There's no denying that improbable and against-all-odds things happen all the time. Are these just coincidences? Or the result of a grander design we simple humans can't comprehend? Honestly? Who knows! But it's sure fun to hear about them!
Not long ago, we shared a post where members of the BuzzFeed Community told us the wild coincidences they can't believe actually happened to them, and boy did they deliver. You know who else delivered? The readers of THAT post who shared their own wild stories. Here are the best ones (plus some of the A+ stories from the previous post):
1. "My best friend died from COVID last year. We'd promised that whoever went first would report back to prove that there is life beyond. As background to what follows, I edit transcripts for court reporters and primarily do civil work. Last month, right around what would have been her birthday, I got a rare treat of a criminal job, working on an appeal in a murder case she and I had followed closely. The murder happened on her birthday a few years prior. Weird that of all the murder cases in the US right now, that's the one that lands on my desk. And even weirder, there was a stenographic typo throughout the job that translated into her uncommon name."
2. "I moved to a new city far away to start a new job. I met a guy on a dating app and we instantly hit it off. We dated and were completely inseparable, even getting matching tattoos. High passion and love levels on both sides. After a year or so he asked me to move in. The day I’m moving in, his wife came home, eight months pregnant. There were absolutely NO signs he was ever married. The insane part is that I had grown up with her and her sister in a very small town far, farrrrr awayyyyyyyy. I'd stayed the night at her house growing up and everything."
3. "When I was a kid growing up in Ohio, somebody broke into our garage and stole a bunch of my grandfather's tools, which he'd engraved with his initials in a very specific fashion so that all three letters stemmed from the same letter. My father was devastated as my grandfather had passed the year before. Years later, my parents moved to a very small town in Arkansas and they decided to go to a flea market. My dad was going through a large assortment of tools and picked up a wrench with my grandfather's initials. My dad couldn’t believe that almost 15 years after they were stolen he was able to find one of the tools over 600 miles away in a random little town in Arkansas."
4. "Years ago, my uncle bought me pajamas as a Christmas gift. He left the gift receipt in the box, and when I saw the date and time on the receipt, I screamed! What are the odds? 12/12/2012 at 12:12?!"
Here's the receipt:
5. "My family was at a restaurant when my stepmom and I went to the bathroom. We were each in a stall, and I was telling her how I was taking a class at my community college that was a general physical education class, but felt like the teacher was trying to work me to death! I said something about 'she's all athletic and shit, she can handle it and I can't' (and a few other choice bits). When I came out of the stall there was the dayum teacher standing in front of me. The restaurant was about 15 miles from the school. My dad sent drinks to her table and I never went back to the class."
6. "I used to own a china doll with a broken off missing hand. During a day trip, I found a hand on the ground which looked to be the same size and material of the doll I had at home, so I took it home with me. I couldn’t believe my eyes when it fit onto the broken arm like two pieces of a jigsaw."
7. "I was playing a game on my phone when my (now ex) boyfriend started watching an old 1980s Jeopardy! episode he found on a random Roku channel. The contestants introduced themselves and one was from a town near where I grew up. My boyfriend joked, 'Hey, he’s from your town, you know him?” I rolled my eyes, then looked up. And yes, yes I did know him! (We'd met, like, 25 years after the episode aired.)
8. "I was listening to an audiobook on the train when the woman across from me kept asking me innocuous questions. I was tired from work, though, so I took out an earbud and apologized, saying I was really focused on this audiobook and didn't mean to ignore her. She lit up and said she is a voice actor for audiobook recordings, and asked me what I was listening to. I turned my phone around and she said she was the narrator of the audiobook I was listening to!"
9. And here's a sorta similar coincidence: "As a kid, I was really into this one book series. One day I was reading one of its books in a restaurant when I noticed this older lady at the next table kept staring at me and my book. Finally, she asked how I liked it and I told her it was good. For the rest of our meals I kept looking between the photo of the author on the back of the book and the older woman — they were identical."
10. "My history teacher was showing us a slideshow of her trip to China when one of my classmates shouted, 'Hey, those are my parents!' Indeed, this girl's parents were in the background of my teacher's picture at Tiananmen Square. They not only were visiting China at the exact same time, but crossed paths with their daughter's teacher at just the right moment to photobomb her."
Not the actual photo but it probably looked a little like this:
11. "I am a lawyer in New York. A number of years ago I represented a woman who got a bad decision on her case. She screamed at me over the phone for 20 minutes — really screamed — and then said she would not pay my firm’s bill and hung up on me. That night, I went to a Yankees game with a buddy, and who sits down one seat away from me? The client. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw her. Fifty-five thousand seats in that stadium and she sat one seat away. Turned out she was on a blind date with a guy and asked me to keep an eye on them since she didn’t know the guy. We ended up having a fun time together. She paid the bill the next day."
12. "I went to primary school with two boys both named Andrew James Scott. Common enough first, middle and last names, but there were only 20 or so kids in my class total, AND they had exactly the same birthday."
"One of them changed schools in the second grade, and I have no memory of what we called them to differentiate them."
13. "On Instagram, I saw someone just had a baby and I randomly said a name for the baby (not to them but to myself). A few days later they announced the name of the baby and yup, the random name I said turned out to be the baby’s name. I was honestly shocked!"
14. "While I was working at Domino's I took an order from an old couple that was having trouble with their card. Turned out it was my father's brand new credit card. They'd got the card info by going through our mail and the reason it didn’t work at first was because it wasn’t activated yet."
15. "Had a friend go to the hospital with their husband. She was getting a colonoscopy I believe. Right when they walked through the door, her husband passed out. He had an aneurism. The only reason he survived was because he was already at the hospital, anywhere else he would've died. When they say it's not your time, they really mean 'it is not your time.'"
16. "In 2019, I was on my way to a Halloween party (fairly drunk) when a fight broke out and I ended up getting stabbed. At the time, I was in shock and didn't realize I was stabbed, so I went to the party anyway. A man there told me he could see my muscle sticking out of my side and to call 911. Fast-forward to a few weeks ago. I went to get a tattoo of a knife under my scar. After some conversation, we realized that the tattoo artist was...the guy from the party! I live in a fairly large city, so I was completely mind blown."
17. "When I studied abroad in Rome, one of my two randomly assigned roommates was from a town an hour away from where I grew up. She and I went to a hookah bar one night, and sitting across from us was a girl she went to high school with there on vacation!"
"We still occasionally keep in touch 13 years later. I posted an Instagram story of my apartment building, and she commented and said she also used to live here! Guess we have some kind of cosmic connection!"
18. "I live in Southern Arizona and my cousin lives in Manhattan. For a period in the late '90s her long-time partner lived in San Antonio. About twice a month my cousin would fly out to spend the weekend with him. Anyway, about five years ago I had a client that I would swap used books with, and she gave me a bundle she'd purchased from a thrift store. As I was flipping through one of the books a very faded airline boarding pass fell out. It was for a flight from New York to San Antonio in 1998, and the name on the ticket was Karen Goldstein...my cousin's name. Somehow that book made it across the country and into my hands. Craziest thing that’s ever happened to me!"
19. "My parents went on a cruise for their honeymoon and met a couple from across the country. They hung out the whole time and then parted ways. Three years later, my parents went on a vacation to Hawaii and ran into the same couple staying at the same resort as them. Total coincidence. Then last year, they took another cruise, and guess who was there? Absolutely insane. They never got each other's contact info. My dad said 'we'll just see them next time.'"
20. "I was a Canadian working in Israel when someone asked me if I knew their friend in Alberta (I was from Nova Scotia, which is on the opposite side of the country from Alberta). I had my speech about how we’re the second largest country in the world and not some small town where everyone knows everyone else all prepared, but when they told me their friend’s name...I did know them."
21. "At a resort a few hours drive from home, I was sitting at a bar with my husband, making small talk with a guy who was rooting for the same hockey team as we were. Turns out we're from the same town! Ok, not that weird. We tell him what part of town we live in, he does the same. We narrow it down a bit more, and I realize he lives on the same street I used to live on with my first husband! I ask if he knows the little blue house with the front porch on that street. He says 'Yeah, that's MY house!'"
22. "I worked in a call center and was making small talk with a customer named Amanda while waiting for her account to load. We got to talking about siblings, and she mentioned her older sister named Melissa and her younger brother Nicholas. My siblings and me? Melissa (oldest), Amanda (middle), and Nicholas (me, the youngest)."
23. "A few years ago, my bad ass grandpa fell into a river in Alaska. He was 87 and on a fishing trip. He used the skills taught to him in the Air Force to stay afloat, and managed to climb onto a log as he floated downstream. A man saw him and pulled him out of the river, saving his life. Grandpa decided that he needed to end his trip early after that brush with death, so he changed his flight to leave a couple days later. Guess who just happened to sit next to him on the new flight? Yep, the guy that pulled him from the river."
24. "I was driving for Uber after getting laid off a few years ago. Picked up a white woman (yes, necessary detail) and randomly, based on her name which was the same as my grandmother's, we started talking about our families. Long story short, it turns out she was the descendant of my ancestors' owners in South Carolina. She was a very nice lady and was absolutely horrified. It was definitely surreal and she left me a huge tip. Reparations I guess?"
25. "When I was a kid my mom took me to see a local stage production of Hello Dolly where one of the actors fell off the stage. As an adult I was telling my husband this story when he added 'Yeah, they fell on the trombone player." Turns out we were both in the same audience on the same day 12 years before we ever met in person."
26. "On my 33rd birthday, I went to use the restroom and mentioned to the person at the sink next to me that it was my birthday (it was the jovial 'drunken ladies room' by this point of the evening). Another girl nearby overheard and said it was also her birthday. She, too, was turning 33, and we were born on the very same day and year, at the very same hospital only a few hours apart. We’re still friends a few years later."
27. "My dad's youngest brother lived in the city and worked with dad. My mom's younger sister was close to his age and knew him from hanging out. One Friday night he missed a turn coming back to the city, went airborne and hit head-on with my mom's sister's car with two children in the back seat, packed and headed to the lake. Neither knew of the other's plans. My dad's brother died instantly and my mom's sister ran to see if she could help anyone and flipped out."
28. "I’m originally from the Midwest and moved out to California after grad school. I was lonely so I agreed to meet a guy I'd met online. When we first greeted each other he kept telling me that I looked really familiar. After talking for some time he mentioned that he was an officer in the Navy. I told him so was my brother. Then he looked at me funny and said, ‘Wait, is your last name *****?’ I was floored, turns out he and my brother had gone to a specialized school together years before and he remembered my brother because he placed top of the class and according to this guy was ‘super smart!’ I never even knew that about my brother until I met that guy! Such a small world!"
29. "I got locked out of my apartment in the rain after a long day, so I took the metro all the way back across town to search for the keys at work. Looked everywhere. No keys. By then the metro closed for the night, and it was too late to call a friend to ask if I could crash on their couch, so I slept at my desk. Around 4 a.m. I woke up from a dream where I'd seen the keys lying on a dark grey carpet. I jumped out of my 'chair/bed' and stumbled through the darkened building hallways down to the ground floor conference room where the day earlier I'd attended a company Town Hall meeting. Once inside, I discovered someone moved the hall's sliding walls around so it was hard to locate where I sat exactly. Out of frustration, I shoved a chair out of the way and — voila — my keys were right there on the carpet exactly as I dreamt!"
30. "Last summer I quit a job that I hated and took a week long trip to Las Vegas to celebrate before starting my new job. I hadn't said anything to my ex-boss about my trip, and was over the moon to finally be free. On the second to last night of my trip, my sister and I were walking across one of the many bridges on the Strip that go over the street. There was a huge crowd in front of us that randomly parted as we walked through, and I kid you not — standing there, 30 feet away and looking me dead in the eye, was my ex boss. At 11 p.m. on a Thursday night, 400 miles from home, in a city full of millions of people, I happened to walk directly into the boss I'd just escaped. It was AWFUL. What are the odds?!"
31. "When our son’s birth mom was pregnant with him, she picked us out of a large group of couples with no identifying factors. The only thing we knew about her was her medical history, that she lived at least 150 miles from us, and her first name — we’ve never even seen a picture of her. Fast forward to last November when we finalized the adoption. As we were signing off on paperwork, we noticed our last name (which is not a common last name at all) in the wrong spots — our last name was listed under the birth parent's. We asked our lawyer about fixing the typo and he said 'I thought it was a mistake, too, but apparently, your son was always meant to be a (insert our last name) because that’s his birth parents’ last name as well.' Spelled the same and everything."
32. "When I was 17 I got a part-time job as a stock boy in a department store and was trained by a guy named Bill who had a strange, memorable last name. He was in his late 20s and was engaged to his high school sweetheart. After I was working there a few months, Bill went on a guys’ golf trip to Florida where he hooked up with a woman he met at a bar. It was a one night stand, but the woman told her brother she hooked up with this guy with a weird name. As it turned out, the brother remembered his college roommate had a sister who was engaged to guy with that strange name. Same Bill. His engagement was over before he got home from Florida."
And lastly, here's a cute story of long odds to marvel at:
33. "I went to Gen Con in 2019 dressed as Captain Marvel and spotted another Captain Marvel cosplayer. I went over to her, she hugged me as soon as she saw me, we took some pictures together, and that was that. Fast forward a few months later, I’m in college and looking for a place to sit in one of the dining halls because it’s kinda busy. I see a girl sitting by herself so I ask if I can sit next to her. We get to talking, and soon she's scrolling through her camera roll to show me a picture of her dog and I catch a fleeting glimpse of the Captain Marvel logo in one of the photos. I bring up that I cosplayed as her for Gen Con, and she pauses and says 'So did I.' One look at each other and it clicks: she was the other cosplayer. I practically tackle-hug her in excitement and show her the picture I took to confirm it was her and she says, yes, it’s her."
"A week or two later, I’m scrolling through some of my cosplay photos from Gen Con 2018, and I see a photo I took of a girl cosplaying as Veronica Sawyer from Heathers and realize she looks…oddly familiar. I ask my new friend if that was her too, and she confirms it was. We ran into each other TWO YEARS IN A ROW at the SAME CONVENTION before we ended up going to the same college. Call it what you will — fate, destiny, coincidence — but somehow the universe just aligned perfectly for something like this to happen. Fast forward to now: I’m a junior, she’s now one of my best friends in the world, and we’re actually supposed to hang out today."