25 Unforeseen Events That Prove Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Life is full of surprises, and sometimes, things happen that defy all logic and reason, leaving us wondering if fate or pure chance is at play. In this collection of unbelievable coincidences, we dive into some of the most mind-boggling stories shared by people who still can’t explain the bizarre events that unfolded before them.

#1

Image source: buheeh, Beytullah ÇİTLİK/unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I was a kid our class had a cake raffle in relation to mother’s day. I went around our area and sold tickets. People were so friendly and brought me in for tea and cake. I had a great time. We had ten cakes people could win and nobody I had sold tickets to won. I was so disappointed and angry I decided to bake a cake to the lady who bought most tickets from me. I went to her house on mothers day to give it to her. Turns out not only was it mothers day, it was also her birthday and we delivered the cake in time for her birthday party. Best accidental cake gifting ever.

#2

Image source: Wyzard_of_Wurdz, Rakesh Mondal/unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I was a kid, we used to drive past this old abandoned school on a hill on the way to the grocery store. I always thought it would be cool to make it a house and live there. Years later someone tore down the school and built a house there. I was an adult then and had my own kids and was living in a house with a leaky basement. As I was driving my kids to the grocery store, I would pass this house and think, it must be nice and dry living up on that hill. I bet he doesn’t have a leaky basement. Fast forward a few more years, I am divorced and remarried. We are looking to buy a house. A guy my wife works with is selling his house. It turns out to he that very same house on the hill. I live here now and am writing this comment from my nice dry house on the hill.

#3

This happened about 12 years ago. My daughter has epilepsy, and she was about 9 at the time that this happened. We were having a lot of trouble with her going into absolute uncontrollable rages. A lot of this could be contributed to the epilepsy medication Kepra that she was taking at the time. It is well-known for causing aggression and rages in children. But they were getting worse and worse, and it was mentally, physically, and emotionally so draining. I knew it wasn’t her fault, but that doesn’t really make you feel much better when you’re getting hit, or things thrown at you, and screeching going on and on and on, and all your things broken. My husband and I spoke with a pastor of our church about it when he came up to visit her in the children’s hospital during one of her stays. Just for the emotional support for us as parents because he was very good about that kind of thing.

Anyways, these rages were happening more and more frequently. One day I answered the phone and a woman introduced herself and said that she was calling from the church, and that Pastor Marty had asked her to give me a call because she had dealt with some of the things I was going through, and she was a pediatric nurse. So I started talking with this woman, I was at a very fragile moment that day because things had been really rough as far as the raging went. So I really unloaded, and I told her what was going on. And she said to me “Do you by chance use Pine-Sol to clean your house?” It was a pretty odd question. The funny thing though was that I did indeed use Pine-Sol to clean my house. In fact I had a lot of it because there had been a going out of business sale somewhere. So I told her that I did, and she told me to immediately stop using it. She said that she didn’t know exactly what the connection was, but she had spoken to many many parents who are having behavioral problems with their children out of the blue, and out of the nature of the child. She said that the one thing they all had in common was that they all used Pine-Sol. So I thought that was pretty strange, but I was more than willing to stop using it if it was going to help our situation any.

So here is where the weird coincidence kicks in. We spoke for a little while longer, and I thanked her for her time and told her I was going to try this, and then I said something about the pastor and his wife. And she said “Wife? What wife?” Apparently her Pastor Marty was not my pastor Marty. She was not even in the same state as me. She had dialed the wrong number! She just happened to also have a pastor named Marty, and she just happened to accidentally dial a wrong number where there just happened to be a mother, me, desperately needing help with their rage filled child. We were both completely surprised, and we laughed about it, and I thanked her for her advice.

Just so you know, I stopped using the Pine-Sol, and my daughter’s rages went down about 90%! I don’t even know the woman’s name. She introduced herself at the beginning of the call, and I cannot even remember her name, but what she did for me that day, and did for our family that day, I will never, ever be able to thank her enough.

Image source: Victoria Gonzalez

#4

Image source:  Jon Clemence, Andrej Lišakov/unsplash (not the actual photo)

March 1, 1950, in Beatrice, Nebraska.

It was a chilly Wednesday evening in the rural Nebraska town. Reverend Walter Klempel went to West Side Baptist Church to start the gas furnace so that the choir wouldn’t be cold at practice later that night. After lighting the furnace, he went back home to wait for practice to start—7:20 p.m.

What he didn’t know was that the furnace had a leak, and gas was slowly filling the church.

At 7:25 p.m.—five minutes after choir practice started—the gas ignited. The resulting explosion destroyed the church and broke windows in nearby houses. Miraculously, however, not a single choir member was injured or k****d.

How did every choir member manage to avoid almost certain death that night? By being late.

Every one of the 15 members of the West Side Baptist Church choir happened to be running late that particular evening, so no one was there when practice was supposed to start. And each person was late for their own, unrelated reasons: car trouble, falling asleep, geometry homework, losing track of time, and just plain laziness were among the reasons the choir members later gave.

While it isn’t unusual for people to be late to choir practice, what are the odds of all 15 happening to be late on the same day?

Literally one in a million.

#5

Image source: explosively_inert, Getty Images/unsplash (not the actual photo)

I used to work at a movie theater. One day a group of people from an organization that helps mentally handicapped people experience a sense of normalcy in their life come through. They each had their own cash and came to concessions for candy and popcorn.

One girl in my line had a bunch of candy but was 1.25 short, and when I told her this she had this look of defeat and was about to start crying so I just told her she was fine and covered it myself. She happily took her candy and went to watch her movie.

The next day I got a “keep the change” tip from a random customer of 1.25. That was the only tip I ever got at that job.

#6

Image source: SparkleFritz, Tamilazhagan/unsplash (not the actual photo)

Not mine, but a friend’s.

He had gotten out of the military and had developed a drinking problem. One night at the bar he drove his truck home drunk and hit a motorcyclist, k*****g him. Goes to court, ready to face his doom, when a woman reaches out to the court to express her gratitude to my friend. She is the wife of the motorcyclist who he k****d. She says that her husband had schizophrenia and had random bouts of rage. That night he left her a voicemail (which she played for the court) in which the guy told her over the phone that he was coming over to m****r her. She said she prayed when she got that voicemail that something would prevent him from getting to her house. And what do you know, my friend accidentally m******d him. The woman tried to argue with the judge that he wasn’t a drunk driver, but an angel who sent him home at that exact moment to stop her husband. She didn’t want him to face jail time because he was doing the world a good deed.

He ended up getting 3 years in prison and only served 2 for good behavior. The judge felt sorry for the situation but you can’t just not send someone to prison for drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter.

#7

Image source: Stalked_Like_Corn, Getty Images/unsplash (not the actual photo)

My mother and I had a thing where we would always tell each other “Be careful” before the other would leave somewhere. Once, I forgot and that day she was in an accident on the way home. 6 months later, I forgot again. Again, accident. So I never missed saying it again.

She died in 2012 and I remember driving to the funeral home to plan her funeral, past this church that always changed their signs on Wednesdays. The sign for that Wednesday said only “Be careful”. That was it. No other words. No Bible citation, just that.

#8

Image source: Legal Avocado, Hector Reyes/unsplash (not the actual photo)

My friend’s father, Vincent, served in Korea. After the war he visited his folks in his small home town located at one end of the state of Pennsylvania where he met a gorgeous young woman, Loretta. Although she was engaged to another man, he managed to sweep her off her feet so she broke off that engagement. Vincent and Loretta married and moved 400 miles away to a major city where they stayed and raised a family.

Fifty years later, sadly, Loretta passed away from cancer. Vincent began to spend a lot of time with some seniors from his church and eventually began to have romantic feelings towards one of them, Evelyn. The only trouble was, Evelyn had been keeping company with a man who lived across the street from her, but after a while she broke it off with that man and soon Evelyn and Vincent were married. The guy who lived across the street from her didn’t take it well when she broke it off with him and he saw this other guy coming around her house. He liked it even less when he realized that Vincent was the SAME MAN who had stolen his fiancee Loretta 50 years earlier!!

#9

Image source: Vivien Tarkirk-Smith, Getty Images/unsplash (not the actual photo)

I had been living in Japan but after two and a half years I got ill and had to return to the UK. I took the opportunity to visit places along the route, and in Cambodia I met a woman who was returning to New Zealand from Hong Kong. We visited Angkor together and ended up on the same flight to Bangkok where we said goodbye. We didn’t keep in touch.

Fast forward a couple of years and one day I went to a supermarket in the Kings Road, Chelsea, an area I had never been to before, while a friend went to a nearby shop to return a purchase. As I waited at the cashier a woman in the next line called across to me and said “Don’t I know you?” I wracked my brain and she said “Didn’t we go round Angkor Wat together?” As coincidences go that one is hard to beat.

#10

Image source: David Stewart, Photo By: Kaboompics.com/pexels (not the actual photo)

My wife and I backpacked around Vietnam for three weeks. One place we stayed in had a television so while I was waiting for my wife to get ready to go out one night I flicked on the TV to see what Vietnamese viewing was like. We could only get reception on a few channels and since the other two were Vietnamese talk shows I left it on a program that was doing current affairs in English. It was a strange mixture of footage from Australian programs so I recognised the presenter from TV back home.

I had the TV on for about five minutes while I waited and was about to switch it off when I looked up and saw my brother on the screen. The network was showing a program from Australia about marriage and it included couples showing excerpts of their wedding videos. My brother officiated at the wedding of one couple and so he was clearly visible on the screen for about ten seconds.

When I got back to Australia I mentioned this to my brother. He had no idea he’d been on Aussie TV let alone replayed on Vietnamese TV. I can say with almost one hundred percent confidence that my brother has only appeared on Vietnamese TV for ten seconds in the entire time they’ve been broadcasting, it blows me away to think that it happened to occur in the ten minutes of Vietnamese TV that I happened to be watching.

#11

Image source: Quartersharp, Hans Isaacson/unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I was 8, my best friend and his family came over to bring me a Christmas present. “Guess what it is?” my friend said. I had absolutely no idea, so I just said the weirdest, most random thing I could think of. “An inflatable dinosaur,” I guessed. And it was. It was gigantic.

#12

Image source: rivalconga, The Yuri Arcurs Collection/freepik (not the actual photo)

I grew up in a small town in California, then moved to Missouri as an adult. Before moving, I spent my early 20s working in a local video store in that small town. 14 years later, I was in hospital in Missouri, having surgery to break up a kidney stone. The overnight patient care person looks familiar to me. Every time she comes in, I keep thinking I know her, but can’t figure out why. She mentions she’s from California, and I say I am too. Turns out, we’re from the same small town, and she was a regular customer of mine. She said she’d been trying to figure out why she recognized me too.

#13

Image source: oliverjohansson, Elena Helade/unsplash (not the actual photo)

I was living in America and went for holidays to Mexico. There, I matched with a hot Mexican girl on tinder in Cancun. We chatted but never met. I never unmatched her neither she did.

A year later I have noticed her 2 miles away. She was a summer student in the same town in the UK where I relocated.

I messaged her, she still didn’t want to meet.

#14

Image source: goodhumansbad, Andre Ouellet/unsplash (not the actual photo)

Not mine, but my friend’s story. Her cousin moved to Japan and noticed that someone in their building had the same last name (looking at the apartment buzzers or mailboxes or wtv). It’s a relatively unusual Moroccan Jewish last name, and obviously they’re in Tokyo so that’s pretty weird to begin with to see a non-Japanese name let alone the exact SAME name.

So they knock on the door and are like “Hi… this is weird but I’m you’re neighbour and we have the same last name… are we possibly related?” and it turns out the neighbour was a branch of their family that had gotten “lost” – nobody knew what had happened to them. It’s a MASSIVE family with literally hundreds of cousins in the same generation, and this particular bit of the family had just gotten lost in the mix. The parents would have known these people’s parents, and so everyone got back in touch and they got reconnected with the whole rest of their family! I thought that was crazy… what are the odds?

#15

There were a number of strange coincidences that occurred to me and others in and around the 6 month period from April 2007, when my 16 year old son Kyle passed away suddenly, and unexpectedly from a brain hemorrhage.

They began just a few weeks before he died, when the step father of his girlfriend drowned in a diving accident. He stayed with her constantly, supporting her and comforting her. On the day of the funeral Kyle travelled to the crematorium by taxi with their group of friends when he (as relayed to me separately by two people present) calmly asked them what they would do ‘when’ he died; my son proceeded to ask his best friend to take care of his (Kyle’s) girlfriend as she would have two losses to cope with.

Almost 4 weeks later, on 15th April 2007, my son created a single page on MySpace with a profound statement about life filling the page. He also had music playing automatically when the page was opened. The song ironically was ‘How to save a life’ by The Fray.
The following day, Kyle died.

A month or so after Kyle’s funeral, I was driving alone in my car listening to local radio. Suddenly the broadcast stopped and there was around 10 seconds of dead air; a song broke the silence, blurting out from the start of the chorus, ‘…How to save a life…’.

I told my husband what happened, and I was quite shaken up, but he said it was probably just a glitch by the radio station and it was brushed off.

A few days later exactly the same thing happened. I concluded that the station were having technical issues and maybe this particular song is what they always cut to.
Another few days passed and my husband and I went shopping in the car. I decided to listen to a different station and flicked through to find one we liked. No sooner had I chosen a station when the sound cut out; my husband and I both visibly jumped when the chorus ‘How to save a life…’ jarred the silence. We had to pull over to take in what had just happened, yet to this day we cannot explain it?

Incidentally, Kyle’s best friend did indeed look after his girlfriend, so much so that they fell in love and moved in together. Alas it wasn’t to be and they split up 2 years later.

There are a number of other incredulous coincidences that have occurred since Kyle passed away, but I will leave them for another post…

Image source: Dawn McManus

#16

Image source: Bongo_Goblogian, cottonbro studio/pexels (not the actual photo)

When I was in the early stages of dating my spouse, I brought her to my hometown to meet my parents. While looking at an old family photo album, she pointed to a picture and said “how do you know this man?” I answered, “that’s my uncle” and she said, “No, he’s my uncle!” Turns out her mother’s sister married my mother’s brother.

#17

Image source: _incredigirl_, Ahmet Kurt/unsplash (not the actual photo)

The summer before grade 5 my family moved 2 provinces west. I was sad to leave all my friends but I was especially excited to get away from my bully, a loser named Geoff. On my first day at my new school, the teacher introduced two new students to the class. Me and my bully Geoff from two provinces away. We had both moved from the same Small Town, Saskatchewan to the same Small Town, British Columbia. What are the chances.

#18

Image source: HouseAtomic, selcuk s/unsplash (not the actual photo)

I was w/ a friend and he’s chatting up this girl… I end up sitting in her car while they talk on her porch and I guess I was fiddling w/ the knobs and switches on the dash; I left everything as I found it but I must have inadvertently dimmed the console lights all the way down.

Years later I meet the same girl, end up sitting in her same car and it’s night time, her dash lights are out; “have been for years” she says.

I lean over and turn the dimmer up.

#19

Many years ago, when I was about 5 years old, one day I noticed my dad had a big burn scar on his chest and back. I asked him what happened. He told me he was in a train wreck when he was young, it got on fire, he was OK but many of his schoolmates were unconscious and would die, so he saved as many as he could by taking them outside, going in again, etc. and got burnt. I didn’t believe him, I thought “My dad is tricking me, he wants me to think he is a super hero like superman”. But I didn’t say anything and didn’t ask anymore. He always told us stories at nighttime that he invented, so it wouldn’t be odd for him to tell me a fantastic story.

When I was 12 years old, my dad died. I have missed him all my life, and I’m 63 so it’s a long time.

At the age of 19, I went to Colombia and stayed many months, at an uncle’s home. His wife worked at the Chilean Embassy and got me a job as a receptionist. One day, an old man asked me for help because he had lost his passport, so I gave him directions to get a new one. A few days later, he came back to thank me, and asked my name. “Solange De Vidts” I said. Then we had this conversation:

“De Vidts? Are you Carlos De Vidts granddaughter?”
“No, I am his daughter”
“Oh, please send him my kind regards”
“I’m sorry, he died”
“Oh, I’m so sorry! Your dad saved my life”
“What? How come?”
“Well, when we were at the Escuela Militar (Military School), the students of the last year were to go to Argentina, to march for their Independence day. Your dad wasn’t supposed to go, because he was in the penultimate year, but asked to go and as he was the best student with the highest grades, they let him go. We were on the train and had a terrible accident at Alpatacal, it was a tragedy, many died. I was unconscious and your dad took me out, I don’t know how he managed because he was small. So he saved me.”
At that moment I remembered the story my dad told me, and realized that my dad had told me the truth. Felt so guilty for not believing him!

It was a very strange coincidence, that accident is called “The tragedy of Alpatacal”, it was in 1927. To meet one of the survivors decades later, who recognized my name because it is not common in Chile, in another country, is a huge coincidence, that allowed me to know better my dad, years after his death. I even found photos, where I could identify my dad.

Image source: Solange De Vidts

#20

Image source: ResponsibilityWise74, James Fesh/unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I was around 8 years old I went to an adventure/theme park based in the UK. While playing in a castle themed wood-chip play area I climbed up one of the towers by ladder into the small room. There were around 10 or 12 of these towers around the play area. When I entered my head into the small room I was met with the sight of a huge s**t in the corner covered in flies and a pair of blue socks covered on s**t also. Disgusting and weird but yeah, these things happen.

When I was 15 I moved to another city on the other side of the country and became best friends with a kid on my street. We’re still best friends now 16 years later.

One day we were talking and the theme park came up to which my friend told me he did a s**t in one of the rooms in the castle play area when he was 8 and that he wiped his arse with his socks. I was astonished and asked him particularly which tower and what colour were the socks. He said they were blue and described the same tower.

So I saw my future best friends s**t 7 years before I moved across the country and met him.

Weird right?

#21

Image source: TootsNYC, Andrej Lišakov/unsplash (not the actual photo)

I used to spend my summers working in the office at a church camp in northern Iowa. I became friends with some of the people who spent their vacation there, especially this one little girl who would stay for two weeks every summer. I was sort of a big sister for the two weeks her family was there.

Then came the summer I had my internship in New York City and I didn’t go to camp. I was sort of bummed that I wouldn’t see this girl.

One weekend a bunch of us decided to go to Washington DC, and I wore my staff shirt from the camp; it had very distinctive stripes across the shoulders.

We are in the Smithsonian and I feel someone touch my arm. I turned around, and it is that little girl who was my friend. She had her parents had gone from Iowa to DC for part of their vacation. They’d missed me at camp that year. But they didn’t quite believe her when she said she saw me until they spotted the stripes from across the room. .

#22

Image source: anon, Getty Images/unsplash (not the actual photo)

This happened recently.

I went back to my alma mater to watch a football game. After the game, i was supposed to spend the night at a friend’s parents’ house. We got separated so he texted me the address – only problem was he messed up the street number. I then spent a good ten minutes trying to convince the woman that lived in the house next door that i knew her son and we were friends so she should let me inside. It was very embarrassing when i realized my mistake.

The very next day i got dinner with a different friend from college who has never met the friend i went to the game with. I’m telling him this story and i happened to mention the address. He immediately got really suspicious of my story. Turns out It was his house and his mother i tried to stay at. Everything i told that woman was inadvertently true – i really did know her son!

#23

Image source: Dave Smith, fxquadro/freepik (not the actual photo)

I was working in a small shop and the owner was away and the till broke, it wouldn’t power up or do anything. This was a nightmare because a typical customer would buy many small items – it was mainly crafts.

While we were still wondering what on earth to do, a guy walked in and asked if we were interested in getting a new till and would we like one on trial? He was a till salesman.

#24

My father was a naval officer, so we lived in a lot of places – some fairly unusual. When I was 13, we moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our home was 8500′ above sea-level and 600 miles from the Red Sea – not a place you’d expect to find US Navy.

Dad got to know the Marines in the security detachment at the US Embassy well, and one day Bob, the Gunnery Sergeant, came to him with an unusual request. His fiancee Carol was coming to Addis; they were to be married at the embassy. Bob wanted my dad to stand-in for her father – to give the bride away. My dad agreed immediately. In fact the reception was at our home.

A few months later Bob got orders; he and Carol left Ethiopia, promising to keep in touch. A year later, on a Thursday in September, Bob was walking into the American Embassy in Amman Jordan on his day off; he’d forgotten something. One of the on-duty Marines asked, “Hey Gunny, weren’t you in Addis before you came here? Some Americans from there were in a car accident on their way back from Petra. Do you know anyone on this list?”

My name was on that list. You can read about my NDE in another thread. Bob sent the ambulance which brought me from the government aid station, in the middle of nowhere, to a private hospital, in Amman, the next day. He cabled my parents that I was seriously injured; that they needed to come at once. For the next two days, until my father arrived, every time I opened my eyes either Bob or Carol was sitting next to my bed.

Probably just coincidence.

Image source: Geoffrey Walton

#25

Image source: anonymous, Alejandro Hikari/unsplash (not the actual photo)

This happened to my brother when we were a lot younger.

First of all, we were a poor family from eastern Europe, so we shared a PC. Both me and my brother were really into gaming and that PC was the only option to play video games.

One time my parents planned a one day trip in the forest in the mountains. My brother, who was like 12-13 refused to come, to play video games of course.

When we got back, he kinda looked frightened, but didn’t say a word, he was just very happy to see us somehow, which was weird.

Later that evening he told me that he sat playing games, randomly looked at the light in the room, which was on, and said ‘If demons exist, the light should go off’. He said, that in an instant, the light went off.

Pretty terrifying for a child in a christian family, but now I only think, what a f*****g coincidence ot was haha