The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (34 page)

According to the
Detroit Free Press
, in February of 2007, in the Paw Paw Township, Michigan, two brothers were killed in a head-on collision with each other. The brothers, ages twenty-four and thirty-three, shared a home. The elder brother lost control of his vehicle and crossed into the path of his brother's oncoming car. They were both pronounced dead at the scene.

TOLD BY AMBER GUETEBIER

In 2000, I traveled abroad for the first time and was happy to be visiting a friend who had recently moved to the beautiful city of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Upon arrival, the old friend met me, and we immediately began to wander the labyrinth of streets and canals. In the spirit of fun, we took several photos of ourselves, holding the camera up and capturing our own faces at funny angles.

After spending a few weeks in Amsterdam, I went on to travel to Ireland and Spain, returning to the Netherlands with a new beau in tow, just as spring was setting in. Happy to be back in the beautiful city, I started
looking for under-the-table work. A local restaurant hired me, and I was befriended by a kooky Englishman who told me about a cheap “squat” I could stay in, for the grand fee of ten U.S. dollars a month. My boyfriend and I jumped at the chance and promptly moved into the building. It was a run-down, leaning brick row house, with a flooded basement and three creaking floors, no running toilet, and a mixture of travelers from around the world, including an eccentric Irish painter, an Israeli soldier, and the wild Englishman.

Once we had a bit of money saved, and we knew we would be around awhile, I decided to get my rolls of film from the earlier part of my trip developed. It was then that I realized the coincidence: the first photograph that my friend had taken of us shortly after my plane touched down was in front of the very building I had ended up living in! Not realizing it when I went to the squat for the first time, I had to see the photo to realize I had been in the exact place where I would later live.

DESTINED TO LOVE

This is the story of John and Martha O'Brien, originally told to Phil Cousineau for his book
Coincidence or Destiny?
:

In 1989 a group of people from around the United States gathered in Paris to participate in a Bohemian Paris art and literary tour. On the third day of the tour, Martha Fletcher, a dancer from San Francisco, met John O'Brien, an artist from Greenwich Village, on a houseboat that rested on the Seine near the Pont d'Alma, in front of the Eiffel Tower. The two hit it off, but at the end of the tour they returned to their respective homes.

It wasn't until several months later, when Martha was moving into a new home that she realized that a photograph she had kept on her bulletin board since grade school was a painting of a houseboat on the Seine at Pont d'Alma, and the Eiffel Tower was in the background.

A few months later, John moved to San Francisco for the summer. With him, he brought a painting he had painted ten years before—of a ballerina with long red hair. The dancer looked exactly like Martha.

It was no surprise that the following summer the pair returned to Paris, John painting and Martha dancing. They spent a day in Moret sur Loing, a charming little village outside of Paris. At the end of the summer, however, they again parted, only this time John was returning to New York to move out to California permanently.
As he was packing his things he too came upon an old photo that he had kept for years. It was a photo of a painting of the little town of Moret sur Loing.

One year later, Martha and John married. One year after that, Martha was sorting through old boxes to make room for a nursery, and she happened upon a diary she had written when she was twelve. As she browsed through the pages, one line in particular stood out: “I wish I could be Michelle O'Brien.” Michelle O'Brien was a ballet dancer that Martha had admired as a youth. Two months later, Martha gave birth to their daughter, Michelle O'Brien.

TOLD BY DENISE MURPHY BURKE

Several years ago, I organized a Northwestern University reunion of my sorority sisters. We were all to stay at a sister's home in Santa Rosa, California. A group of about twenty of us were able to come, some from as far away as New York. I was immensely excited about the reunion and especially looking forward to the arrival of my best buddy, Barbara, from Ohio.

The afternoon prior to her arrival, I received a long-distance call from her. She said, “My suitcase is packed,
and my ticket is in my hand, but I just don't think I can come.”

It seems her son had called and begged her not to go. He had had a very powerful dream in which she was in a fatal accident at the reunion. My friend said that based on that alone she would have changed her plans. But her son had confessed to her that he had also had a similar dream three years before that his father would die very suddenly; five days after that dream his father died while taking a shower. His father was only forty-eight years old. The son felt somehow responsible for his dad's death, and due to his guilt had never shared the dream with his mom. But now he was desperate to convince her to stay home, and she did.

Even though Barbara wasn't with us, the first day was incredible. The plan for the second day was to take a horse-drawn, open-wagon ride through the vineyard countryside. That morning, nine of us climbed up on the first carriage as the driver was hoisting his large body into the driver's seat. Suddenly, the two horses mistook a loud sound for a signal to go. They lurched forward, throwing the driver on the ground. With no one to keep them in check, we were soon going at a full gallop!

I reached up to the driver's seat and pulled back on a large wooden lever, which seemed like it should be
the brake. The lever did nothing to slow the wagon, but I held on to it for dear life. The others threatened to jump, but I begged them to hold tight.

We were racing out of control, and all of a sudden, we realized the freeway was straight ahead of us. The horses were heading right for it. But as the horses approached the freeway, they took a sudden ninety-degree turn on two wheels onto a frontage road. At full speed, the horses headed directly for one of the telephone poles that lined the road. The pole ended up going right between the two horses, smashing the yoke and freeing them. Everyone but I was violently flung out of the carriage. Women lay strewn on the ground like rag dolls. No one sustained serious injuries. But when the police arrived and asked me the names of the others, I couldn't answer. I just kept wondering, “What would have happened to Barbara if she had gone with us?”

I think that a deep connection between mother and son saved her life.

“In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.” —WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

TOLD BY JOANNE WARFIELD