt something like a hemorrhoid in my asshole.

The next day I was talking to my Dad on the phone and for some strange reason I told him about the hemorrhoid. He said, "Oh, I can't wait for your Mom to get home so I can tell her". She had had a dream about me the night before. In the dream I had asked her to look at my rectum because something was wrong with it. She told me she didn't want to look at it and that I should go to a doctor.

R25, tell her that I found her book in a public library in a mid-sized city in Australia and loved it. I was about 12 or 13 and didn't understand a lot of the references till I re-read the Serial as an adult - it was one of the first books I bought off Amazon. An absolute classic! I wish she'd written more.

R210-

[quote]Bin Laden was dead for years when his "capture and execution" were staged for public consumption.

Why do you think the movie "Zero Dark Bullshit" won the Oscar? Why does the "official story" change every few months? Even today, after nearly 3 years, the "real, official" story conflicts with contemporaneous "first hand witness" accounts AND official military accounts.

A significant percentage of "news stories" we learn about via the Mainstream Media are fictional in varying degrees.

Look at how "liberals" say Benghazi was okay while attacking Judith Miller on the "WMD" story.

Or "Fast and Furious" arms transfer was okay while "Iran-Contra" was evil.

Obama is just as evil as Bush, Reagan was just as evil as Clinton.

Poor, ignorant people trust the government.

So sad. They need to wake up and smell the fascism.

The BF walked into the living room one morning and put a yellow candle in a glass on top of the TV I was watching. He walked away and I watched as the candle actually slid off the top of the TV and crashed to the floor. He ran back into the room "What was that?!" I was kind of shocked and said, "That candle you brought in just slid off the TV by itself." He looked confused and left again. 20 minutes later the phone rang. It was the BF's mother saying that the sister had passed away 20 minutes ago. (Yellow was her favorite color.) I always thought she swept through to say a last goodbye to her brother. They were very close.

Has anyone mentioned the prologue to Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia yet? All of you would love it.

Great film, you should see it.

r79, Judith Miller clearly criminally lied about the fictional WMD's. "Benghazi" has been declared a basic screw-up, even by the bi-partisan committee.

What law did "Fast and Furious" break, compared to the Iran-Contra crimes? Criminals had to be PARDONED over I-C.

Your attempts at equations fail miserably.

R79 and R82, please not that you are on the wrong thread.

not = note

I was a college student from a small liberal arts college in the midwest (1700 students) studying in Aberdeen, Scotland. While there, my parents came into some money so my Mom decided to spend some time with her sisters who live in Edinburgh. She was staying for a few months and since I was so close, we decided to travel a bit.

On a whim, we decided to rent a car and drive around Ireland. Our last stop was Dublin. Since we were doing lotsa touristy stuff, we decided to visit the Guinness brewery. On the walk there, I spotted the sexiest guy I'd ever seen. He looked like walking sex--definitely stuck out from the crowd. I was with my Mom so didn't think anything beyond, "He's fucking hot."

Later Mom and I are in the Guinness lounge enjoying our free pint after the tour. I look around the room and there's the hot guy from the street! What's he doing here?? I look to see who he's with and I bolt up and run over to the table.

Sexy guy is sitting with my college classmate and close friend Maia. She was supposed to be studying in Freiburg, Germany. She told me that she had hitchhiked to the UK to surprise me with a visit. She got as far as London and called my dorm who to learn that I had left town. Instead of heading north, she decided to hitch to Dublin and she'd arrived that morning.... She didn't know the hot guy, she'd just so happened to grab an empty chair at his table.

We ended up having a lovely time enjoying Dublin with my Mom. We're still great friends (this was 15 years ago).

[quote]We ended up having a lovely time enjoying Dublin with my Mom. We're still great friends (this was 15 years ago).

You're still friends with who? Maia or sex on a stick? And did you get to fuck him?

I'm still friends with Maia. I only said hello to the walking orgasm. He was (probably still is) way out of my league.

When I was 17, I spent the summer in Finland, staying with a family in a small city in the middle of the country. My host brother and I didn't get along very well, so I would go into the nearby town almost daily to kill time (I was also desperately culture-shocked and homesick).

One afternoon I wandered into a shoe store and struck up a conversation with the young woman working here. In the course of talking with her, found out that she had been an exchange student in the US - in the same very small town I'm from.

This happened to a friend of mine. She left her apartment one morning and went down to her car. She hadn't driven it a week and found that two of her tires were punctured and flat.

I don't remember what kind of car she had, I think it was a Jeep, and it took a very specific type of tire that was hard to find. She decided she'd go to an internet cafe to do some research on where to get replacement tires and to do some comparison shopping.

She couldn't make up her mind as to which cafe to go to. One was much closer to her house, but the other one was closer to her church, but was a good 20 minute walk.

She decided to go to the one closer to her church.

When she got there, she was checking online and having a tough time finding anyone with the tires. Five minutes later, some random guy walks in and announces to the room that he just cleaned out his garage, had a set of tires that were in great condition, and if anyone needed them they were free. It turns out that the tires were the exact ones she needed.

She of course attributed this to Jesus loving her and the power of prayer.

Shit like this always happens to her, so maybe she's on to something.

A friend of mine left her apt. complex, got into her car, and took off for the supermarket to do some shopping. When she went to roll down the window, she found they were electric. Her car had roll-down windows. (This was in the 80s.) Shocked, she parked a few miles away and went to call someone, thinking she'd just bring the car back to her parking spot. But the car now wouldn't start.

Coincidentally, this friend had been an actress in a commercial where she was stopped by a local policeman and, when she called the police, they wanted to send the original officer from the commercial to come and mess with her.

Long story short, it turned out that the car had been left in her parking complex by someone who had stolen it. The police told her "You just stole a stolen car!"

Read this about Will Rogers. He was known as an easy touch for down-and-out people, especially actors. His wife would patiently wait for him to do his thing, no matter how urgent their appointment.

So it was, that Will was due at a location at a certain time. He was hurrying to get to the building. Just as he reached the street light, a man asked him for a handout. As usual, Will attended to him, first. So this made him late. He then crossed the street, just as the roof of the building he would have been in, collapsed.

To R88, this is probably because there have been exchanges between your small town in the US and that particular small town in Finland.

Not saying this is the case with all the freakish coincidences on this thread, but very often they will reveal patterns and structures that we are not aware of, but which exist and shape our behaviour (and, no, I don't mean psychic).

For example, much as I love the Clarke peters/Che story, it's a case of English theatre people who want to work in America and an American who is very interested in London. These peopole are bound to get together. Sometimes you will be surprised at how small the world is.

All this said, I love the thread like anyone else.

Agree with R92 your towns most likely had an exchange agreement.

R88 here - I was sent through a national organization (Youth for Understanding) as part of a scholarship program through my dad's workplace. I made the choice to go to Finland.

It's possible that there was some exchange program - but that woman was a few years older than I and we didn't have any Finns when I was in high school.

I used to work at a bank with an unstable guy who had decided to undergo a sex change. This was in Manhattan. I remember the manager coming in and telling us that since Steve was becoming a woman now he wouldn't have to wear a tie anymore like the rest of us. Everything was cool. But as soon as Steve's, er, bloomed, he started parading bra-less around the office with the top three buttons of his silk blouse undone.

Fast forward five years, I run into Steve at the French Market in West Hollywood. He's back to being a boy. He tells me that he tricked an old man in Florida into thinking he was a real woman but the guy caught him in the shower and put him out on the curb that night. He could no longer afford the hormones, much less an operation.

Fast forward five more years. I run into Steve, now in the Castro. He's a Rajneeshi follower, the guru in red from Oregon. Steve's living on the dole in the Allerton Hotel. He says Big Red up in Oregon with all the Rolls Royces preaches abundance and he is expecting $40,000 to appear in his checking account. He just has to pray and it will happen. I give him my copy of "City on a Hill" about the murderous Rajneeshi "community" in Antelope.

I haven't seen him since.

R13/14, I am a HUGE Cyra McFadden fan! Was over the moon when they reissued The Serial a few years back. My parents live on Mt Tam and I know my mother, who was at Berkeley when The Serial was first a serial, is a great admirer as well. (I also attended Berkeley, and am in my late twenties).

Could not be more pleased to hear that she is alive and well and living on a glorious goddamn houseboat. She's probably spitting distance from my cousin, who is anchored in Sausalito as well.

Aah, you've made my week! I'd love to get a letter to her.

By now we can all agree that this thread has brought Cyra McFadden to new readers and delighted her fans. Simply based on the level of enthusiasm I got the Serial on kindle- a book would have been better but I don't think it was available. Might check again.

Only cool people like Ms. McFadden R96, so you must be cool. Cyra expertly skewered the residents of Mt. Tam and Mill Valley back in the 70s. She started out in the Pacific Sun, I think. Armistead Maupin was writing "Tales of the City" for the Chronicle at the same time. Maupin worked the gay angle and Cyra worked the straight angle, Marin-style. The book eventually became a bad movie with Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld.

Her second book was optioned but never made. It was her memoir, "Rain or Shine" and I loved it. Her father was a rodeo announcer and her mother was a trick rider. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer that year but didn't sell as well as it should have. Maybe people thought it wouldn't be funny. But it's hysterical. Lots of funny, real-life characters in that book.

I'm going to have to show her this thread when I see her on Sunday. Writing can so lonely. It's the art form that is both created and consumed in private. There's no applause, no instant gratification. If you like her books, write a review on Amazon. She'd love that. Mine's there.

Wow R97. Didn't even know it was available on Kindle. Thanks.

PS - Not to go on and on, but somewhere in here I wrote about a woman who "stole a stolen car," only realizing when she saw the electric windows that it wasn't her car. I said she was an actress. Well, she was, but in this particular case, it was Cyra McFadden doing a commercial for the Hearst Corporation when they wooed her back to SF in the 80s to do a column. Willie Hearst was taking over and they did a series of very funny black and white commercials for the paper. One of them had Cyra stopped by the Marin County Police. You see them at the side of the road, red lights flashing. The police car is a BMW. The Logo on the door says "Marin County Police. We Want It All. Now." The cop says they've been looking out because they heard Cyra McFadden is back in town. Then he asks her, "What kind of car is this anyway?" Cyra meekly says: "A Plymouth." "Cop says: "Hmmm, never seen one of these around here before."

This might count..

Just watched Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann on Watch What Happens Live. Andy showed a clip of Cameron's first commercial, a coke ad, and in it, she gets a coke from some random dude. Leslie says, "wait a second, is that my boyfriend?" Everyone thinks she's joking but she says, "Was is name Alan?" Cameron confirms it was.

Cameron later asks Leslie if she was with him when he was in Australia, she confirms she was and Cameron says it's crazy because Alan told her at the time how he had a girlfriend and it turns out it was Leslie.

About 35 years ago one of my first loves had given me an antique figurine of a seated dandy as a birthday gift.I absolutely loved it(and him)and I treasured it.We eventually broke up but I carried that thing with me from state to state and every time I looked at it I would smile.About 15 years ago it was stolen by a vengeful ex,and I thought it lost forever.Afew years ago I started surfing ebay and etsy just to see if there was another like it but never found any until one day up popped one! i was thrilled as it was exactly like mine and bought it immediately.When it arrived I was astonished to find on the bottom a price written grease pencil,exactly like the one I had! When i emailed the seller asking her where she got it from,she said she picked it up years ago at a little shop in Jacksonville florida when she was on vacatiion,the city where I lived when it was stolen!I know it could well not be my exact one,but what are the odds? And I still surf the net and havent seen another like it again.

[quote]Why do you think the movie "Zero Dark Bullshit" won the Oscar? Why does the "official story" change every few months? Even today, after nearly 3 years, the "real, official" story conflicts with contemporaneous "first hand witness" accounts AND official military accounts.

ZERO DARK THIRTY didn't win any major Oscars. Just sound editing. It wasn't as beloved as you might "remember."

In 1995 I was working as a secretary in a psychiatrist's office. One of our nicer patients was a woman, whom I'll call "Sarah Simmons" for this story. Her real name was much more distinctive, and not at all common. She was funny and bright, and doing well in her treatment. We were about the same age, and she had dyed platinum blond hair cut in a short, spiky 80's style, much like I'd worn years before. She was transitioning out of treatment since she was doing well. We got word a few months later that she had died in a motorcycle accident. I was sad, as she'd been a nice and interesting person, and we'd had a lot in common. Had we not met the way we had, I could have easily imagined she and I being friends.

12 years later, a married couple is over to my house for dinner for the first time. We didn't know each other well, and this was the beginning of what has become an enduring friendship. Point is, I knew almost nothing about them other than the fact that they were both from other parts of the country and had met and settled in our city, D.C.

As they were leaving, the husband looked at a picture of me from college 20+ years before, turned to me with a wistful expression on his face and said: 'you know Sarah? Sarah Simmons?' I was so confused for a moment, because yes, I'd known Sarah Simmons, but how did he know that and why did he ask that? He pointed to the picture of me -"She was my girlfriend for many years after law school, and she died a couple years after our break-up. It was a tumultuous relationship and difficult break-up, but we were getting back to being friends when she died. How did you know her? Why do you have her picture displayed?"

I was stunned and said the picture was actually of me from 20 years ago, but that I had known Sarah, although I was vague about how, as I didn't want to break her confidentiality, even after her death. We were all sort of confounded at the coincidence that in a metro area of 3+ million people he had seen a pic of me and thought it was his old girlfriend, who I happened to know in a completely unrelated way.

Many years ago, I had a cheap subscription to O Magazine. It had some fun and inspirational stuff in it, but I didn't renew my subscription and tossed the magazines. One issue had a page with a great quote, part of which said "...anyone or anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you" with a great graphic of the night sky behind it. I always wished I had ripped out the page and kept it. A few years later, one of my neighbors put out a huge pile of loose O Magazines for recycling. I randomly grabbed 4 magazines out of a stack of maybe 30 just for fun reading material. Sure enough,a few days later I grabbed one of the magazines, flipped through it,and landed right on the page with the poem I wanted to keep. I ripped it out, framed it, and I still have it.

One of my cousins was with the State Department and was stationed in South America. He met the neighbor directly behind them over the fence. The man was from Scotland and said he knew only one other American and that had been a neighbor of his in Czechoslavakia some years earlier. He told my cousin his neighbor was from Arkansas. My cousin asked him where and he told him Searcy County. Not only did my cousin know him but he was another cousin of ours who was in the military. Strange coincidence.

A client shared this with me: months before, her husband passed away. She was close to his family,and took up the invitation to visit her brother in law and his wife, who lived in another state. The occasion was some town festival that attracted folks from all over the region.

One event took place in a church, which was packed with people. My client was sitting next to a lady with whom she chatted. She told the lady that she recently lost her husband. The lady asked her where her late husband was from, and she gove her the tiny town's name, which was miles away.

The lady exclaimed, "That's where I'm from!" Asking for the man's name, the lady told my client that not only did she know her husband, but they were high school classmates. The lady spoke kindly of her husband, and recalled how handsome he was.

The client told me she found it comforting that, of all the strangers around her, she was positioned next to the one person who knew her husband, and considered it a "wink" from him.

R104, when you met "Sarah Simmonds" at the psychiatrist's office, did you recognize her as the person you knew years earlier?

That's truly amazing R104

r108, ???

Oh, never mind! I read it in a hurry. Cool story, R104! Lots of great stories on this thread.

In 2002 I made the great decision to move to Paris. I visited about 2 or 3 apartments before falling in love with what ended up being my flat for 2 years.

After securing the flat, I went back to emptying the apartment I was leaving. There was a pile of magazines I was going to get rid of, but I chose to re-read them one last time. Sure enough, in one issue there was a picture of my new landlord inside a "true stories" article, complete with gayer-than-gay nickname (he was probably friends with one of the editors).

Of course, I decided to keep that one.

I saw him again in another issue of the same magazine.

Do you still live in Paris?

In the outskirts, now. It's become too expensive. But I go there every week, almost.

Why?

Decades ago I lived in England for a year, and became fascinated with brass rubbing(s). One weekend excursion brought me to a village church that had several brasses that looked interesting. I had to sign a register at the local post office in order to do the rubbings. About halfway through doing the rubbing, a man entered the church and called me by my name, BOTH names.I was intrigued how a complete stranger would know how to address me. He introduced himself with MY names, both of them. We had identical names. The postmistress had seen my entry in the register, and called this man, thinking we might be relatives. We weren't, but the situation made for a great afternoon at this gentleman's home. I was introduced to his wife and family, and spent several hours with them,being entertained,enjoying Brirish village life and a luscious high tea, AND a little of it marvelling at the odds of two men with the same names finding one another.

My sister married a widower in 2009 (they're both in their 50s). About a year into their marriage, my sis was looking at childhood pix of her hubby at her mil's house and came across a picture from the 1964 World's Fair. Her mil was standing next to our mother on line and each mom was holding hands with their kids (my sis and her hubby). They didn't know one another until 1996 and they lived 2000 miles apart throughout childhood.

Some coincidences point toward destiny.

When I was in University, I saw a man, we'll call Mike (his actual name is equally common), down the hall and was instantly drawn to him. Like, one of those rare, lust-at-first sight moments. I had no idea if he was gay, I myself was still closeted and I heard someone call his name, so that's all I knew about him.

I had posted signs all over the downtown, which as an hour drive from campus, looking for a living room to use as a film location for a school project. The first call I got was from a man named Mike and I wondered if it was him. We lived in a big city so the odds were slim. I showed up at the door, and, sure enough it was him. He showed me around, I was smitten and overwhelmed since I wasn't out yet.

Cut to, about five years later, I have not seen or heard anything about Mike. I was working a job and my co-worker, who had a bit of thing for me, said he had shown my facebook pics (facebook was brand new) to his friends and that one of his buddies, Mike, said I was cute. Despite the fact that it had been years, my first thought was that it was the same Mike. So I asked his last name, and sure enough, it was the same mike. We ended up dating for a while and he was a total asshole, but still.

R114, I just wanted to live through you for a few seconds. (Want to move to Europe).

I love the total asshole part, R117. It's still a cute story. Well, a funny story.

Keep them coming!

A creepy one. Years ago I was on a beach vacation and rainy weather kept us from being outdoors. I went to the drugstore to find a book to read. I rarely read Steven King, but I picked up 'It' mainly because it was the thickest book on the shelf.

After reading, I was a little creeped out by the whole 'clown the sewer with a balloon' and especially the line he used to lure in the children. "Down here, we all float."

A few days later we went to eat, and as we walked through the restaurant parking lot, I saw a car's front license plate from a distance. It had a clown holding a balloon on it. I joked with my friends saying, "look guys, it's Pennywise the clown, luring us in." As I got closer to the car, I saw the words on the license plate that said, "Down here, we all float."

I still have dreams about that damn clown.

And a fun one. When I was 17 or so, I drove with a friend to Philadelphia via a route that neither of us had ever taken. Along the way, we encountered Armand Hammer Boulevard. We were intrigued, and being young, and this being pre-smart phones and Google, neither of us had ever heard of 'Armand Hammer.' We concluded that the sign was actually a mis-spelled 'Arm and Hammer' Boulevard.

We returned to my friend's home late that evening and walked in on his parent's watching The Tonight Show. Just in time for the night's guest, Mr. Armand Hammer.

When I was younger, I worked as a driver for a rich man who was a total con artist. He was a "furrier" by trade and one of his scams was leaving a mink in a taxi with an arm sticking out. He'd ask the cabbie to stop while he made a phone call. Occasionally, the driver would take off with the mink, not knowing he'd been set up and that my "employer" had written down the cab info, including name, company, car no., etc. Then he would sue.

20 years go by. I'm on my way home and, for some reason, this guy just pops into my head. Hadn't thought about him in years.

When I got to my apt., I turned on the television and there he is...on People's Court with Ed Koch! Now HE was the one being sued by a man who'd given him a fur to sell. Still a con man, he told Koch that he knew his father, who was a furrier! Koch was surprised but said he wouldn't take the coincidence into consideration when he rendered his verdict. But he did. Even though the guy with the fur deserved to be fully reimbursed, Koch partially denied his claim.

I come from a very small coal mining town in Eastern Pa.

I was in Vietnam with the Army back in '65 stationed in a very small town as part of a very small company of US soldiers.

My time had come to be rotated out to a new area and I was waiting for the truck to come to transport me out. It finally rumbled through the small gate and started to discharge the fresh troops who were going to replace us grizzled veterans. One of the first guys to hop down was from my small town in Pa. I recognized him immediately. He wasn't a friend as he was about 4 years younger than me, but I knew him instantly from our town. Turns out he was a student of my Aunt, the grade school teacher.

We had very little time to talk before I was climbing up the back of the truck to be on my way to the new site. I didn't see him again.

But it was odd that we ran into each other, so far away from home and in such a small town in Vietnam. I never saw anyone else familiar in my 3 years in the Army.

I was traveling in the summer of 1979 through Europe and while in Paris stayed at a large student hotel. I sheared a room with a few girls from other countries and met one American girl who was staying in another room.

That Fall I started at a large University in my city and met the same American girl in my small division I had met in Paris a few months earlier, who still is one of my closest friends.

Years ago, pre-cell phone, internet. My brother-in-law had a business trip to Europe, Paris/Madrid/Berlin kind of thing. Around the same time, his neighbors were headed to some kind of fancy benefit in Monaco.

One night in Paris my bil decides go sightseeing and ends up at the Moulin Rouge. Out front, on the sidewalk, he ran into his neighbors.

R113, I want to go to New York. If this is where you are we can swap apartments for a week!

Actually, where are you? I like to travel.

R124 when I started reading your story I thought: did I end up posting that story??

It's not exactly the same but long story short while staying at a youth hostel in Paris I ended up sharing a room with my ex's best friend, who was from Germany. I hadn't seen her in 3 years.

At another youth hostel also in Paris I met two girls from Quebec, who I saw again one month later in a completely different town, that is Annecy (in the French Alps).

Here's one from Alan Cumming:

‏@Alancumming 4h

RIP bob Hoskins. He played my dad once, and we discovered he'd had a tapeworm removed in the London hospital that later was my apartment

Joe got on the train at Southport. Fortunately he didn't recognize me.

I went to an ophthalmologist who dilated my pupils and then took me to a waiting room. When it was time, his assistant came to get me and called me by name. Someone else had been in the room all along, also with his pupils dilated. When he heard my name, he jumped up and began talking.

We had known each other years before in another part of the country. We had always had crushes on each other but I was in a relationship and we had not been able to act on it before.

He was the partner I had always dreamed of and we were together until he died.

It was so strange that we had sat in that room together without knowing.

r130, That's a great story. How are you doing now?

R130, that's an amazing story

I lived in Philadelphia at the time. My boyfriend lived in NJ. We went to Hawaii to vacation with my parents at their condo. The boyfriend was a very good golfer, so we scheduled a tee time at the local course. We showed up, checked in and were told we would be golfing in a foursome with the Smiths. We went up to the first tee to wait for our start. We saw an older couple waiting also, and chatted, thinking these were the Smiths. Soon, a golf cart pulls up, and in the cart was my next door neighbor from Philadelphia. She was in Hawaii for her honeymoon. After we got over the shock of running in to each other 6,000 miles away, I turned and asked the couple we had been talking to if they would mind us swapping out the foursome. They gave e a weird look, shrugged their shoulders and said "no problem". As we figured out how to make the change, it became clear that my neighbor WAS Mrs. Smith. Turns out that was her new married name. We not only ran in to each other, we were assigned to the same foursome!

Bump! Anymore?

My best friend/soulmate died on Saturday August 2. I met him when we both lived in Colorado. We were as physically unalike as two people can be but we had the same soul. He was a tall gorgeous dark haired guy, and me, not so much.

He was one of those that had guys throwing themselves at his feet. I, of course thought he was cute but never wanted to date him, were better served as friends. We made each other laugh and we filled our conversations with bad puns and quotes from Clueless and To Wong Foo and Barbra Streisand's concert patter (This next song is from Showboat which is making it's way back to Broadway after 67 years. [nods head up and down])

He had so many demons, most of which were chemical based and we tried so hard to fix him but he resisted every attempt. Over and over again he'd tell me "you have no idea how much alike we are" and I started to see it.

He lost his job in Denver, lost his apartment and lost his mind so he moved back home to Ventura CA to live with his family. I tried so many times to get back in touch and I never once heard from him or from his sister, I had contact info for her. I don't know if she isolated him or if it was his choice.

I was out taking a long walk on August 2 and I became very disorientend very suddenly. I didn't know where I was even though I was on a familiar street and I wasn't even sure what day of the week it was. I had to look at my phone to confirm it was Saturday. I'd never had that happen before.

Out of the blue that next Tuesday I got a FB friend request from the sister. I had hoped it was because my bud wanted to get in touch but it was so his sister could tell me he'd died that Saturday before. He'd been in the ICU for two weeks with pneumonia when he died.

Was he reaching out to me as his spirit left the earth? I really want to ask the sister what his time of death was but I'm waiting for the right moment. I really need to know if he was trying to contact me as he died.

It happens R135. Not uncommon at all and entirely possible. Maybe he was playing with your "wiring." Also common is seeing the face of a deceased loved one on another person on the street until you get up close. That's happened to me. My best friend at the time died. Months later, I was walking down the street. "He" was looking at me as I approached. When I got to where he was, the "face" went away and the real guy was standing there instead.

R136 That happened for about a month after he died. I saw him everywhere! We lived in the same neighborhood so we shopped at the grocery store, things like that. I began to realize it felt as if he were walking around not knowing where to go. His old job was in the neighborhood and I got the strong impression he was trying to go there.

Gary Spivey is a LA psychic who talks to the dead, not in that fishing expedition way John Edwards does. I'd hear Spivey talk to callers when he did radio shows and Spivey would immediately, without asking any questions, say something to the caller like "your mom says her head doesn't hurt anymore" and it would be that the caller's mom died of brain cancer. Know what I mean?

If a caller said they felt a ghost in the house or something Spivey would say it was the spirit of someone who'd lived there in the past and they were lost. The caller was instructed to call out to the spirit and tell them to look up at the light (yeah like in Ghost) and to go to the light.

I remembered that on the day I really felt my friend's presence so I called out his name, about three times. I told him to look up at the light, and I told him to go home, Derik, time to go home.

A brief rainstorm had passed through the area right before and after I told him to go home I saw a double rainbow. I got a pic of it and it's my iphone wallpaper.

That's a beautiful story R137. You sound like you may be extremely perceptive, bordering on psychic yourself.

I like to support neighborhood businesses, but always went downtown NYC to a barbershop I liked. I lived on the West side in the low 100s.

One day I noticed an ancient barber shop on 104th (?) and Broadway, very 1940s and old-timey looking, with an old barber doing nothing, so I decided to get a haircut. The guy was tremendously funny and charming, and had been featured on lots of local morning shows, due to his longevity in the area, and unbeknownst to me, was sort of a local celebrity. His name was Mr. K., or Mr. Kay, I forget, but that wasn't his real name, I think he was Greek.

We chatted for only about 15 seconds and he asked me where I was from (I have no accent whatsoever), and I replied, "New England". Almost immediately, he said, "Where? Swampscott Massachusetts?"

I was dumbfounded, for I am indeed from Swampscott Massachusetts, a very small coastal bedroom community of Boston. As I said, I work in speech and have no regional accent whatsoever.

I asked him WHY he had guessed that town, as it was so random. He simply said he used to like to drive up the coast on his way to Maine, and drove along Route 129A, which runs along the ocean, and it was the first town that popped into his head. He remarked on a seafood shack summer restaurant, which is at the end of my STREET!

He was hardly as amazed as I was, and told me he had incredibly good intuition about people, almost psychic, and that this sort of thing was common in his life. About two years later I was very sad to read that he had died of natural causes at an advanced age. It still blows my mind!

I just looked him up, and found this link. He was Greek.

About 25 years ago I took a cab home from work because my car was in the shop. The cabbie was this older African American guy who was chatty. We passed this building and he mentioned that it used to be a recording studio back in the 50s and 60s. I knew about it because my dad was a musician back then and had recorded in that studio. Somewhere my mom has the 45s my dad cut there with his band. So I told the cabbie my dad's name and he knew him from the studio, however they never recorded together. I got the guy's contact information and gave it to my dad. I never asked if he got in touch but I hope he did.

Great thread!

I was a teacher once upon a time. Had a foreign exchange student who, upon her departure back across the globe, gave each of her teachers a small pin. I never wore it; just put it away.

Until one day the following year I decided the pin would suit my day's outfit. THAT VERY AFERNOON that same exchange student walked into my classroom, for she was on an unannounced return visit to her sponsor family.

I was glad she saw me wearing her gift!

sp: AFTERNOON.

After having drops put in my eyes to dilate my pupils, I was waiting with my eyes closed to see the ophthalmologist. Someone else was led into the room soon afterward. When the assistant came to get me, she called me by name. It turned out the other person was an old friend I hadn't seen in years.

What are the odds of two people who both came from the other side of the country being in the same opthalmologist's office with their pupils dilated?

The stories in this thread are amazing. Surprised it fizzled out. More contributions please!

I saved up 30 years to be able to fly to Europe.

I saw London and most of the other capitals. On my first morning in Paris I was having coffee and croissants at this sidewalk restaurant on the Champs de'Elysee.

I heard some yapping. I looked up.

There were some greyhounds looking as elegant as Erté. And who should be leading them but Miss Leslie Caron!

Its was the perfect introduction to a city!

Heaven. Simply heaven.

OK, get ready. This one will make you believe in God.

A couple of years ago, a lesbian couple I know was hosting one of their family's Thanksgiving dinners. Afterwards, the father of one of the ladies, who had a cut and a band-aid on one of his fingers, asked if he could help in the kitchen. He was told that he could stir the turkey broth that they were simmering to make stock.

Later, when it was just the couple in the kitchen, they strained the stock and found the father's blood-stained band-aid as it poured into the strainer. They ladies looked at each other and, after a quick discussion, decided that, although it was gross, there was no health hazard since the stock had been simmering all afternoon. Still, they decided to unload the tainted stock onto an unsuspecting brother.

Fast-forward to Easter, when the family again gathered together for a holiday dinner, this time at the brother's house.

"This soup is really good," one of the lesbians said to her brother.

"I made it with the turkey stock you gave us after Thanksgiving," he replied.

In 1982, my Spanish parents moved our family from the Philippines to Sydney, Australia. A couple of years later, we were at my uncle and aunt's house for a birthday party. We were all just eating lunch outside and chatting quite lively in Spanish. Anyway, a couple walked down from the house next door and they introduced themselves and said that they had just moved in that weekend and that they heard people talking Spanish and they were Spanish and so they wanted to meet their Spanish-speaking neighbours. After talking to them a bit more, we found out that they also had lived in the Philippines and my aunt's mother, who was also now living in this house in Sydney, had designed and made the neighbour's wedding dress a few years prior in the Philippines! It was such a weird coincidence.

Several years ago I was going through a bad patch between jobs and was on a strict budget, only the most important of daily essentials were purchased and there were no frivolous expenses, that being said, because of an emergency situation I had to jump in a cab to help a friend who had taken a nasty fall, this was winter time in the city. As I hailed and entered the cab I noticed a bag of newly bought toiletries that someone had forgotten in the back seat, every item was something I used to splurge on but had given up, but here they were, upon closer inspection there was also a wallet pushed against the back of the seat, it had almost four hundred dollars in it, but fearing any cosmic karma I quickly dismissed keeping it and checked for any info or id for the owner. I was shocked to find the owner lived a block away from my friend! There was no phone number but as least I would be able to drop it off as I knew that address was one with a doorman. I grabbed the bag and wallet, found the building greeted the doorman and quickly was face to face with the owner, he was gracious and thankful, be barely had time to discover he lost it, he took a hundred dollars out and forced it in my hand, grateful for my honesty and effort. He also said the toiletries weren’t his, we exchanged pleasantries and off I went. Upon reaching my friends place, now with some much needed cash in MY wallet and a few surprise luxuries I’d given up, I recapped my story to my friend, when I mentioned the name of the owner of the wallet my friend’s eyes went wide with shock, the man was the first boss my friend had in city!

Yes, I was gonna murder my former friend Andy and as I crept to the back porch door, I saw someone had already done it. But the big bellied southern sheriff arrested me when I fired a shot just to flag him down.

A few years ago, I was at a relative's Christmas party. An old female friend of his had moved back to Brooklyn, she has been living on the West Coast for many years.

We got to talking about the Brooklyn neighborhood she moved to. I was floored when she told me the exact address. Not only was this woman living in another relative's old apartment building, she lived in the relative's former apartment!

The story got even weirder, the woman's sister was best high school friends with the relative who had lived in her new apartment! She gave me her sister's number to give to the relative who lived in her new apartment.

The old high school friends reconnected thanks to a conversation two strangers had.

I have two that I'd like to share.

1). I do family history and was visiting a remote cemetery (about 5 miles from the nearest town) looking for family markers. I'd never been there before and was with a distant cousin who was showing me around. As I was looking at names on the markers I heard a car pull up, then the car's door shut. The next thing I heard was my name. It was a cousin (1st cousin) who also does a bit of family research as well. She had been driving to her brother's place and called her husband to find the name of the cemetery where some family members might be located and gave her the name of the cemetery that we were in. The odds of both of us, who had never been in this cemetery before, to have shown up on the same day and time was remarkable.

2). Last year I was in London and took a walk along the river before leaving the flat where I was staying in Chelsea. I took a couple of pictures on my walk then called a taxi. During the taxi ride we passed the Albert Memorial and I commented that it was my favorite statue in the city. The taxi driver said his favorite was of Sir Thomas Moore. He said the statue is on Cheyne Walk, just off the main road next to the river in Chelsea. I was shocked. I opened my phone and showed him a picture of a statue that I took earlier. Same statue. I don't know why I took the picture earlier, the statue is nice but fairly unremarkable.

After my son was old enough to move from a bassinet to a crib, I was left with a bunch of newborn paraphernalia. I was going to donate the stuff to a local charity, but found out an acquaintance from college was single and pregnant. She was struggling a bit with school, work, and the pregnancy. We were both older students, and stuck together in our classes, as we were finishing the same degree. I offered her the baby stuff, and she thankfully accepted. After we graduated, we lost touch. She moved east to be close to her mother, and I went on with my life. Over the next ten years or so, we would run into each other in weird places, and always laugh at the coincidence. Then, I was attending my son's high school basketball game, and I ran into her in the stands sitting with the school principal. Apparently he had gone to college with us as well, although I didn't remember him. My friend was back in town, and her daughter was attending the same high school as my son. After he graduated, we lost touch again. One day at work, I noticed a new name on our directory, the same last name as my college friend. I didn't think much of it, as it wasn't that unusual a last name. Then one day I asked a coworker if they new this person. They did, and she had the same first name as my college friends daughter. I went right to her office, and asked her if she was indeed the daughter of my friend. She was indeed. Now we still joke, that she slept in my son's bed.

Many years ago my father’s cousin from Michigan was doing some research on the family tree in Luxembourg. Him and his wife were having dinner in a restaurant and the couple next to them were speaking American English so they struck up a conversation. They found out they were distant cousins from Minnesota and were there for the same reason. They were able to fill gaps in each other’s family tree research. Later they organized a family reunion of both branches of the family.

I bumped into an acquaintance of mine on four separate occasions while on vacation. 4 separate trips, years apart. Each time, I'd be standing by the bar and he would come up beside me an order a drink. Now, he is 6'5" so he stands out - but still!

We're aren't close and only know each other from friends years ago, so we had no idea we would be on vacation at the same time or in the same place.

2007, 2012, 2016 and last year 2018. What gets me is that he never seems fazed by it - like - oh hey man, what's up? Like of course it's natural to bump into someone 2000 miles from home.

Yes, I had a dream and everyone I knew was also in it but as magical creatures. Except my dog who was still himself.