I don’t believe in the paranormal, but I do love the stories. Nevertheless, I have had a few “odd” experiences in my life.

Two stories here. One is from a co-worker and one is personal.


First. I just got off of a casual zoom hangout with some co-workers. One of them told the story about his mysterious harmonica. Apparently in high school he had a rare harmonica in the G-key. One night he was talking with friends and placed his harmonica under the trophy display at his high school. Before he left, he grabbed it and put it in his pocket.

The next day, his buddy ran up to him and handed him “his harmonica” which he had “left under the trophy stand.” But my colleague still had his harmonica. He compared them. They were both in the rare G-key. They were identical models. And both were slightly bent in the same way (due to being sat upon in the back pocket). They weren’t identical, though. Apparently, the scuff marks on them were different.

This type of harmonica was fairly expensive so if it was a prank it cost his friend a bit of quid.

His only rational explanations were either (1) prank or (2) weird coincidence.

Second. Me, my best friend, and my sister went hiking one summer (likely 1999 or 2000). When I got back to my car, someone had left a car key on my windshield. They were for a Ford and looked identical to mine (i.e. a physical key attached to an electronic entry remote with buttons for door, boot, and panic). Obviously they weren’t mine since mine were in my pocket. I pressed the panic button to find out which Ford they really belonged to, and my car started beeping. OK. I tried using the physical key to unlock my car and it unlocked just fine. I placed the key into the ignition and was able to start my car.

When I picked up the car from Ford (it was used) it came with four sets of keys. Two were just the physical key, and the other two were physical keys with electronic entry remotes. One set with remote I kept in my pocket, the others I placed in safe places as backups: (1) work, (2) kitchen utensil drawer, and (3) knapsack.

My other key with electronic entry was accounted for (IIRC it was the one in my kitchen).

My friend and I (both sci-fi nerds) joked about time travel and how something bad happened in the original timeline that I was unable to deal with because I had lost my car keys. Maybe a future me had time traveled back to that time and left the car keys, but that caused enough of a change that the need for them never happened. It’s a fun idea, but of course I don’t believe it.

My only rational explanations were (1) the keys belonged to another car but were identical to mine or (2) I misremembered getting four keys from the dealer; but actually got five and somehow the fifth fell out of the car while unpacking.

Neither of these “rational” explanations is satisfactory, and this incident has always bothered me.

What anomalous personal objects have you encountered?