Coincidences and Wierd Events

[INRM]

What's the most wierd coincidence you've ever had?

Ever had a case where 10-coincidences happened back to back and seemed totally rationally linked and yet they turned out to be coincidences?

How long before Coincidence is not coincidence?

Tell me your stories

-INRM

 

[Frank Newgent]

Sitting at the counter of a Denney's restaurant in Costa Mesa, CA, about 3:00 AM one morning. I had hitch hiked out there to see a buddy of mine and was doing the cheapest thing possible to pass the time until I thought it appropriate to head on over to his place. Must have been 1976. I was a teenager.

The waitress saw my backpack and asked where I had come from. I said "Wisconsin". She said "Oh, I lived there was a little kid."

"Oh yeah, what part?" I asked.

"A real small town west of Milwaukee. You've never heard of it." she assumed. I noticed that her Denny's nametag said "Holly".

"Really, tell me where, Holly. That's where I grew up"

She looked at me and said "North Lake."

North Lake was less than 400 people and had only a four room schoolhouse in the early sixties. First and second grade shared a room on the first floor. Holly Melon was in first grade and I was in the second when their god-awful little house burned down. They left town for California.

"Dick Arndorfer pushed you down the stairs at the library and you broke your leg when you were five. When the house burned down, you smelled the smoke first and woke everyone up."

Maybe I should have asked her five dollars for a psychic reading before I blurted out things she barely remembered.Never scare the ◊◊◊◊ out of the waitress at Denney's at 3:00 AM is what I learned.

No great ending. When I came back the following night for some more coffee I remember she told me that she'd called her grandmother who remembered my family. I didn't tell her that Dick was killled later in a car accident.

 

[INRM]

I mean, have you ever had an event happen which looked like a paranormal even. Several repeated situations which fooled YOU beyond a reasonable doubt that they were paranormal, and they turned out to be coincidental or a hallucination, or whatever have you...

-INRM

 

[Sindai]

There was once a recently-emptied aluminum coke can on the smooth plastic desk in front of me, while I was doing something on the computer.

Suddenly, the can moved. I froze and looked down. It moved another inch. I stopped in the middle of thinking "ghost!" and looked around.

Turned out that, with my ceiling fan on high, there was enough of an air current in the room to move the can, which was sitting on a very thin film of condensed water, reducing friction to near-zero. This later happened on a semi-regular basis under exactly the same conditions, so I considered my hypothesis vindicated.

 

[CurtC]

Around 1987, my wife and I were out shopping, and the discussion of an acquantance came up, whom we hadn't seen in four years. We tried to recall the name of the girl he had married - what was it? - oh yeah, Gayla.

I got back home that day and turned on my PC. It was one of those old HP, DOS but not quite IBM compatibles, a portable. I looked at the files on the root of the disk. There was a mysterious file there, with a few dozen bytes I think, and the name was "GAYLA". But not spelled just like that. One of the As was actually the A with a halo, like the angstrom symbol, and the L was a line-draw character of a cell with lines on the left and bottom.

But I have no explanation for how it got there. At no other time in my PC experience do I recall a file mysteriously appearing, and the one time it did, it had a name of someone we had just talked about that day. There is no way my wife could have created the file, and no one else could have had access. A completely unexplainable coincidence.

 

[daver]

I bought a Sony TV quite a while back. It sems to have had some sort of phosphor burn-in problem---when I turned it off for the first couple of weeks there was a word fairly clearly visible--all caps, letters maybe four inches high. The first two letters were RA, the next either an R or a P, the last an E. Bizarre. I suppose if i looked hard enough i could have figured out some reason to believe spooks did it.

I was eating lunch at a Japanese restaurant, and noticed the tea cup sliding across the table. It seems that this only happened with a hot tea cup, set down on a moist ring. What i supposed was happening was that bottom of the tea cup was slightly concave, a bit of air was trapped inside when the cup was set down. That air heated up, and the tea cup floated across the table on its own little air cushion. This happens fairly often at that restaurant--often enough that my daughter jokes about the tea cups being haunted.

I haven't had many bizarre psychoid coincidences. My mom says that when i was young she would periodically get a worried feeling about me and peek in; every time i was either running a fever or had kicked off the covers or something. I'm inclined to think that is more of a selective memory issue (or maybe i always kicked off the covers except when i had a fever).

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I had a girlfriend, Lisa, during the summer between Freshman and Sophomore year in college. I went back to college, then returned for Thanksgiving and had one more date with her. Then I broke up with her via a letter in December (a huge mistake, but that's another story).

I was back in St. Louis 12 years later, in 1984. I visited a bookstore in a mall about six miles from my parents' home. I visited that bookstore perhaps once every five years. When I went to stand in line to pay, there she was, right in front of me! I asked her how often she visited that bookstore, which was even further from her home, and she said that she had never been there before. We had dinner that evening and I apologized for breaking up with her so impersonally.

If that's not paranormal, nothing is.

~~ Paul

 

[INRM]

Around 1987, my wife and I were out shopping, and the discussion of an acquantance came up, whom we hadn't seen in four years. We tried to recall the name of the girl he had married - what was it? - oh yeah, Gayla.

I got back home that day and turned on my PC. It was one of those old HP, DOS but not quite IBM compatibles, a portable. I looked at the files on the root of the disk. There was a mysterious file there, with a few dozen bytes I think, and the name was "GAYLA". But not spelled just like that. One of the As was actually the A with a halo, like the angstrom symbol, and the L was a line-draw character of a cell with lines on the left and bottom.

But I have no explanation for how it got there. At no other time in my PC experience do I recall a file mysteriously appearing, and the one time it did, it had a name of someone we had just talked about that day. There is no way my wife could have created the file, and no one else could have had access. A completely unexplainable coincidence.

Whoah! That's weird!

What does a line-draw character look-like?

Also, which A had the halo? The first? Or the last?

Also, did you open the file, what did it do? Was there anything in it?

I'm a visual-person...

-INRM

 

[St_Hereticus]

Well, I often read while watching the tube. Quite often, more so than I would think possible by chance, I will read a particular word, an unusual one, not just any old common word, and at the exact same time as I read it, someone on the program will say the exact same word. Always makes my spine tingle! Does this ever happen to anyone else out there?

 

[Mercutio]

But I have no explanation for how it got there. At no other time in my PC experience do I recall a file mysteriously appearing, and the one time it did, it had a name of someone we had just talked about that day. There is no way my wife could have created the file, and no one else could have had access. A completely unexplainable coincidence.

Cool story, CurtC, but if I could suggest something, perhaps a change of one word would help. This is an "unexplained" coincidence, rather than an "unexplainable" one. It may be a small difference, but it is important for 2 reasons.
One, there is the simple fact that, while neither you nor I have yet explained it, we have no reason to think that we have all the knowledge or information necessary to explain it. It may be a laughably simple problem to someone with the right tools. (most problems I have with my computer or my car are like this. I have no clue; piece of cake for some other guy).
Two, the word "unexplainable" acts as a stopping point. Why bother, if it cannot be explained. the word "unexplained" acts as a starting point. Who can resist a challenge like that? And a cool story like yours deserves to have somebody use it as a starting point.

 

[INRM]

Well, I often read while watching the tube. Quite often, more so than I would think possible by chance, I will read a particular word, an unusual one, not just any old common word, and at the exact same time as I read it, someone on the program will say the exact same word. Always makes my spine tingle! Does this ever happen to anyone else out there?

Were you reading from a book? Or were you reading the bulletin on the news?

If the latter, it's pretty obvious how the word was said just as you read it.

-INRM

 

[Stig]

Well, I often read while watching the tube. Quite often, more so than I would think possible by chance, I will read a particular word, an unusual one, not just any old common word, and at the exact same time as I read it, someone on the program will say the exact same word. Always makes my spine tingle! Does this ever happen to anyone else out there?

Yes! This happens to me a fairly frequently. It does feel strange but I think it would be more strange if this never happened.

Stig

 

[St_Hereticus]

Were you reading from a book? Or were you reading the bulletin on the news?

If the latter, it's pretty obvious how the word was said just as you read it.

-INRM

Yeah, that might explain it, except that it was always a book I was reading. It happened a few times while I was reading Rare Earth, by Ward and Brownlee. I remember once, just as I came to the word "extinction", someone on TV said it as I was reading it. There were several other instances, but that's the one I remember most clearly.

 

[St_Hereticus]

Yes! This happens to me a fairly frequently. It does feel strange but I think it would be more strange if this never happened.

Stig

Great! At least now I know I'm not the only one this happens to. I'm so relieved...

 

[jasonmccoy]

What's the most wierd coincidence you've ever had?

Ever had a case where 10-coincidences happened back to back and seemed totally rationally linked and yet they turned out to be coincidences?

How long before Coincidence is not coincidence?

Tell me your stories

-INRM

I guessed (correctly) 5 of 6 lotto numbers!