Very Strange Coincidences
 

So lately very strange coincidences have been happening to me. I'll have a conversation or read about something and then things (sometimes more than one) will happen that reference it. Couple of examples:

1) I'm at work (graphic designer at a print shop) and my back starts to hurt so my co-worker and I start discussing the technique of crossing your arms and getting someone else to lift you up from behind. This makes your back feel great because it supposedly re-aligns your spine. Anyway, I go home from work and turn on the TV - Home Improvement is on. Almost immediately Tim and Al start talking about this exact technique.

2) I see the movie Vanilla Sky for the first time and think it's a great movie. I go on MSN Messenger right after watching it and someone on my list has changed their name to a line from the movie - "She is the saddest woman to ever hold a cocktail" (or something like that). We hadn't discussed the movie at all before this, and the last time I talked to this person was honestly at least a month ago.

3) After watching Vanilla Sky I start reading about it on the internet. Mostly interviews with Cameron Crowe (the director) and Tom Cruise. Both mentioned Magnolia numerous times in the interviews. I go home from a day of surfing the net at work :D and my roommate has Magnolia downloaded (er.... rented ;))and asks me if I want to watch it. Again, we didn't talk about it beforehand and he didn't see Vanilla Sky so there was no connection there. Also, at this point I'm already questioning all these coincidences but then I watch Magnolia and it's ABOUT strange coincidences!! Ah!

AM I just tripping or is this stuff even remotely odd?? :confused:

I figure there are so many processes and interactions going on around the place every day that there must be enormous amounts of coincidences. I experienced one only the other day, I was thinking about how useful my CD burner was, and how I'd never had a problem with it, the next day it packed up :( jynxed the damn thing :P

People talk to people, whether you do it directly or not. Most likely your friends are friends with your other friends. I don't think you saw Vanilla Sky for the first time on your own. If you were looking up Magnolia at your home computer, perhaps your roomate stumbled across the history and noticed you were interested. Hrm?

It seems like whenever I learn a new word, I hear it again (from a totally unrelated source) within the next 24 hours. It's really weird.

My best explanation is that I really did hear it a lot before but I didn't pay attention because I didn't know what it means. But usually it's a rather obscure word and I'll go for a very long time without hearing it again. Anyone else have that happen, or is it just me?

irseg, i have the same thing happen to me, but you probably just didn't notice you had heard it before because you didn't know what it meant

i always have coincidences like that mate! but sometimes as i am writing a word on sumthing like a letter or msn i will hear the word that i am typing mayby on the music or my girlfriend saying sumthing.their jst wierd but fun!

I always feel like things have happend before to me, usually when i'm driving someplace i havn't been in a long time, it feels like i had just done it. I'm sure it's just a shadow of a memory emerging, but it's still wierd.

The word thing happens to me a lot too! Especially when I listen to music in the car.

Another strange coincidence involving Vanilla Sky is that I'm in the process of reading the book "Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen Laberge. I watched Vanilla Sky about half way through reading the book and didn't know the movie had anything to do with Lucid Dreams until I watched it.

a couple of weird things have happened to me.. I was at work singin a song in my head. A guy a ways away from me starts singing the same song out loud.. this has happened twice so far :confused:

I call in from work for the day cuz i got a really bad feeling.. 2 hours later.. WTC happens.. now that is weird.

nah not too weird. people had bad feelings about the titanic on sail. i think time is always constant.. and past, present and future are always happening all the time everywhere. so it's not too uncommon to get a 'feeling' about the future because time is only relative.. or something. i dont know. time boggles me but i think it's not always like the way we see it..

weird coincedence.. my bf and i both had the same song stuck in our head and at the saaaaame time, we sang the same line. granted, it was the last song we had heard 2-3 hrs ago.. but still. we had watched t3 in between then.

Something kind in that same vein happened to me. I was sleeping in when my mother knocks on the bedroom door and tells me through tears that a plane has hit the world trade center. I turn over and say "wow, freaky, wake me up when the 2nd tower gets hit" and go back to resting. She came back a short time later really freaking out and said "oh my god oh my god the 2nd tower was hit"

erk...

Using humor to get over a tragedy really didn't work out for me there

*feels more guilt about that than he probably should*

very weird, vyk.

similar kind of story. I was sleeping and my roommate started banging on our door (he was back from a class). I was wondering why he didn't just use his damned key, cursed him for waking me up, and opened the door.

I remember what we said exactly, since I'm from NY and the first thing I thought was "Where is my family," since they were to drive my aunt into the city that day for surgery.

Roommate: "Do you remember the World Trade Center?"
Me: "Yeah, what did they do, explode?"
Roommate: "Essentially!!!!"

What a tragic day. The outpouring of support, though, was soothing, especially since I was so far away from home and obviously couldn't get through to my parents until later in the day.

I wasn't planning on posting on this topic, I just thought I'd read what others had to say about it. Then it happened to me. Last Friday I read a post on the Knowledge board regarding the species of the week: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=21172
If you dont' want to bother with the link, it's about the Pronghorn Antelope. Then the next day in our local paper there is a picture of a Pronghorn Antelope on the front page of the paper! I live in a fairly small town and it's not unusual for the paper to have animal or scenic photography on the front page if it's a slow news day, still...

Coincidences... gotta love em. Anyone who has had strange coincidence experiences may be interested in reading the book 'The Celestine Prophecy'. I can't recall the author's name at the moment (Redfield maybe?) but it's an interesting read and offers at least one interesting theory about what causes coincidences. ANyone here read it?

Well, there's a study that says watching Vanilla Sky is weird. Maybe there's something to it.

I would really like to read "The Celestine Prophecy", so as Qurlon asked, has anybody read the book? I might have to pick it up when I'm done reading "Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore.

Those WTC coincidences are very weird indeed, especially yours Drider... freaky stuff!

BentNoTwisted, your story sounds exactly like something that would happen to me!

I think that there is such a sensory load of information out there that it is hard to take in anything (for example my wife swears she told me about something, and I conveniently didn't hear it :) ). Anyway, when something strikes us or brings something to our attention, I think we are more receptive to noticing it in the future. I never really noticed pregnant women until my wife became pregnant and then I noticed it. I never really noticed the difference in kids with learning disabilities until my son was diagnosed with one.

Here's another coincidence. I was at a garage sale about a month ago and browsing the seller's collection of books and they had the hard cover version of "The Celestine Prophecy". I remembered getting part way through it when it first came out and I decided to pick it up (for $.50 ;) ). I have been planning on re-reading it and actually finishing it this time.
When I read it part way through last time it didn't hold my interest much. At that time I was into self help books. The story was broken into 'lessons' and it seemed much more like fiction than anything I could make personal use of.
HookedOn if you are interested I can sent it to you when I'm done. From what remember, I doubt it is a book I'll want to keep.
I'll have to look up that Vanilla Sky study. It sounds interesting.
This is really off topic, but did you know you can put on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and watch The Wizard of OZ and the music will match what's happening in the movie? :cool: If you want to try it here's a link that explains how: http://classicrock.about.com/library...z.htm?terms=a5

Within 2 months, my wife and I have been in two places at least 45 miles from home and I will see someone who looks familiar and I will say so to my wife only to have the real person I mention actually show up about 15 minutes later. In the first case, we were at dog obedience class 45 miles from home and I said to my wife that one of our classmates looks like "Jayne", one of my wife's co-workers. Not more than 10 minutes later we go to a mall nearby and see the real Jayne shopping and say hi.
Much more recently, a similar thing occurs but with a friend's daughter and we were again far from home and the real girl is spotted by us after I comment that a stranger who had just walked by us looked like this girl!

I'm sorry but I really don't see a coincidence here :hmm: Maybe you could explain it more?

I'll save you all the trouble of wading through the Celestine Prophecy. It's an okay book, part adventure quest, part basic spirtuality how-to. If I remember correctly, we meet particular people at a certain times in our life because they have a lesson to teach us or we to teach them. Coincidences are part of this phenomenon - the right person turning up in the right place at the right time. Or the right movie or book that highlights an issue that you are dealing with in your life.

Psychology tells us coincidences are caused by heightened awareness - you notice that strange new word more in conversation because you are attuned to it.

There is a researcher in England who has done quite a bit of work on coincidences and has published at least one book. I heard him on NPR once it it was fascinating - he has actually named a number of the coincidences you've talked about.

My favorite is the library angel - when you look down at the shelf and find the exact book that you eed for your research.