FLUKEY OR SPOOKY? Incredible real-life coincidences or are they?

[Ivan Seeking]

I have no idea if any of these stories are true.

TWO sisters decided to pay a surprise visit to each other. As they traveled in opposite directions along a rural highway in America, their identical jeeps collided and both were killed. Is this just coincidence or are there greater forces at work, bringing us closer than we ever thought possible? A fascinating new book, Beyond Coincidence, examines this baffling phenomenon. Here CLARE MORRISROE describes the most bizarre stories of them all...

THE KEY

CALIFORNIAN Williard Lovell locked herself out of her house. She spent 10 minutes trying to find a way in when the postman handed her a letter from her brother. In it was the spare key he had taken back to Washington after a visit.

TWO LAURAS

IN June 2001, 10-year-old Laura Buxton of Burton, Staffs, was at a party where she wrote her name and address on a luggage label, attached it to a helium balloon and released it into the sky. It floated 140 miles until finally coming to rest in the garden of another 10-year-old Laura Buxton, in Pewsey, Wilts. The girls got in touch and became friends, upon which they found each had fair hair, owned a black Labrador, guinea pig and rabbit.[continued]

http://www.people.co.uk/news/conten...68_headline=-FLUKEY-OR-SPOOKY--name_page.html

Similar stories?

When I was fifteen, an older friend and I took a 250 [roundtrip] mile bicycle ride from a suburb of Los Angeles to a camping area in the mountains above the town of Hemet. The trip out required about 18 hours of pedaling; much of it either up hill and/or through the desert. Since for a good part of the trip the primary highway was off limits to cyclists, for about eight of the eighteen hours we road along miles and miles of hot, flat, lonely desert roads that were well off the beaten tract. Right about the time I thought we had actually arrived at the middle of nowhere, being about eighty miles from my home and forty miles from any significant population centers, far ahead we noticed a small figure emerging from the blurry heat layer above the road. As we approached what we could then see was a rider on a horse, I finally saw that it was a fellow classmate - a girl from my [current] ninth grade class. It turned out that her family owned land out there and often spent weekends in the desert. She was the only person that we saw for many hours.

This is the one that really gets me. At age sixteen I was a complete off-road motorcycle nut. I often went to a place called El Mirage dry lake bed with one or several friends for some desert biking. The lake bed is surrounded by miles and miles of sand dunes and hills. On one unlucky occasion, while riding with just one other friend we got lost in the dunes. We had no visible points of reference and had gotten completely turned around. Having about one gallon of gasoline left in our tanks and only a little water, and since it was about a hundred degrees out that day…at least, we agreed that the situation was serious and we started a systematic search for the truck. After about 30 minutes, since we seemed to be even more lost than before we agree to each ride opposite directions to two visible high points for a look. Well, let me tell you, those sand dunes are quite confounding; before long we lost each other. Since I couldn’t hear or see my riding partner I started getting really worried. Finally I decided to start a large circular pattern and rode for another fifteen minutes or so and saw nothing even vaguely familiar. Now I was getting really, really worried but what to do? Gas is getting low…oh sh*t! Again I started out with some other plan. No sooner has I started out around a dune that directly ahead was the truck AND my riding partner who was coming from the opposite direction. He also had just spotted the truck. I couldn’t believe my eyes!

 

[RG500]

I was doing a little off road motorcycle riding in the Colorado Peru Creek mining district, a rather remote area. It was early in December an the weather was quite chilly, cold enough for water to freeze on my boots and motorcycle both, it was rather windy and also snowing lightly all day.
Around 5PM it was starting to get dark so I loaded up my motorcycle and headed back down the only dirt road to the nearest highway which was about 5 miles away. About 1/2 mile into my trip I saw two nuns, their habits blowing in the wind, walking with a Great Dane, I waved and they smiled and waved back. My first thought was "if I don't see them in my rear view mirror I am heading straight for the nearest church" but they were in my mirror and I watched them walk down the road as long as I could keep them in sight.
This wouldn't be too unusual however in the direction they were heading, remember it is almost dark by this time, it is winter windy and well below freezing, they were dressed in nothing more than their habits, there was nothing except a very long walk over a very high mountain pass in front of them. Since I spent the day riding this area I knew there were no cars or trucks, no houses, certainly no churches and no real shelter other than a few remnants of old mining buildings. I did not pass any cars or trucks either moving or parked on my way back down that dirt road.
To this very day I still wonder what that was all about, I guess I should have stopped for a chat...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Now that is a strange one. I really wish you had stopped and asked. I will probably always wonder about this...especially since nuns normally can't have dogs. My SWAG is that they were walking the dog for someone locally; perhaps an invalid. There must have been a house somewhere nearby that you missed.

 

[Shorebreak]

I have a few stories that are interesting with regards to "small world" coincidences.

The first involves my brother. He was spending time in Europe. About six months into his trip he stayed in a B'n'B in Portugal. At the time, although he was enjoyibg his adventures immensely, he was longing for some of the familiarities of home. He got up for breakfast and sat at a community table. The woman facing him was a very close family friend our home town.

The second involves a co-worker. I was working for an international company and our US office was participating in a large convention in Paris. One evening after work we were on foot heading towards our dinner destination when the coworker excused himself from the group and approached a couple on the opposite side of the street. We watched as smiles, handshakes, and hugs were exchanged. After a brief conversation, the co-worker rejoined us and explained that these were his next-door neighbors. Neither were aware of the others travel plans to Paris.

I have more, but time is short - I'll post later.

 

[Evo]

I've got a couple of stories my mother used to tell of her experiences during WWII in Algiers, Algeria, N Africa. (formerly a French colony)

Her father was a Captain in the French Navy during the war. Her and her step sisters were at home in an upstairs room. No one else was home and no one was expected for quite awhile.

They heard the front door open and heard someone waking across the floor. Then they heard someone open the piano and start to run their hand up and down the keys. Obviously they were a bit frightened, wondering who was in the house and doing this. Finally, one of them got up the courage to go out and look to see who was there and there was no one. The piano was closed, the front door was locked from the inside.

Before long a soldier came to the house telling them that their father had been in an accident, the jeep he had been riding in had crashed and he had been pinned under and was in the hospital, but was in good condition.

When they got to the hospital they told their father about hearing someone come into the house and the piano playing. He asked what time it happened and they said around 3:30pm. He said that was the same time that he had been brought into the hospital and had heard the radio and thought about the piano at home.

Another time her mother & father were sitting in the den and there was an old antique clock sitting on the mantle that had not worked in years. Suddenly the clock started chiming. Her father looked over at her mother and asked her when she had gotten the clock repaired. She said that she hadn't.

A bit later a messenger arrived with news for her father. Her father had let another officer use his quarters to work in on board ship while they were in the harbor because it roomier. The messenger said that a fire had broken out and the officer had been trapped and perished. This happened at approximately the same time as when the clock started chiming.

There are a lot of these odd "coincidences". I wish I could remember all of them.

Even now with my youngest daughter, I've suddenly sensed & even been awoken from a sound sleep knowing that she was trying to phone me and was angry. I often unplug the phone so I am not annoyed and forget to plug it back in. Many of these times as soon as I reached over and plugged the phone in, it would be ringing and she would start yelling at me telling me she'd been calling me a dozen times.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I had a strange coincidence occur this morning. For some reason I thought about a guy who had done some work for me in the past - a software engineer who has since moved to New Mexico. Since he moved last year he has emailed me twice, and only in response to specific questions.

This morning, for some reason I was thinking about him and his response when, during his last visit [family visit], I told him about my work with algae as an alternative energy source. He was most enthusiastic and I wondered it he had given it any more thought. A little while later when I checked my email, I had one from him about the new mileage standards for cars that Congress has been considering. As nearly as I can tell, it was sent at almost the exact time that I was thinking about him.

He has no role in the business and I have no idea why I would think of him. Since he moved he is pretty much out of the picture.

Very odd.

 

[Evo]

I had a strange coincidence occur this morning. For some reason I thought about a guy who had done some work for me in the past - a software engineer who has since moved to New Mexico. Since he moved last year he has emailed me twice, and only in response to specific questions.

This morning, for some reason I was thinking about him and his response when, during his last visit, I told him about my work with algae as an alternative energy source. He was most enthusiastic and I wondered it he had given it any more thought. A little while later when I checked my email, I had one from him about the new mileage standards for cars that Congress has been considering. As nearly as I can tell, it was sent at almost the exact time that I was thinking about him.

He has no role in the business and I have no idea why I would think of him. Since he moved he is pretty much out of the picture.

Very odd.

I have the same things happen. I'll suddenly think of a client I haven't spoken to in over a year and the phone will ring and guess who? It happens quite often, so often that I don't know what to think of it.

 

[siddharth]

Well, whenever something like this happens to me, I think of the number of coincidences that didn't happen.

 

[Evo]

Well, whenever something like this happens to me, I think of the number of coincidences that didn't happen.

I knew you were going to say that! :tongue:

 

[Tony11235]

These are very interesting events indeed. But look at it this way: you are cherry picking so few events from billions of events, majority of which are not surprising or interesting. I think I basically just repeated what you said siddharth, but I just felt I had to say it.

 

[russ_watters]

I have the same things happen. I'll suddenly think of a client I haven't spoken to in over a year and the phone will ring and guess who? It happens quite often, so often that I don't know what to think of it.

It is a standing joke in my office that if we have a job that is languishing, we just remove it from our list of active jobs. Invariably, the client immediately calls to reactivate the job.

 

[Evo]

It is a standing joke in my office that if we have a job that is languishing, we just remove it from our list of active jobs. Invariably, the client immediately calls to reactivate the job.

Speak of the devil, that just happened 15 minutes ago. I had to give my boss my forecast today, and this customer hadn't returned my calls for 4 months, so I removed it and within an hour he called me and said to go ahead.

Now if I add him back to my forecast, he will disappear again, so I am leaving him off. :uhh:

 

[Moridin]

I tend to think that it is observation selection on statistical anomalies.

 

[neutrino]

The TV programme Million2One airs a lot of real-life incidents like some of the above, and in the end calculates the probability of that happening.

There's this old man, somewhere in England. His daughter takes care of him, but for a few hours on a particular day, she goes back to her house, which was just down the street (or somewhere pretty close by). During those fateful hours, the old man has a heart attack. He tries to call his daughter, but by mistake dials the wrong number. But guess what, he dials to a public phone in a quiet corridor in a city hospital. And who was walking by when the phone rang? His granddaughter, who happens to be working as a nurse there! He was eventually brought to the hospital and was saved.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Well, whenever something like this happens to me, I think of the number of coincidences that didn't happen.

I once tried to quantify situations like this and generate a probability, but there are often sooooooo many variables that the task was non-trivial to say the least. My position on this is that the most strking accounts it might be explained by statistics, but there are many examples where this is difficult to defend when you lay it all out, and perhaps impossible [or nearly so] to quantify.

I tend to think that events with odds of something like one in a billion happen too often, but, as I said, it was beyond me to develop a model that could test this idea.

 

[Moonbear]

Let's see, I have explanations for the ones in the quote in the OP:
1) Both sisters were equally bad drivers, so if they both had to head down the same road in opposite directions to get to each other's houses, it's no wonder they collided.

2) Of COURSE she was locked out...her brother had the spare key! We have no idea how often this person locked herself out, and she may have given her brother the spare key she usually leaves hidden outside for these frequent lockouts.

3) Of all the kids in the world who have tied messages to balloons or stuck them in bottles, is it really surprising that there'd be ONE case where they'd wind up in the hands of someone with the same name? I wonder how common the name Buxton is?

I'd have to agree with siddharth that it's just confirmation bias. We tend to notice if something happens, but don't notice all the times nothing happens, or we only meet up with strangers. And, the wider our circle of acquaintances, the more likely we'll bump into them in unexpected places. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to meet up with an old classmate in a town far from home (I wound up living only a town over from one in OH and didn't know it until a mutual friend mentioned he was coming out to visit and was going to visit my other classmate while out there too). People from similar backgrounds are attracted to similar places I think.

 

[siddharth]

I once tried to quantify situations like this and generate a probability, but there are often sooooooo many variables that the task was non-trivial to say the least. My position on this is that the most strking accounts it might be explained by statistics, but there are many examples where this is difficult to defend when you lay it all out, and perhaps impossible [or nearly so] to quantify.

I tend to think that events with odds of something like one in a billion happen too often, but, as I said, it was beyond me to develop a model that could test this idea.

This is where I found the "law" of truly large numbers illuminating.

The law of truly large numbers says that with a large enough sample many odd coincidences are likely to happen.

For example, you might be in awe of the person who won the lottery twice, thinking that the odds of anyone winning twice are astronomical. The New York Times ran a story about a woman who won the New Jersey lottery twice, calling her chances "1 in 17 trillion." However, statisticians Stephen Samuels and George McCabe of Purdue University calculated the odds of someone winning the lottery twice to be something like1 in 30 for a four month period and better than even odds over a seven year period. Why? Because players don't buy one ticket for each of two lotteries, they buy multiple tickets every week (Diaconis and Mosteller).

Some people find it surprising that there are more than 16 million others on the planet who share their birthday. At a typical football game with 50,000 fans, most fans are likely to share their birthday with about 135 others in attendance. (The notable exception will be those born on February 29. There will only be about 34 fans born on that day.)

You may find it even more astounding that "In a random selection of twenty-three persons there is a 50 percent chance that at least two of them celebrate the same birthdate" (Martin).

On the other hand, you might say that the odds of something happening are a million to one. Such odds might strike you as being so large as to rule out chance or coincidence. However, with over 6 billion people on earth, a million to one shot will occur frequently

Given the fact that there are billions of people and the possible number of meaningful coincidences is millions of billions, it is inevitable that many people will experience some very weird and uncanny coincidences every day.

(http://skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I am well aware of the laws of large numbers, but the fact is, to attribute all such "coincidences" to odds is a faith statement. Unless we have a way to quantify each episode and compare the frequency of such events, we can't know if they are explained by the odds. From a scientific pov we would expect this all to be explained by the laws of very large numbers, but without a model to test this assertion, we are only guessing.

 

[turbo]

One thing we should consider is the holistic nature of consciousness. I have a friend of 35+ years who lives a thousand miles away. He is in the import-export business, so he is often either out of the country (often in Nepal or Kashmir), or criss-crossing the US with his wife to attend trade shows. He and I have given each other rocks and minerals, native American artifacts, and other objects, and it's natural that when you see these things daily in your house, you connect with the other person a bit, even on an unconscious level. If he calls or emails saying that he and Barb are going to be up to visit his dad and they want to get together with us, I usually think "I was just thinking about him", when in fact, he is probably a frequent low-level stimulant in my mind because of all the connections that we have made over the years. I have pictures that I took when his only child was about 4 and we made an easy hike into a beautiful waterfall, and others when the son was a teen and we climbed Mt. Katahdin with some other friends and family. It's not that I discount the times when these coincidences pop up, but I have to realize that my brain replays a lot of stuff and that sometimes the coincidences are a function of this.

There is a guy that I consider a friend, though he lives on the left coast and I have never met him, and I think of him often. He was a Navy surgeon during the Viet Nam war, and he insisted on accompanying Marines in hot fire-fights, so he could treat their injuries more effectively than just waiting for them to be flown into a field hospital. He once removed a live mortar round from the abdomen of a Marine (who survived) with his bare hands, and got a Silver Star for that. He should have gotten the Congressional Medal of Honor for that. We haven't hooked up for a couple of years, but if he called tomorrow, I could say with complete honesty "I was just thinking of you earlier". Go to page ten, and get ready to love this guy.

http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps17064/IssueAll10.pdf

 

[Evo]

Not to mention all the times that I don't think of someone and they call me.

Just last month my ex partner at my former employer called me looking for a job. I hadn't thought about him in almost a year! :tongue2:

When the girls were little I could always tell when their dad (my ex) was calling. We got tons of phone calls, but every time he called, I wouldn't answer and I'd tell them to pick up because it was their dad. I was never wrong and I never accidently answered one of his calls. It got to the point where they asked how I could tell daddy's ring apart from everyone else's. I told them (it's a joke between me and the girls) and they thought it was hysterical. But it was true, the hair on the nap of my neck would rise when he called.

 

[russ_watters]

I tend to think that events with odds of something like one in a billion happen too often, but, as I said, it was beyond me to develop a model that could test this idea.

Every moment of your life is utterly filled with 1 in a billion chances, the vast majority of which go completely unnoticed.

I am well aware of the laws of large numbers, but the fact is, to attribute all such "coincidences" to odds is a faith statement.

No it isn't! That's what science is! The corollary that you seem to imply is that any sufficiently large sample will contain happenings that are inexplicable by science. That's basically just not accepting the scientific worldview.


[caveat: the way you said it was slanted - scientists don't think exactly that way]

 

[russ_watters]

Not to mention all the times that I don't think of someone and they call me.

Besides the selection bias, most people simply overestimate the rarity of every-day occurrences. In my example, we took, iirc, 3 jobs off our board that day and only got the one call. Jobs that do languish also tend to languish a certain amount of time - 2-4 months, I would guess. And we tend to take them off our board in that amount of time as well. So now the odds are down to something like 13:1 for that day (40 business days in 2 months, 3 clients), which isn't a very big coincidence at all, especially considering we do that probably every other week.

The other night, I found out that a neighbor of mine, her father was one of my profs in college. How big a coincidence is that? The population of the Philly metro area is about 5 million, so is it 5 million to 1? Certainly not - I can probably think of a dozen ways to trim the sample size to reduce the odds. For starters, I probably had 20 profs that fit the demographic - so now it's 1:250,000. But then what fraction of the original sample fit the demographic of middle-aged males? 1/8? And how tight do I make the demographics? - she's Israeli and I probably only had two Israeli profs, but then there are probably also a very small number of Israelis in the Philly area. It becomes impossible to calculate the odds, but you can see how easy it is to make them very reasonable.

And what about all the other possible coincidences that didn't happen - how do we factor those in? What if I had met her in college? Would that be a bigger coincidence? Considering her dad was an engineering prof at my school, she took engineering (for a little while...), and our times at school partially overlapped, it is almost a bigger coincidence that we didn't meet!

 

[Evo]

Yep, it's like someone remarking on seeing the time 11:11 on the digital clock and thinking that he seemed to be drawn to looking at the clock at that particular time and thought it was significant, when in fact he just remembered the instances of seeing 11:11 or 12:12 etc... because it stood out in his mind because it was interesting, his mind blanked out the other hundreds of glances at the clock because they didn't catch his attention.

How many times have I thought of an old friend and they didn't call? I don't know since it didn't happen there is no event to remember.

But then there are those occurances like my ex's phone calls that were so spot on to make the kids ask how I did that. Probably coincidental, but it became quite funny.

 

[DaveC426913]

TWO sisters decided to pay a surprise visit to each other. As they traveled in opposite directions along a rural highway in America, their identical jeeps collided and both were killed.

Let's grant that everything in this story is true - evern the dubious things such as a "surprise" visit, and "identical" Jeeps.

Just how coincidental is it?

Paying a surprise visit to each other. Had they just been on the phone, commisurating over their lousy lives? The point is, it's quite possible that this dual decision was not a coincidence - being sisters, it's highly likely their lives were "entangled", meaning one's affects the other's.


How far apart did they live? 10 miles? They're in the country. How many routes would there be from one house to the other? One?

The accident itself is not too hard to believe "Hey, isn't that my sister coming up? Hey! HEYY! Hi!" wave wave - screech tires - dirt road - oops.


See, this is really just one event - not two. There isn't any larger picture with mysterious interconnections.

Coincidences are - by definition - not requiring of an explanation. In a world as large as ours, unrelated things at some point, HAVE to come together.


Dave - The Fun Wrecker

 

[LightbulbSun]

I have no idea if any of these stories are true.



http://www.people.co.uk/news/conten...68_headline=-FLUKEY-OR-SPOOKY--name_page.html

Similar stories?

When I was fifteen, an older friend and I took a 250 [roundtrip] mile bicycle ride from a suburb of Los Angeles to a camping area in the mountains above the town of Hemet. The trip out required about 18 hours of pedaling; much of it either up hill and/or through the desert. Since for a good part of the trip the primary highway was off limits to cyclists, for about eight of the eighteen hours we road along miles and miles of hot, flat, lonely desert roads that were well off the beaten tract. Right about the time I thought we had actually arrived at the middle of nowhere, being about eighty miles from my home and forty miles from any significant population centers, far ahead we noticed a small figure emerging from the blurry heat layer above the road. As we approached what we could then see was a rider on a horse, I finally saw that it was a fellow classmate - a girl from my [current] ninth grade class. It turned out that her family owned land out there and often spent weekends in the desert. She was the only person that we saw for many hours.

This is the one that really gets me. At age sixteen I was a complete off-road motorcycle nut. I often went to a place called El Mirage dry lake bed with one or several friends for some desert biking. The lake bed is surrounded by miles and miles of sand dunes and hills. On one unlucky occasion, while riding with just one other friend we got lost in the dunes. We had no visible points of reference and had gotten completely turned around. Having about one gallon of gasoline left in our tanks and only a little water, and since it was about a hundred degrees out that day…at least, we agreed that the situation was serious and we started a systematic search for the truck. After about 30 minutes, since we seemed to be even more lost than before we agree to each ride opposite directions to two visible high points for a look. Well, let me tell you, those sand dunes are quite confounding; before long we lost each other. Since I couldn’t hear or see my riding partner I started getting really worried. Finally I decided to start a large circular pattern and rode for another fifteen minutes or so and saw nothing even vaguely familiar. Now I was getting really, really worried but what to do? Gas is getting low…oh sh*t! Again I started out with some other plan. No sooner has I started out around a dune that directly ahead was the truck AND my riding partner who was coming from the opposite direction. He also had just spotted the truck. I couldn’t believe my eyes!

Ivan,

This is really a mere coincidence. Identical cars are not that rare considering the fact that I always see a million Hyundai Accents on the road all the time, but I think nothing of it. People forget that this planet is really a small planet, and with so many people on it a lot of flukey things are bound to happen that don't have any significant correlation between them. I have to deal with this a lot and it seems like people find the word 'coincidence' too humdrum and are always seeking some mystical explanation. There's nothing to this.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Ivan,

This is really a mere coincidence. Identical cars are not that rare considering the fact that I always see a million Hyundai Accents on the road all the time, but I think nothing of it. People forget that this planet is really a small planet, and with so many people on it a lot of flukey things are bound to happen that don't have any significant correlation between them. I have to deal with this a lot and it seems like people find the word 'coincidence' too humdrum and are always seeking some mystical explanation. There's nothing to this.

What are you talking about?

 

[DaveC426913]

What are you talking about?

He's saying the same thing I am. He's saying coincidences happen.

And coincidences do not require explanation. They are simply ... coincidences.


Here's an easy one: Flip a coin one million times, record the values. Go through the list of results and find a place where heads came up 10 times in a row. Now write some silly book about this "Is it simply chance, or is there some deeper hidden interconnectedness to the universe?"


Take it one step further: Ten pennies think to themselves "Wow! what are the chances that we ten heads are all together! That's got to mean something important!" And the one hundred to either side of those ten say "Wow! Look what happened right in my neighbourhood! That's got to mean something!"

Meanwhile, there's 999,790 pennies that go on about their boring lives.

 

[baywax]

The Roots of Coincidence

I'm just submitting a title here

The Roots of Coincidence by Arthur Koestler

And its on Amazon with 6 reader's reviews

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394719344/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Here's a quote about Koestler's work from the New York Times

Mr. Koestler's main concern is with demonstrating that, contrary to what one might expect- namely, that such paranormal events are most disturbing because they seem to break what most of us think are the laws of the real world- it is precisely modern physics that offers a "rapprochement" between the real world and parapsychology, even if the rapprochement is "negative in the sense that the unthinkable phenomena of ESP appear somewhat less preposterous in the light of the unthinkable propositions of physics."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/01/02/specials/koestler-roots.html

I'll chime in and point out that the word "coincident" simply describes two incidents occurring at the same time. It does not explain why they've happened simultaneously. But, if you think about it, there are about 6 billion "coincidents" taking place right now, amongst the human population and they are not bound by timelines or distances. They are simply happening here (on the planet) and now.

 

[DaveC426913]

Hospital staff often claim that more babies are born during the Full Moon and that most crime happens during a Full Moon.

I want to ask the staff when is the last time they saw a baby born and looked out the window and said "Wow, another baby born two days past a waning gibbous!"

 

[Ivan Seeking]

He's saying the same thing I am. He's saying coincidences happen.

I realize that, but the story wasn't referenced accurately. It does no good to ignore the interesting parts a story, or to pick obvious examples, just to make it all easier to explain. Also, we know coincidences happen, but the question is whether or not all cases can be explained by coincidence. And the answer is that they might be, but in many cases we don't have a way to test this assertion.

How would you calculate the odds in the story about the house key?

It is fair to say what we expect - that it is all explained by probability - but it is crackpottery to make a statement as fact when it can't be tested.

 

[LightbulbSun]

Similar stories?

When I was fifteen, an older friend and I took a 250 [roundtrip] mile bicycle ride from a suburb of Los Angeles to a camping area in the mountains above the town of Hemet. The trip out required about 18 hours of pedaling; much of it either up hill and/or through the desert. Since for a good part of the trip the primary highway was off limits to cyclists, for about eight of the eighteen hours we road along miles and miles of hot, flat, lonely desert roads that were well off the beaten tract. Right about the time I thought we had actually arrived at the middle of nowhere, being about eighty miles from my home and forty miles from any significant population centers, far ahead we noticed a small figure emerging from the blurry heat layer above the road. As we approached what we could then see was a rider on a horse, I finally saw that it was a fellow classmate - a girl from my [current] ninth grade class. It turned out that her family owned land out there and often spent weekends in the desert. She was the only person that we saw for many hours.

Coincidence. You're bound to find someone you know in the same area as you since this planet is so small. What's so magical about a person owning land out there?

This is the one that really gets me. At age sixteen I was a complete off-road motorcycle nut. I often went to a place called El Mirage dry lake bed with one or several friends for some desert biking. The lake bed is surrounded by miles and miles of sand dunes and hills. On one unlucky occasion, while riding with just one other friend we got lost in the dunes. We had no visible points of reference and had gotten completely turned around. Having about one gallon of gasoline left in our tanks and only a little water, and since it was about a hundred degrees out that day…at least, we agreed that the situation was serious and we started a systematic search for the truck. After about 30 minutes, since we seemed to be even more lost than before we agree to each ride opposite directions to two visible high points for a look. Well, let me tell you, those sand dunes are quite confounding; before long we lost each other. Since I couldn’t hear or see my riding partner I started getting really worried. Finally I decided to start a large circular pattern and rode for another fifteen minutes or so and saw nothing even vaguely familiar. Now I was getting really, really worried but what to do? Gas is getting low…oh sh*t! Again I started out with some other plan. No sooner has I started out around a dune that directly ahead was the truck AND my riding partner who was coming from the opposite direction. He also had just spotted the truck. I couldn’t believe my eyes!

There's nothing strange at all about finding the truck at the same time. You guys must of had done a complete 180 and if the truck wasn't there you would of intersected with each other. This is just a coincidence. When someone thinks of the same thing as me at the same time I just think they had a similar train of thought. Nothing magical or mystical about it whatsoever.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Coincidence. You're bound to find someone you know in the same area as you since this planet is so small. What's so magical about a person owning land out there?

Well, I don't mean to imply that either of my stories is suggestive of anything other than long odds. In fact the second story was most interesting to me because I was starting to worry about my life, not really because the odds were that great. But try to quantify the situation. In some cases the odds seem extraordinarily long and we would seem to expect that such events are very rare, but even events with long odds can be common.

One quickly realizes that in order to address these situations in a general way, one needs to assign classes of events to help sort things out. Some events that seem highly unlikely are in fact likely due to the number of similar benign events experienced in a typical day or year. But I was surprised to find just how common some types of events might be even though the odds seem very long.

Anyway, I suggested trying to quantify the odds for the story about the key, or for my encounter with my classmate. It often is not so easy to say with any mathematical certainty what the odds would be.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It has long been a hobby of mine to dig up interesting stories like these, so I often probe my customers and friends a bit and see if they offer up anything intersting. If you ask people you will find that most have at least one story about something that seemed very odd; so much so that they find it to be a memorable event. At least this is what I have found.

Here is one story that I found to be very interesting because of the source and the nature of the claim. This came from a person who has no interest in paranormal stuff, and he seemed to be quite perplexed about his own story. As nearly as I can recall it goes like this: He was standing in his driveway and noticed that his neighbor across the street was working on his motorcycle. The guy was running his motorcycle with his rear wheel off the ground and spinning, and cleaning the moving drive chain with a rag. In fact this is a common practice for shade-tree mechanics. It is also very dangerous. Randy [my buddy] was watching this, and as he described it, in his mind's eye he saw the chain grab the rag and drag the mechanics hand into the spinning sprocket. According to Randy, he saw this as if was a memory, and he found himself starting to run, almost like an involuntary reflex, while wanting to yell at his neighbor to stop. He swears that after about two or three steps, and just as he started to yell, what he had seen in his mind actually happened, and his neighbor was injured pretty badly.

So, I don't know. Was this some sort of Deja Vu-like event where the event registered twice and left the impression that he saw it before it happened, or was this a legitimate ESP event of some kind, did he cause it by yelling, and/or was it just a coincidence? If it was coincidental, then as the story was told, the odds would have to be tremendously long. Randy claimed that even he had no idea why he reacted as he did - that it was very uncharacterstic of him. Normally he might have mentioned in passing that cleaning a chain like this is a bad idea, and more likely he would never say anything at all, but to jump and run as he did was perplexing even to him.

 

[small_bang]

Yep, it's like someone remarking on seeing the time 11:11 on the digital clock and thinking that he seemed to be drawn to looking at the clock at that particular time and thought it was significant, when in fact he just remembered the instances of seeing 11:11 or 12:12 etc... because it stood out in his mind because it was interesting, his mind blanked out the other hundreds of glances at the clock because they didn't catch his attention.

Hmmmm, I have a weird 11:11 story.
I started noticing this 11:11 thing and took notice of it but just laughed. This was back in the latter 90's. This went on for at least a couple of years. As far as I knew, this was my own private 'cosmic joke'.

Then, around '99 I found out about this infamous Art Bell radio show and began to tune in, on and off, around the early spring of that year.
My habit was to take a little radio and stick it next to my ear and then I would fall asleep within a half hour into the show..around 1:30 - 2am. I did this one to several times a week, but not necessarily consistantly everyweek. Many weeks would go by when never listened.

Then, the strangest thing happened. That fall, I happen to tuned in again one day the same way I described above. At 4:30am that same morning, I woke up wide awake.
The program was still in progress and my mind began to focus on what was being said.

Remember...as far as I knew, 11:11 was my very own personal and private 'phenomena'.

Art was talking to a caller. The caller was saying something to the effect: " Art... have you heard anything about lots of people saying that they keep seeing some kind of numbers or something like that?"

To which Art Bell replies: "Yes caller, I don't know what it is, but I can tell you that I've been receiving thousands upon thousands of faxes and emails from people ALL SAYING THAT THEY KEEP SEEING THE NUMBER 11:11 !

Well, let me tell you...I FREAKED OUT

No bull..true story. Let me know the statistics on THAT one.

 

[small_bang]

All of a sudden everybody clams up? Everybody's reading but no one has nothing to say? Thats weird and spooky!

Heres another flukey coincidence. Whats the statistical probability of one person killing each and every thread they post on? hehehehehe