Coincidences seem to arrive in our lives as surprising twists of fate. At least that's what it feels like when you run into your childhood friend while traveling across southern Spain. Or meet someone on the first day of college, only to discover they share your birthday. What are the odds, right? Well, even though the odds have more to do with math than magic, you can’t help but think the universe aligns in mysterious ways.
But sometimes, these glitches in the matrix present themselves in the most peculiar, eerie, and impossible-to-explain forms. Like, the examples in this 'Ask Reddit' thread. After one Redditor shared their spooky experience of finding a broken piece of headstone lying in the middle of the cemetery, they invited fellow community members to share their own creepy and weird coincidence stories.
The thread immediately became a hit as it deeply resonated with hundreds of people who came forward to share how these so-called alignments instantly sent shivers down their spines. We at Bored Panda have scoured the thread and wrapped up a collection of some of the best horror movie–esque responses, but just to warn you: some of them may not be for the faint of heart! So continue scrolling, upvote as you go, and let us know if anything similar has ever happened to you in the comments.
Psst! After you're done reading through this post, check out our earlier piece filled with one-in-a-million coincidences that are hard to believe actually happened.
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My best friend died via assisted suicide at my house (did an AMA awhile back). After she drank her lethal cocktail, she slipped into a coma and then it took about 40 minutes for her to finally pass. We kept taking her pulse every two minutes or so. Finally, my Great Dane who had been sleeping bolted upright and let out one muffled "woof", and then stared directly at my friend, then her eyes tracked slowly up from her, through the air, up towards the ceiling. We leaned over to take her pulse again, and this time she was gone.
Picked a bunch of flowers to put on a random grave whilst on a walk at a cemetery. After 20 minutes my arm holding the flowers shoots out behind my back. I figure that the grave it's pointing to is the lonely grave that wants the flowers. The names on the grave were mine and my fathers full names with the same spelling. We have a pretty uncommon last name!! Turns out it was our ancestors.
Tl;dr: found me and dads graves.
Stopped my cd player in the car because it was playing a song that reminded me of a dead friend, switch to radio. Same song. Note for note. Three years after it had been released.
On my 12th birthday I was on the way to the bike shop to get a new bike, I was with my dad, his girlfriend and my brother. We was still about 10 minutes away from the town center, so no where near the bike shop.
Some random, old, creepy looking guy came up to us, looked down at me and said; "**You buying a bike?**" I looked at my dad, confused and kinda scared.
We told him that we were on our way to buy a bike. He then started going on about how I *MUST* get a helmet and wear it *ALL* the time! We was a little freaked out but we just assumed he was a weirdo and just forgot about it.
A few hours later I was riding through the park on my new bike and I fell off. I didn't fall very hard and landed on grass so it was cool. As I went to get up brush myself off, I looked up and he was just standing there, looking disappointed and shaking his head. He thing shook his index finger at me and said; "**I told you to wear a helmet.**"
At this point I just s**t myself and rode as fast as I could home!
What is even weirder though is the fact that I have moved about 40-50 miles away since then and I still see him every once in a while. I don't believe in guardian angels but it just creeps me out.
I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washingtonwhen I was 12. When you first go in, they give you this passport thing [image above] which tells you the story of someone who lived during the Holocaust. The one that I got had a young man whose birthday was the same as mine, except 50 years prior. The day I went to the museum was 50 years to the day since his death.
I worked at a library for a very long time, and in an effort to not lose my soul, I collected stuff I found in books. My favorite discovery was a hilarious postcard between two friends. I immediately thought, "I'd like to met these people". I kept it next to my computer for a few years.
After a few years passes, I'm going through my papers and find a postcard from my girlfriend that I don't recognize. It takes me a few minutes to understand that I'm reading the postcard I'd put aside years earlier, between someone who was now my girlfriend and another person I'd come to know as a friend. It was probably the weirdest event in a series of events that defied probability regarding a ton of surreal linking events in our lives.
TLDR: I stumbled into a relationship with someone whose mysterious postcard ended up in my collection without directly pursuing it.
When I was about 12 I had a terrible nightmare in which two planes collided in mid-air. It was extremely vivid and I woke up in a panic. My bedroom was right next to the family bathroom and after about 30 mins of lying in bed freaking out I noticed the landing light come on and knew that a parent was heading to the bathroom. Now by twelve I wasn't the sort to bother my parents about nightmares any more, but I was convinced there was going to be a plane crash, so I rushed out to my mum and told her everything. She said I was being stupid and that I should just read and try to get back to sleep.
The next morning my mum comes rushing into my room and pulls me out of bed and has my dad with her. She asks me to tell him about my nightmare and then they both looked freaked out. They insisted that I went downstairs with them to watch the news. I thought they were pranking me or something but when I got down breakfast news was running a story about 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision. We later worked out that I'd woken up around about the time the crash itself took place. Nothing like this has happened since.
My husband and I met in our late 20s. We grew up near each other but went to different high schools and colleges, were a few years apart, and hung with completely different crowds.
My parents put in a bid on the house next door to his parents when I was about 11. It fell through and we moved elsewhere.
While in college, he traveled to my school to compete in a game. Since it was homecoming, he ended up briefly watching the parade. Out of hundreds of people, he remembers me and telling his friend I was a cool chick. Not only had I been drinking, but I was dressed as a crab and standing next to Ariel from The Little Mermaid. (I nearly pooped myself when he told me about watching me dance badly around in the street and take pictures with the little kids.)
While attending a house party with my now husband, I was looking at pics on the walls taken at parties his friends had thrown back in high school. I was on one side of a pic and he was on the other side of the big group. I went to about 20 parties back in the day, and I do not remember ever partying anywhere near his area.
My husband and I were best friends with a guy and girl who are cousins. We both went to endless family gatherings but never met. We heard stories about each other and had never even seen a picture of one another. After six years, we finally met and were an item by the end of the night, and we've been together ever since.
I once read or heard a story, about these two newly weds that were going through family photos. The wife stumbled upon a photo of herself at Disney World, as a child, posing with some character in a costume. In the back ground of the photo they found the husband being pushed in a stroller. The picture was taken like 15 years before they were married, and they lived in separate countries at the time. It was a complete coincidence that both of them were caught in the same snap shot.
Was listening to pink floyds dark side of the moon while driving into my ranch this morning. The lyric "run rabbit run" comes on as a rabbit simultaneously was running off on the road. Kinda trippy.
Years ago went to southern Ohio to pick up my brothers gf. Some friends of hers were over at the apartments that were on the edge of town. We decided go to the bars and show me around town. As we left someone said "let's party till the cows come home. After shutting down the bars, we returned to the apartments at and we freaked out as there were about 20 cows that escaped pasture a mile down the road that were chewing on the apartment's bushes.
When I was 16, I went to pick up my little brother from soccer practice. On the way home he goes, "do you ever get the feeling your whole life is about to change?" this was uncharacteristically weird of him, since he tends to be pretty 'bro' in his daily life and i'm the emo sibling. And so I said, "I dunno, things like nothing ever changes." And he said, "something is about to."
Anyway, we pulled into our street and out of the blue he goes, "someone died." I'm like "uh... what?" Then we pulled around the corner and all these cars were parked in front of our house. Turns out our dad died that day at work.
After my great-aunt Lynn passed away, my other great-aunt Cynthia was walking home in the rain. Obviously she was pretty sad. She said, "Lynn, show me some proof that you're still here."
My aunt Lynn collected these rare things called Indian medicine bags. Somehow, Cynthia found one on the ground in the rain. Inside there were six paper dolls- four girls and two guys. One of the girls was wearing pants.
The coincidence? In her family, there are four sisters and two brothers. Aunt Lynn always wore pants.
Last december, i had a bad dream earlyish in the morning that my dad had stopped taking his liver medication and that he was going to die. In the dream, i asked why he had been so careless but he said that it was just his time. When i woke up, my sister texted me that dad was in the hospital. He passed away 3 weeks later due to, of course, liver complications from not taking his medication.
I was around ten years old and my mom took my siblings and I to an Elvis impersonator show. After the show, he was signing scarves and things. [He was kind of a local celebrity in my medium-sized Florida city.] The person in front of me had the same uncommon name as me and was about my age. I said that was my name, as well. We thought it was cool but never saw each other again.
A few years later, I'm camping with my family in New Hampshire. The campground has a small playground and I'm on the swings. I hear someone call my name, turn and see this same person was there, telling their family they were going to the playground.
I was working as a contractor in a sanitarium for the mentally deranged. I happened to notice a nameplate on a door that had my very unique last name on it. Turns out it was my great aunt was living there.
This is buried but I hope someone reads it. My best friend was on a father son fishing trip at Sioux Narrows, Ontario (I'm from north Dakota and so were my friends and his family) now there is this bridge there that's apparently 50-60 feet above the water. My friend was with another mutual friend who had went on the trip. These two had a tradition of jumping off this bridge into the water. On this particular trip, my friends dad had a crazy dream where one of them jumped off and died. It shook him to the point he made all the people on the trip promise they wouldn't jump. My two friends ignored the warning and went for it anyway. As u have already figured out my friend never came outta the water. One of the best people I've ever met gone :(
This is sad! Something that was supposed to be memorable but the dad and the son turned into an unforgettable tragedy.
When my cousin and I were babies (we're just under 2 years apart) we were sleeping in my room while our moms were wrapping Christmas presents since it was around Christmas time. They were downstairs wrapping presents when they hear on the baby monitor a woman saying to my cousin who was starting to cry, "don't worry, your mom will be here soon". My mom and aunt run upstairs and no one is there.. Plus no one else on the street had a baby so there was no interference.
I had a dream (at age 16) that my mom got pregnant, that the baby was a girl with brown hair, and at the time in my dream the baby was almost a year old. I told my mom and we laughed about it that day. Mind you I was my mom's only child. Cue a week later we found out she was pregnant. My sister was born 9 months later and has brown hair.
I had a dream about my daughter before she was born about a year before looks the same as she did in the dream.
Creepiest coincidence I can think of is when I was in high school, it was around the time Princess Diana had died. I visited my grandmother at her job at a doctors office to have lunch with her. Everyone in the break room was watching coverage of the funeral when my grandmother said, "I wonder if Mother Theresa would get this kind of coverage if she died?" Like clockwork, an announcer came on and told of the breaking news that Mother Theresa had passed away. Everyone did that slow head turn eye contact with my grandmother. To this day, my grandmother says it was a coincidence.
Not necessarily the creepiest thing I've encountered, but this just happened a few hours ago.
Just returned from dog sitting at a friend's house. It was the first time I'd done so since my cat passed away a month ago. Little things like seeing a can of cat food had me missing him (since he'd always loved coming along to this friend's house, I kept a spare can there).
Well, as I passed by the place in my apt where his ashes are currently kept, I muttered, "Never thought I'd miss peeing alone." Went to the bathroom and shut the door behind me. Mid-stream, the door opens. I looked down, expecting to see my dog. He was asleep on the living room floor.
I've shut that door a million times before. And know the nudge that he or the cat would pull when I was in the bathroom. It had opened just wide enough to let a cat in. But no cat.
Maybe it's simply the whole pet grief thing. I just found it very odd, particularly as I don't believe in an afterlife of any sort.
I love this story. I love to think they (our pets) are never far, that they come back to check on us. I miss my pets that are gone so much......Sometimes I fall asleep thinking about how wonderful it might be to show up where they are one day, if I get to make it to where they are!
This may get buried but just wanted to share . I was raised by my grandmother. The day she died I was going to the place after receiving news, an old lady looking so similar to her flagged down my vehicle asking if I could drop her a little distance on the way. After dropping her off I stopped by the side of the road and cried a river. I like to think it was my grand mother who wanted to see me for one last time.
When my mom was pregnant with me, an old woman came up to her and told her she was pregnant and poked her in the stomach. my mom was only about 2 weeks along and she nor anyone else knew for a while. and she wasnt even trying to get pregnant.
My mom was fairly thin at this time and didnt have a baby bump .
It was nearing Christmas and one day when I came home from school my mother asked me to guess who we got a Christmas card from. Without hesitation I said, "From the people who ran the little motel on our summer trip to Michigan." She was speechless. I was right and I was speechless too.
I once went on a camping trip alone. Just one night. I had a great hike and set up in the middle of nowhere with nobody in sight. I hadn't run into someone else in hours and I made a fire, ate dinner, got into my tent, and went to bed.
All sounds normal, right?
Well I had been taking some pictures with my disposable camera, but I had about 6 photos left. I decided to save these for the trip home. I placed all my valuables (wallet, keys, phone [old phone, no camera on it], and disposable camera) under my pillow. I went to bed.
The next day I packed up the tent and went home. The next week I went to develop the camera. I realized all the photos were used, so I assumed I had just counted incorrectly. When I got the photos back, **the last six photos were pictures of me sleeping!!!** I had not seen anyone else at all! Also, if someone had did it, they would have needed to open the tent, get the camera from under my head, and take six pictures of me sleeping without me waking. And I'm a very light sleeper!
*SOOOOO CREEEPY*
I was taking some picture at the graveyard, it was for a class so my friends were there modeling for me, anyways, I ask one of my friends to try to look like she is crying, while I adjust my camera, when I go to taker her picture, I see she is doing a GREAT job, she is sobing up and crying, I take a couple of pictures before realizing that she is looking at this big family grave... With the exact names and last names as her realives, there was her dads' name, mom, sister and brother, exact name with exact last name. Her family lives on another state and they are alive. So that was spooky, but later on we are all in my car, and we are listening to some music one of us had on a usb, we were listening to a son for like the third time, when the sound goes off and a horrible voice says 'get back from where you came from', and the song continues where it left off. We were so creeped out we had to stop and catch our breath. To this day I still don't know what it was, maybe interference from another radio? No idea, but it was creepy.
I was walking through the woods one day, and I stumbled across a graveyard from the 1800's 1900's. I was just walking through and the first one that I saw was a little boy who died on the same day that I was born. The crazy part was that he and I had the same first and middle name.
It's a bit creepy but not unusual if you think about it. It would all depend on where you are geographically and how common your name is. For instance, if you lived in the UK and your name was John Smith, then there is a very good chance of stumbling across a gravestone with that same name inscribed on it. I think it seems rare and strange at first glance but there are a lot of names out there that have been popular for centuries. But if your name is Rhubarb Reginald Custard then yeah, weird.
My friend had told me that I would find out within 3 weeks that I was pregnant and it would be a boy. 3 weeks later, to the day, I found out I was pregnant. I didn't find out that I was having a boy until 3 days before I had him. And my friend called me a month and a half before I had my son to tell me that I would have him on the 20th. Sure enough after 36 hours of labor I had my son on Nov. 20th. I always thought it was kinda creepy that she got it right.
When I was a kid (maybe around 9 or 10) my friends and I would always hang out in the woods behind our bus stop. There were 4 of us that would always go back there, but my friend Alex and I would go back there most often. There wasn't really anything inherently weird or creepy about the woods, but I remember feeling very calm back there, despite generally having attention and anxiety problems. I had a dream one night that me and Alex (but neither of the other 2) were hanging out in the woods and an old woman came up to us to tell us that we shouldn't go back there anymore and that the woods were private property, and then she turns around and walks up into the sky. The next morning I was telling Alex about the dream and I get to the part with the old lady. I say "And she told us not to go back into the woods behind the bus stop anymore" and Alex finishes the sentence "-Because it's private property. And then she floated away"
Turns out Alex had been having the same dream every now and then for a few months at that point. He'd never told me about it.
We compared a few other details about the dream and what Alex said sounded familiar (ie, it was foggy, there was a green-pained iron gate that didn't really exist) but these parts I'm willing to chalk up to power of suggestion.
When I was 17, I worked at Red Lobster. I closed the kitchen, so I was one of the last people to leave somewhere between midnight and 1 AM. Being as late as it was, some of the city's bus routes were already done for the day and only the heavy traffic ones were still running. Due to this inconvenience, I had to take a bus that dropped me off several city blocks away from home, leaving me with a twenty minute walk home.
This lead me through a graveyard in the middle of a neighborhood, one of the oldest in the city. It had a small street that ran through it with streetlights, but both ends had a gate stopping vehicular traffic, only allowing pedestrians through and headstones line either side instead of sidewalks. Creepy enough at night, but it was faster than walking around, especially since the cemetery was wide and narrow.
At this particular point, I had been walking through here at least once a week coming home from work, so I grew fairly comfortable there and would even sometimes just check out headstones instead of walking straight home. This one night, however, things changed.
I was walking up to the cemetery's street, cutting through a grocery store parking lot, just wanting to get home to bed. As I walked up the side street leading to the pedestrian entrance, the streetlights in the cemetery shut off. All of them. At once.
"Weird," I thought, but I carried on. My bed was calling me. I walk through the gate and the first light turned on, basking me in it's glow. I slowed, looked around and saw nothing unusual so I continued. Coming to the edges of this lone lamp, the second light flickered on, stopping me in my tracks. I pull my already quietened headphones out of my ears, getting scared and searching for an answer.
Still nothing. I pick up my pace, briskly walking through this second pool of light, noticing that the first pool has disappeared as I leave it behind. Getting up to the third light, it flashes to life while the second one dims out, much like my bravado by now. This continues on all the way through, the lights turning on and off as I enter and leave them, jogging out of fear.
As I make my escape, the lights all off for now, I think about how creepy it would be if they all turned on now... But they didn't. At least, not until I was across the street from the graveyard, causing me to break into a run for the rest of the way home.
I've told this to many friends, and always get the "it was probably just motion sensors". It wasn't. I continued to use that path and had a couple of other less freaky experiences, but never again did I have the lights protect(?) me in such a way.
My friend and I were in the car one night driving to see a movie. I had the most eerie feeling for no reason and it wouldn't go away so I vocalized it to her. "I have the creepiest feeling right now, no idea why." She says "me too, what the hell, I've been feeling creeped out for the last ten minutes." A couple mins later her phone rings, unknown number, she answers and no ones there so she hangs up. Rings again, same number, picks up. Then my phone rings, different unknown number. I get on the phone, "Hello? Hello?" I hear my own voice saying hello on her cell phone. We realize we're talking to each other and get really freaked out and throw our phones in the back seat. Couple seconds later there's a loud bang on the side of her car door, like someone threw something at the car, but there were no cars or people around. Pull over, get out. There's a huge dent in the side of her car. Thouroughly creeped out for the rest of the night.
Well, for me it would be when I moved from Massachusetts to where I am now.
There were these two kids that lived in my now hometown, a brother and a sister. The brother and sister were the same ages as my brother and I, respectively. The boy and my brother's names both started with "T", and the girl and my names both started with "A". The boy was more of an athletic type, while the girl was more into art; also like my brother and I. I was a girlscout in my town in MA before, and I joined one of the troops when I got here, and it was the troop that the girl had been in.
Three days before we moved in, the two kids were hit by a drunk driver and killed.
It was pretty damn eerie...
My sister and I have a good friend that we met around 2003-04. We were all living in the same city, but we grew up in different cities. A few years later she met our imigrant mother who was a seamstress. One day she was with her own mother talking about us and where we were from, and our mother. Her mom suddenly said, "That's funny! I got married in that city and I remember I had a foreign lady make my wedding dress for me!" A few days later my sister was sorting through our old family photos and found a picture of a couple that she didn't recognize on their wedding day from around the late 70s early 80s. The bride in the picture was our friend's mother.
I once was attending an 80's themed party, planning to dress as Marty McFly i spent a day shopping in thriftshops in a large city. After visiting at least 6 i had everything but a denim jacket. Not a single one had one (crazy I know). My friends and we decided to try one more before we gave up for the day. We walk in, the cashier meets us at the door and all she says (not hello, nothing). Is "we're having a sale on denim jackets today only" and showed us to 2 full racks of nothing but denim jackets in everysize.
I had gone to eat at a Chinese buffet with a friend. After dinner, I opened up my fortune cookie to read a message that said: "A friend in need will contact you soon, answer the call." Minutes later while walking out of the restaurant, my phone rang and it was a friend that was going to be moving away to another state. He was calling me because he needed a fridge back that he had just let me have a few days prior.
My husband and I bought an antique clock at a flea market. It wasn't until we went home and looked at it more closely that we realized on the inside of the door on the back it had our wedding date written in pencil. Our anniversary is 9/22/09, 9/22/24 was written in the clock.
I had something weird happen the day my grandpa passed away. I knew he was going downhill and didn’t have long and I’d wanted to fly up from where I was living but my mum had said wait for a while and see if he gets any better. So a week goes by and one morning I have this dream where I’m sitting on my grandpa’s bed at the nursing home, and he’s telling me that he’s upset that he wants to wait for me to come see him before he leaves but he’s worried I won’t make it, and so I hold his hand and say Grandpa, it’s okay if you can’t wait for me, I understand, I’ll see you when I get there. And so he says okay and then the next part of the dream is me seeing him in his casket in a dark blue suit, against a cream coloured silk lining. When I wake up, I get a phone call from my mother to tell me that he had passed away that morning, and that his last words were that he wanted to go home. I said Mum I know, I just saw him in a dream and told him it was okay to leave. I will never forget that.
Can one still believe in coincidences?? Wrap your head around this: I visited the USA (I'm from Europe). From Sonoma I went to SFO for a day, had a snack and happened to talk to the only guest at the bar. He was on a business trip, spending just one day in San Francisco, too. Long story short: It turned out that he was the AMERICAN UNCLE OF A FRIEND OF MINE!! Whom I had met after a very long time just the week before. OMG, we almost fell of our chairs!!!! I was secretly in love with that friend back then (but he was married). That friend almost lost it when his uncle called him the next day to tell him. Love this story!!
My aunt had the perfect coincidence occur and we still tease her today. So we were visiting my grandmother's grave and it was damp out as it had been raining heavily prior. My aunt was talking to my grandmother's headstone and asked for a sign about something. Right after she said that she took a wrong step and her foot sunk into the ground to almost her ankle. You just here her screams overdramatically "I'm not ready yet ma" before my laughing family helps her out. In honesty they needed that laugh because everyone was being too somber and granny wouldn't have approved. I believe that occurred 25 years ago (maybe a little more) and she is still called mudfoot 🤣 on occasion my uncle teases her "they're coming to get you Barbara" (night of the living dead reference) and her name actually is Barbara so it's perfect.
I had something weird happen the day my grandpa passed away. I knew he was going downhill and didn’t have long and I’d wanted to fly up from where I was living but my mum had said wait for a while and see if he gets any better. So a week goes by and one morning I have this dream where I’m sitting on my grandpa’s bed at the nursing home, and he’s telling me that he’s upset that he wants to wait for me to come see him before he leaves but he’s worried I won’t make it, and so I hold his hand and say Grandpa, it’s okay if you can’t wait for me, I understand, I’ll see you when I get there. And so he says okay and then the next part of the dream is me seeing him in his casket in a dark blue suit, against a cream coloured silk lining. When I wake up, I get a phone call from my mother to tell me that he had passed away that morning, and that his last words were that he wanted to go home. I said Mum I know, I just saw him in a dream and told him it was okay to leave. I will never forget that.
Can one still believe in coincidences?? Wrap your head around this: I visited the USA (I'm from Europe). From Sonoma I went to SFO for a day, had a snack and happened to talk to the only guest at the bar. He was on a business trip, spending just one day in San Francisco, too. Long story short: It turned out that he was the AMERICAN UNCLE OF A FRIEND OF MINE!! Whom I had met after a very long time just the week before. OMG, we almost fell of our chairs!!!! I was secretly in love with that friend back then (but he was married). That friend almost lost it when his uncle called him the next day to tell him. Love this story!!
My aunt had the perfect coincidence occur and we still tease her today. So we were visiting my grandmother's grave and it was damp out as it had been raining heavily prior. My aunt was talking to my grandmother's headstone and asked for a sign about something. Right after she said that she took a wrong step and her foot sunk into the ground to almost her ankle. You just here her screams overdramatically "I'm not ready yet ma" before my laughing family helps her out. In honesty they needed that laugh because everyone was being too somber and granny wouldn't have approved. I believe that occurred 25 years ago (maybe a little more) and she is still called mudfoot 🤣 on occasion my uncle teases her "they're coming to get you Barbara" (night of the living dead reference) and her name actually is Barbara so it's perfect.