People Are Sharing Their Shocking "One In A Million" Stories That Are So Wild, They Could Be Movies
We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their "one in a million" experiences that were so shocking, they could be turned into movies. Here are the wildest results.
1."When I was a kid, my dad faked his own death. We spent years thinking he was dead until he reached out with his new name and identity like nothing had happened. A few years later we also found out he had put in place a plan to have us killed. He ended up fleeing and living in hiding for years!"
2."My mom has been struck by lightning. Twice. She was INSIDE her house both times and in two different houses!"
3."I met a guy online. We emailed (this was before texting was a thing) and went out a few times. I liked him, and he called me pretty regularly (again, this was pre-texting). I didn't get a call from him one day, which was odd, so that night I called and left him a message. No return call. I called his work the next day, and he hadn't shown up. I called the police, who did a well-person check at his house, but he wasn't there. The next day, the police called me back. They'd found his body. He'd been murdered by one of his neighbors. I had to testify at the trial. It all felt like a movie."
4."In 2019, I was especially overwhelmed with my job and with life in general. We had over $25,000 in outstanding medical bills for my son, so quitting was not an option. On a whim, I bought a lottery ticket but forgot about it and accidentally threw it away in the bag it was in. Two nights later, I saw on the news that someone had won a large Powerball prize at the grocery store where I purchased the ticket from, but the winner had not yet come forward..."
"...I thought, That person is so lucky. Then I remembered that I, too, had purchased a ticket. I emptied the gross outdoor garbage can to try to find it. I checked the numbers. Then I double-checked the numbers. Then I sat on the floor, sobbing. I was the winner!!!! I won the Powerball!!! I paid off all of our outstanding debt two days later, put the rest in savings, and have never told a soul."
—T.W.
5."It was 1992, and I had moved to the Greek island of Crete. I was told there would be a room to rent by the month (unusual in summer months) and that the occupant was moving out that day. I waited outside for them to leave, and as she appeared we recognized each other. We had met at a party in the UK the year before and had chatted in a hammock in the garden. She had traveled to the UK to get away from the tensions in Yugoslavia. It was actually her stories of travel that evening that inspired me to leave the UK in the first place, and there she was, moving out of my new home on Chania’s Harbor in an entirely different country."
—Rhiannon Bryant, Facebook
6."When my nana was just a teen, she escaped a Satanic cult and rescued four teen girls who'd been kidnapped and were being hidden in the attic."
7."I developed a great working relationship with one of my employees. After two years of working together, we started talking about our parents. It turned out that the name on their dad's birth certificate was the same name as my dad's. I called my dad, and he confirmed that he once dated my employee's mom! He was unaware that she had gotten pregnant, so it was a shock to all of us. It was then when I noticed all of the similarities between my employee and dad. That person is now an integral part of our family."
—Anonymous
8."I've died on the operation table. Twice."
9."My nana lost her engagement ring while on vacation at their favorite beach resort. They went back to the same resort a year later on another vacation, and she randomly found her engagement ring in the water while exploring a reef. What are the chances?!"
—Stacey Hogg, Facebook
10."My dad's cousin was an activist in the '80s against the neo-Nazis. One night he was in bed, but a family member had a bad feeling and decided to call him to see if he was okay. He got up to answer the phone, which was in the kitchen, and while he was on the call, a bomb went off in his bedroom. That phone call saved his life."
—Diane Kayla, Facebook
11."When I was 12, I woke up around midnight and decided to get a drink. When I came back, I noticed that my stuffed elephant had been moved. I freaked out and looked for intruders and didn't see anyone, but I heard voices on our street before going back to bed. The next morning, I woke up to about 10 police officers standing on the pavement outside my room. My neighbor had been murdered..."
"...The murderer must have moved my stuffed animal and been one of the men I’d overheard that night. It freaks me out just thinking about it. Maybe if I hadn't woken up to get water, they would have found me and killed me instead."
—Anonymous
12."My great grandma did some spy-type stuff for an Indian underground movement in the 1930s. She was a low-level civil servant, so the British let her keep her job (which is pretty badass for a woman in the '30s in itself). Most of the British officers didn't think she was smart enough to understand their conversations, so she was able to listen in on important conversations and copy down important documents..."
"...Unfortunately we don't know too much because she kept most of her work a secret to protect our family, but my grandpa actually found some cool notes and letters of hers from the '30s."
13."I was brought home from the hospital in a baby blanket that a murderer gave my mom. She was about 7 months pregnant with me and was looking for baby supplies at garage sales. The man noticed she was pregnant, invited her inside for lemonade and a snack, and gave her his daughter's baby blanket. Soon after, we found out that he had been arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for murdering his wife and his mistress's husband."
—Anonymous
14."I have a rare genetic blood disease called congenital spherocytic anemia. About one in a million people in the general population have it. Unrelated, I also have a 1 in 5 million genetic mutation that has resulted in me having a completely functioning third kidney. I have also been struck by lightning while driving in my car. I don't know if this makes me a very lucky or unlucky person."
15."Years ago I found a random woman’s journal at Goodwill. I searched for her online and found her son. When I gave him the journal, he said that his mom had passed away a few months earlier and the journal was accidentally donated. A year after that, I was in the same Goodwill and found his father’s journal."
16."I was working as an investigator and was searching for someone related to my case. I tried dialing the number I obtained in an interview, but I accidentally misdialed and called a random number. The population of the city in which I was working was about 3 million people, but somehow the person who answered my wrong number call happened to know my subject and his location."
17."I was on a service trip to Nicaragua in college and struck up a conversation with the random person who was sitting next to me on the bus. While exchanging pleasantries, we got to the topic of where we were from. I told her my hometown, and she said that she actually lived there for a year when she was in third grade. After narrowing things down even further, we eventually figured out that we were in the same third-grade class. We hadn’t seen each other in 13 years, but we somehow ended up sitting next to each other on a bus, thousands of miles away from home."
18."My childhood home blew up with dad still inside...and he survived."
—Anonymous
19."I have the rarest type of synesthesia, which means I can actually taste words. It's called lexical-gustatory, and less than .2% of the population has it. I have to physically say the words out loud to taste them (so reading silently to myself won't do it). When I was younger, I'd always repeat words that tasted good in my head, and I'd avoid saying words that tasted bad."
"Now I can mostly ignore it. It only happens if I speak, so I don't taste from other people during conversations. For example, 'Sam' tastes like lemon juice mixed with salt, almost like a chili-lime flavor without the spiciness; 'Jon' tastes like raisins; and 'Noah' tastes like avocado."
20."I was kidnapped while leaving work one day and was held captive for 18 months, along with two other girls. The guy who took us claimed himself to be an 'ineffable lower god,' and he used cult tactics, manipulation, and control to have us be his family."
"I was allowed to leave to go to the grocery store as an errand, but I knew if I didn’t come back, the others would receive my punishment. I finally got away by stabbing my captor when I believed he was going to kill me."
21."My father and I went to a casino for the first time. I had $50 in my pocket, with the intention of that being the only money we'd spend. We played roulette and quickly lost 45 bucks. As I had a $5 chip, I placed it on the number 5. The ball started spinning and actually landed on that number. We cheered. I decided to leave the whole bet on 5 again. Rinse and repeat. The ball fell on number 5 FOUR times in a row. We walked out with almost $43,000 in American dollars after taxes. Never went to a casino again in my life."
22."I'm allergic to the cold. Like, literally. I get intense hives and swelling, I pass out, and I throw up. It doesn’t even have to be freezing. If it's below 45 degrees Fahrenheit and I'm without a jacket, I can’t do it. I have to carry an EpiPen with me in the event that I drink something too cold or have a severe reaction."
23."My family and I live in Canada. When I was a child, we went to Disneyland, and I somehow got separated from my parents in the theme park. Panicked, I started to look around for them and couldn’t believe that our next-door neighbors (from Canada!) were sitting on the bench right in front of me!!! I was able to sit with them until my parents found me. Talk about a weird coincidence."
—Kimberly Holbrook, Facebook
24."I was talking with a woman on Tinder while I was out of town for a baseball trip. When I asked for her number, she responded with my phone number but with a different area code. I thought maybe she Facebook-stalked me and got my phone number from there and was just messing with me, but nope. She had the same exact phone number as I had. What are the chances?!"
25."In college (1965-ish), my dad worked at a liquor store. He was supposed to work that Friday night, but his girlfriend (now-wife/my mom) insisted he take her to some event, so he switched shifts with a coworker. That night the store was robbed, and the guy who took my dad’s shift was shot five times and died. My dad has major survivor's guilt to this day and will rarely talk about it, but it’s so wild because if he had gone to work, I wouldn't be alive."
26.And "I survived a 'nonsurvivable' plane crash. I was on an old Po-2 (famous for being very safe and uncrashable) on a tour of the desert in western China when I was 7. My father’s friend who piloted the plane didn’t survive, but somehow I got out with only a concussion. I apparently passed out for almost a day in the wreckage on the edge of the desert, 50 kilometers from the town/airport."
"The people who found me were some tree planters. (They plant greens in the desert to protect towns from sandstorms — a lot of people who live in these desert towns in China do this.) They found me while they were picking up a shipment, and the only reason they looked was that they were making a bet to see how quickly an egg could cook in the sand, and they went off the road to test it.
"According to my dads, I survived because the plane was mostly made out of fabrics and wood, so when the plane crashed, the front half collapsed and took the majority of the impact. I was knocked out and was luckily covered under the wreckage and in the shade, so that cooled me off enough to survive for a day or so."
Do you have your own one-in-a-million story that rivals these? Tell us about it in the comments below!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and clarity.
