We’ve all experienced instances of synchronicity in our lives, moments that seem so incredibly coincidental it’s as if the cosmos themselves are laughing at us. The Ghost Diaries decided to gather the most haunting coincidences ever reported. Prepare yourself for some of the most sinister examples of synchronicity you could possibly imagine…and remember, they actually happened!

Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym’



Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym tells the tale of four shipwreck survivors who are stranded at sea and finally decide to kill and eat the cabin boy, named Richard Parker.

A few years later, in 1884, a real ship by the name of the Mignonette experienced the same fate: the officers on board, starving to death and losing their minds, killed and ate the cabin boy, who’s actual name was….wait for it…Richard Parker.

You Will Die By This Bullet



In 1883, Henry Ziegland broke off his relationship to a longtime girlfriend who then killed herself in sorrow. The woman’s brother devoted his life to hunting Ziegland down and murdering him. And he did so, shooting Ziegland before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide. But Ziegland was not dead; the bullet had grazed his face and then lodged itself into a tree, leaving Henry injured but alive.

Years later, Ziegland decided to cut down the very same tree that had the bullet lodged in it. But when the trunk proved too bulky for his landscaping capabilities, Ziegland used dynamite. The blast sent the bullet air-born once more and, as fate would decree, straight into Henry’s head. This time it stuck.

JFK predicted his own death



You could fill a library with all of the conspiracies, anomalies and coincidences swirling around the date of November 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But this is not about the Lone Gunmen theory or the grassy knoll. Rather, this coincidence concerns something you may have never heard of: the fact that JFK actually predicted his own death, hours before it happened.

While reassuring wife Jacqueline Kennedy, who was severely disturbed by a funereal anti-Kennedy ad posted in the Dallas Morning News, John reportedly said: “Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?”

If that’s not enough, read the list of similarities between Lincoln and Kennedy. Brace your head for some spinning.

The Curse of James Dean’s car



Forever cementing the phrase “It’s better to burn out than fade away” into the pantheon of American counterculture, James Dean died in 1955 when his Porsche sports car crashed virtually head-on into a Turnipseed Ford at speeds of 70-75 mph. What you might not have heard is the strange epilogue of death that haunted his car afterwards.

When the car was towed away from accident scene, the engine slipped out and shattered a mechanic’s legs. Later, the engine was bought by a doctor, who used it in his own racing car. This doctor was killed in a racing accident shortly thereafter. Another racing driver was killed in his car during that same race; his car happened to be fitted with James Dean’s driveshaft. The garage that housed James Dean’s Porsche while it was repaired was destroyed in a fire and, while on display in Sacramento, the car fell off its mount and shattered a kid’s hip.

Mark Twain and Halley’s Comet



Celebrated satirist and author Mark Twain was born in 1835 on the day of the appearance of Halley’s Comet. In 1909, Twin predicted he would die the day the comet returned, and he did. Perhaps Twain, knowing he was near death, pushed himself along so that his demise would coincide so fantastically with Halley’s arrival. Or, perhaps his fate was irrevocably linked with a rock hurtling through space.

Lightning Strikes…Four Times



In 1918, a bolt of lightning struck the battlefield of Flanders, knocking British officer Major Summerford off his horse and paralyzing him from the waist down. Six years later, a retired Summerford was fishing alongside a river when another lightning bolt struck a nearby tree. The tree landed on him, severely injuring him once again. Two years later, when Summerford had finally recovered from his injuries and could walk, he took a stroll in a park, where he was struck once more by a lightning bolt. This time, he was permanently paralyzed. Summerford died two years later.

End of crazy story right? Wrong! Four years later, a lightning bolt struck the cemetery where Summerford was buried, destroying a single tombstone: that’s right, Summerford’s.

The Dark Knight and Domestic Terrorism



In 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside an Aurora movie theater during the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. The shooter, James Holmes, who believed he was the Joker character from the Batman series, armed himself in tactical gear and killed 12 people before surrendering to police. Five months later another shooter, Adam Lanza, killed 26 people, including 20 children, at the Sandy Hook elementary school. On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev detonated two bombs at the Boston marathon, killing 3 and wounding 264.

The coincidence? The Dark Knight Rises contains a shot of a map featuring Sandy Hook. And the Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar…his name is pronounced Jo-kar, or Joker.

9/11, the Simpsons, and Predictive Programming



Above is the original cover for a Coup album, designed in June of 2001.

Like the JFK assassination, the events of 9/11 are festooned with eerie coincidences and anomalies, enough to make any conspiracy theorist feel like he’s losing his mind. And he probably is. But what many people don’t know is that some of the strangest 9/11 symbolism took place before the attack ever occurred, in the form of coincidental media images that seemed to prophesize the biggest terrorist attack on American soil.

Is it sheer coincidence, or evidence of predictive programming? Perhaps it goes even further: what if the secret cabals that plan these events communicate to one another through the media, planting details of false flag attacks and other conspiracies right under our noses.







Got some coincidences creepier than these? What about the psychic that predicted John Lennon’s death or the novel that foresaw that sinking of the Titanic? Personal, historical, conspiratorial, controversial–we’d love to hear about it.

Sheer coincidence, synchronicity of evil, predictive programming, or all of the above…?