"I Was Almost Murdered In A Case Of Mistaken Identity": People Are Sharing Their "One In A Million" Stories, And My Jaw Is On The Freakin' Floor
Reddit user u/yankeevandal posed the question: "What statistically improbable thing happened to you?" The thread promptly filled with hundreds of chilling, shocking, and fascinating stories of brushes with death, eerie coincidences, and unfortunate mishaps. Here are some of the most interesting anecdotes:
1."My sister's husband was taking classes at a community college in their city. He met a girl in his class who told him she was from the same small town where he and my sister (along with my parents) used to live. They talked some more, and he learned that her mom and stepfather worked at the same prison as our dad. He mentioned my dad’s name to her, and she said, 'That’s weird. That’s my stepdad’s name.' That's how we learned about my dad’s affair and his other family."
2."I was hit by lightning...sort of. Indirectly. Lightning hit a tree near the wellhead while I was doing dishes. It exploded the tree, fried the well, and gave me a jolt that made my metal fillings so hot, they burned my tongue. Other than that, I was fine."
3."I was almost murdered in a case of mistaken identity. A guy came chasing after my car on the highway, waving his gun out the window. He eventually got in front of me, blocked my car, and stopped his car and got out. He came right up to my window, pointed the gun right at my head, looked me in the eyes, and said, 'Sorry, wrong chick,' then got back in his car and drove away. I still have no idea who he was or who the 'right chick' was."
4."I got my tonsils out twice because they grew back. Let me tell you: Throwing up blood that runs down the back of your throat after surgery was an exorcist-level event. I’m glad the pain pills were so huge that I had to break them up into smaller, jagged bits..."
5."I was contacted by the FBI in regards to a criminal on the most wanted list. There were so many coincidences in our lives that the agents thought that I had to know where he was. They grilled me for a couple of hours trying to get information, but I had never heard of the guy. It was incredible since our lives seemed so connected. We lived two streets apart as kids, attended the same elementary, middle, and high schools, and were members of the same church. He was three years older than me, so we never met at school, and his family attended church during a different time slot. We both studied French at the same university. As language tutors, we worked in the same office and had the same boss and general phone number. The age difference kept us from ever meeting, and he switched from French to business before I got there."
"We both did a church missionary service in the same part of France, and even lived at the same address twice. Our time in France never overlapped, and those mission apartments changed tenants every couple of months. When we both lived in Salt Lake, we lived in the same (large) apartment complex. He robbed an armored car outside of a movie theater on a Monday morning, getting away with a lot of cash and murdering the driver. I was working the overnight shift at a grocery store (from Sunday night to Monday morning) on that exact morning. The theater and the grocery store shared a parking lot. Every six months or so, the FBI checks in with me."
6."A bird crapped in my mouth. I had the car door barely open while my boyfriend pumped gas and was mid-sentence when a bird flew under the awning and pooped at the perfect angle to go through the barely open door, right into my mouth. Gross."
7."We moved out of our family home that my parents had lived in for about 25 years. We’d already moved out, and the new owners had moved in, but about a week later, my mum remembered that she’d left some old photo albums in the attic. She went back to collect them, and when we were looking through them, she realized that a young boy in a few photos of family friends was actually the new owner of our old home. I still find it funny that before moving any of his possessions into his new home, there were already photographs of this man as a child in his house."
8."I was hit in a crosswalk two times as a pedestrian by the same person. The incidents were four years apart and in different states."
9."My son died at 11 months old for two and a half minutes. I got to hold him as he took his first breaths, hold him while he took his 'last' breaths, and then got to hold him as he took his first breaths again. It’s something that, as a mother, I don’t wish on anyone. It was by far the scariest night of my life. I’ll never forget it: New Year's Eve 2007 in Fairbanks, Alaska. My son statistically was not supposed to survive the pregnancy. I nearly lost him three times in the first trimester. I started going into active labor at 20 weeks, got put on strict bed rest, and then developed preeclampsia. I also had Hyperemesis through the whole pregnancy. I couldn’t even hold down water and needed daily IV fluid and nutrition. I was 17 pounds lighter than my pre-pregnancy weight when I delivered him at 39 weeks. Because of all of that, he shouldn’t be here now."
"To make things even weirder, the doctor who kept me from losing him in my pregnancy was the doctor who treated him in Alaska — at a completely different hospital, all the way across the country from where we first met. It felt like divine intervention seeing his face. I knew, deep in my soul, that my son was going to be okay. My son is a happy, healthy teenager now. I am sitting here crying thinking about that night. It definitely still feels like a gut punch when I think about it."
10."When I was a teenager, I picked up a hitchhiker, and then a few years later, the same guy picked me up when I was walking after I ran out of gas. Never saw him before or after those two occasions."
11."I survived two attempted kidnappings between the ages of 2 and 5. I don’t remember the first, but I remember the second time vividly."
12."I was driving with the windows down, and my friend was riding shotgun telling me about his friend, nicknamed Bird, whose death anniversary it was. We stopped at a red light and a feather flew into the car and landed on his arm. His arm has a feather tattoo in honor of his friend."
13."While riding my bicycle on a commercial fishing pier as a kid, I lost control and rode off the edge with a 20-foot drop to exposed rocks at low tide. I tried to stop myself going over by planting my feet on the edge of the pier, but I knew my bike was too heavy. Somehow, the bike stopped halfway over at a 45-degree angle. However, the seat was in the small of my back, preventing me from getting off. I couldn't budge it at all to get the bike back up. A fisherman finally ran over to help me, and we decided he would pull me as hard as he could, and I'd let the bike fall."
"I jumped to the side as he pulled me back to the pier, and it worked. However, my bike remained there, not moving at all. When I examined what had happened, there was a piece of rebar sticking out from the edge of the pier bent upwards in an L-shape, and it passed diagonally through the spokes of my front tire and completely wedged my bike in place. It was the ONLY spot on the 300-foot-long pier with ANYTHING sticking out. I most certainly did not stop myself and my bike from going over."
14."I found a dropped phone, tried my birthday as the passcode, and it unlocked."
15."I got left a written message to call a girl, and I mistakenly called another girl with the same name instead. We've been married for 14 years."
16."I was driving to a friend's house when a huge tree fell on the road. My car passed under it as it was falling, so as soon as I could pull over, I called the emergency services and messaged my friend to say I would be late. When I got to his house, I found that his girlfriend's mum was in the car behind, and the tree fell on her car. Luckily, she only had minor injuries, but one tree almost took us both out."
17."I received my heart transplant after being on the list for only seven hours."
18."I have been hit in the head by live squirrels three times in my life, each on separate occasions."
19."In 2006, I bought a travel guide to Costa Rica from a used bookstore to prepare for an upcoming trip. Inside the book was a copy of a shipping receipt from someone who'd ordered the book online a few years earlier. I did a double-take when I saw the shipping address on the receipt. The previous owner of the book had lived not only at my address, but IN MY SPECIFIC APARTMENT. And, presumably also took a vacation to Costa Rica, because that's usually why people buy travel guides."
20."My husband and I visited our old hometown and went to a used bookstore we used to frequent. I picked up a familiar title in nostalgia and flipped it open to find a student’s school ID card. The name and photo on the ID? My husband's. Turns out his mom had donated books to that store many years before we all moved away from that area. He must have been using it as a bookmark and forgotten. It’s not so surprising considering we used to live in that area, but the ID was nearly 10 years old by the time we found it. That book was sitting on the shelf for nearly a decade, untouched, waiting for me to come along and pick it up. Bizarre."
21."About 10 years ago, I was in Baltimore for the large east coast earthquake that resulted in damage to the Washington Monument. It was major news because the east coast rarely has earthquakes, let alone ones large enough to cause a commotion. That day, I was packing bags to take a trip back west to the Bay Area. When I landed and got back to my parents' house at about 11:30 p.m., we were sitting, having a glass of wine, and chatting when we felt a magnitude 3 to 4 earthquake hit. Normal for the Bay. I may be one of the few people ever to experience an earthquake on two different US coasts on the same day."
22."After losing an AirPod while skiing, I was able to find it the next run."
23."I once got into a car accident while driving home from work. I hydroplaned and got pitched off the road. My car ended up flipping over entirely, and I ended up upside-down. My airbags didn't deploy, and my car was completely totaled, but I walked away with only a few bruises and a small piece of glass in my thumb. The cops that arrived on-scene were amazed that I came out practically unscathed. They didn't even have to use the jaws of life to get me out; I just opened the door and crawled out. There was definitely a guardian angel looking out for me that day."
24."Lost a small (real) pearl earring in the snow down the street from my boyfriend-at-the-time’s house. I was adjusting a scarf, and it flung out of my ear. I was sad because my grandmother got them for me. The next spring, my boyfriend-at-the-time flicked a joint into the woods and was paranoid it didn’t go out all the way. He went to go step on it, and right next to his foot was the earring."
25."I saw an ad on a Pepsi case at a grocery store for a text-to-win contest to see Beyoncé in concert. I figured why not, so I sent a text and was entered. A few weeks later, I got a text back from the same number that told me I won the grand prize! I ended up winning two tickets to Beyoncé’s Mrs. Carter Show world tour in Brooklyn and $500 on a Visa gift card. I used the $500 for some bus tickets and a hotel down the street from Barclays. The seats were awesome, and it's something I’ll never forget!"
26."I was on a train that derailed."
27."I got hit by a car and wound up in the front passenger seat without going through a window or open door. I went through the open moonroof."
28."I got attacked by a robin in the morning, then attacked by a hawk three hours later. Weird day."
29."A traffic light fell off of its cable and directly in front of my car while I was stopped at the red light."
30."My daughter was bitten by a rattlesnake in the wild."
31.Finally: "My wife and I were on a long cross-county roadtrip killing time in the car by listening to comedy albums. We finished listening to a Jim Gaffigan special as we were pulling into a rest stop off of 80 in Ohio. Who do I see coming out of the bathroom at the rest stop?? Jim freakin' Gaffigan. I lived in NYC for 20 years and never ran into him, saw him perform, or knew his material, but now, I was seeing him at some random rest stop after listening to him for an hour?! For the first time in my life, I thought that we were living in a simulation, and something glitched. It was like we conjured his presence or something."
OK, I am FREAKED OUT right now!!! What's your "one in a million" story? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
