There are those who go through life believing everything happens for a reason, that our destinies are all planned out by a power bigger than us, and our lives are ultimately driven by fate.
Then there are others who don't believe that one bit, and chalk up anything others might call "fate" or "destiny" to merely being a coincidence.
Of course, that doesn't mean that coincidences can't be eerie, even unsettling from time to time.
Indeed, sometimes we might experience something in our lives that will haunt us, or at least stay with us, for the rest of our lives.
Even if we know, deep down, that it was merely a coincidence.
Redditor No-Investigator-4030 was curious to hear stories of the most bizarre and inexplicable coincidence people have ever experienced, leading them to ask:
"What's the most bizarre coincidence you've ever experienced that still baffles you to this day?"
The Spitting Image
"A friend saw me at a bus. stop so he came and shook my hand."
"Then he said 'Sorry, you look like someone I know'."
"That's when I realized it wasn't my friend and this guy just really looks like him."
"We both just happened to look like someone else in each other's life."- treearemadeofbark
The Gift that Keeps On Giving
"When I was in 8th grade (around 1990) my family moved from one part of Houston to another, but it meant totally new schools, new friends, new everything."
"So, my dad being the adorable clueless guy he was bought pens with my name and number on them."
"He thought my skater punk @ss was gonna pass out sparkly purple pens with my number on them to 'make friends'."
"Well, I thought they were so hilarious that I gave them out like crazy and had given them all out by like day 2."
"Well, flash forward about 15 years and I'm living in LA. I stop at a gas station in like Barstow on a weekend trip to Vegas with friends."
"There I am, standing at the urinal, mind wandering when I happen upon a purple sparkly pen on the floor."
"I think, there's no way, nudge it with my foot and sure enough it's one of those f*cking pens!"
"There it was, my name and old phone number."
"What are the damn odds?!"- EdithWhartonsFarts
Destined For One Another
"Maybe not that baffling, but I saw this girl (my age) at taco bell, I went over and said hi to her (briefly, but then left)."
"I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen."
"Coincidentally just crossed paths with her at a bar that weekend. Hung out with her and chatted."
"Turns out, we both got hired by the same large factory (it had 4 different buildings)."
"She was days, I was midnights."
"We were in different buildings."
"Then I got switched to afternoons (still a different building), then I got switched to days, then I got switched to a building closer to hers, then I got switched to her building, then I got switched to her area of the factory, then I got switched to standing right beside her."
"We basically would spend 8 hours every day facing each other about 10 feet apart."
"Been married for a couple of decades now."- Apprehensive-Care20z
lisa simpson school GIFGiphy
The Key To A Successful Search...
"My then-girlfriend and I drove a couple hours to the beach, hiked into the dunes a 1/2 mile, set up tent in the sand and spent the night."
"Next day we take down the tent, hike back, and realize we don't have her car keys after looking through everything twice."
"I go back and start randomly, hopelessly sifting through the sand around the campsite, doing a grid, thinking there's no way I'm going to find her keys."
"Finally my foot hits keys!"
"I reach down and pick up...MY keys, which I didn't know I'd even brought, which I would have never found when I got all the way home because I didn't think I'd even brought them."
"Then I kept sifting and found her keys."- shimmerer
And You Thought The Parent Trap Was Fiction...
"I sat next to my doppelgänger on a flight."
"Same name, same birthday—we were both headed to weddings."
"Here's the kicker: our dates were long-lost siblings reuniting."
"It felt like the universe hit copy-paste on our lives."
"Mind blown!"- iscarafolha
Love Is Eternal, And Indeed, All-Around
"1.) I spent the night in a b&b in a small town in France and had a dream about my good friend."
"It was super vivid."
"Uncannily so."
'The next morning over breakfast I looked at the guest book and saw he had stayed there a few weeks before me."
"I waited until it was morning in the States and called him, figuring it was a sign to reach out."
"His wife answered and told me he had passed away earlier that night."
"2.) we had a picnic in a park for a free summer concert and someone took a picture of my wife and I."
"In the background is another family with a small kid staring at the camera."
"The woman was a foster mom and two years later we were matched with a kid - it was the same one staring at the camera."
"We didn’t notice this for a long time until the foster mom was over (she’s now family) and noticed herself in the background of our photo on our digital frame."
"Our first family photo before being a family!"- Zmirzlina
Animation Love GIF by Karma's WorldGiphy
It's A Small World After All!
"I was studying abroad halfway around the world when I met a guy who asked if he could sit down and practice his English with me."
"He explains that he had learned as an exchange student in the US but hadn't had a lot of opportunities to speak it since."
"What part of the US, I ask? 'Oh, they sent me to the middle of nowhere'."
"'A tiny little nothing town'."
"'You wouldn't have ever heard of it'."
"Well, I'm from the midwest, it's worth a try."
"It turns out he'd spent a year in my parents' hometown, a town of 5k in northern Missouri."
"I've spent months of my life in this town."
"I'm probably somehow related to his host family."
"But he's right, 99.99% of Americans would never have heard of it."- Tawny_Frogmouth
Love At First Sight... With Minor Delays...
"I randomly met a boy on the beach while visiting my grandmother."
"I was 10 he was 14."
"I'm American, He's English."
"Years later I'm on a message board trying to find out if 'Dead Like Me' is coming back."
"Begin conversation with random guy on message board."
"It's him."
"We meet up and get married within months. 20 years and 3 kids later."- HmNotToday1308
It's Sometimes Hard Not To Think There's Someone, Somewhere, Looking Out For Us
"When I was 19 I lived alone in a big city."
"I am female and was always careful to put the wooden dowels in the windows at night."
"Didn't want anyone to break into my studio apartment."
"I had a very vivid dream that my father floated in from a window in my living room and was now floating off to the side of my bed and apparently in a lot of pain."
"He had his arms crossed over his chest and he was saying 'Help me! Help me!'"
"He was wearing just a white t shirt and looked disheveled and covered in dirt."
"His t shirt was all ripped."
"Then all of a sudden I hear loud banging!"
"The banging continues and as I am about to wake up I see my dads apparition fall to the floor."
"And he is gone!"
"The banging continues."
"It takes a few minutes to realize that someone is banging on my door."
"So I get up and run to the door and look out the peep hole and it's my oldest sister and her husband."
"I let them in and they are freaking out and saying 'You have to get dressed and come with us now!'"
"'Daddy fell down a mountain and he is in the hospital and we don't know how bad it is'."
"So I quickly dress and get some things to take."
"And my sister says 'Oh, let's make sure that the windows are shut'."
"I told her, 'Oh no it's fine I always put the dowels in when I sleep'."
"Well, guess what...........one window was open 1/4 of the way."
"I still remember it vividly to this day."
"We went to see him it was over a 45 minute drive and he was ok."
"He had broken all his ribs and was in an awful lot of pain but otherwise ok."- Dayana2
Waking Up Omg GIF by BounceGiphy
Etched In Memory And Body...
"I, completely by chance, got tattooed in my mom's childhood bedroom."
"I made an appointment with a tattoo artist, and when I was on my way there, the address sounded familiar."
"So I texted my mom, and she confirmed that it was her childhood home, a pastors house built next to a church."
"By pure coincidence, she was also in the same city that day (she never visits it and lives about 2 hours away. I lived 2 hours away the other way as well)."
"We ended up going for lunch together and she showed me around her old house."
"It turned out I got tattooed in her old bedroom."
"The old built-in closet she used to climb in was still there."
"Still the craziest coincidence ever, I don't think my mom at 9 years old expected her own daughter to get tattooed in that room 45 years later."- Art-Soft
Be Careful What You Wish For...
"During a pretty feeble thunderstorm, I yelled to the sky, 'You call this a thunderstorm?'"
"Two seconds later, the world goes white, and a sound like an explosion erupts."
"Our building was struck by lightning, and we were only one floor down from the roof."
"I knew we had been hit because there were sparks cascading down from above."
"I am an atheist, but I gotta admit, this made me scratch my head."
"I also failed to mention that me and my roommate were on the balcony when this happened."
'You have never seen two people try and three-stooges there way back through the door so fast!"- DanoGuy
Art Imitates Life?
"I grew up next to a farm that has been bought by developers and their intent is to create a massive quarry."
"I wanted it stopped, to protect the beautiful landscape surrounding it, and started a campaign."
"We started brainstorming what celebs we could try to get to endorse our idea, and James Camerons name came up."
"He named a character in Titanic after our town, Cal Hockley, so we joked he might have a connection."
"When I researched into it, it turns out Cameron named the character after our town bc his family are all from here, and he spent his youth on his grandparents farm here."
"ON THAT FARM."
"Then it hit me that our town actually might have meant a lot to him...so on a hunch, I checked if there were any other Jack Dawsons around."
"In the cemetery NEXT to the farm, where all of Camerons family are buried are the graves of J Dawson and Rose."
"Whats even crazier, is that next to them all is the grave of an eastern European family...named Titanic."
"I cant decide if it's all coincidence or inspiration."- MYSTERees77
titanic kate winslet GIFGiphy
Great Minds Think Alike
"I went to Iceland last year and didn't announce it to anyone or anything."
"I was driving the south coast and took a side quest to a waterfall."
"Was minding my own business and heard someone say 'you look just like my friend!'."
"I turned around and I WAS the friend."
"Ran into a girl I went to high school with (we grew up in a very small rural town) that I had not seen in probably 5 years?"
"We just happened to be at the same waterfall, in Iceland, at the exact same time, with neither of us knowing the other was visiting the country."
"Definitely one of the most random and cool things that's happened to me in a while."- congenitalstupidity
Right Place At The Right Time
"The most remarkable coincidence of my life occurred during my motorcycling days in the UK in the mid-1970s."
"One weekend my friend Pete and I arranged to meet at his house in Cosham, near Portsmouth."
"He lived in Cardiff and I in Coventry, cities 120 miles apart and each approximately 150 miles from Cosham."
"Normally we would both have ridden motorcycles, but his was inoperable at the time so he planned on hitchhiking."
"Other than agreeing on where we would meet, we didn’t coordinate our trips, routes, or departure times."
"I was therefore surprised, as I navigated the Chieveley Interchange at Junction 13 of the M4, to see Pete stepping out of a car pulled over on the roundabout."
"I circled the interchange and returned to where he was just about to extend his thumb soliciting a lift for the ride south."
"At that point we had each traveled for a couple of hours and were roughly 100 miles from our points of origin."
"He jumped on the back of my Suzuki GS750 (he had his helmet with him) and I piloted us both to Cosham."
"What are the chances?"- TheGoldTooth
In Love And War!
"Joined a completely random guild on a very populated server in WoW years ago (Moon Guard - one of the busiest servers in the game)."
"Nice folks, so I stuck around."
"I eventually came to realize that the GM and I lived in the same general area when we were both joking one night about missing some upcoming ingame event or another due to an impending hurricane."
"Thought that was neat and we joked about it but never really probed any further because that'd be weird, right?"
"One night she was ranting about how much being a call center supervisor sucks, I empathized because been there done that, and cracked a joke about the particular local call center company I had previously worked for."
"That led to the following exchange:"
"Her: 'Yeah, I used to work there too, they're the worst. Which client were you with?'"
"Me: '*name of client*, you?'"
"Her: '*name of different client*'"
"Me:: 'Oh cool, my husband worked with that client for a couple of years'."
"Her: 'Who's your husband, I'm bad with names but what does he look like?'"
"Me: 'Big scary looking bearded blonde biker dude, usually wearing his leather vest and always smoked a pipe'."
"Her: OMG YOU'RE (hubby)'s WIFE!! He sat right next to me for AGES, everybody's scared of him but he was SO nice, and he talked about you ALL THE TIME!'"
"So yeah... random WoW guildmaster ended up being an old coworker/friend of my husband's, who we later figured out lived like 5 blocks away."- talidrow
video games computer GIF by South Park Giphy
Sometimes, something seems so perfect or so significant that it's hard to accept it was purely a coincidence.
But If Only You taught us anything, certain things might have been a coincidence at all...
@themanfromvulcan/Reddit
@buffysmanycoats/Reddit
@jadelikethestone/Reddit
