THE THREEFOLD LAW
In Louisville, Kentucky, three family members died in the same spot, on separate dates. A woman was hit by a car—an accident that she survived but that killed her six-week-old daughter. A few years later, the same woman was killed about two blocks away as she jumped from a moving vehicle for an undisclosed reason. But the cruel coincidence continued when twenty years later, the woman's nineteen-year-old son died on the same street when his motorcycle hit a car full of college students.
THE OL' SWITCHEROO
Irv Kupcinet experienced a rare kind of synchronicity while covering the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London in 1953. He found items in a hotel room drawer that were identified as those of Harry Hannin. Hannin, widely known as a Harlem Globetrotter, was actually a good friend of Kupcinet's. Just a few short days later, Kupcinet received a letter from Hannin. In the letter, Hannin explained that he had been in a hotel room in Paris and had found a tie in a drawer that had Kupcinet's name on it.
COINCIDENCE OR JUSTICE?
A man attempting to rob a convenience store in Cherryville, North Carolina, thwarted his own plans when he dropped the gun. The gun hit the ground, went off, and the bullet went into the robber's foot.
HEART ATTACK
In Rome, an Italian who was charged with killing his American girlfriend, after having kidnapped their daughter, died of a heart attack while testifying in court during his trial. Family members and friends claimed that he had threatened to kill her many times, and they were convinced he was guilty. Perhaps divine justice played a role in his eventual death.
A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
According to the Journal Times of Racine, Wisconsin, there is new evidence that destiny plays a role in love. On August 18, 2007, a young couple, Melody Kloska and Matt Behrs, tied the knot in a simple ceremony at the Wind Point Lighthouse in Racine. After the ceremony, they tossed a bottle containing their wedding vows into the cool blue waters of Lake Michigan.
Just a few weeks later, the newlyweds received a divine sign that they were meant-to-be. A letter arrived from Fred and Lynette Dubendorf, who had found the bottle while walking on a beach in Pentwater, Michigan, located on the other side of Lake Michigan. The letter explained that the Dubendorfs discovered the bottle on the very beach where they had been married twenty-eight years before. Not only that, but the Dubendorfs had been married on August 18, 1979.
A CHILD'S STORY
Anne Parrish, famed American novelist who wrote dozens of award-winning books from the 1920s through the 1950s, was one day browsing through books in a Parisian bookstore. She found a book that had always been a favorite of hers, Jack Frost and Other Stories. Delighted to find a memory from her childhood, she was shocked to discover that the inscription within contained her own name and the address of her childhood home in Colorado.
DOUBLE DEATH
In Germany in the late 1970s, a story hit all the newspapers, television and radio stations—a story that contained one of the most tragic examples of synchronicity to date. A man was walking along a country road at night when a car struck him from behind and killed him. One year from the day he died, the man's twin brother went for a walk at that same spot, in memory of his departed brother. As it turned out, the driver of the car that hit and killed the first man also had a twin brother. The driver's twin brother decided to drive along the same road, in memory of his own departed brother. He hit and killed the twin brother of the pedestrian, recreating a scene that has shocked everyone who has heard the story.
PAW PAW TRAGEDY
According to the Detroit Free Press, in February of 2007, in the Paw Paw Township, Michigan, two brothers were killed in a head-on collision with each other. The brothers, ages twenty-four and thirty-three, shared a home. The elder brother lost control of his vehicle and crossed into the path of his brother's oncoming car. They were both pronounced dead at the scene.
SYNCHRONIZE YOUR LIFE
TOLD BY AMBER GUETEBIER
In 2000, I traveled abroad for the first time and was happy to be visiting a friend who had recently moved to the beautiful city of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Upon arrival, the old friend met me, and we immediately began to wander the labyrinth of streets and canals. In the spirit of fun, we took several photos of ourselves, holding the camera up and capturing our own faces at funny angles.
After spending a few weeks in Amsterdam, I went on to travel to Ireland and Spain, returning to the Netherlands with a new beau in tow, just as spring was setting in. Happy to be back in the beautiful city, I started looking for under-the-table work. A local restaurant hired me, and I was befriended by a kooky Englishman who told me about a cheap “squat” I could stay in, for the grand fee of ten U.S. dollars a month. My boyfriend and I jumped at the chance and promptly moved into the building. It was a run-down, leaning brick row house, with a flooded basement and three creaking floors, no running toilet, and a mixture of travelers from around the world, including an eccentric Irish painter, an Israeli soldier, and the wild Englishman.
Once we had a bit of money saved, and we knew we would be around awhile, I decided to get my rolls of film from the earlier part of my trip developed. It was then that I realized the coincidence: the first photograph that my friend had taken of us shortly after my plane touched down was in front of the very building I had ended up living in! Not realizing it when I went to the squat for the first time, I had to see the photo to realize I had been in the exact place where I would later live.
DESTINED TO LOVE
This is the story of John and Martha O'Brien, originally told to Phil Cousineau for his book Coincidence or Destiny?:
In 1989 a group of people from around the United States gathered in Paris to participate in a Bohemian Paris art and literary tour. On the third day of the tour, Martha Fletcher, a dancer from San Francisco, met John O'Brien, an artist from Greenwich Village, on a houseboat that rested on the Seine near the Pont d'Alma, in front of the Eiffel Tower. The two hit it off, but at the end of the tour they returned to their respective homes.
It wasn't until several months later, when Martha was moving into a new home that she realized that a photograph she had kept on her bulletin board since grade school was a painting of a houseboat on the Seine at Pont d'Alma, and the Eiffel Tower was in the background.
A few months later, John moved to San Francisco for the summer. With him, he brought a painting he had painted ten years before—of a ballerina with long red hair. The dancer looked exactly like Martha.
It was no surprise that the following summer the pair returned to Paris, John painting and Martha dancing. They spent a day in Moret sur Loing, a charming little village outside of Paris. At the end of the summer, however, they again parted, only this time John was returning to New York to move out to California permanently. As he was packing his things he too came upon an old photo that he had kept for years. It was a photo of a painting of the little town of Moret sur Loing.
One year later, Martha and John married. One year after that, Martha was sorting through old boxes to make room for a nursery, and she happened upon a diary she had written when she was twelve. As she browsed through the pages, one line in particular stood out: “I wish I could be Michelle O'Brien.” Michelle O'Brien was a ballet dancer that Martha had admired as a youth. Two months later, Martha gave birth to their daughter, Michelle O'Brien.
THE WARNING
TOLD BY DENISE MURPHY BURKE
Several years ago, I organized a Northwestern University reunion of my sorority sisters. We were all to stay at a sister's home in Santa Rosa, California. A group of about twenty of us were able to come, some from as far away as New York. I was immensely excited about the reunion and especially looking forward to the arrival of my best buddy, Barbara, from Ohio.
The afternoon prior to her arrival, I received a long-distance call from her. She said, “My suitcase is packed, and my ticket is in my hand, but I just don't think I can come.”
It seems her son had called and begged h
er not to go. He had had a very powerful dream in which she was in a fatal accident at the reunion. My friend said that based on that alone she would have changed her plans. But her son had confessed to her that he had also had a similar dream three years before that his father would die very suddenly; five days after that dream his father died while taking a shower. His father was only forty-eight years old. The son felt somehow responsible for his dad's death, and due to his guilt had never shared the dream with his mom. But now he was desperate to convince her to stay home, and she did.
Even though Barbara wasn't with us, the first day was incredible. The plan for the second day was to take a horse-drawn, open-wagon ride through the vineyard countryside. That morning, nine of us climbed up on the first carriage as the driver was hoisting his large body into the driver's seat. Suddenly, the two horses mistook a loud sound for a signal to go. They lurched forward, throwing the driver on the ground. With no one to keep them in check, we were soon going at a full gallop!
I reached up to the driver's seat and pulled back on a large wooden lever, which seemed like it should be the brake. The lever did nothing to slow the wagon, but I held on to it for dear life. The others threatened to jump, but I begged them to hold tight.
We were racing out of control, and all of a sudden, we realized the freeway was straight ahead of us. The horses were heading right for it. But as the horses approached the freeway, they took a sudden ninety-degree turn on two wheels onto a frontage road. At full speed, the horses headed directly for one of the telephone poles that lined the road. The pole ended up going right between the two horses, smashing the yoke and freeing them. Everyone but I was violently flung out of the carriage. Women lay strewn on the ground like rag dolls. No one sustained serious injuries. But when the police arrived and asked me the names of the others, I couldn't answer. I just kept wondering, “What would have happened to Barbara if she had gone with us?”
I think that a deep connection between mother and son saved her life.
“In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.” —WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
NIGHT OF TERROR
TOLD BY JOANNE WARFIELD
My throat ached with an excruciating pounding. It was my heart! It was so loud that I was sure I would be detected in my third hiding place in the shed. Who was this madman stalking me with a gun? What did he want from me?
Finally, catching my breath, I braved a peek around the corner of my shelter and decided to run for cover in the main house. I dashed through the clearing toward the house, slipped in through a side door, and slid the lock shut as quietly as possible.
I leaned back against the wall and slid down into a heap. Just as my heart began to slow down a bit, I heard a wild screeching of tires in the driveway. I rolled onto my knees and looked out the bottom of the window. Through a tear in the curtain, I could see the maniac in the driver's seat headed straight for the house at full speed.
I leapt to my feet and ran out the back door toward the orchard. In a flash I heard the car behind me. I turned the corner of the house, and the wheels screeched after me. My God, I thought, this was it—I was going to die!
Then I bolted upright in bed, stricken with terror. My heart was thundering in my chest and throat. It took me several minutes to realize that I was actually home and experiencing a nightmare! The fear lingered. I was so shaken by the experience that I made myself get up and walk around to stay awake. I turned on music and sang out loud to dispel the mood so there would be no chance of reentering what was a very real, frightening place. I knew this was no ordinary dream. It was 2 A.M., so I had some tea and, after an hour or so, somehow managed to get back to sleep.
Two days later, I was speaking with my mother, who lived several states away. She related to me a horrifying story about how she and my sister had been chased into hiding by my sister's crazy husband, who had threatened to shoot them. They frantically tried to find a place to hide. They hid in the shed, then in one of the cars, where they slept all night. They were truly terrified for their lives.
The incident had happened at 2 A.M. on the very night of my own nightmare.
PSYCHIC MADAME
No one can claim that Madame de Ferriem wasn't psychic. In 1896, the German medium had a premonition, which was published in the local papers, of a disastrous collapse of a coal mine in Dux, Bohemia. The following year, an accident in the exact mine killed hundreds of people.
Both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, who was considered by some to be Shakespeare's literary equivalent, died on the same day: April 23, 1616.
In 1958, a Kansas tornado ripped a woman out of her house and deposited her, unharmed, sixty feet away, next to an LP of the song “Stormy Weather.”
PSYCHIC WIFE
The wife of Ulysses S. Grant woke on April 14, 1865, with the intense sense that she and her husband should get out of Washington, D.C., as soon as possible. They left that day, even though it meant standing up President Abraham Lincoln's invitation to the theater. That's why Grant was not killed by John Wilkes Booth that evening when the actor assassinated the president. Booth's papers later revealed that Grant was on his hit list.
PRESCIENT LITERATURE
In Gulliver's Travels, written in 1726, Jonathan Swift describes two moons revolving around Mars, in close proximity to the planet. One hundred and fifty-one years later, astronomers proved that Mars does indeed have two moons, and these moons are not far from the planet's surface.
Author Morgan Robertson wrote his story of a gigantic luxury ship, the Titan, in 1898. In this fictional tale, the ship, advertised as unsinkable, hits an iceberg and tragically goes down, killing many passengers and crew. In 1912, the real-life ship the Titanic met its shockingly similar fate.
In 1914, Robertson wrote another novel about a future war involving fantastical weaponry called sunbombs, which were capable of decimating an entire city. In the book, the war starts in December and is brought on by the Japanese, who carry out a sneak attack on Hawaii.
LISTEN TO YOUR DREAMS
Countess Toutschokoff was the wife of a Russian general at the time that Napoleon was invading Moscow. During that time, she woke from a dream in which her father had come into her room with her young son and said that her husband had been killed at Borodino. The next two nights, she had the same dream. Finally she told her husband about it, and they looked at a map but could find no such town. Later that same year, her father came into her room early one morning, holding her son's hand and saying that her husband had indeed been killed at Borodino, a small town outside Moscow.
In Paris in the Twentieth Century, Jules Verne describes the Paris skyline dominated by a large metallic structure. The book was written in 1863, years before the Eiffel Tower was conceptualized in 1887.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
TOLD BY ANN B. IGOE
Once my daughter and I went to the airport in Charleston, South Carolina, to pick up a woman and her son from South Africa. We had never seen her before, and I was not enthusiastic to be seeing her at this time. She was a woman that my husband had met on one of his trips. She had entertained him, and he had invited her to visit us if she ever came to America.
She was not difficult to recognize. She had the audacity to arrive wearing a khaki suit and pith helmet, and she walked about our little airport as though on a safari.
When she marched into our living room, she stopped dead in her tracks, gasped, and shouted for her son to come immediately. He found her standing in front of a painting that my daughter and I had bought in a small village in southern France.
He could not believe his eyes. He said, “This is the painting that my mother and I fell in love with in a small village in southern France, but because our funds were low, we had lunch to think about it before making our decision. When we returned to buy the painting, we were told that it had just been sold to an American woman and her daughter.”
They had
settled for a lesser painting by the same artist, and they just happened to have a photograph showing the painting hanging in their living room in South Africa.
Of course, new friendships were cemented on the spot.
MAYBE HE HAD A POINT
An agoraphobic man who had vowed never to leave the house again after he was assaulted at age eighteen decided, after thirty years of self-induced imprisonment, to take a walk outside. But the strain of being out was too much for him: he suffered a heart attack while strolling along.
“Whether we name divine presence synchronicity, serendipity, or graced moments matters little. What matters is the reality that our hearts have been understood. Nothing is as real as a healthy dose of magic which restores our spirits.” —NANCY LONG
ONE HARDY BOOK
When British actor Anthony Hopkins signed up to play a leading role in the film The Girl from Petrovka, based on a book by George Feifer, he traveled to London to pick up a copy of the book for research. Although he visited many bookshops, he was unable to find a copy of the book anywhere. Waiting for a train at an underground station, Hopkins noticed a book sitting on a bench near him, apparently discarded. When he went to see what it was, he was amazed to find that it was The Girl from Petrovka, the very book he'd been searching for! As if this wasn't enough, years later while shooting the film, Hopkins was introduced to the book's author. The two men discussed the film and the book it was based on, and Feifer offhandedly mentioned that he didn't own a copy of the book himself anymore. He'd leant it to a friend who had lost it somewhere in London. Hopkins, incredulous, produced his found copy of the book, the margins of which were covered with the original owner's notes—made with Feifer's own hand.
The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories Page 9