• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Strange Coincidences?

Screenshot_20220512-080144_Twitter.jpg
 
Travelling to Dundee from Kings Cross by train to look for a new abode with massive rucksack and a bursting-at-seams suitcase I had stowed the suitcase in a rack by the entrance and ruffled several feathers by wandering down the train corridor and accidentally banging a few people with the rucksack.

The train had a series of lights: green, red, amber to indicate whether each seat was not booked, already booked, potentially booked. To my annoyance everything was red or amber. so I clumsily moved down the aisle, before randomly slinging the rucksack overhead and sitting at a random amber seat. I'd booked the ticket online and, belatedly, logic reached my mind: of course, I too would have a reserved seat!

I dreaded having to go back down the aisle to collect my suitcase and move to another carriage, of which there were at least 10. I read the reservation details on my phone. K something, that's good fortune I thought seeing that corresponded with the carriage I happened to be in. 43, I look up. You guessed... the very seat I randomly selected.

With 90 seats per carriage I guess that was about a 1 in 900 possibility. Although I'd roughly planned the journey, up till that point I had no idea about the reserved seat thing, so hadn't funneled down to that info prior, which required extra phone clicking into submenus. A man has lived a sheltered life, but it is his most purely statistical coincidence to date.

Edit: should elaborate, actually sat at a red seat in the aisle to get my bearings thinking if the red booked person (me!) turned up while I was thinking, I could just shift to the window seat which was the amber one of course.
 
Last edited:
The LNER Azuma trains which run from London Kings Cross to Dundee have nine coaches; of these coaches M (first class) and C (standard class) are unreserved. The remaining seven coaches have either 52 seats (accessible coach A), 58 seats (first class coach L), 66 seats (composite coach K), 70 seats (buffet coach G) or 86 seats (the other coaches). So that all cuts the odds down somewhat but it's still a rather impressive coincidence nonetheless! However looking at the seat layout map there doesn't appear to be a seat 43 in coach K (which contains both first and standard class accomodation) so the plot thickens.

Screenshot 2022-05-15 231240.png
 
You are correct. I should probably anticipated forensic examination for which this forum is justly famous. For the sake of my paranoia of identity theft or whatnot (wholly unwarranted, no doubt, but who knows these days) I had made up such details of the real seat I was on as it seemed immaterial to the fact of the actual coincidence. Plus, in reality the coincidence thing actually happened on the Cornwall to London leg of the journey, not on the subsequent LNER part, which was wholly uneventful.
 
In fact you remind me I am due a partial refund as it was delayed due to some football hooligans, or some kind of incident involving a group of young men in another carriage exiting the train at an unscheduled stop for reasons unknown (I was under my headphones by then). So I have had to look up receipt details and found it was H34 in the GWR. Small amount of research seems to confirm up to 10 carriages and 2 of those are first class. My odds shorten to roughly 1 in 700 which still makes me kick myself for not buying a lottery ticket when I got out.

For what it is worth...
train.PNG
 
This has literally just happened to me.

I have just finished typing the last words (well, first draft last words) of the new book. It's about a reality TV show which places groups of people in camps in remote spots to try to track ABCs, which have been reported from those locations. So, I finish typing and then go to my Firefox home screen to faff about for a bit, and this was one of the first things to pop up in the 'Pocket Suggestions'.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/...ild-man?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

I'm writing entirely offline, so I don't think there's any way that the book and my online life could be connected (and research was done AGES ago). Just a little coincidence, but it pleased me.
 
An hour ago in WhatsApp I sent a joke meme about Simon and Garfunkel to my mate in Australia.
He said less than five minutes later the real S&G turned up on the show he was watching .

I didnt openly share his sense of amazement, explaining I was distracted as Ive pulled a muscle in my back this morning . He empathized and told me he's had a number of falls on the wooden stairs in his place. He sent me a photo of the staircase. Most recently he's recovering from banging his knee.

I left the conversation as an American airbnb guest arrived to check in. I said nothing about my back before he volunteered he's was walking oddly because he'd pulled a muscle. In his calf. How did that happen I asked. He slipped on the wooden stairs in his previous place. Banged his knee.
 
This is not a huge synchronicity but I found the fact that the actual subject of my coincidence today to be about synchronicity, kind of interesting.

I'm really behind in my FT reading. I recently started a diligent reading "Catch-Up" campaign. So, today I am at the end of FT of October of 2020, issue number 397. I get to the book reviews and see this, after skimming most of the reviews:

FTE.png

I found this weird because yesterday, I picked up a used-book I recently bought online by Colin Wilson called Unsolved Mysteries 42 Amazing True Cases of Unnatural Events With No Rational Explanations. I had scanned the contents to see which chapter looked tasty and landed on Chapter 36, entitled Synchronicity or 'Mere Coincidence'?

I haven't finished reading that chapter but will forthwith.
 
Last night it happened again. Bloody electronic devices listening to us. Yesterday evening me and Mrs DT were watching an old repeat of 1980's sitcom just good friends. Mrs DT asked who is the actress was that played Vince's mum

I replied that I think her name is Anne Lynn, but said I'll Google it on my phone. I put the name Anne into the search engine and the first person to come up on the list of Anne's was Anne Lynn.

That's no coincidence. Anne Lynn isn't/ wasn't that a famous actress, certainly not a house hold name but the first person to appear when I typed in Anne was her.
 
Another minor but weird one.

Herself asked me about the name of a Canadian dessert I'd had a crack at making some time ago, with some success, as one of her friends wanted to know.

I had to do a bit of thinking but it came to me in the end - Nanaimo Bar, a calorie-laden confection of biscuit, cream and chocolate. I then picked up a random FT from the pile as I was trying to track down a reference for something else entirely. (FT418, in fact, May 2022 and last month's).

I opened it at random.

The sidebar news cutting on Page Nine, where my eyes came to rest, was about strange goings-on in Nanaimo, Canada.....
 
AgProv said:
Another minor but weird one.

Herself asked me about the name of a Canadian dessert I'd had a crack at making some time ago, with some success, as one of her friends wanted to know.

I had to do a bit of thinking but it came to me in the end - Nanaimo Bar, a calorie-laden confection of biscuit, cream and chocolate. I then picked up a random FT from the pile as I was trying to track down a reference for something else entirely. (FT418, in fact, May 2022 and last month's).

I opened it at random.

The sidebar news cutting on Page Nine, where my eyes came to rest, was about strange goings-on in Nanaimo, Canada.....
Click to expand...
OK. (See my FT/Colin Wilson synch-up, above, please.) I find these random but close-in-time references/synchronitites higher on the scale of coincidnece because they actually involve Fortean Times... the place where we virtually meet to discuss this very topic and strange occurances. I acknowledge the forum will attract these synchrocnistic events re-telling, but does being on the Forum also cause the events? (I again go back to "If you stare into the Abyss, it stares back.")
 
The strangest coincidence that I ever experienced happened back in 2001. I had just moved into a new flat , was still settling in, when I suddenly and without warning , lost my job. I was devastated, had no savings and was completely reliant upon my wages to keep afloat. I could not even afford to pay the next months rent.

On a chilly November day, huddled under a blanket on the sofa , because i didn't dare to put the heating on , I worried about how I would survive .

All of a sudden, I heard a buzzing sound. I looked up , to see half a dozen, what looked to be wasps , had flown in the window and were buzzing around the room. I opened the window as wide as I could, so they could find their way out and as I got closer to them, I saw that they were not wasps at all , but honey bees . They flew around the room for a while, all following each other in a line, before eventually the one in front discovered the open window and the others followed him out.

I thought it was odd that the bees were out in November and later , had a conversation with a bee keeper who confirmed that it is highly unusual for bees to be active at that time of year.

Later, that afternoon, I heard the letterbox rattle and found that a local free newspaper that was around at the time, had been pushed through the door. I turned to the page where job ads were sometimes placed , not really expecting to find anything suitable for me, to find that actually, there was a job ad that looked interesting. I called the number and spoke to the manageress, who arranged an interview for me, withy the boss, the following day. (she later told me that she somehow knew, as soon as she spoke to me, that i'd get the job)

The boss did , indeed offer me the job and my financial problems were over. The name of the company was Honey Bee Publications !
If that is not strange enough , later , on the same evening The job was offered to me, the phone rang. It was the boss of a company a friend of mine worked for. She had put my name forward as the perfect person for a job with this company.

After a short telephone interview , he offered me some part time work that I was able to fit in around the other job i'd taken. His name was Mr Ashbee!
 
queenofwands said:
The strangest coincidence that I ever experienced happened back in 2001. I had just moved into a new flat , was still settling in, when I suddenly and without warning , lost my job. I was devastated, had no savings and was completely reliant upon my wages to keep afloat. I could not even afford to pay the next months rent.

On a chilly November day, huddled under a blanket on the sofa , because i didn't dare to put the heating on , I worried about how I would survive .

All of a sudden, I heard a buzzing sound. I looked up , to see half a dozen, what looked to be wasps , had flown in the window and were buzzing around the room. I opened the window as wide as I could, so they could find their way out and as I got closer to them, I saw that they were not wasps at all , but honey bees . They flew around the room for a while, all following each other in a line, before eventually the one in front discovered the open window and the others followed him out.

I thought it was odd that the bees were out in November and later , had a conversation with a bee keeper who confirmed that it is highly unusual for bees to be active at that time of year.

Later, that afternoon, I heard the letterbox rattle and found that a local free newspaper that was around at the time, had been pushed through the door. I turned to the page where job ads were sometimes placed , not really expecting to find anything suitable for me, to find that actually, there was a job ad that looked interesting. I called the number and spoke to the manageress, who arranged an interview for me, withy the boss, the following day. (she later told me that she somehow knew, as soon as she spoke to me, that i'd get the job)

The boss did , indeed offer me the job and my financial problems were over. The name of the company was Honey Bee Publications !
If that is not strange enough , later , on the same evening The job was offered to me, the phone rang. It was the boss of a company a friend of mine worked for. She had put my name forward as the perfect person for a job with this company.

After a short telephone interview , he offered me some part time work that I was able to fit in around the other job i'd taken. His name was Mr Ashbee!
Click to expand...
S'pose you've gotta Bee thankful for strange coincidences!
 
Another minor musical moment. I'd connected my phone to the living room speaker whilst I got on with some ironing, and it began halfway through "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals. As usual, this made me remember our school music teacher, something of a hippie, who used to make us sing "There is a Green Hill Far Away" to the "Rising Sun" tune. I then grinned harder when it was followed by John Lennon's "Imagine", as one of the first things we did in music lessons with her was copy the lyrics to this into our hymn books so it could be sung in assembly. Obviously today was a Miss Hainsworth day...
 
Weird moment of synchronicity. Went to a particular supermarket. As I approached there was an old man leaning over to help a pigeon lying on its back on the pavement. Dont know what happened to it. He turned it over and tried to encourage it to fly off. Assume it couldn't. I carried on into the shop, was in there about 7 or 8 minutes, left, carried on my journey. When I came to the main intersection I saw a large lorry of sorts coming along. I say lorry. It said on the side what it was ...."Pigeon transport".

I've never heard of such a thing, but it was a kind of horsebox for pigeons.


Now were the two things obviously connected? It's possible. But I can't see how. The man is unlikely to have had the number ( even if it was tagged) of your neighbourhood pigeon rescuers, and even less likely that he called them and they got to the scene in that short time.

I suppose the pigeon could have escaped from the vehicle. But that also seems improbable as it was by definition 10 minutes driving time from the approaching lorry. If they were following it how would they know where to go?

So it just seems a bizarre coincidence.
 
I suspect the pigeon transporter was carrying racing pigeons!
 
I saw on Reddit that 'Maid Marion and her Merry Men' was on YouTube. So I decided to watch it but hadn't got around to it until yesterday. Decided to start at the beginning, so put on the first episode - where The Sherriff of Nottingham is berating a character for selling 'out of date' rats.
'What's the sell-by date on that rat?'
'Sixteenth of July, 1145'
'And what's the date today?'
'Seventeeth of July...'

And it was!
 
catseye said:
I saw on Reddit that 'Maid Marion and her Merry Men' was on YouTube. So I decided to watch it but hadn't got around to it until yesterday. Decided to start at the beginning, so put on the first episode - where The Sherriff of Nottingham is berating a character for selling 'out of date' rats.
'What's the sell-by date on that rat?'
'Sixteenth of July, 1145'
'And what's the date today?'
'Seventeeth of July...'

And it was!
Click to expand...
That's quite a coincidence, Catseye. But shame it isn't 1145. Unless... you weren't watching it at a quarter to midday, by any chance?
 
We've just returned from Walt Disney World. We were on our way through Epcot one evening when a guy walking the other way suddenly gestured at Son No 2. For a hazy moment I wondered if he was trying to pick a fight with him, but no, Son No 2 shook his hand and started to chat with him. It turned out to be one of his work colleagues, whom he had known was also going to Disney at about the same time as us, but didn't expect to bump into randomly. When you think of all the people across all the different parts of WDW, it does seem quite amazing that we should have been walking in opposite directions along exactly the same path at the same time...
 
gattino said:
Weird moment of synchronicity. Went to a particular supermarket. As I approached there was an old man leaning over to help a pigeon lying on its back on the pavement. Dont know what happened to it. He turned it over and tried to encourage it to fly off. Assume it couldn't. I carried on into the shop, was in there about 7 or 8 minutes, left, carried on my journey. When I came to the main intersection I saw a large lorry of sorts coming along. I say lorry. It said on the side what it was ...."Pigeon transport".

I've never heard of such a thing, but it was a kind of horsebox for pigeons.


Now were the two things obviously connected? It's possible. But I can't see how. The man is unlikely to have had the number ( even if it was tagged) of your neighbourhood pigeon rescuers, and even less likely that he called them and they got to the scene in that short time.

I suppose the pigeon could have escaped from the vehicle. But that also seems improbable as it was by definition 10 minutes driving time from the approaching lorry. If they were following it how would they know where to go?

So it just seems a bizarre coincidence.
Click to expand...
That reminds me of one I forgot.

Years ago, during the time of the Yorkshire Ripper, I left home near Leeds to go to uni.

Occasionally, I'd take the National Express back home to Leeds. I just checked the dates and this must have been January 1981. I forget all the places the coach went through on the way, but somewhere in a town/city I forget, when I was not that far from home (but not sure if it was Leeds or Sheffield or somewhere), I remember being slowed down and this huge lorry going past with SUTCLIFFE emblazoned on it. I was homesick for Yorkshire and seeing it made me happy because it's a Yorkshire name, like my own, and I was at school with some Sutcliffes - it made me feel I was almost home. And for some weird reason it stuck in my head. Must pass a thousand lorries, but only that one I remembered and remember to this day.

The next day, I think it was, or within a couple of days because I never was home for long, he was arrested.

Don't think anyone believed me when I told them about the lorry. Coincidence due to name but also because he was a lorry driver.

ETA: One of our friends was working at Armley Jail, where Sutcliffe was initially remanded. We saw him a few months after this and he told us some interesting stuff I've never seen in the press. Was only decades later I realised I'd been on the same street as Sutcliffe the night of one of the attempted murders (this victim survived). I'm sure on the date as it was my birthday and I was in Leeds on the uni campus where he focussed his efforts in late 1980. Literally walked past the place where later, in his confession, he said he sat in wait watching women go by. I was a teenager- the same age as his youngest victims. So this particular infamous case has always felt close to home, even closer when I realised that I'd been in his cross-hairs, briefly.

Just checked and he was arrested on a Friday, apparently. That probably was the day I was actually travelling home, then - the day I saw the lorry. Must have been on the evening news that same day? Unless they announced it the following day. In my memory, it was very close in time from me seeing the lorry to his arrest.
 
Last edited:
We were on holiday in the Algarve it must have been 20 years ago in Alvor I think. I was worse for wear having been drinking the local tipple all afternoon and my wife was helping me, cajoling me back to the hotel. There is a church in the middle of the little town (im sure its Alvor) and as we passed there was a funeral and the coffin was being brought out of the church. I noticed a tall man standing at the Church door blessing himself as the corpse went past him and I said to my wife that's Dave from work. She was not amused at this stage and dragged me up to the hotel for a rest. A few weeks later I met Dave in the corridor and asked him was he on holiday recently. Of course he had been in Portugal and being Irish had stood up from his drink when he seen the coffin just as I passed on the other side of the street. Small world indeed.
 
Yesterday morning, I was just listening to random songs on YouTube. The last song I listened to was ‘Sing It Back’ by Moloko. It was originally a hit back in 1999, and was quite popular.
A bit lafter, I had to pop out to do some shopping. I went into Boots, where they were playing a remix. I then went into M&S , just two minutes walk away, and they were playing the original version!
 
Another coincidence yesterday! I think this comes under the term ‘frequency illusion.’
I was reading a review of the film ‘Where The Crawdads Fly’, and they mention that the main character is a ‘manic pixie dream girl’, with a link to the meaning.
Then later that day, The Guardian had an interview with Zooey Deschanel with ‘manic pixie dream girl’ in the title!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Pixie_Dream_Girl
 
Simon said:
Another coincidence yesterday! I think this comes under the term ‘frequency illusion.’
I was reading a review of the film ‘Where The Crawdads Fly’, and they mention that the main character is a ‘manic pixie dream girl’, with a link to the meaning.
Then later that day, The Guardian had an interview with Zooey Deschanel with ‘manic pixie dream girl’ in the title!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Pixie_Dream_Girl
Click to expand...
Where the Crawdads Sing.

Sorry - as you were...
 
Last edited:
I get Trivia email blasts each morning. They include a short bio on someone that did something on the date of the email. Today's was about the woman who penned "America the Beautiful" on July 22, 1893. Her name was Katherine Bates. Coincidentally, she looks somewhat like Kathy Bates, the actress.
 

Attachments

  • Katherine Bates Poet.png
    Katherine Bates Poet.png
    972.5 KB · Views: 11
I was browsing The Online Books page before. My wife was watching the news.

Just as the news started talking about women's football at Wembley tommorow I read the title of a book listed called England Or Germany.?
 
Spudrick68 said:
I was browsing The Online Books page before. My wife was watching the news.

Just as the news started talking about women's football at Wembley tommorow I read the title of a book listed called England Or Germany.?
Click to expand...
"Spoiler" will duly follow, no doubt!:comphit:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top