22 People Who Experienced Such Extreme Coincidences, They Just Might Prove That We Live In A Simulation

“When my older son was very young, he’d talk about how he used to be ‘Burt Roberts’ (last name changed to protect the innocent). Burt had a twin brother named Bern. Burt’s wife was named Betty. Burt was from Idaho (location changed). A lot of this was pretty obvious. My wife’s family is from Idaho. My wife’s name is Betty. Later, for fun, I did a Google search. There was a Burton Roberts from Boise, Idaho. He had a brother, Bernard (Bern). Burton was married to Betty. Burton died two weeks after my son was born. My son was born six weeks preterm. Obviously, it was just a coincidence, but, man, for a minute, I was flabbergasted.”

—Anonymous

“When I was in 8th grade (around 1990), my family moved from one part of Houston to another. It meant totally new schools, new friends, new everything. So, my dad — being the adorable, clueless guy he was — bought pens with my name and phone number on them. He thought my skater punk ass was gonna pass out sparkly purple pens with my number on them to ‘make friends.’ Well, I thought they were so hilarious that I gave them out to everyone. By, like, day two, I had given every single one away. Well, flash forward about 15 years, and I’m living in LA. I stop at a gas station in Barstow on a weekend trip to Vegas with friends. There I am, standing at the urinal, mind wandering, when I happen upon a purple sparkly pen on the floor. I think, there’s no way, but I nudge it with my foot, and sure enough, it’s one of those fucking pens! There it was, my name and old phone number. What are the damn odds?!”

—EdithWhartonsFarts

“My dad lives in a national park here in Australia. It’s farmland that’s legacied in. It’s the remnants of a volcano that blew itself up very violently, so it’s very hilly terrain. One day, we were sitting out on the deck when we saw a hang-glider come down halfway down the valley. Their landing looked rough. ‘Shit, we better see if he’s alright, they don’t land anywhere near here,’ my dad said. So we got in the car and drove for about 10 minutes to reach the spot. We headed over to the guy who was standing by a very damaged glider. The pilot stared at us incredulously, then stammered, ‘Fuck, Jack, is that you?’ My dad, who hasn’t seen his childhood friend for 35 years, shouted back, ‘Fuck, Tim, is that you?'”

“They both grew up in Greymouth, NZ. Found each other randomly after a glider crash in NSW, Australia.”

—aalios

“Several years ago, I had a husky who was getting on in years. I was very in tune with him. Enough so that I knew what specifically many of his whines or queues meant. He had a particularly unique one that signaled when he needed a bathroom break. As he got older, he started needing to go outside in the middle of the night, too. Old man problems, am I right? When he got to be a bit past 11 years old, my fiancé and I started noticing that I could hear him from across the house. Then, we noticed that he never failed to wake me up at night when he needed to go out, even though he wouldn’t come into the bedroom to get me. He’d just meet me at the back door.”

“One day, my fiancé was sitting on the couch with the dog and watching TV while I was taking a nap in the other room. I had sound-dampening headphones in with light music going to help drown out distractions. I woke up to the sound of this dog making a loud enough racket that I heard it through all of those precautions. I pulled on pants and shoes and stepped into the next room, where my partner asked me what was wrong. I told her the dog was whining. She said he hadn’t. We looked to the dog, who made the tiniest ‘I need outside!’ whine, before getting up and going to the back door. It was surreal.

And then it happened more. I’d be outside in my workshop and hear the dog whine. Within two minutes, my partner would be bringing the pup out to do his business. To the day he died, I could tell what that dog needed, when he needed it, regardless of distance.

I currently have a two-year-old husky that I’ve started hearing at different volumes than my partner. I’m not psychic. But I think that, just maybe, some dogs are.”

—AnArdentAtavism

“I saw this girl (my age) at a Taco Bell. I went over and said hi to her (briefly, but then left). I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. Coincidentally, I crossed paths with her at a bar that weekend, too. I hung out with her, and we chatted. Turns out, we’d both gotten hired by the same large factory. She worked days, I was midnights. The factory was made up of four large buildings, and we were in different ones. Not too long after, I got switched to working afternoons (still in a different building). Eventually, my schedule was changed to work days. Management switched me to work in a building closer to hers, and later, I got switched to her building. After that, I placed in her area of the factory. Eventually, I placed right beside her. We basically would spend eight hours every day facing each other, about ten feet apart. We’ve been married for a couple of decades now.”

—Apprehensive-Care20z

10.

“I met this girl who worked at the farmer’s market. We would see each other on Saturdays and chit-chat on occasion. Eventually, we exchanged Instagram accounts and found out we were both into home brewing and fermentation. She posted that she had 40 lbs of apples and had run out of fermentation vessels. I reached out, learned that we were close neighbors, and went to pick up the apples. We decided to hang out in a few weeks and compare our home brews. When we hung out, we really hit it off. She had just moved to Boston a year ago after touring with a band through Europe. She had only been to Boston once before in 2013, but only for a weekend to play a festival.”

“Anyway, we started seeing each other pretty often. One day, we were lying in bed, talking about a future where we had a farm. We were talking about our hypothetical pet pig, Francois. I mentioned that, at one point, I had the chance to walk a piglet on a leash. As I was scrolling through my phone to find this photo, I had what I can only describe as a strong ‘calling’ to check a different photo not too far from that one.

So I opened this picture that was calling me. I remembered that day. It was October of 2013. I was outside of my undergrad dorm, enjoying a nice day, when suddenly, this brass ensemble walked by, playing. They got to a little platform outside, played music for about 10 minutes for the random people who were outside enjoying the day and then kept going. I thought they were pretty cool, so I snapped a photo and enjoyed the music.

So, back to the present day. This picture seemed important, so I opened it, I turned to her, and said, ‘Do you know this band?’ She looked at me and said, ‘You see that person in the middle of your shot who is staring at you? Yeah, that’s me.’

I lost my mind! What are the chances of me seeing this band when they strolled by, her being a part of it, her being there for that weekend, me taking that picture, centering her at the same time, she made eye contact with me, encountering her eight years later, being neighbors, dating, and finding that picture while we were side by side? I’ve had a lot of coincidences in life, but that one still gets me.”

—eddie0715

11.

“Through a series of weird circumstances, I had never met my best friend’s older sister’s best friend. This might not seem unusual, but I was very close to my friend’s sister and was at their house all the time. We finally met one night, and we were all sitting around the kitchen table talking. She and I are both major cat people and we were talking about our past and current cats. I told her the wild and horrible story of how my cat had been missing since the night of my senior prom three weeks prior. He was 13, and I was devastated. I showed her a picture of him, and she said something along the lines of ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up, but he looks a lot like this cat my dad started feeding in our backyard about three weeks ago. He didn’t have a collar, so my dad thought he was a stray, but he is pretty chonky.'”

“It was like 11 p.m., but my friend and I immediately jumped into my car and drove over to the girl’s house. As soon as I got out of the car and yelled his name, my cat came running. He was missing a tooth from a previous adventure, so I pried his mouth open to be 100% sure it was him. It was!

The friend lived about three miles from me. After we worked out what had happened and how huge of a coincidence it was, my mind was completely blown. The stars aligned so perfectly for me to get my baby boy back. I still get goosebumps when I think about it.”

—emilyjobot

13.

“My then-girlfriend and I drove a couple hours to the beach, hiked into the dunes a 1/2 mile, set up tent in the sand, and spent the night. The next day, we took down the tent, hiked back, and realized we didn’t have her car keys after looking through everything twice. I went back and started randomly, hopelessly sifting through the sand around the campsite, doing a grid, thinking there was no way I was going to find her keys. Finally, my foot hits keys! I reach down and pick up…MY keys? I didn’t know I’d even brought them, let alone lost them. I never would have found them when I got all the way back home and started looking there. I saved myself from a real future headache. Then, I kept sifting and found her keys, too.”

—shimmerer

14.

“Back in college, a buddy of mine and I were hanging out in his dorm, looking for mischief to make. We decided to head over to the Student Union Building (the SUB). On the way out the door, we grabbed his roommate’s pocket knife. It was a little Old Timer switchblade, maybe two inches long, that he had received from his grandfather. In the SUB, we played a little ping-pong, watched some TV, etc. Then, my buddy got the idea to compete to see who could be the first to throw his roommate’s pocket knife in such a way that it would stick onto the carpet. We had each made a few unsuccessful attempts when I threw the knife in such a way that it hit the floor, kicked off at about a 30-degree angle, and shot into the space between an ATM and the wall.”

“We went over to the ATM, one on each side of it, and, not really communicating, each reached behind it to retrieve the knife. I was the one who found it, and I pulled it out, only to notice that the tip was pretty severely bent. Alarmed at having bent his roomie’s knife, I stood up and looked at him, holding up the knife with a look of dismay evident on my face…only to see him looking back with a similar look of dismay, holding a 2-inch Old Timer switchblade with a broken tip. Within a space of about two linear feet, there were somehow two virtually identical switchblades with mangled tips.

But wait, there’s more! Fast forward about 15-20 years. I’m listening to This American Life, and the episode is about coincidences. The whole time, I’m listening unimpressed, thinking, ‘My pocketknife story is way cooler than any of these stories. I’m actually pretty bummed I didn’t hear when they were taking submissions, or I would’ve submitted it.’ I ho-hum my way through the episode until I get to the final act. It’s a story about a boy at camp…losing his pocketknife that he received from his grandfather…who broke off the tip throwing it at the floor…and then having a confrontation with another boy holding what looked like his pocketknife with the broken tip. Meaning that there were now two separate coincidences about mistaken identity of pocketknives with mangled tips that guys received from their grandfathers. I still can’t think about this without my brain melting.”

—sickmission

16.

“There’s this guy I went to grade school and high school with who was an acquaintance at best. Somehow, I’ve seen him in five different locations in different countries throughout the last 15 years. Disney World when I was a kid. Then, some beach bar in Thailand. The Bean in Chicago. A pub in Budapest. And finally, a library in San Jose, Costa Rica. We’ve become friends due to our love of traveling, but neither of us posts on social media, nor do we communicate with each other about our plans to travel. We never talk outside of the random meetings. Now, if I see him, it’s like the world wants us to have a beer together.”

—Anonymous

17.

“One morning, as my father and I were leaving our apartment to head to school together, I paused at the door, went back inside to the change bowl, and scooped out a fistful of coins. My dad asked why, and I didn’t really have a reason. I just said, ‘We’re gonna need this.’ I wasn’t exactly a coherent morning person, so he shrugged it off. As we were driving in, we passed the grocery store, which reminded him he needed tape for his class (he was a teacher) for some project they were doing. We went in, got to the register, and as the tape was rung up, he realized he didn’t have his wallet on him. I said, ‘I got this!’ and put down the money I had taken earlier. It was exact, to the penny.”

—Tartlet

18.

“My mom and I were heading out for a morning shopping trip, so I was in the shower pretty early, around 7:15 a.m. or so. My grandpa had been ill with a cold, which was concerning as he only had one lung. He was recuperating at home, though, and had seemed perfectly fine when we spoke to him the previous day. Chipper, even. Yet out of nowhere, my brain suddenly thought, ‘We’re not going shopping today, he’s died.’ I have intrusive thoughts every so often, so I just told myself to shut up and get on with the shampooing. Five minutes later, my mom banged on the door to tell me my grandpa had passed away in his sleep and that we needed to head over to his house. I don’t believe in psychics or precognition or anything like that, and I’ve never even thought of myself as a particularly perceptive person, either. Like, I’m as dense as a brick most times. Which is why this still has me spooked fourteen years later.”

—Anonymous

19.

“When this happened, I was a 19-year-old woman who lived alone in a big city. Every night, I was always careful to put wooden dowels in the windows to prevent someone from being able to break in. That night, I had a very vivid dream that my father floated in from a window in my living room and was now floating off to the side of my bed. He was seemingly in a lot of pain. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and he was saying, ‘Help me! Help me!’ He was wearing just a ripped-up white t-shirt and looked disheveled. Then, all of a sudden, I heard a loud banging! As I was about to wake up, I saw my dad’s apparition fall to the floor. Then, he was gone.”

“The banging continued. It took a few minutes for me to realize that someone was banging repeatedly on my door. So, I got up and ran over to look out the peephole. It was my oldest sister and her husband. I let them in, and they were freaking out and saying, ‘You have to get dressed and come with us now! Daddy fell down a mountain, and he is in the hospital. We don’t know how bad it is.’ So, I quickly dressed and packed some things to take. Before we left, my sister said, ‘Oh, let’s make sure that the windows are shut.’ I told her, ‘Oh no, it’s fine; I always put the dowels in when I sleep.’ Well, guess what? One window was open 1/4 of the way. The one my dad came through. I still remember it vividly to this day.

After a 45-minute drive, we finally got to see him. He was thankfully OK but had broken all his ribs and was in an awful lot of pain. My dad and I were very close, so later, I asked him about my dream. He said that he was wearing the exact same T-shirt I described when it happened. He said he was thinking of me and that he wished I had come out with him. He had taken the rest of the family out pine nut hunting and asked if I’d come and drive, but I lived in another city and declined. None of the other children could drive, as they were all 14 and under. So, he said he was laying there thinking about why I hadn’t come with them.”

—Dayana2

22.

And finally, “I grew up next to a farm that had been bought by developers with the intent to create a massive quarry. I wanted to put a stop to it to protect the beautiful landscape surrounding it, so I started a campaign. We started brainstorming what celebs we could try to get to endorse our idea, and James Cameron’s name came up. He named a character in Titanic after our town (Cal Hockley), so we joked he might have a connection. When I looked into it, I learned Cameron named the character after our town because his family is all from here, and he spent his youth on his grandparent’s farm here. ON THAT FARM THE DEVELOPERS INTENDED TO CREATE A QUARRY ON!”

“Then it hit me that our town actually might have meant a lot to him. So, on a hunch, I checked if there were any other names from the movie about town. In the cemetery NEXT to the farm, where all of Cameron’s family are buried, there were the graves of J. Dawson and Rose. What’s even wilder is that next to them all is the grave of an eastern European family with the surname Titanic. I can’t decide if it’s all coincidence or inspiration.”

—MYSTERees77