We all probably see so many random strangers every day that we forget in mere moments. However, there are sometimes those weird little meetings or realizations that just are a reminder that the world can be more interconnected than it seems and that truth can be stranger than fiction.
Someone asked “Was there a time where you realized it was a small world after all?” and people shared the strange and sometimes bizarre coincidences and encounters they’ve had. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to tell your own tales in the comments below.
#1
I studied abroad in the US in my junior year of high school and was placed in a 400-people town somewhere in the midwest. My hostfamily took me to the closest McDonald's one night and I overheard the only other customers speaking my native language. I turned around and it was my brother's elementary school teacher and her husband on a US roadtrip.
Image credits: CichaelMlifford
#2
I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon and I moved to a tiny fishing village in Alaska for 7 years on an island with only 2,000 people or so. One day I get a call from my dad and step mom because they were on vacation in a small fishing town in Ireland named Cushendall and had run in to someone I knew. Apparently a random person on the street had heard his American accent and asked for some tips on places to stay nearby. My dad noticed that he was wearing a hat from the town I lived in and asked if he knew me, and he answered that he had just had dinner with me a few nights before all the way back in Alaska.
Image credits: tonderthrowaway
#3
Im from germany so my family and I visited austria. We were on a 3000m Mountain and suddenly my art teacher stood behind me.
Image credits: BeNz_REDDIT
#4
My husband, some friends and I had a drunken cab ride from Fremont street to the strip in Vegas a few summers ago. The driver was an immigrant from Serbia and was chatting with my husband about sports, soccer in particular, when I jumped in asking if he supported Red Star Belgrade. He went crazy - "f**k no, man, Partizan all the way!" and told us he had been a bit of a hooligan and had beaten many a Red Star fan. It was a memorable ride for sure, particularly as he was swerving the car like crazy whilst on his diatribe. My husband likes to remind me of the time I nearly got us killed by a crazy football fan.
Almost exactly a year later, we jump in a cab at the Venetian hotel in Vegas. The world cup is on, and the driver makes small talk about that days results. He tells us he's from Serbia and this time it clicks. I tell him "hows about that Partizan?!" and he's delighted I know of his team. My husband tells him that he drove us around a year ago and the driver exclaims "the Celtic fans from Glasgow!"
He continued chatting away about football til he dropped us off, remarking that France were due to play next but he didn't like them because of "that f*****g Griezmann. Hate Griezmann."
Any time we've watched a game with Griezmann playing hubby and I both shout "hate Griezmann!" in honour of our Serbian friend.
Image credits: allaboutjb
#5
Coworker always said she liked my house. Turns out her grandparents built the house but had never met her.
Image credits: cowboycasanovaa
#6
I met a woman from Belgium at a party and asked her, as a joke, if she knew my childhood friend who had moved there when she was about 12.
Turns out that the lady I met at the party didn’t just know my childhood friend, but they were really close friends. party lady even put me and my old school friend back in touch.
Image credits: Bearded_Singer
#7
I met someone in Korea while travelling. When I went back to work and told one of my colleagues about it turns out she was her bestfriend.
Image credits: Milfueille
#8
Went to New York for a weekend with my girl a few years ago, we were walking up the Empire State Building and walking down the other way was my ex-girlfriend from my small town that i grew up in and had not chatted to for years.
I grew up in a small town in Southern England, wtf?
Image credits: HeadbangerNeckInjury
#9
I went on holiday near the Everglades in Florida many years ago. I support an English football (soccer) team called Scunthorpe United. We're not really good and we are in the fourth division of English football, we're not like Manchester United.
Me and my parents stayed in a holiday home, and so we went to buy some groceries at the local Walmart one evening. So I go round one of the aisles - and there is a kid wearing a Scunthorpe shirt! Yep, of all the shirts of a sports team, there is a kid walking around with my team's shirt on. I was just ecstatic to say the least.
Image credits: thunderfart_99
#10
My ex-MIL is from Trinidad. We are in the U.K.
I work in a hospital. One day a new doctor started on our ward. We get chatting and she mentions she is from Trinidad. I say something along the lines of ‘small world, MIL is from there. She asks for MIL name and starts laughing when I tell her.
It turns out MIL and the doctors family have been friends for about 40 years and come from the same small town.
It freaked me out a little to be honest - I mean, thousands of miles away from Trinidad, and they are from the same small town!!!
Image credits: victhemaddestwife
#11
Used to pitch softball in the US and had a friendly rivalry with another team pitcher."
"Went on vacation and missed the playoffs as I was in London. I'm checking out the royal museum and run into that pitcher on the day we were supposed to be playing against each other.."
"So we got a beer instead.
Image credits: wastingtoomuchthyme
#12
This happened to my wife.
She was getting her masters degree, and part of it was watching a nurse do a presentation on a baby she helped deliver 26 years before hand. This was done in a hospital on the other side of the US. As the nurse describes the case, my wife realizes that she was the baby this person delivered.
She walks up to the nurse and explained that the baby turned out fine. She literally made chit chat with the nurse who helped bring her here.
#13
A girl I went to elementary School with wound up in the same mental hospital as me.
Image credits: CarWash_inMyDadsAss
#14
I used to travel the world for work. One trip I was drinking with this guy in an airport bar in Texas. A few weeks later, I walk into a restaurant in Maracaibo, Venezuela and I hear “Hey slider728!!!” It was the bar dude from Texas.
Image credits: slider728
#15
I was moving and driving from NJ to FL, stopped at some random gas station in the middle of no-where South Carolina and had heard someone call my name.
It was an old high school friend from NJ who had moved away years before. No idea he even moved away and we were literally the only 2 cars at the gas station. It was extremely weird but we had a great laugh, chatted for maybe 10 minutes, and we went on our way.
Image credits: maxdps_
#16
Yeah. I dated a guy in college. Nice guy, we had fun. We were just too young to be serious, and that was that. Years later, and many miles away, I bought a horse. It was a random thing, just read an ad. His sister was the seller.
Image credits: calcaneus
#17
I was introducing a guy to replace me at work in a town I was leaving. We had never met before, but it turned out he had not only worked (briefly) at the new place I was starting at, but also grew up in the house next to the one we just bought there.
Image credits: undecided_too
#18
I was 5900 miles away from home on a ferry and ran into the parents of one of my students.
Image credits: lisanik
#19
My stepdad was south African. Ran his own business here in the UK. One day a new client comes in, they get chatting, and he notices my dad's South African accent. Says he, too, is originally from SA. Asks my dad where he used to live, and says "me too !"
Comes back in the next day with a photo (black & white - little South African humour there) of a group of kids, aged about 10. Says to my dad " this was a birthday party I went to when I was 10" He points at a boy and says "that's me". Then he points at another boy in the photo and says to my dad "that's you." He had a photo of a party my dad had attended something like 40 years ago on another continent, and neither of them knew each other !
#20
Yeah, my family and I had booked a kayaking trip on our vacation in Norway. We're from a small town in Southern Wisconsin. Our tour guide was from a town 10 miles down the road.
Image credits: AmySchumersAnalTumor
#21
My brother went to Florida with his friends family. He met this girl there, hung out with her the 2 weeks he was there (with his friend too). About 6 months later he goes to Moscow with my grandfather for a trip to Russia (this was 1991). He's at a shopping plaza near their hotel, who does he see, the same girl from Florida.
A few years back, my family was at the beach with my father-in-law. The waitress at one of the places we stopped for breakfast was my father-in-law's neighbor growing up.
It truly is small world.
Image credits: anon
#22
I had a professor in college that I took evolution and biology with. She started each semester with “I know what you all have been doing in the shower” ...science experiments. This was in Florida. I was in Germany a few years later on vacation and I was in a bravarian castle when I see that same professor. I went up to her and she thought it was a joke that her family had put me up to until I said “I know what you’re doing in the shower”.
Image credits: Kyla_420
#23
We were on a family vacation in Greece. We met one of my mom's former classmates while standing in line at a local attraction. The thing is, they were classmates in Romania, my mom lived in Hungary and the former classmate lived in the US and they haven't met since graduation. And they both spotted each other in an instant too.
Image credits: agilopika
#24
Met a guy from work in Verona, Italy. We were there on a trip just for a couple of hours only.. and I met him there on some random street. That was some crazy a*s coincidence.
Image credits: xGrandArcher
#25
I was interviewing to a job across the country, changing industries and everything. Well, the guy who was interviewing me, who would be my next boss, went to college 25 years ago with my previous boss from my current job, who had just left a couple months before. When I said his name dude's face just lit up. They haven't talked in decades.
And what makes it even more bizarre is that the city they went to college with is distant as f**k from both jobs. So they had 25 years of following opposite paths and careers just for me to end up in the middle and connect their lives again.
#26
I met my horse riding instructor (with his two ridiculously hot redhead twin daughters) while on a Cruise on the Nile. We are from Europe. We locked eyes with one of the daugthers and i'm fairly sure she recognised me. It was 20+ years ago and I still regret not having enough balls ( we were around 16).
Image credits: chinchenping
#27
Yes, it was when a girl that I met at a water park showed up to my grandma’s funeral.
Image credits: anon
#28
My father moved to a small town in rural Midwest in 2000 from the southern part of the US. Prior to that, he lived his whole life in Europe, both eastern and western but is originally of Slavic descent.
When he moved to this new Midwestern town, he started looking up Slavic last names (not many given the size of this place) to find new friends and started calling them. One of the people he called shared the name of someone he worked with when he lived in Eastern Europe back in the early 90s.
He didn’t think much of it because there are a lot of common names in Eastern Europe. But the guy then told him that his occupation was the same as the person he knew with the same name. After probing further, it turned out that that this actually was his colleague, and that they both somehow ended up in the same tiny a*s middle-of-nowhere Midwestern town, and came there under the same exact circumstances.
It still blows my mind to this day.
#29
My math teacher and my aunt were bffs in high school.
Image credits: milklvr23
#30
My (half-)brother recently left his wife and got a new girlfriend.
Turns out his girlfriend is the granddaughter of our dad's ex-wife. My brother was once the step brother of her mother. In theory, he could've been her (step)-uncle now.
Small world indeed.
Image credits: anon
#31
I made a c***py meme for one of the subreddits with a picture I had taken. Put it up for a few hours without much of anything happening with it and took it down.
About a week later in surfing Facebook and seen the exact picture shared by both my sister and step grandmother. Neither of them had a clue I had anything to do with it.
Image credits: MyJelloJiggles
#32
I posted a picture of my homecoming outfit on Reddit earlier this fall (homecoming is a football game/dance that happens in the fall for American highschoolers). A couple hours later, I got a DM from some guy saying that he was probably going to come across as super creepy, but he was pretty sure he went to school with me because I looked familiar and our homecoming was on the same day. I asked him what our school mascot and colors were, because I wasn't about to name drop our school, and he immediately got them right.
I know he's a junior and a band kid, but I never asked him who he was. I'd honestly rather stay blissfully ignorant. I never tell anyone my Reddit account because I've opened up here about my self-harm and childhood trauma, so it's weird to think that there's some kid at my school who potentially knows all of that stuff.
Image credits: squawk_kwauqs
#33
Yesterday, me and my friend were talking about developing a game, and he wanted to get as much help as possible to make a game. I happen to have a cousin that develops games, so I told him about my cousin. He had his mind blown when I told him who was my cousin. He told me he met my cousin multiple times and my cousin even worked with his brothers for a while. I said no f*****g way. Small world eh?
#34
I grew up in Everett, WA. When I turned 22, I decided that I wanted to hitchhike America. In the beginning of my journey, I was in Sacramento, CA. I got stuck there, living on the streets for a while. I nice guy told me where I can find a good place to sleep for the night. He seemed familiar and genuinely nice. I took his advice and the next day, I was already on my way to LA. After my very, very long journey was over. I was 24 and back in Everett, WA. I went to visit a friend one day and just happened to look in his neighbors window. It was that really nice guy from Sacramento. Turns out we grew up down the street from each other and went to the same high school. This showed my that literally anything can happen and you will never stop being amazed with what paths you take in life, the places and people who come and go on that path.
#35
When my sis unexpectedly ran into my aunt, at a hotel restaurant, in ANOTHER country, BOTH on a secret honeymoon trip with their respective SO's..."
"They had somehow booked the same dates to travel to the same country, been on the same flight and stayed at the same hotel."
"Neither of them knew about the other ones travel plans.
#36
When I got hired at my job and realized the old Filipino guy in my department who sat across from me was married to one of my mom's college classmates from the Philippines. Sometimes my mom or his wife would have us bring stuff for the other because it's easier lol (my mom lives in town and her classmate is about 10 miles out from her).
It shouldn't be such a trip because in Hawaii pretty much everyone knows everyone, but just knowing that they started in the PI and then both ended up and stayed in Hawaii when their other classmates eventually ended up in Nevada or California.
Image credits: electromancing
#37
I’m from Texas and on a mission trip to Thailand I met a man who knew about my broken toe from about 2 weeks prior. His daughters worked as the athletic trainer at my school and I had gone to see her to see what was wrong. I guess she though someone breaking their toe from kicking someone else was interesting enough to tell her dad.
Image credits: Deathlyswallows
#38
I was on a bus at the airport in Rome, Italy. On the window of the bus was a sticker for the school I was currently attending for my Masters (the school is in the southern United States).
Image credits: mrsdoctorleospaceman
#39
A friend in high school was dating a guy from another city. A girl I worked with was from the same town as friends bf and I mentioned that my friend was dating someone from where she use to live. I only knew his first name, age and something rather general about him and jokingly asked her if she knew him.
She immediately knew who I was talking about. Their parents had worked together when they were younger and they had spent some time together as kids.
#40
Went on holiday to a different continent and bumped into my teacher.
#41
I ran it into a family friend in a random bar in the middle of nowhere Colorado. I hadn't met this person yet and we had beers and talked about outdoor stuff. Didn't realize till like 2 months later that he was a close family friend.
Image credits: needsmoreusername
#42
Travelled abroad the summer after 4th grade and went to a theme park that consists of 6 other parks, one of them being a water park.
I Spent the whole day playing around in the water and then I see this boy from class and from all the shock decide to hide behind my dad. I was too shy to say hi, so I just moved on. I wonder if he saw me too but we went to a school that was girls-only after 4th grade so I never saw him again.
Image credits: 8008135forLife
#43
I had a fifth grade buddy in kindergarten. I also had a swim instructor. Imagine my uttermost shock when those two were related.
#44
Traveled from USA to New Zealand and still managed to find someone from my hometown...
#45
Worked at an office with 800+ people. My step mom was talking to a relative in the UK about the fact that her sister’s ex-brother-in-law worked in Texas for a company that sounded like the same one I worked for. I looked up his name in the directory and he worked in the next section over from me and I’d pass him in the hall all the time just had no idea who he was!
#46
When I move over a thousand kilometers away from my hometown... and still ended up working with someone I went to highschool with.
#47
I worked at an American school in Jordan and became really good friends with my roommate who also taught at the school. The school was pretty small, so we were close with most of the other teachers as well. My friend ended up moving back to the states and getting married, but we kept in touch. I started working at another school in Shanghai several years later. We planned to take a trip to Tibet with a group from my school over Spring Break. She came to Shanghai a few days early and one night we went to dinner at a local restaurant. As we’re enjoying our meal and catching up, I notice a couple that looked oddly familiar. I lean in to my friend and ask her to look. She realizes it’s a couple we worked with in Jordan. We remember their names and go say hello. When we go to the table I see that they’re sitting with two friends of mine from my current school. Turns out they had worked together at another school. The American school/International school community is very small.
#48
In high school I went on vacation to New Mexico one year and to Maine two years later. I saw the same classmate from elementary school both times. He had also moved across the country after 6th grade.
#49
Went on a heli-hiking trip on a glacier in New Zealand and our guide was from the same small town in Washington state that I grew up in.
#50
When I was in Spain for 2 days (from Canada) and ran into my friend on the street, like literally could of ran into her. We both knew we were going to be there, but we both had vastly different schedules, and we both just happened to have an hour free time slot at the same time at the exact same place. It was a fun time.
#51
At, um, Disney World. A thousand miles from home, I bumped into a sports acquaintance at Epcot.
#52
Person in my corporation moved to town and joined our site. We were talking, and we figured out that we were both camp councilors at the same camp in a completely different city, only one year apart.
#53
I went to law school with a woman for 3 years and maybe had 1 class together. We were in the same Bar Prep group. It turned out she went to college 45 minutes from me and was mutual friends with a bunch of my friends from HS who went to the same college.
#54
My 4th grade teacher left halfway through the school year to start teaching internationally. She told me I know I'll see you somewhere out there. My first international business trip I was walking through a stall street and guess who I ran into.
#55
Yup. I caught a flight to Sydney from the UK. Took a coach 10 hours up the East Coast. Got off at a random spot and was collected by the hostel owner which was a 30 minute drive to the hostel. It was the first week the hostel was open and wasn't yet advertised. This particular hostel only had room for 10 people at a time. One of the random guests who was staying there worked with and was friends with one of my best friends back in the UK. Small world.
#56
Moved to the western US while I was in high school, but I used to live in the Bahamas part time. One day, a girl from my class comes up and asks me if I know so and so from this tiny out island in the Bahamas. Turns out her and her family randomly ended up on the island I used to live on while they were on vacation. She ran into one of my best friends that lived down there, and he mentioned having a buddy who lived out west, and she tracked me down when she got home. Crazy how connections like that happen, but made me realize just how small the world can be.
#57
My first ever day in America I went to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz with my brother. He ordered us a couple of chocolate dipped ice creams. One of the girls serving ice cream looked familiar so I shouted "Marie" a couple of times. My brother thought I had lost my mind from jet lag but she was a friend of mine from Edinburgh.
#58
On the hour bus ride from my small city to the airport, I meet a girl who was taking the exact same 3 week backpacking trip as me but in the reverse order. We even had the same cross Atlantic flight there and back and got on the same bus home. Then we sat down and compared trips.
#59
I’m adopted (closed) but ended up contacting my birth mom about two years ago. She still lives in the town that I was born in and has 4 young adult children. My half brother found me on Facebook so we talk every now and again, but I’ve never met any of them in person. About a year ago I ended up moving to the town I was born in to be closer to my now fiancé.
On Sunday I was at a restaurant with my fiancé for lunch, look over and recognize that the woman sitting on the other side of the booth divider is my youngest half sister from my half brother’s Facebook pictures (I had messaged my half brother to see if she was at the same restaurant as I was at that moment). I’ve never been within 10 feet of anyone who shares half the same DNA as me.
It was pretty wild.
#60
When I was in high school (I live in the US) there was a boy a grade above me that would talk to and flirt with me. That summer I met him I took a trip to spain with my family and one day we decided to visit a museum there. And guess who was also there lol. That really was the craziest "small world" moment I've had. The fact this boy I just met a couple months ago would also take a trip to europe and to the same country and to the same museum as me on that specific day blows my mind haha.
#61
I met my old football team at an amusement park, which was like 800km from my home. I was really bad at the game and I got a lot of hate from them. I told my friend that I was feeling bad that I need to go rest somewhere. I was behind a restaurant like 2 hours watching youtube. I was pretty scared.
#62
Ironically happened in Disney world so cue the “it’s a small world after all” track. I got separated from my family and even though I could remember my moms phone number I was too young to understand what an area code is because I’d only ever called my mom locally. This was pre-smartphones so no looking it up. I got passed around to a few different employees until one asked me where I was from. I gave her the name of my random small town in NY and it turns out she had grown up in the next town over and knew the area code. Was able to call my parents and reunite with my family.
#63
I used to live in a town of about 20,000 people in Connecticut. I love away to Colorado before 6th grade, and the same year one of my friends moved to Georgia. The summer before high school I was with my family on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard, off Massachusetts. One day while eating Ice Cream I saw my friend who had moved to Georgia ride his bike by me. We talked and it was the craziest small world moment of my life.
#64
About a year after graduating high school I was in another city in our state in the USA visiting a shopping mall when walking towards me was a classmate from my high school. We stopped and chatted for a bit, commenting on the small odds of running into each other there since neither one of us actually lived in that city. Soon after that I went into the US Navy and about three years later I was walking down a pier in Marseilles, France when the same classmate was walking towards me. The odds were much smaller for that encounter.
#65
Before I was born....
My father used to work for an international airline and he once got sent to Miami for a couple of months, where he befriended one of the bartenders in the airport's bar. Less than a year later he got sent to Zurich and the first time he stepped into that airport's bar the bartender greeted him like an old friend. At first my father just assumed that the guy was naturally like that, but after thinking for a bit he realized that it was the same guy.
#66
I did my bachelors in the US. [There was a] person that I had one class with in my freshman year, but never really talked to. Our interaction was limited to awkwardly white man smiling at each other when we walked by each other occasionally.
I graduate, move to London for my master’s.
My new uni is pretty elitist, top college usually reserved for a very narrow range of professionals, I have no idea how I got there. It was pure randomness.
As I leave my first day orientation, I walk by that same f*****g guy in the hallway. And all we do is white people awkward smile at each other.
#67
FB connections ALWAYS get me like that. Seeing friends from completely different circles and contexts that know each other...
#68
Not me but I read a story about a woman in the u.s. who had a special sweater with her name tag on it when she was young. It went to Goodwill or someplace and I think about 10 years later she was in the middle of Africa in a fairly primitive area and she sees this little kid with the same sweater on as confirmed by the tag.
#69
My next door neighbors. From my old state, moved into the house down the street from me.
I’ll see you in hot btw.
#70
The first time I traveled to another country.
I saw first have how similar people are. They go about their day, doing their best to have a decent life. Since then I've seen that in every nation.
#71
A girl transferred into my school when were 10 years old and befriended me, and then started bullying the s**t out of me while still masquerading as my friend. I ended up getting her expelled less than a year after she joined the school because she was a troublemaker all round and I just happened to know the truth behind everything she did because she told me, on top of just wanting to report her anyway for how she was treating me. The second she got expelled, she promptly disappeared from my life, and I never thought I'd see her again. Fast forward 8 years later - I'm now 18, living in a different town, in college, new set of friends, haven't seen anyone from my childhood in years. The b***h randomly shows up again, integrates herself into my friendship group and then f***s my boyfriend behind my back.
#72
I was talking to this girl online we were hitting it off then we kinda broke up and i was asking my other online friend for help, but the friend was the uncle of this girl and she was asking him for help too, but apparently she didn't know that he was talking to me and he also didn't know that she was talking about me until she mentioned it to him.
He felt super guilty, I was just major confused on what the chances are that, that would happen.
