r/Synchronicities

This is a true story, and it’s something I’ve thought about for decades.

Back in the mid-1990s, before everyone had cell phones, my friend Erika and I used to make three-way prank calls. If you remember how landlines worked, you’d be talking to your friend, hit the flash button, dial another number, and merge the calls.

We had a whole system.
We’d each grab a giant phone book, randomly pick a number, and call it at the same time. The result was that two complete strangers would suddenly find themselves connected and each would assume the other had called.
Usually it went something like this:
“Hello?”
“Yeah… you called me.”
“No, you called me.”
Then they’d argue for a couple of minutes while we sat there trying not to laugh.
We did this quite a few times.

Then one call happened that I’ve never been able to explain.
A woman answered first.
“Hello?”
A few seconds later, a man answered.
“Yes… you called me.”
She replied, “No, you called me. Who is this?”
He answered, “Who is this?”
There was a long pause.
Then she quietly said…
“…Tom?”
Another pause.
“…Sheryl?”
At that exact moment, Erika and I both stopped laughing.

The woman asked, “Did you call me?”
He replied, “No… I thought you called me.”
She said, “Maybe one of the kids did this.”
He laughed and agreed that maybe that was what happened.
Then she said something I’ll never forget.
“It’s been years… how have you been?”

As they kept talking, we realized they had been divorced. They had separated about four years earlier and hadn’t spoken to each other in roughly three years.
Neither Erika nor I said a word.
Without even discussing it, we both did the exact same thing-we muted our ends and decided not to hang up.

What had started as a prank suddenly felt like something we weren’t supposed to interrupt.
We listened for hours.
They caught up on life, talked about the kids, shared stories about what had happened since the divorce, laughed together, and slowly the conversation became warmer and more comfortable.

By the end of the call, they had decided to meet for lunch the next day.
Only after they finally hung up did we disconnect our phones.

I’ve replayed that night in my head countless times over the last 30 years.

What are the odds that two teenagers, each randomly picking a name from a phone book, accidentally reconnect two people who hadn’t spoken in years-and that those two people end up making plans to see each other again?

Maybe it’s just an incredibly unlikely coincidence.
Maybe it’s one of those Jungian synchronicities.
Maybe it’s fate.
Maybe it’s nothing more than statistics doing something extraordinary.
I honestly don’t know.

I just know that it was the strangest thing I’ve ever witnessed, and it’s one of the few experiences in my life that still makes me wonder whether coincidence is really as random as we think it is.
Has anyone else ever experienced a coincidence that felt almost impossible to explain?

TL;DR: In the ‘90s, my friend and I used random three-way prank calls to connect strangers from the phone book. One night, we accidentally connected a divorced couple who hadn’t spoken in about three years. They recognized each other, talked for hours, and ended the call by making plans to meet for lunch the next day. Thirty years later, it’s still the strangest coincidence I’ve ever witnessed.

Yeah there’s no way to sugarcoat this… I’m looking for some insight on these strange events. Some responses are bound to be.. skeptical… and that’s completely understandable. But, I don’t have the luxury of waiting to find out more in due time.

So. Here is an account of some things. If you know what’s up, can you please share your thoughts?

It begins with a normal day at work: I arrive at a Starbucks on south street in Philadelphia for my mid shift. I’m standing off to the side with the morning shift supervisor, discussing what needs to be done for the day. Meanwhile, customers stand in line to order… drinks are being made, steam wands hissing in the mid morning bustle…. The man in line at the register is tall, about 50 years old or older and … odd ….
He keeps looking at me, instead of ordering.
Likewise, I am starting to notice and be drawn, from my conversation, to this older man. Finally he looks into my eyes and calls my name clear as day.

In the deafening strangeness
I answer, “Can I help you?”

Everything feels singular for one hinging moment. I’m not even wearing my apron yet… no name tag. Then, the man simply asks to borrow a pen. I hear the noise of the cafe return in a rush, louder than ever. He takes the receipt from his order, writes on the back of it, and hands me my pen with a thank you.

The strangeness fades. I count in the tills, assign tasks…. I walk up to Andrew at the registers and joke “can we talk about that weird guy?”

Suddenly, there he is again! The man is standing, impossibly, in front of us long after he had left… or so I thought. He reaches across the counter to hand me a folded receipt. I open it to reveal one scribbled X written in my own pen, willingly lent.

I honestly just keep thinking of Muppets Treasure Island when someone mutters *“Black Spot, Black Spot”*

….

A couple hours later my buddy arrives to pick up his closing shift. We all join in the retelling and Sean shakes his head. “Weird things happen to you” he laughs,

A woman bursts into the shop then, bothered, and we all turn our attention to her. “Who is in Charge here? “ She demands.
I am.
I ask what I can do for her and she deflates…
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she says, “but someone just left a dead bird in front of your store.”
All eyes turn to me.

Looking at the bird, it’s pretty obvious this is a fresh kill. I don’t mean “flown into the glass door” but more like, a pretty cleanly broken neck with a few drops of ruby red blood on the sidewalk. I dont touch it.

….

The events of this day had us all twittering and sure enough, when the final barista arrived for our closing shift we wanted to bring them up to speed. A man in line eavesdrops, interjecting, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but listen… but tell me, do you still have that paper?”

As weird as the day was, this was still getting weirder for us.
I pull out the receipt.
After a long look, he says, “I think I can fix this”
He dug around in his biker bag for a minute before shaking out a silver paint pen. Painstakingly, he encircles the x completely, blows on it, and hands it to me reassuringly.
“I think this will help.”

So, reader, does it? What happened? What did the first man intend? What is the purpose of the bird? Did the circle help???

There is a second, darker half of this story but I am reluctant to tell it. I’d prefer first thoughts from anyone knowledgeable in this sort of … Thing. Suffice it to say: there are many more dead birds and strange things in the year to come after this first event.

I'M A PROFESSIONAL PSYCHIC READER WITH OVER 14 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, KINDLY SIGNIFY "HELLO!" OR DM ME WITH YOUR INITIALS AND I'LL TELL YOU WHO'S AROUND YOU AND IF THERE'S ANY MESSAGES COMING THROUGH FOR YOU love and light

i genuinely don't know whether to call this karma, the worst coincidence of my life, or divine intervention 😭

i'm 19m. i was in a situationship with a girl i'll call maya (20f). things were complicated at times, but she was genuinely the first person i'd ever been that emotionally close to. she was also the one who initially approached/befriended me, which matters because i'm pretty introverted and don't really form connections like that often.

now here's where i fucked up.

i used to run a small meme page. last year, during a period when maya and i were in a difficult situation, a girl i'll call nina randomly approached me through that page.

nina started talking to me and eventually straight up proposed to me. i rejected her because i wasn't interested in dating her and well, i was loyal to maya atp.

however, things between maya and me got really bad after a terrible fight and i liked the attention i was getting from nina, so i kept her around for a while.

and on one occasion, i flirted with her.

i'm not gonna defend that. it was wrong, i shouldn't have entertained it and i should've told maya about it. eventually i stopped talking to nina completely and blocked her. if i'm being completely truthful, i was basically just using her as someone to fall back on when things with maya were bad. i was never serious about her.

as far as i was concerned, that was the end of this random internet interaction.

except apparently the universe had other plans 😭

maya also had a small edit/content account.

at some point, another girl online, let's call her sara, approached maya through that account and befriended her.

sara apparently had this habit of approaching small creators online and becoming friends with them.

during their friendship, sara told maya stories about having a boyfriend.

she even sent maya screenshots of conversations with this supposed boyfriend, including screenshots where the guy was flirting with her.

sara never revealed the guy's identity.

so maya had absolutely no fucking idea who the guy in those screenshots was.

and as far as we know, sara had NO IDEA that maya and i even knew each other.

keep that in mind 😭

recently, maya was telling me some stuff about sara and something started feeling REALLY weird to me.

her behaviour, the way she approached smaller creators, the way she built her new accounts/personality around the people she befriended, everything just felt uncannily similar to nina.

eventually i told maya:

"i think nina and sara might literally be the same person."

we started comparing what we knew.

and then everything fucking clicked.

nina and sara were apparently the SAME CATFISH 😭

meaning the girl who approached me as nina had independently approached maya as sara.

neither of us knew.

and the catfish apparently didn't know maya and i were involved either.

now remember the mysterious "boyfriend" sara had told maya about?

yeah.

that was supposedly ME 💀

except i was NEVER nina's boyfriend.

i had literally rejected her proposal. we never dated. the only incriminating thing she actually had on me were those messages where i had flirted with her.

and those screenshots sara had shown maya of her mysterious "boyfriend" flirting with her?

they were MY FUCKING CHATS WITH NINA 😭😭

maya just hadn't known that the guy in those screenshots was me.

so when we realised nina = sara and i told maya about my history with nina, the dots finally connected.

maya pulled up the old screenshots sara had sent her.

and there were my fucking messages.

i had essentially EXPOSED MYSELF by figuring out that these two catfish identities were the same person 😭🙏🏻

maya obviously felt betrayed. i admitted what i'd done, apologised, and she ended things/blocked me.

and honestly, i understand.

i fucked up by flirting with someone else and hiding it. i'm not asking anyone to tell me that part was okay. it wasn't.

but i genuinely cannot process the fucking chain of events that led to her finding out.

out of every random person on the internet i could've stupidly flirted with, i somehow chose a catfish who:

1. independently found the girl i was seeing

2. befriended her under ANOTHER identity

3. apparently didn't know we even knew each other

4. lied to her that i was her boyfriend

5. sent her screenshots of me without revealing my identity

6. and then later I MYSELF realised the two identities were probably the same person, which caused the girl i was seeing to finally realise that the anonymous guy in those screenshots was me 😭

if i had never noticed the similarity between those accounts, she might literally never have known those screenshots were mine.

again, i know the obvious lesson here. if i hadn't flirted in the first place, there would've been nothing to expose. that's completely on me and losing maya because of it hurts like hell.

but WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE ODDS OF THE REST OF THIS HAPPENING 😭🙏🏻

i genuinely feel like i experienced karma delivered through a two-account catfish cinematic universe.

i'm simultaneously heartbroken, angry at myself and completely mindfucked by how this even happened.

like bro what the fuck 😭

tldr: i fucked up and flirted with a random girl online while things were bad with the girl i was seeing. turns out that random girl was a catfish who had ALSO independently befriended the girl i was seeing under a completely different identity, without knowing that we knew each other. she told her i was her "boyfriend" and even sent her screenshots of me flirting without revealing who i was. months later I MYSELF realised the two accounts were probably the same person, told the girl i was seeing, and accidentally gave her the missing piece needed to realise that the anonymous guy in those screenshots was me. she ended things and blocked me. completely my fault for flirting in the first place but what in the divine intervention fuck are those odds 😭

This morning, Amazon recommended Holly by Stephen King to me. I added it to my wishlist and looked it up on Google to see what it was about. Then I moved on to something else, thinking I'd probably read it a long time from now.

Around lunchtime, my mom came home and told me she had been to the store and bought me a book. When I looked at it, I saw that it was Holly by Stephen King.

A few weeks ago I went to a park in Oslo, sat down on a bench, me and a random guy started some small talk. After about 20 minutes, another random guy came over and we all chatted for a while.

After some time one of the guys introduced himself and shook the other guy's hand, saying, "My name is Martin."

The other guy's eyes got big and he said, "What a coincidence, my name is also Martin."

I couldn't believe my ears. Then they both looked at me and asked, "So, what's your name?"

I looked up at the sky, long pause, then back at them and said, "You're not going to believe this... my name is also Martin."

The odds: Picking 3 random men from the population and they are all named Martin is estimated to be 1 to 2 million.

Key numbers: Male population (Norway): 2.8 million Men named Martin: 22,200 1 in 126 men is named Martin (0.79%) Odds that 3 random men are all named Martin: (1/126)³ = 1 in 2,000,376 (≈ 1 in 2 million)

Further modest estimate:

Three random men all named Martin: 1 in 2,000,000 50% chance the first two talk. 50% chance the third joins the conversation. 50% chance they eventually exchange names. 1 / 2,000,000 × 1/2 × 1/2 × 1/2 = 1 / 16,000,000

If we assume there were relatively few people in the park and that the three could have ended up at many different spots and different times, the odds become substantially lower, potentially on the order of 1 in 100 million or even rarer.

Anybody had a bigger coincident than this? Happy to answer questions to find a more accurate odds.

I asked a broader question in a few spiritual communities about which practice actually moved people. I expected meditation, prayer, or sign-tracking.

What stayed with me: people said the real shift happened when they stopped forcing signs to mean something and started trusting the pattern instead. It makes me think about synchronicities differently.

Maybe the sign isn't the message. Maybe it's a mirror showing you what state you're already in.

What's one synchronicity that showed up after you stopped chasing it, not before?

I'm not saying I can predict the future or that anything supernatural is happening. I've always dismissed these things as coincidences. But after so many similar experiences, I honestly just find them eerie and wanted to know if anyone else has experienced something like this.

It started with small things. Sometimes I'll see a couple and randomly think, "They're not going to last." Months later I'll find out they broke up. Other couples that I never have that thought about seem to stay together.

Then there was a girl I met on the very first day of college. I had never spoken to her, knew absolutely nothing about her, and after just looking at her I had this random thought that she had autism. I forgot about it completely. Later she was diagnosed with Level 1 autism. I'm not a medical professional, so I have no idea why I even thought that.

There was also a distant relative I hadn't thought about in years. One day I randomly asked my mom about him. The next day we got the news that he had cancer.

Probably the strangest one for me was when I suddenly became obsessed with reading about cancer. I was reading Reddit posts, watching YouTube videos, and even looking at research papers for no particular reason. It was completely out of the blue. A few months later my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I'm not saying the two are connected, but the timing has always stuck with me.

The one that has stayed with me the most happened when I was in 7th grade. My grandma was talking about my little cousin, who was around five years old, saying how smart she was and how great she would be when she grew up. Out of nowhere I remember thinking, "I'm sure she won't grow up." I wasn't scared or emotional. It was just a random thought that came and went.

The next year she passed away.

Another thing that still feels strange is that on the day she died, I happened to walk past her house. She lived far away, and that was actually the first time I had ever walked that far after school with a friend instead of taking the school bus. While passing by, I casually told my friend, "That's my uncle's house." Later that day we got the news that my cousin had died.

Has anyone else experienced something similar, where random thoughts or interests later lined up with real events often enough that it made you stop and wonder?

Lately I've been noticing repeating numbers everywhere—11:11, 10:10, 12:12, and 4:44. It happens on my phone, receipts, the clock, and sometimes even random places online. I know there's something called the "frequency illusion" or "Baader-Meinhof effect," where once you notice something, you start seeing it everywhere. But part of me also wonders if it's just a coincidence or if other people believe these numbers have a deeper meaning. For those of you who've experienced this. Do you think repeating numbers actually mean something? Have they ever shown up during an important time in your life? Or is it simply our brains looking for patterns?

I'm genuinely curious to hear different perspectives—whether you're skeptical, spiritual, or somewhere in between.

Hey guys! Just as the title says, I’m wondering if anyone has ever encountered so many coincidences in a row regarding a person that it seems really weird or intentional?

Recently, a girl I dated for a couple months last year has been on my mind. I don’t particularly wish to reconnect with her or anything, we both wished each other well but that was it. I suppose I wouldn’t be opposed to a final conversation but it’s whatever. We no longer have each other on social media or anything.

A couple of examples of recent “huh…” moments:

My laptop had to be repaired the other day, when I got it back I opened it up and it was set to the date of her birthday. (Which happened several months ago) Once I logged in the date set completely back to normal.

On Instagram a random public account came up in my usual feed, I’ve never seen this person before, but the person’s name was my ex’s first name and my last name (kinda weird).

I completed a quiz in a newspaper for my Grandpa, the only question he hadn’t answered was one specific piece of trivia that I only knew because of her (because it was almost like an inside joke between us, and I even got her a gift based on it once).

I had a dream that practically replicated our entire first date, the occasional weird dream interruption happened here and there, but it was our first date all over again.

I went to visit my parents house, went into the bathroom and as I was washing my hands I spotted the manufacturer of the sink is literally the town she lives in written in huge capital letters. (I obviously lived in this house my whole childhood, I’d never ever noticed that before).

And finally its come in causal convo from friends of friends of friends or from the very rare mutual on social that there were literally consecutive days where we were in the same place at the same time or just missed each other.

So yeah. There’s been a couple more moments like this that felt extremely weird but they escape my mind right now. I know the general idea of ‘once something is on your mind, you see it everywhere’ but it felt very jarring and it’s not like I go out of my way to look for her or think of her.
Is the universe telling me she’s gonna contact me or something 😭💀 You guys got any examples of this happening?

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I used to laugh at superstitions and thought they were just stories older people told. But one experience still sticks with me.

A few years ago, a family member warned me not to travel on a particular day because they had a bad feeling about it. I brushed it off and left anyway. I didn't have a major accident, but the trip was one disaster after another—my vehicle broke down, I got stranded for hours, and I lost something valuable before I finally got home.

I still don't know if it was just an incredible coincidence or if there was something more to it, but it definitely made me stop dismissing every superstition so quickly.

Has anyone else had an experience that made you question whether some superstitions might actually have some truth to them?

Yesterday, while hiking in the mountains, I found three feathers in different places.

Today, I found another feather on the beach, and later I found a red feather at the grocery store.
Something else happened today that caught my attention. While I was at the beach, a man came over and started talking to me. I noticed that his hat had two feathers on it.

I know feathers can simply be a coincidence, but I’ve never noticed this many in such a short period of time, so it made me curious.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Do you think this could have any symbolic or spiritual meaning, or is it just coincidence?