I genuinely feel like reality is trying to warn me about death
Ever since December, I’ve felt like I’ve been trapped in some kind of loop of strange coincidences, “death omens,” synchronicities, and weird experiences that keep getting more intense over time. I genuinely don’t know if this is just my brain connecting random things, anxiety, pattern recognition/apophenia, or something deeper/spiritual, so I wanted to ask if anyone else has experienced anything similar.
A huge part of this revolves around the number 22. It appears constantly in ways that feel extremely specific and creepy to me.
What makes it even stranger is that the number 22 started appearing BEFORE I ever tested the random number generator. After around 10 days of constantly noticing 22 everywhere, I decided to test a random number generator from 1–10,000 just to see if I was imagining things — and the VERY first number I got was 22.
Around that same time, I also got a video editing job from a client involving a person’s death and funeral.
I constantly notice times like 22:22, 23:22, 20:22, etc., especially during conversations about death or while reading/watching something related to death.
One time while gaming with friends, they randomly said “you died” in-game, and when I looked at the clock it was exactly 01:22. Before that, nobody had said it at any other “22” time.
One morning I woke up after having an ultra-realistic dream that a distant relative died, and later noticed his birthday was 22.11 and that his phone number also contained 22.
Then there are the animal-related things:
- On 22.12.2025, a dog (either a stray or my neighbor’s dog) was barking directly toward my house around 7–8 AM. At the time I didn’t even know people considered that a “death omen,” but I remember thinking it felt strangely unsettling, especially because it happened on 22.12.
- In April, a bird (possibly a crow/raven) randomly flew directly onto MY window and immediately left.
- On April 30th, for the first time ever, a dog came directly under my bedroom window during the Islamic call to prayer (adhan/ezan) and started howling. Since then, it has happened multiple times. Not every single day, but enough to deeply disturb me.
- Earlier this year, a cat spent almost a month or two constantly crying/howling around our house at night.
There are also strange “coincidences” that feel impossible:
- The day before Eid, when my family planned to visit graves, I randomly received the LoL skin “Graves” from a chest.
- On Laylat al-Qadr (the “Night of Destiny” in Islam), I received Lunar Guardian Nasus, which felt symbolic to me because of the moon/destiny themes.
- While visiting a graveyard, my father found a grave belonging to someone whose name and surname were almost identical to mine — and my name is extremely rare.
- I talked about a friend I hadn’t seen in 5 years, and then randomly saw him a few days later.
- A friend asked me “what flag is this?” and I answered “Vietnam.” Around 15 minutes later, I randomly got a Viber message from a girl from Vietnam saying “Hi🐝” — and the date was 22.4.
- Earlier this year, a friend I haven’t been close with for around 4 years randomly sent me a follow request on Instagram.
- I was recently reading old Discord chats with a guy I hadn’t talked to in a long time. He also hadn’t played the game I play for around 3–4 months. Then 2–3 days later, he suddenly came back online and started actively playing the game again.
- Just 3 days ago, I saw an old Discord message from a guy who hadn’t replied for almost a month in one server. Then literally the next day, he suddenly replied again after being inactive.
- Today I randomly created an Instagram profile and Instagram suggested the username “alligator.” Later that same evening, my friend texted me saying “Gladiator is available on Netflix now.” What freaked me out is that “gladiator” almost looks like “alligator” when rearranged in my head.
- Another thing that really disturbed me happened while watching a movie. I randomly looked toward the TV at the exact moment the subtitle said “I’m dying...” Afterward, I checked the entire subtitle file because it scared me so much, and there were basically no other subtitles mentioning death, murder, or dying anywhere else in the movie. The creepy part is that this exact subtitle was subtitle number 922 out of around 1100 subtitles — again involving the number 22. Even stranger to me, the movie itself came out in 2022.
The strangest part is that since December I’ve also started experiencing:
- strong déjà vu,
- remembering random dreams from years ago,
- feeling like people resemble other people in weird ways,
- feeling like reality is “connected” somehow,
- and moments where I feel like I suddenly “predict” things before they happen.
For example, I once dreamed about signing up for exams, and the next morning I woke up to a Viber message that had arrived while I was asleep saying that exam registration had officially started.
I know a lot of this can probably be explained by confirmation bias, anxiety, selective attention, pattern recognition, etc. But emotionally it’s becoming hard not to feel like there’s some kind of message, warning, or “death omen” surrounding me.
At this point, everything feels connected in a way that honestly scares me. Sometimes it genuinely feels like reality is trying to tell me that I’m going to die soon.
Has anyone else ever gone through a phase like this where coincidences started feeling TOO specific and TOO frequent? Did it eventually stop?
