Strange Coincidences — Nobody Believes Me

i know how this sounds. i know. i dont drink, i dont smoke, i work as an engineer, and i have a good memory. just for context. a few years ago i was driving at night — long highway, middle of nowhere, no streetlights. around two in the morning. completely straight road, almost no other cars. i put on a podcast and drove. then i see it — three lights ahead of me on the horizon. not blinking, not moving. just hanging there in a triangle shape. at first i thought — a tower maybe, or a plane. but they werent moving at all. i drove toward them for about five minutes — they didn't get any closer or farther. then i blinked — i dont know how else to describe it, like a frame just got cut — and they were gone. thats it. darkness. highway. podcast still playing. i pulled over. got out. silence, stars, nothing. okay, i thought. fatigue hallucination, happens. got back in, kept driving. then i looked at the clock — 4:18. i left at one in the morning. to that point on the highway — i know it well, drive it all the time — its exactly one hour. an hour and a half at most. three hours had passed. the podcast — id been listening from the very beginning — was halfway through the second episode. each episode is 40 minutes. so roughly 60-70 minutes of audio had played. but three-plus hours of actual time. im sitting on the shoulder at four in the morning just staring at the clock. phone battery was normal. car was fine. i felt fine, nothing hurt, head was clear. just the time. i didnt tell anyone for two years. then i told a friend — he laughed and said "you obviously fell asleep at the wheel and dont remember it." maybe. but i have never once fallen asleep driving. and if i had — i wouldnt have stayed on a straight highway for another 60-70 minutes of podcast. one detail i cant explain at all and try not to think about — the seat. i always have it pushed all the way back, im tall. when i pulled over and got out — when i got back in — it was moved forward. not by much. but noticeably. i had to adjust it. i was alone in the car.

I have a son. He's still little. We started noticing strange things back when he was just a baby. During the period when he cried a lot from colic, a glass baby food jar would crack — and it happened more than once. Once a vase cracked too. But at the time we were just puzzled, wondering how his crying could possibly cause something like that. Then it got worse. When he got a bit older, my wife and I had a serious argument one day — we weren't screaming at each other, but we were definitely raising our voices. Our son wasn't crying, but he was just standing there staring at us, and then we heard a crack. A fracture had appeared on the window. We were in shock. At that point you can't just chalk it up to a weird coincidence or loud crying anymore. He doesn't go to kindergarten. He went for about a week, and then something bad happened. He came home and said he never wanted to go back — that the kids were mean, that two boys kept pushing him around and calling him names. And wouldn't you know it: that very same day, a window in his classroom shattered. The teacher said someone must have thrown a rock from outside. Let's just say there's reason to believe the glass wasn't broken from the outside. Have we taken him to any specialists? No. I don't want my child hauled off for some kind of experiments. But I don't know what to do either. I can't keep him locked away at home his whole life just so nobody notices. I'm posting this in case anyone has already dealt with something like this. If you have, hit "Been there." At least I'll know we're not the only ones — and that everyone else is just keeping quiet about it too.

i dont even know where to start because every time i try to tell this out loud i hear how it sounds myself anyway. three years ago i was traveling to a funeral for a distant relative in another city. bus ride, five hours, i slept the whole way. woke up at some stop — twenty minute break, everyone got off to stretch. i got off too, bought coffee from a kiosk, sat down on a bench. there was a woman sitting next to me. elderly, ordinary looking. we started talking, just to pass the time. she asked where i was headed, i said to a funeral. she said she was sorry for my loss. then she asked, do you think about it much? about death? i said well, lately yeah, stressful job, anxiety. she went quiet for a moment and said "you know, everything is going to be okay for you. you in particular. i can just see it." i didnt think much of it. people say all kinds of things. the bus started moving. i went back to my seat. after a while i looked around — the woman hadnt come back. she wasnt on the bus. i figured she must have gotten off at that stop. okay, fine. arrived, funeral, the usual. two days later heading back. and heres the thing. im waiting for the bus, talking to a distant aunt i hadnt seen in years. i tell her about the stop, the woman. i describe her — grey coat, hair pulled back, thin-framed glasses. my aunt gives me this strange look and goes, wait. takes out her phone. scrolls through photos. shows me. it was her. the same woman. my aunt says thats my neighbors mother. she passed away. in april. i was going to the funeral in october. i still think about it — maybe it was just someone who looked similar? maybe i remembered wrong? but i have a very strong visual memory, its actually something people notice about me. and the coat. and the glasses. and the way she was sitting. and thats not even the strangest part. the strangest part is that things genuinely did get better for me after that. and i dont know what to do with that.