It's just a coincidence!!!

[-Fran-]

But why, other than your belief system?

I wouldn't call it a belief system, more a way of thinking when I meet a problem or something that looks odd... There's just not enough evidence to convince me that there are such things as psychics at all. It is sure not my first explanation for things like this. It's not really my last either, for that matter. There ARE after all many things I can't explain in this world, because my knowledge lacks in many areas. And if I can't explain things, I'll try to learn a lot more before I go cry "psychic", that's for sure

Coincidence, here, seems like a totally valid explanation, a few other explanations would be valid too. But how would a "psychic flash" be one?

 

[-Fran-]

I had a girlfriend who was into all sorts of woo. But still a big fan of Randi's. Go figure. Anyway... She was fond of saying "There are no coincidences!" And kind of left that hanging. As if to point to some mystical force that we just don't understand yet.
[INSERT THEREMIN MUSIC HERE.]

Yeah, and they have this way of saying it... like they were in a movie... or said something really profound that no one has said like a million times before

 

[-Fran-]

One thing that used to fascinate me way back when I sort of believed in telepathy was how often my sister and I, our parents and one of us, a friend and I and sometimes my cousins and I could finish each other's sentences, be thinking about the exact same thing at the same time, call each other at the same time to talk about the same thing, anticipate what the other person would say or have the exact same question about something. Even when we were playing cards or something, I could sometimes know what someone would do or say.

At the time I hoped it was telepathy though the explanation that people closely related to each other knew each other so well it seemed they were reading minds certainly occured to me.

Yes, me and my mother, and me and my best friend does this, and experience this all the time Just means you know each other really well, I guess, and that humans are more predictable than we like to admit.

This annoys my best friend's husband so much, how we talk in half sentences and his curious mind can not follow

 

[fromdownunder]

Without wishing to harp too much on the Sara story, a distinct possibility is that she heard the parents yelling out "Sara" a couple of minutes earlier, looking for their missing child without conciously taking it in.

As you were consolling the child, your friend's "subconcious" (for want of a better term) kicked in, and she rememberd the name that she had heard.

Norm

 

[-Fran-]

Very good point, Fran. I find a lot of paranormal beliefs are due to simple coincidence and I find myself constantly reminding people of that fact.

I try to as well, but some people just don't seem to grasp what a coincidence is, it seems.

Uri Geller's 11:11 BS is a great case in point. You don't actually notice that time any more than any other, but people recognise it when they do see it. In the same way, people disregard how many times they think about their kids, except for that one time Johnny falls off his bike and breaks his arm, just as mum's wondering if he's ok. Coincidences have to happen.

Exactly. Now, a world without coincidences... that would be the strange thing! And people also grossly misunderstand, I think, how common coincidences of this kind actually are.

One of the reasons I love playing cards is because I have a very sharp memory for numbers and I know which cards are in play and often call a card before it gets played by someone else, or call the next card off the deck.

Lucky you, I can't even remember my own cell phone number

There are defintely people who see that as some kind of paranormality, until I explain what actually happened. Luckily for them, I'm an honest bloke!

Do you ever get the kind of woo who, after you have explained, think that YOU are the one deluding yourself? You know, you really are psychic with numbers, only these powers scares you, and you have to make up some natural explanation for your abilities to not be scared in the night I've got that a few times. *sigh*

People just want to believe.

Ack so true

One bloke I recruit for has had that happen to him on three or four occasions and he's convinced I have some form of ESP. In his case, I'm not about to tell him he's a deluded dickhead!

lol, better not, might not be good for business

 

[Franklin]

I've had occasional flashes of "insight" throughout my life, but never really thought of them as something "magical" or that I was kind of "psychic". I believe the subconcious part of the mind can sometimes make discreet connections through our senses leading to an idea about something that makes it's way into our concious mind. After driving over a million miles thru my working life, I would sometimes get that on the highway; sort of a sixth sense of when there was trouble up ahead. Sometimes it could be a sudden lack of traffic coming the other way, or a subtle slowing down of the traffic ahead of me. The human mind tends to remember all the significant coincidences but none of the thousands of misses.

Knowing the child's name was Sara is interesting; spontaneous reactions often are. However, I used to have a friend who was good at guessing people's names without knowing them; it was kind of a hobby of theirs when they were bored. (She worked as a clerk in a jewellry store) Sometimes she could guess people's first names within the first couple of tries with about 20 per cent accuracy. There is nothing "paranormal" about this, on the contrary, over time she had developed a "scientific" method of it.

Professional "psychics" learn to spot all sorts of "tells", similar to good poker players and police inspectors. In the end, psychics practice their own curious "scientific method" of getting people to believe thay have this special "power".

 

[-Fran-]

synchronicity does exist, we see it all the time. Last week I caught sight of my clock and it always seemed to read 01:23 or 12:34 this happened quite a few times. I dont however believe it was a sign or omen. It reminded me of that jim carrey movie 23, we see what we are conditioned to see. Some see correlation others will not. Its just one of those fortean moments that makes you think eh?

Exactly! Nothing weird about it.. unless people want it to be

 

[-Fran-]

Without wishing to harp too much on the Sara story, a distinct possibility is that she heard the parents yelling out "Sara" a couple of minutes earlier, looking for their missing child without conciously taking it in.

As you were consolling the child, your friend's "subconcious" (for want of a better term) kicked in, and she rememberd the name that she had heard.

Norm

Yeah, absolutely, could have been a valid explanation too! It's too long ago, to remember any details, really, so there might be several explanations. I do not claim it had any paranormal causes at all, I must stress that I have been using the story as an example of a funny lucky guess and a coincidence though, and then people have often countered with the "psychic thing"

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

Here's another story. Feel free to share it with any woo or skeptic you know.

The last time there was a Friday the 13th, earlier this year I think, my father had a nightmare about me being in a car crash. He didn't elaborate on more than that but said it was "terrible". He told my mother about it and they were both incredibly alarmed. My father called me that morning to tell me all about it and remind me it was Friday the 13th and plead with me to be very careful that day. I didn't take him seriously at all but played along and said nothing would happen and promised to look after myself and everything. Then my mother called with the exact same thing in a voice so solemn and so convinced I would have laughed and snorted except I felt it would be very inappropriate to do so and just sat through it in slack-jawed silence and disbelief and mumbled I'd be ok and not to worry.

I was really outraged and taken a back, actually. It was all so silly. I mean, so silly. And they were as panicky and taking it as seriously as can be. And here was my mom telling me I would die!

And guess what. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. I didn't even stub my toe, let alone come anywhere near being hit by a car.A woo might say it was because I prevented it and, sure, I was more careful crossing the street that day, just cause I promised and just in case. If there was something to telling the future, though, wouldn't it be unchangable?

That's the paradox of fortune telling and why it isn't real: if you knew something bad would happen, why didn't you change it? However, if you changed it, then it wasn't the future then, was it?

 

[-Fran-]

I've had occasional flashes of "insight" throughout my life, but never really thought of them as something "magical" or that I was kind of "psychic". I believe the subconcious part of the mind can sometimes make discreet connections through our senses leading to an idea about something that makes it's way into our concious mind. After driving over a million miles thru my working life, I would sometimes get that on the highway; sort of a sixth sense of when there was trouble up ahead. Sometimes it could be a sudden lack of traffic coming the other way, or a subtle slowing down of the traffic ahead of me. The human mind tends to remember all the significant coincidences but none of the thousands of misses.

Knowing the child's name was Sara is interesting; spontaneous reactions often are. However, I used to have a friend who was good at guessing people's names without knowing them; it was kind of a hobby of theirs when they were bored. (She worked as a clerk in a jewellry store) Sometimes she could guess people's first names within the first couple of tries with about 20 per cent accuracy. There is nothing "paranormal" about this, on the contrary, over time she had developed a "scientific" method of it.

Professional "psychics" learn to spot all sorts of "tells", similar to good poker players and police inspectors. In the end, psychics practice their own curious "scientific method" of getting people to believe thay have this special "power".

Absolutely. We are often rather good at noticing small things around us, processing, and draw conclusions from it, without really thinking about what we are doing. And yeah, sometimes it's just pure coincidences and lucky guesses too. Nothing paranormal about it. It's weird how wooish people often attributes all these powers to the human being, and then totally dismisses, underestimates or does not understand the things that the human brain actually ARE very good at. Our brain is a fascinating thing on its own, in its natural state and without all the silly powers and abilities they want it to have

 

[-Fran-]

Here's another story. Feel free to share it with any woo or skeptic you know.

The last time there was a Friday the 13th, earlier this year I think, my father had a nightmare about me being in a car crash. He didn't elaborate on more than that but said it was "terrible". He told my mother about it and they were both incredibly alarmed. My father called me that morning to tell me all about it and remind me it was Friday the 13th and plead with me to be very careful that day. I didn't take him seriously at all but played along and said nothing would happen and promised to look after myself and everything. Then my mother called with the exact same thing in a voice so solemn and so convinced I would have laughed and snorted except I felt it would be very inappropriate to do so and just sat through it in slack-jawed silence and disbelief and mumbled I'd be ok and not to worry.

I was really outraged and taken a back, actually. It was all so silly. I mean, so silly. And they were as panicky and taking it as seriously as can be. And here was my mom telling me I would die!

And guess what. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. I didn't even stub my toe, let alone come anywhere near being hit by a car.A woo might say it was because I prevented it and, sure, I was more careful crossing the street that day, just cause I promised and just in case. If there was something to telling the future, though, wouldn't it be unchangable?

That's the paradox of fortune telling and why it isn't real: if you knew something bad would happen, why didn't you change it? However, if you changed it, then it wasn't the future then, was it?

Well, I am not surprised nothing happened! And glad it didn't of course Yeah, the whole Friday the 13th scare is a weird thing I can see bad things happening on that day from pure self-fulfilling prophesy, that is to say, people being so nervous and skitterish from Friday the 13th fear that they get clumsy and distracted and things like that. If they didn't know what day it was nothing would have happened, probably. And besides, if no accidents never happened on that day, somewhere on earth... that would be weird seeing as some bad thing or another always happens somewhere every day.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

Yeah, I know. I like to tell people that story to give them perspective on all of the stories about someone who had an ominous feeling, or a nightmare or a reading telling them something bad would happen...and then it did! In this case, someone told me something bad would happen and they were certain it would and were waiting for it and...it didn't happen.

How many times did someone have a feeling that didn't come true? And then they instantly forgot about it not coming true while they remembered the one or two instances it did.

Like Randi once said, it's funny how a person needs only one slight incident to prove that something woo is real but 300 instances proving it's not to disbelieve it.

 

[fromdownunder]

I will offer this one as my favourite personal coincidence.

It was a few years ago - somewhere between 1993 - 1995, but it was the wierdest thing that ever happened to me.

My daughter and I were discussing movies, and she started describing a movie we had both seen at one time or another, set mostly in the Sydney Opera House. Neither of us could remember the name of it, and it got frustrating trying to think of the name of the damn thing.

So, I said I will find it. I got out my Movie book (not Maltin's guide - a similar type guide from another publisher), closed my eyes, opened it up randomly and pointed at a line.

I opened my eyes, and there it was - an Australian movie called One Night Stand set in Sydney with WW3 about to happen. And it was the movie we were thinking about. I was pointing straight at it.

Not bad, but if that is the best, and only thing I have done in 57 years, I doubt that there is much in my "paranormal" ability that will start a revolution.

Norm

 

[-Fran-]

I will offer this one as my favourite personal coincidence.

It was a few years ago - somewhere between 1993 - 1995, but it was the wierdest thing that ever happened to me.

My daughter and I were discussing movies, and she started describing a movie we had both seen at one time or another, set mostly in the Sydney Opera House. Neither of us could remember the name of it, and it got frustrating trying to think of the name of the damn thing.

So, I said I will find it. I got out my Movie book (not Maltin's guide - a similar type guide from another publisher), closed my eyes, opened it up randomly and pointed at a line.

I opened my eyes, and there it was - an Australian movie called One Night Stand set in Sydney with WW3 about to happen. And it was the movie we were thinking about. I was pointing straight at it.

Not bad, but if that is the best, and only thing I have done in 57 years, I doubt that there is much in my "paranormal" ability that will start a revolution.

Norm

Maybe you too was hit by a "psychic flash"?

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

Wow. Something like that happened to me, too.

I was in 3rd grade and there was this boy, Jon or John, who I think had trouble counting and could never find page numbers or was too lazy and who was always ran to me with his textbook, asking me to find this and this page.

One day, he ran to me with a math textbook and asked me to find page 347 and I smacked it down on my desk and flipped it open angrily to a random page and there it was- right there.

Jon or John was amazed and so was I. He wanted to know how I had done it.

 

[TheAnachronism]

Oh, have I got a sPoOkY story for all of you.

This particular one comes from my grandmother, and occurred so many years ago that it would be impossible to verify. In addition, I should mention that my grandmother is rather senile, and memories do naturally fade with time.

[Anecdote]

My grandmother was born and raised in a small Bavarian town outside of Munich. She had married in her late teens, and by the time World War II began, she already had two small children, and her husband went off to fight (stationed somewhere near Poland/Russia). Now, while he was gone, she made a shocking discovery -- she received many lettres addressed to him from his various mistresses. She was raised Catholic, and being upset at the time, she prayed to God that he would do what he thought would be best for her and her children. Later that night, she awoke to her husbands voice calling out her name.

Later that week, she received news that her husband had died that night.

[/Anecdote]

Personally, I don't believe too much of it. I mean, why pray for God to do what he thinks is right? Isn't that what he supposedly does anyway?

And surely her husband would have been on her mind that night, so it seems most likely that it was some sort of dream.

 

[The Atheist]

Do you ever get the kind of woo who, after you have explained, think that YOU are the one deluding yourself? You know, you really are psychic with numbers, only these powers scares you, and you have to make up some natural explanation for your abilities to not be scared in the night I've got that a few times. *sigh*

Yep. I've had that happen a couple of times.

And surely her husband would have been on her mind that night, so it seems most likely that it was some sort of dream.

I know a very similar story. Famous lifeboat captain on the early 20th century, Henry Blogg, was at sea in a terrible storm when one of his crew was washed overboard. They managed to rescue him, but his watch had stopped with the immersion in the sea.

His wife had reported to Blogg's wife that she had a feeling of doom. The time she had the feeling was the exact time shown on the stopped watch. Now, her husband's at sea in a storm, undertaking one of the riskiest jobs in the world. It would be an odd wife who didn't have the odd foreboding feeling.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yup--there's lots of people on this planet, and LOTS of events happen everyday. It would be a very strange world if really bizarre coincidences NEVER happened.

Here's a good essay on the topic.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Here's another one. My other grandmother, who's even more woo-woo than my mom's mom, swears that one night, she suddenly woke up at 1:15 AM because she had heard a scream. According to her, no one in the apartment was up, no one was outside and it no TV or radio was turned on next door or anything. The next morning, she found out her long-time friend had died in a car crash that night, at around 1:15 AM.

I see several explanations possible for this. She could have been dreaming, someone outside whom she couldn't see had screamed, she could have simply imagined it or the neighbor's baby could have woken up. The time? Just a coincidence she fitted in after she found out about the crash.

Another possibility is that she had this dream on a night after she knew about the car crash, and then her memory got mixed up.

I guarantee this: she didn't tell anyone about waking up to a scream before she learned about her friend's death.

 

[SomeGuy]

One thing that used to fascinate me way back when I sort of believed in telepathy was how often my sister and I, our parents and one of us, a friend and I and sometimes my cousins and I could finish each other's sentences, be thinking about the exact same thing at the same time, call each other at the same time to talk about the same thing, anticipate what the other person would say or have the exact same question about something. Even when we were playing cards or something, I could sometimes know what someone would do or say.

At the time I hoped it was telepathy though the explanation that people closely related to each other knew each other so well it seemed they were reading minds certainly occured to me.

When we were younger, my sister and I had much the same group of friends, would do a lot of things together etc.

Because we are both pretty associative thinkers/speakers, many times we held conversations that had such huge leaps and shifts in topics, that we could easily hold because we had the same associations. Many people though we must have a telepathic bond, because there was obviously not enough information to actually hold the conversation.

Needless to say, now that we've both moved on with our seperate lives, we've lost this "paranormal" ability to hold conversations that no outsider can follow.

As for coincidences, my favourite reply to: "Isn't that an amazing coincidence" is:

"Nah, it's just a function of regression to the mean".