Some coincidences are just funny. These aren't those.
Every one of the five stories below actually happened, and actually checks out — no ghost stories, no uncredited internet legends. Just real events that, put side by side, look like something a novelist made up.
1. The Book That Predicted a Real Killing
In 1838, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel called “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.” In it, four starving sailors adrift at sea draw straws to decide who will be killed and eaten so the others can survive. The one who loses is a cabin boy named Richard Parker.
Forty-six years later, in 1884, a yacht called the Mignonette actually sank. Four real sailors were adrift with no food. Three of them killed and ate the fourth to survive until rescue came, 24 days later. The cabin boy they ate was named Richard Parker.
The case, R v Dudley and Stephens, became a landmark ruling on necessity as a legal defense for murder — and remains one of the strangest instances of fiction seemingly forecasting reality on record.
2. Killed by the Same Taxi, a Year Apart
On July 30, 1974, a man named Neville Ebbin was riding his bicycle down a street in Hamilton, Bermuda, when he was struck and killed by a taxi.
Almost exactly a year later, on July 18, 1975, his younger brother Erskine — riding the same bicycle, down the same stretch of road — was also struck and killed by a taxi. Same taxi. Same driver. Even the same passenger sitting inside it at the time.
Two brothers, one road, one taxi, one driver, twelve months apart.
3. The Man Who Caught Two Falling Babies
In 1937, a Detroit street sweeper named Joseph Figlock was working an alley when a baby girl fell from a fourth-story window above him. She landed on him. Both were injured, but both survived.
Almost exactly a year later, Figlock was sweeping a different Detroit alley when a two-year-old boy fell from another fourth-story window — and landed on him again. Again, both survived. The story ran in the Detroit Free Press and Time magazine at the time, making it one of the rare “impossible coincidence” stories with contemporary press coverage rather than decades of retelling behind it.
4. Two Murders, 157 Years Apart, Same Name, Same Spot
On May 27, 1817, 20-year-old Mary Ashford was found dead in a water-filled pit in Erdington, England. A man named Thornton was tried for her murder and acquitted.
On May 27, 1974 — exactly 157 years later, to the day — 20-year-old Barbara Forrest was found murdered in the same area of Erdington. The man charged with her murder was also named Thornton. He, too, was acquitted.
Both women were 20. Both had spent their last evening dancing. Both had told a friend, in the days before their deaths, that they had a bad feeling about what was coming. Both cases remain unsolved.
5. The King and His Double
On July 28, 1900, King Umberto I of Italy had dinner at a small restaurant in Monza. The owner looked exactly like him. It turned out they shared more than a face — the restaurateur was also named Umberto, born the same day in the same town, married to a woman named Margherita just like the King's own wife, and had opened his restaurant on the very day Umberto I was crowned king.
The King invited his double to an event the next day. That morning, word came back: the restaurant owner had been killed in a shooting. Hours later, King Umberto I was shot dead by an assassin.
Coincidence, or Something Else?
None of these needed embellishment to be strange — that's what makes them worth telling. Sometimes the universe just repeats itself, for no reason anyone has ever been able to explain.
Sources
R v Dudley and Stephens — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens
Mary Ashford and Barbara Forrest — Unsolved Mysteries Wiki
https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Mary_Ashford_and_Barbara_Forrest
The Man Who Kept Catching Babies Falling Out of Buildings — Medium
https://historianandrew.medium.com/the-man-who-kept-catching-babies-falling-out-of-buildings-6e03dcda90f9
King Umberto's Uncanny End — Brain Bubblegum
https://www.brainbubblegum.net/home/2017/7/25/uncanny-resemblance