40 Stories About The Craziest Coincidences That People Can’t Forget About

I was at a download festival some years ago. I was drunk and in the middle of the crowd watching a band. Beside me there were two guys speaking in a different language which I recognised, I asked where they were from and they turned out to be Norwegian.

These guys were the only two Norwegians I'd met since college where we had a Norwegian exchange student. So! I mention her name and that she'd joined their military. They ask which regiment, I tell them... He then rang her and passed me the phone.

Still blows my mind.

As a young lad I did the French exchange thing. I was staying with a family in some random part of southern France. One day we went to meet the older brother returning home by train. As we're waiting on the crowded platform, I spot... my brother. What. The. F**k? He was doing the Inter-railing thing... and he'd only ended up at that station because he'd f****d up and got on the wrong train.

I flew from Newcastle to Gran Canaria, midway through the holiday, we booked an excursion for a jeep safari through the mountains, we pulled up at a zoo and went in, we walked further up through the mountain to an animal show that was sold out but they managed to squeeze us in, we took our seats and waited for it to start, turned around to find our next door neighbours sitting there.

I got on a train in Nottingham to go and see my friend Jo in London, and sat at a table with a random woman. We got off at the same station, took the tube, got off at the same station again, and then walked the same way until she got to her house. After she went in I knocked on her door. She was not happy that I had followed her home at night, but I was quick explain she lived with my friend Jo. I guess London's not that big.

I was in a bit of a bad place following a horrible divorce and subsequent even worse short term relationship and decided to f**k with it all, applied for a job in Australia working in a very niche role. Got the job, sold my house and all my stuff, got the pets all jabbed and crates made.

Then 6 weeks before going ran into an old friend who told me about my ex husband, who was moving to Australia to work in a very niche….. you get the gist.

Reader, I bottled it and never went.

I once left my phone in a taxi. The next day, I used FindMyiPhone and tracked it to a street where I spotted the car - and what looked like my phone inside poking out from the cushions. But when I knocked on the door of the house it was parked outside, no one answered.

Since I was leaving the city soon, I was keen to get it back before it conveniently ‘disappeared’. So I hung around for a bit. After a while, another guy showed up and was clearly waiting for something too. It was a bit awkward, just standing on opposite sides of an empty street, so we got chatting. Turns out, he’d also left his phone in a taxi - but in a completely different one.

Then, about half an hour later, another bloke appeared and was also obviously waiting for someone, just staring at a house fron the opposite side of the street. We tried bringing him into our club, but he was really standoffish. Pretty sure he was a proper stalker, not like us hobbyists.

Anyway, I got my phone back in the end.

Another weird coincidence: I bought a domain name for a business—just a random name like “Flying Foxes” or “Wandering Rabbits” (not the actual name, for privacy reasons). The business ended up doing surprisingly well, and I realised I needed the .com domain too.

Annoyingly, it was already taken by an author promoting a book about an American Civil War battle. Since their book was printed years ago and seemed to be not much more than a pamphlet, and I had a bit of money by this point, I figured it was worth trying to buy it. I googled the author’s name and, bizarrely, not only did she live in the UK - she lived in the same town as me. I emailed her, and it turned out she was just three streets away. So I popped round with some cake and she sold me the domain for £50. I still see her around town.

Not me, my sister, but close enough...

A few years ago she went 'up the city' as we refer to our nearest one, to look for a house to rent, at Number Y on Street X. Had a look around, went back to our mum's and told her she'd been to see this house on Street X. Mum asked if it was number Y. Sister confirmed it was. Mum said that she'd spent the first few years of her life there, back in the 60s.

In the 90s my dad had a Nissan Sunny and my uncle had a Nissan Micra. As a joke my uncle tried his car key in my dad’s car to see if it would open because they were the same manufacturer. Lo and behold it works, however my dad’s key didn’t work in my unlcle’s car. Few months later we’d been for a forest walk and got back to the car to find my dad had locked his keys in the car. Luckily for us there was also a Micra parked in the car park so we waited for the owner to get back. He tried his key in my dad’s car and we were saved a call to AA.

Went on a lads holiday to Agia Napa after a-levels. One night hanging around a pool after all the clubs had shut I watched a guy push his friend in the pool. The security guard at the hotel threatened to taser him and he cried. Fast forward 2 years later went to university and stood drinking in the kitchen with flatmates on our first night. Guy started telling a story about how he went on a lads holiday to Agia Napa and one night he pushed his mate into the pool and a security guard threatened to taser him and his mate burst into tears. Mad that we ended up living in the same dorm.

In 2010 I was 20 years old working a dead end job in a bowling alley ( where I also worked with my now wife) we used to have scores of foreign exchange students get booked in in groups of 60-100 from Spain, France, China etc. Any way we had one group of Chinese kids and we would have to type in their names and one kid was named Simba (they usually choose English names to help us easily pronounce them) who was super talkative practicing his English. Fast forward 2 years and we had enough of smelly shoes and decided to do an online teaching English as a foreign language course and move to China.

After a year of teaching in one city we decided to move to a different city in the summer holidays and one of our contacts mentioned they needed some foreigners to judge an English competition so we obliged. We got on the bus to the a**e end of nowhere and who was getting on with us....Simba...in China a country of 1.4 billion people.

When I was a teenager me and my dad planned to go to the Lake District. We stopped off at his best friend's house which was only a few minutes from our house to pick something up. After a quick chat, nobody mentioning anything about plans, we were on our way. We drove for a couple of hours and stopped off at a café. When we were ordering in this café in the middle of absolutely nowhere with about 5 customers, my dad's best friend that we just saw a few hours earlier pulled in. Apparently we were all going to the Lakes, nobody mentioned anything, and stopped off at the same café. That was a weird one.

In 2001 i was backpacking round China with a couple of mates. In Sichuan province we pitched up in this little bar. There were about 8 people there all sat round one table, and the owner told us to join the group.


I sat down and realised I was opposite a girl i went to school with, who lived literally 100 yards from  my folks house. We started laughing at the coincidence and then the bloke next to me says he's from the village up the road. So fully half the customers in this bar in China were all from a 5 mile radius in Shropshire 🤷.

I’ll start by saying that I used to run a lot, done over 100 parkruns and volunteered a fair bit.

In 2023, I had a month in Australia and had planned 3 parkruns, the last being in Sydney. While I’m waiting for the briefing I see someone who is identical to someone I know from my local parkrun in Scotland. I thought I’d go and ask for a photo together, as my friend would never believe she has a doppelgänger. As I got nearer, she turned around, looked at me and gasped “it’s YOU!!” And I gasped “it IS you!” She was on the first leg of her honeymoon, so we did indeed get a couple of photos together, 10,000 miles from home!

I’m Irish but live in Scarborough, we don’t get many Irish people here. I work in a hotel. Irish guest checks in so I get chatting to him. I ask where he’s from he tells me, I say no way my aunt lives in that county, I say which town fully expecting to not even know of the place but no it’s the same one my aunt lives in. Population of 1000 people. My aunt used to cut his hair.

When I was 10 we were planning a family holiday to New Zealand over Christmas. My parents owned a small house sign making business at the time and a woman came in and ordered a sign for a friend of hers who... lived in New Zealand, right near where we were going on holiday. My dad was able to hand deliver one of his house signs to someone on the other side of the world while on a once in a lifetime holiday.

About 15 years ago, took a trip to New Zealand (from the UK) and was travelling around in a van. In travelling through Christchurch, we need to do some shopping, the main supermarket was closed for some reason so we drove around some suburban place and randomly found a small supermarket. Decided to stop there and pick up some stuff, walking around the fruit and veg section I hear “oi, BigBlueMountainStar”, looking around in shock, there’s my boss’s boss staring at me and waving.

Not mine but my girlfriend at the time. We lived in Norwich, and she was on holiday in New York. At the top of the Empire State Building, she had a small panic attack and the security guard came over to help her. He started chatting to help her calm down, and she mentioned she lived in Norwich. He said no way, my daughter lives in Norwich. Eventually they discovered, she worked behind the bar at our local pub five minutes around the corner and had served us many beers. I still don't quite believe it.

I had a book which had been signed by the author with a personalised message.


At some point, someone got me an exact duplicate sans the message. By mistake, I accidentally gave the signed copy to a charity shop in Yorkshire.


About a year later, I was on holiday in Italy, a quieter bit not far from San Marino. A little one-horse town. Anyway, I pass by a shop which had some non-Italian books outside, and would you believe it? My personalised copy.

I watched a m****r documentary and served mother of the victim the next day at work.

Called my mate on his landline back in the day. Before the phone even rang I heard him on the other end saying “I’m just calling (my name)”. I went “hello?” and he was like “what the f**k?”.