Coincidence. Serendipity. Happenstance. A crazy stroke of luck. Everyone has their own description of a time when the stars seemed to have aligned in their favor, bringing them good fortune that they would remember for a while.

It’s a moment that made you believe in the existence of miracles, much like what these people on Reddit have felt. A thread came alive more than a decade ago when fate was on their side. They were left utterly awestruck and had to share their stories for the internet to see. 

If you have similar experiences, we would love to hear about them in the comments below!

Discover more in 47 Stories About The Craziest Coincidences That People Experienced

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#1

I once went to call a friend, but I misdialed his number. This was way before cell phones, back when there were payphones (late 70’s). Anyway, I dialed his home number, started talking to him about some stuff, and he stopped me and said, “Andy, what the…? How did you know I was at the laundromat?” …. I really couldn’t understand what was going on …

After a lot of confusing back and forth, he realized: the number of the payphone in the laundromat was different by one digit from his home number, and I had mis-dialed the laundromat by mistake … where he happened to be, and where he picked up the phone.

© Photo: apullin

#2

It didn’t happen to me, but a friend of mine lost his wallet. He had no idea where it went. Weeks later in a shopping centre carpark, an elderly woman picked up the wallet and handed it over to a passer by who could probably decipher the name on the drivers licence better than she could. The woman handed the wallet…to his sister. What are the odds?

© Photo: mattel-inc

#3

I once had a friend accidentally leave her bag (with wallet, ID, everything) in the back of a taxi, and before she had realized what she was missing the taxi had left. Not ten minutes later, while we were still in the lobby freaking out, our other friend somewhere in the city caught the *exact same taxi* back to the hotel, and we were able to get the bag back.

© Photo: anon

#4

In the aftermath of the First Gulf War, my grandparents had rented their house in Irbil, Iraq to the UN to be used as housing. One of the men inside the house was a UN officer and my family got to know him well. He stayed there for a couple of months before being deployed elsewhere.

Months later, my parents decided to leave Iraq. So they sold everything they had and fled to Amman, Jordan. Since they did not have permission to leave they needed to sneak through the border. However, their plans seemed to have been ruined when their bus suddenly came upon an unexpected Iraqi army checkpoint. My parents were freaking out until they see that same UN officer supervising the checkpoint. He saw my parents and lets them through.

© Photo: Iraqi272

#5

When my uncle was young he and his brother went to fishing on the lake where our cabin was. My uncle had huge glasses and of course he dropped them in to the lake. Searching for them was pointless because the lake is very deep and water dark as night.

They went home and told my grandparents what happened. Obviously they were mad because at the time money was hard to get and new glasses would cost a lot of money. Then their neighbour came by and handed the missing glasses to my uncle. The glasses had fallen straight to his fishing net and got stuck from frame.

This happened around late-60’s or early-70’s.

© Photo: anon

#6

My grandfather lost his college class ring while swimming in the ocean off of Baja Mexico. Three years later he gets a phone call from a man who had found it with a metal detector. The man had called the Alumni Association and searched the records for people who had the initials R.H.P. which were engraved on the inside of the ring.

© Photo: eeggles

#7

I met a girl at a bar, she had a fake ID and for whatever reason showed it to me, it was my best friend’s sister’s ID. Her sister had never lived where we were, and I asked the girl where she got the ID, she got it from a bar near the border (we lived in central Texas). I told my friend and she told her sister, who confirmed going to the bar and losing her ID there.

© Photo: anon

#8

Kinda relevant. About 5-6 years ago my mom and I were at Walmart going back to our car when mom noticed something shiny on the ground. It was a 1.5 carat diamond that my amazingly honest mother took to the police station where someone had literally just reported it missing. It was some sort of family heirloom.

© Photo: nineteen_eightyfour

#9

My friend and I were studying abroad in New Zealand. We went out for a night and after a lot of drinking he realized that he had lost his passport. We spent the next hour retracing our steps, but couldn’t find it anywhere.

The next day, he called the US embassy and found out that he was going to have to fly up to Auckland, fill out a bunch of forms in person at the embassy, and then put in a rush order for a new passport. It was going to take about 3 days and cost him over a thousand dollars to do all of it.

He was in the process of booking his flight and hotel up there and checked his Facebook while waiting for the airline’s page to load. There was a message on there from somebody who had found his passport in the gutter and managed to track him down on Facebook. He was literally 2 seconds away from spending some major money. Got the passport back, bought the guy a couple beers, and everything was all good!

© Photo: anon

#10

My mom lost her favorite watch on the beach when we were on vacation in Mexico. Three or four days later, we are sitting around the hotel pool and she mentions something about being bummed about the lost watch.

The family sitting next to us happens to overhear. “you lost a watch? We just found one on the beach earlier today!” They bring it down from their room. Lo and behold, it’s the same watch! It still worked, too, despite the finish being all scratched up from tumbling around in the sand and salt water.

This was probably 7 or 8 years ago. The dad of the family had a pretty sweet cheeseburger tattoo on his shoulder that I still remember. Claimed his grandfather invented the cheeseburger. >_>

**TL;DR: Lost watch tumbles around in the ocean for 3-4 days and is returned by a man with a cheeseburger tattoo.**.

© Photo: Avi_

#11

Best I can do is making the stars align for someone else. I must have been 16 or 17 at the time. I was working for a grocery store and it was my turn to round up carts out of the parking lot. I was grabbing a few and noticed a wallet in the front of one. After a bit of deliberation, I opened it up and found $800 in it. I turned it in and turns out the guy who left it was stressed out and in a hurry to get going for his honeymoon. One of the best feelings in the world to know that I helped this guy keep one of the most important events in a man’s life from turning into a disaster.

© Photo: pupkinrupert

#12

Left my bag in a cab with about $5k of things in it (including laptop I use to do my work). Same cab drove past me ~3 hours later, chased it down, got it back.

© Photo: anfedorov

#13

This fall I was on a date, walking in the park with my date and dog. As we headed back, I realized my keys were missing. I stayed calm, and my date and I easily walked 2 miles using our iPhones as flashlights, weaving through pedestrians, a drum circle, and a bunch of folks juggling/poi spinning/hooping.

Desperate to get my keys back, I posted on Craigslist, but heard nothing. As a last ditch effort, I posted to my city’s subreddit, and a Redditor found and returned my keys. He was one of the drum circle jugglers; I am also a juggler.

Best day ever, and reward paid.

© Photo: microminimalist

#14

My mom was swimming at a spring in Florida and lost the heirloom ring her grandmother had given her. A few years later, she’s at a totally different spring in Florida and spies it on a SCUBA divers finger. The woman was totally cool and actually returned it to her (I guess as my mom could tell her where she found it). My mom still has it to this day.

© Photo: Sasselhoff

#15

Not me, but happened to my boyfriend’s parents:

My boyfriend’s mother was looking through an old photo album from when she went to Disney World as a kid, and recognized her father-in-law in the background of one of the photos…driving around a little boy who would become her husband around 20 years later. Crazy to think that they crossed paths at Disney World as kids.

© Photo: uncle_albert

#16

I came across a long lost friend in Halo 2 because he was using the same game tag as he was 12 years ago.

© Photo: AmbientGoat

#17

I’m an extremely stingy person when it comes to panhandling and similar acts, so maybe once every 5 years or such I’ll hand change to someone asking for money on the side of the road. On this particular Monday, I had received an unexpected $5 tip from a customer at work. She handed it to me as a thank you for something or other and since she didn’t toss it in the tip jar, I was allowed to keep it.

At this point in my life I was living hand to mouth and that could buy enough bread and cheese for a weeks worth of meals. That $5 was a big deal. I usually headed to the Food Lion right around the corner from my house but as I wanted to get as much food at once for as little as possible, I planned to hit up Walmart a bit farther down the road.

I was sitting in the left-hand turn lane about 4 cars back, waiting for the light to change when I noticed directly next to me a homeless man. I recognized him as the guy that often slept next to the vending machines outside the Food Lion. Suddenly, I wanted to give him that $5. I didn’t *really* need it. I had no been expecting it. Someone gave it to me, I could give it away. So I handed over my fiver and the guy begins to ramble. I was dreading a “Thank you and GOD BLESS” but it was not to be.

The man proceeded to tell me to be careful. He stated that it looked like it was going to rain and that we all knew how FL and tourist drivers were. They never thought about how the little bit of sand often on the roads and medians would only help you to slide once the rain started and the oil slicked up. I had better be careful. I was nodding and trying to ease away before the car behind me started honking because the light had changed green. The car that had been in front of me was already through the light.

I thanked the man for his warning, pulled up and turn onto the next road just as a FL shower started. Not 2 blocks down the street a person turning into the median slid into oncoming traffic and T-boned the car that had been sitting in front of me at the light. If I had not been held back talking to the homeless man about this exact type of situation, I would have hit both of those cars and compounded the wreck. Best $5 I ever spent.

© Photo: Dyanthis

#18

A few months ago, I was out partying with a few friends of mine, on my way back from the pub, I realize to my horror that my keys are gone, while I try to retrace my drunken steps back to the pub, I meet an old friend who live quite close to me, I spend the night, go back to the pub in the morning, and catch them just as they are about to toss my keys in the lost and found box, that they didn’t have the keys to open ( there was a small-ish slot they could toss things in at the top).

© Photo: Demonican

#19

When I was around 8 years old I had the Donald Duck hat that I wore all the time. It had Donald Duck dressed like a cowboy posing for a Wanted Style poster. Well that summer my father makes me sit in the back of a Jeep Wrangler for the 8 hour road trip to Grandma’s house. With the top down. Somewhere in New Jersey we hit a bump and my hat flies off. My dad pulls over but because it’s a busy highway it’s next to impossible to see where the hat went/find it. I was devastated.
3 days later, on the trek home, somewhere on a highway in New York my dad suddenly pulls the car to the shoulder, gets out, runs across 3 lanes of highway traffic, and grabs my hat.
The hat was covered in road grease and extremely tattered but I didn’t care. To this day it’s my lucky hat.

© Photo: militarytime

#20

Not me personally, but my father told me when he was a young boy his parents took him to an amusement park. When they went on a roller coaster his father’s wallet slipped out. By a crazy stroke of luck my dad caught the wallet between his feet and held it the whole ride.

© Photo: SamiLMS1

#21

Today i found some young university student’s macbook pro just sitting in its case at a bus stop. no one around claimed it was theirs. so i have taken it,and have contacted her via email. im hoping she gets back to me on it. i would hate for her to loose all that work on there (i think she seems to be a law student) if she doesnt get back tome by the end of the week, i shall hand it in to the police. it will just take her longer to receive. IF she reports the missing item to the police.

© Photo: anon

#22

Preface: I am an English exchange student in San Diego, visiting my friend in Philly.

My friend and I went by Megabus from Philly to Baltimore for a pro wrestling show. The mega bus drops us off in some mall on the outskirts and we take the bus into Baltimore, we watch the show, grab a bite to eat. Good times were had by all.

We travel back to the mall for the bus back to Philly, and we wait, and we wait. it approaches midnight. It’s freezing, a clear Baltimore January night. and in the parking lot where we were standing a guy is watching us in his car.

Naturally we start to panic, as a Megabus approaches, relieved we are about to get on. I ask “This is going to Philly right?” The man in the car has now walked up behind us. The conductor said “D.C.”, my heart sank. Here I was 3000 miles from home in the UK, 2000 miles from my bed in California. The guy from the car said “you guys are going to Philly too?” he offered us a ride. He was waiting for the same bus that never came. So we drove towards Philly.

Where my friend lives is a small suburb called Bridgeport, and it turns out he was going to see his girlfriend that lived a few blocks away from where my friends house was. The wrestling theme continued as it turns out he was the cousin of Luke Gallows

THANK YOU THAT GUY! You saved me and my friend from freezing in some Baltimore mall.

© Photo: Lewisbell

#23

I went for a walk in a park one day and found a school ID. I went to class the next day, look at the kid sitting next to me and realize it’s his ID. I went to a school with 40k+ people, and it was a small calculus class too.

© Photo: invisiblewar

#24

Thats incredibly lucky! I’ve got one but its not nearly as cool. I usually drive to campus since I live in the boonies and there are no bus stops around. One morning, for the first time all year, I parked at a friends apartment and rode the bus to campus. I stayed on campus about 4 hours before I went to catch the bus back to my car. While waiting for the bus I noticed a note that read something like, “Hi, I found your phone. It is in the building right next to this bus stop. Hope you find it.” I thought nothing of it and proceded to hop on the bus. I quickly realized I took the wrong bus and had to wait 30 minutes until I could get back to campus.

Lo and behold, halfway through the bus route, my friend (who’s apartment I parked at) ran on the bus frantically looking for his phone. He was surprised to see me and I told him about the note and explained it might be his.

Evidently he had been following every bus with his car so he could ask each bus driver if they had seen it. It was his phone, of course, and we went back to the building and then he drove me to my car. Pretty random considering 1) it was the first bus I had been on all year, 2) I took the wrong bus, and 3) there’s 25,000+ people at my university.

© Photo: bingster21

#25

When I was on a site-inspection tour once, my boss had to fly home for an emergency meeting, and instead of getting a rental car for me, he said it was fine if I used his Mitsubishi Colt (massive pickup truck).

I was seriously nervous about driving it, as there are 2nd World War battleships with smaller turning arcs than this thing. Turns out my fears were justified when I tried to turn out of an extremely narrow parking space and scraped the front left bodywork. I got out, pooped myself, then wiped off as much damage as I could, and re-attached the mudguard that had come loose.

When my boss got back, I was dreading having to tell him about it, as he wasn’t much of an understanding guy, and he had a massive temper. As I was contemplating just biting the bullet and telling him, he turns a corner too slow and scrapes the EXACT same spot on the car. Literally the EXACT same place. I just stood there gaping.

We got out the car and assessed the damage, and I still remember him saying something about how he didn’t think it had done that much damage. I even impressed him by knowing EXACTLY how to fix the mudguard.

I still laugh to myself when I think of that! What are the odds?

#26

Story#1

I once found a MASSIVE gold ring in a hotel parking lot in New England when I was 10, and my parents left it with the hotel to see if anyone turned up to claim it.

The hotel (a little mom&pop place) actually shipped the ring to me in Alaska, a couple months later. Sort of surprised me.

Story#2

I left my wallet, with $640 at a waffle shop. They kept it behind the counter. Nobody seemed interested when I came to claim it, meaning that nobody even looked inside to see how much cash there was.

#27

Not really “good luck,” but weird story like this. my girlfriend (in college) and her friends met my ex girlfriend (from high school) and her friends randomly on chat roulette and ended up talking about me for a few hours.

#28

My mother was making a copy of a tax form at our grocery store’s copier. The tax return had everything a thief would need to steal her identity. She accidentally left the original in the copier and left the store. Luckily the next person to use the copier was my friend’s mom, who recognized the name and returned the form.

#29

One of the first gifts my husband ever gave to me was this watch. What made it special was that it was an exact copy of a watch I had owned as a young child. When I had lost the first one I was devastated even to the point where I mentioned it to him around the time we first met. He found a copy of the discontinued watch and gave it to me. You wouldn’t believe how much I loved that watch.

I couple years later, I looked down one day to realize the watch was not on my wrist. I could not find it anywhere. I was almost beside myself. A couple of days later, I got a phone call from someone who had found my watch IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET. They knew it was mine (how?) and were holding it for me. My watch had not been fastened properly and had fallen off OUTSIDE. I could not believe I got it back.

TLDR: My personally valuable watch was randomly found my someone who knew me randomly, on the ground outside.

#30

I guess this will be buried. But, in the hope that someone reads: when I was a little kid I travelled to Canada with my parents (from Europe). Whilst over there I lost my favourite stuffed animal, Dodo. I was totally devasted obviously, I can still remember it.
A few years later, my older brother was visiting friends in Canada and saw this stuffed toy up on one of their shelves. It was Dodo. They had picked him up off the street because he was interesting looking. He was returned to me safe and sound which was a joyous day.

Unfortunately he disapeared a few years later in really weird circumstances, but I had him for a while.

#31

This happened to a friend of mine. My friend and three other people went out for an overnight halibut fishing trip on his boat and they had their gear in the water just sitting back and having a grand old time. Beers were consumed, and a pole gets a massive bite and somehow gets ripped out of the holder before anyone could get to it. My buddy loses a delicious fish and a nice halibut pole.

They finish up for the night; tide goes in and out. They wake up and get a few more hours in of fishing when they get another huge bite. They reel the thing up (which takes forever) and the first thing they see is the pole, followed by the fish. They caught the pole they lost several hours earlier, even after the tides changed overnight.

TLDR; lost pole in Gulf of Alaska. Sleep, wake up and somehow catch pole and fish that stole the pole.

#32

Summer before senior year of high school. My friend and I drive almost 200 miles across the state to go surfing. Everything’s fine, we lock the car with our belongings inside (it’s not the kind of beach you can leave your cellphone/wallet/towel/girlfriend on), and I put the car key in my board shorts. It’s in a ziplock bag filled with air, which fills the small pocket of my shorts. I jump in the ocean a few times, cautiously catch a wave, to make sure that it doesn’t come out. I was satisfied with the result.

Now, I am not the world’s greatest surfer. I would not even say that I’m a *decent* surfer. I go to catch a wave, and the wave more or less catches me. I was tossed a*s over teakettle, hit my head on my board, get thrashed around by the wave pulling on my surfboard (it’s leashed to my leg), and I come up sputtering for air.

With an empty pocket.

I’m pulling at the waves all around me. The salt stings my eyes when I try to look underwater but I do it anyway. I race to the shore and desperately scan the waves. It was stormy and each wave was whitecapped. I call to my buddy to look for the key. Another surfer scans the waves. **NO LUCK.**

I start to think of all the great explorers who sailed this ocean, about the giant sea monsters you see drawn on ancient maps, of how massive this ocean is and how tiny my car key is. I start to wonder why I didn’t get an airtight bag. Or at least Something better than Ziplock.

Five or ten long minutes pass. The tide’s rising but hope’s receding. The other surfer left with a “bummer, bro.” As I stare at the waves thinking about how unlucky I am for when my parents arrive with a spare key, four or five hours later and enough distance to build up a white-hot rage, I see on the crest of a wave, like the winds pushing Venus to shore, a ziplock bag… With a key to my Honda.

It was carried to the shore right in front of me. Picked it up out of the foam.

#33

One night, me and my friend were meeting friends and were late so we started running like crazy. Her wallet fell and she noticed within minutes. We searched for an hour, but we did not find it. On our way home, we were completely drunk and my friend said to me: ‘Imagine I find my wallet… MY WALLET!!!’

#34

A customer in front of me had a total of $9.00 even on their purchases. With different items, I also got a total of $9.00.

Edit: It was a gas station in the United States.

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