As the title says. Sometimes posts like this lead to a bunch of “paranormal” discussion—that’s ok but not a necessity. I’m relatively skeptical of that stuff myself, but they always make for good conversation and friendly debunking. This also includes very unlikely things. I’ll start:
When I was growing up (in the days before the communication revolution) my family took a trip to Chicago. During our five days there we somehow hailed the same cab driver three times, in three extremely different locations in the city. The second time all of us were shocked, and the third time we actually had him take a picture with us. I’m sure my folks have the old disposable Kodak photo buried somewhere in an album. Could he have been stalking us? I guess so. But he certainly didn’t seem like he was, and nothing bad happened. He seemed as surprised as we were. Definitely stochastic—but it’s funny how weird stochasticity can seem when it’s a little less random.
In 98, I worked at a small company. In 2003, I worked at a big company at a different city a few states away. I happened to be have a good view of people walking by from the parking lot to the front door from my desk. I recognized a coworker from 98 walk by. I ran out to say hi to make sure it was her. It was.
Other than both businesses being in the same broad category of software development, they had no other relation. And this was the one time she was walking by. It’s not like she was working there like I was. And I came by that job from a totally different path that had nothing to do with our old company. And she was not with that old company either and came to be where she was by another unique and totally circuitous route as I had.
I don’t know what the odds were of that chance meeting but it had to be less than 1 in a million. I mean, that one time she walked by I could have been in the bathroom or at lunch even.