Several Spooky Synchronicities!

[ColinJ]

#1

I'd recorded yesterday's Tour de France stage and sat down last night to watch it but there was no sound. I checked the TV - it was okay (sound on BBC/ITV etc.). There was just no sound on the recording. Huh? Had Eurosport broadcast the thing with no sound - surely not? Then I noticed a funny little symbol on the screen - a picture of a loudspeaker with a cross through it. It suddenly dawned on me that I'd dropped my Times Sudoku puzzle book on the satellite box remote control that morning. It must have landed on the mute button - botheration!

Anyway, I started watching the race but got a bit bored with no commentary to listen to so I started stepping through the recording about 5 minutes at a time. It looked as though it would end in a bunch sprint so I hopped forward until there was about 20-odd km to go. I suddenly noticed something had happened because one rider had dropped back from the peloton and had blood on his elbow. I went to step the recording back a few seconds to see the crash but dropped the Hard-Disk-TV-recorder's remote control on the floor (had a clumsy day yesterday!). I picked the control up and suddenly became aware that the sound had come back on and the mute symbol on the picture had gone off.

So I started watching the coverage again but then realised that I'd recorded the race with no sound - how come I could now hear the commentary? It turned out that I'd stopped the playback and was now watching the highlights programme direct from Eurosport and it just happened to be at the exact same point in the race. Weird coincidence or what!

#2

That got me thinking back... In the 80s, I was a student living in Manchester. My flat didn't have a phone and this was in the days before mobiles, so when I did the dutiful son thing and phoned my mum once a week, I used to have to go out to a callbox on the corner of the street to make the call.

So there I was one evening. I dialled my parents' number and my mother answered.

"Hi mum"
"Is that you Colin?"
"Don't you recognise your only son's voice?"
"Oh it IS you - it's been a while since you phoned us..."

There was a loud click, then a hiss, then silence. I put the receiver down, and picked it back up again to redial my mother, but I heard a voice on the line. The call was still connected...

"Colin, are you there?"
"Yes, I am. Something went wrong with the phone just now"
"Why are you speaking in that strange voice?"

Coming to think of it, my mother sounded different too - as if she was aged about 25 rather than 60....

"What about you - you sound like a woman in her mid-20s!"
"I am a woman in her mid-20s!!!"

Something weird must have happened at the telephone exchange because I was now speaking to a woman who thought she was speaking to her boyfriend Colin. B/f Colin was actually engaged in a very confusing conversation with a 60 year old woman in the midlands !

It took a while for us all to work out what had happened. It was a very strange experience.

#3

It was a couple of years after The Big Break Up and I was at long last starting to feel more cheerful. I was working from home and suddenly found myself bursting into song as I typed away on my PC keyboard:

First I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live
without you by my side
But I spent so many nights
thinking how you did me wrong
I grew strong
I learned how to carry on
and so you're back
from outer space...


[At which point I decided to turn on my radio because I fancied listening to some music as I worked]

I just walked in to find you here
I just walked in to find you here
with that sad look upon your face
with that sad look upon your face

Bloody hell - I was now singing a duet with Gloria Gaynor! The radio was playing I Will Survive at the exact point in the song that I'd got to .



So... has anybody else had a Spooky Synchronicity that they'd like to tell us about?

 

[mickle]

Witch! Witch! Burn him!

 

[Fnaar]

Witch! Witch! Burn him!

Just before I read this I burned my finger on a saucepan in the kitchen!

 

[Globalti]

I have a couple but they are too complicated to explain on here!

 

[Dayvo]

Not really synchronicities, but strange, nonetheless.

At breakfast one Sunday morning at home (before my brother, sister and I moved out), the family were talking about the dreams we had had the night before.

My sister said that she had dreamt that she was driving a car through a park and knocked someone over and killed them!
I asked if it was a Mini, and she replied, 'er, yes!'
I asked her if it was a yellow Mini. The colour drained from her face as she said 'Ye-es!'
I told her that I dreamed I had been walking through a park and been knocked down and killed by someone driving a yellow Mini!

I had just arrived on a kibbutz in Israel; the first evening was spent sitting round a campfire getting to know the other volunteers. An English girl, who was slightly eccentric, to say the least, came up to me with a clenched fist and asked me if I knew what she was holding in her hand.
After saying that it could be absolutely anything, she told me to concentrate and I would know.
I didn't concentrate, but to keep her happy I hesitated with my answer before replying, 'A 10p coin.' She was astonished, opened her fist to reveal a 10p coin, and ran off to her group of friends, saying that there's some weird guy here!

But the strangest thing I have ever experienced was when I was working in Oslo 14 years ago and a friend said we should try and lift a chair off the ground whilst a girl was sitting on it.
My mate said we should take a leg each (of the chair, not the girl) and try to lift it. The four of us took a leg, but we couldn't raise it at all. He then said that we should stand facing each other, 2x2, and, in turn, put our right hands in front of us, palm down, followed by our left hands. Then we should remove our hands in the reverse order, and then try to lift the chair again.
We did this, and to my, and two of the others', utter amazement, we lifted the chair and the girl a couple of feet into the air as if it was weightless!
To this day I have absolutely NO idea how it happened!

 

[Speicher]

I have had many "synchronicities" over the years. (Note also that it is in my sig line). Far too many to detail them all. One funny one:

I was on holiday and the subject of old dances came up - bear with me on this - I was reminded of Mr Pastry's funny rendition of "Lancers".
I then said the the elderly gentleman sat next to me, "What is the real name of Mr Pastry?".

The gentleman looked absolutely stunned, and very anxiously/worriedly asked me why I thought he would know the answer to the question. I diplomatically tried to explain that he looked like he would know the answer, I did not want to say that he was the oldest person in my immediate vicinity . It turned out that he used to work with Mr Pastry's agent, and he wondered how I knew that.

I was phoned one day at work by someone we were exporting pictures to, who lived in Vancouver. He said he had met my uncle. Vancouver has several million people living there. Apparently my uncle was the owner of the company with which he had his insurance. Small world?

 

[terry huckle]

Look out for a change in your life. In my experience these things happen in clusters and seem to group around a transition of some sort.

Apart from that, enjoy these things! All mine, whilst sometimes unsettling, seem to have had humorous elements.

 

[ColinJ]

I was on holiday and the subject of old dances came up - bear with me on this - I was reminded of Mr Pastry's funny rendition of "Lancers".
I then said the the elderly gentleman sat next to me, "What is the real name of Mr Pastry?".

The gentleman looked absolutely stunned, and very anxiously/worriedly asked me why I thought he would know the answer to the question. I diplomatically tried to explain that he looked like he would know the answer, I did not want to say that he was the oldest person in my immediate vicinity . It turned out that he used to work with Mr Pastry's agent, and he wondered how I knew that.

Yikes!

I thought that I was getting old but I have only the very faintest memory of Mr Pastry!

Is this the dance that you are talking about?

 

[Speicher]

Yikes!

I thought that I was getting old but I have only the very faintest memory of Mr Pastry!

Is this the dance that you are talking about?

Yes, that's the one! I do not think my memory extends as far back as when he was live on stage, but I often saw "highlights" of his show on televison when I was very young. I do admit to having an excellent memory.

 

[ColinJ]

I've thought of another couple of spooky synchronicities...

#4

My sister and new hubby were on their honeymoon. I can't remember where it was, let's just say that it was in a remote little village in Italy. They had gone out for a meal and noticed that the couple at the next table sounded English so they leaned over and said hello. The two couples got on well and spent quite a bit of time together but didn't keep in touch after the honeymoon.

One year later, my sister and brother-in-law were on holiday in a little village in a quiet region in France. They had gone out for a meal and noticed that the couple at the next table sounded English so they leaned over to say hello and... almost died of shock ! Yes, you've got it and no, they weren't being stalked - pure coincidence! I suppose the only explanation was that both couples liked travelling to quiet european villages but how many of them are there? To independently pick the same dates for two different barely-heard-of villages - definitely spooky!



#5

The father of a mate of mine worked on the design of some part of Concorde. He flew out to the USA on it and was sitting in the bus taking him from the plane to the terminal building when he heard a voice behind him that sounded familiar. It belonged to someone who'd sat behind him at school and they hadn't seen each other for over 40 years!

 

[mickle]

Oh my god! My father worked on the design of some part of Concord! Spooky!

 

[ColinJ]

Oh my god! My father worked on the design of some part of Concord! Spooky!

Okay, now if it was (I think) either the brakes or the landing gear and he went to school in Coventry then we are definitely in spooky territory !

 

[cisamcgu]

#1

I went to step the recording back a few seconds to see the crash but dropped the Hard-Disk-TV-recorder's remote control on the floor (had a clumsy day yesterday!). I picked the control up and suddenly became aware that the sound had come back on and the mute symbol on the picture had gone off.

So I started watching the coverage again but then realised that I'd recorded the race with no sound - how come I could now hear the commentary?

I think it much more likely (since pressing the mute button does NOT cause a silent recording) that dropping the second remote control simply turned off the mute that the suduko book had turned on. Your TV was muted, not the recording (which will merrily record what ever you tell it, even if the mute button is pressed, in fact even if the TV is switched off at the time!)

So, not a spooky co-incidence, just a unlucky press of a mute button.


Andrew

 

[NickM]

I was sitting in a pub reading a novel called "The Lovelock Version" by the New Zealand author Maurice Shadbolt, who had died a couple of weeks before. It is largely a historical novel, but has a rather incongruous magic realist passage in which one of the characters, although living in the 1870s, steps into a shop in Auckland only to find that it is a bookshop in which the author of the book in which he is a character is holding a signing; the two have a conversation about the progress of the plot.

I paused after this chapter, and turned the book over to have a think. On the back of the dustjacket was a photograph of the author.

At that exact moment, a woman asked "Do you mind if we sit here?". I looked up, and replied "Not at all - be my guest" and her husband looked exactly like the man on the back of the book.

 

[mickle]

Okay, now if it was (I think) either the brakes or the landing gear and he went to school in Coventry then we are definitely in spooky territory !

Saunders Valve in Hereford. Making some of the ..er.. valves. So that would be not very spooky at all then.