Synchronicity Lost in Bath

[Susan Leybourne]

Hi Folks,
I wanted to share this as as a side effect of saying on the Billy Butler show last week that I get lots of weird anomalies on the phone, opened up the flood gate for another weird phone incident .
I was staying in Bath with my old friend James and his new girlfriend Mary. I had never been to James home before and another friend suggested I stay with them as I was attending an event in Bristol. Even though they would be away from home on Saturday night, they suggested I use the house anyway, let myself in and out and we would all meet up Sunday evening.
On Saturday night I was following the route back to the house, doing OK until none of it looked familiar. I had walked around and around for over an hour on a supposed ten minute journey. I was hungry and I needed the loo and there was no one in sight to get directions from. The mistake I had made was being collected in Bristol and let in through the back gate. Therefore, I had never seen the front of the house . I tried to call James on his mobile but they were in Devon, at another event which called for turning phones off. So after leaving my pathetic voicemail, started muttering to myself, " this ain't blooming right" "why do they have their phone off?" and saying out " loud Ring me James !" within about ten minutes I received a text message, which said " Did you find the address OK?" I rang the number straight away. " It's me, No I haven't found the blooming address, I'm totally lost but right by the school"
The voice on the other end said "If you are by the school you are in the right street, but who is this? ".
"It's Susan " I replied thinking what's he playing at. the voice on the other end said that he hadn't seen Susan in three years and he wanted to know why I was coming to his house.
"Is this James ?" I asked, " Yes" he responded, but I soon thought that he didn't sound like my James I realised I was speaking to a total stranger who had miss texted the number and I had received his message in error and I had just called a wrong number . I was indeed speaking to a stranger. I told him I was in Bath and he said he was in London and we both laughed at the Synchronicity, talked briefly about the weirdness of what had just happened and ended the call, but I followed the Stranger's advice in that he initially said that if I was in front of the school I was in the right street. I followed the wrong James information, and found the right James house in less than two minutes.
All the best
Susan

[ChrisDoman]

So the directions worked even though they were intended for someone else! Wow - this is like the idea of the philosophers stone - what you need is somehow given to you by the universe...

[jobsaboba]

So the directions worked even though they were intended for someone else! Wow - this is like the idea of the philosophers stone - what you need is somehow given to you by the universe...

where else could what you need come from ?

jobs

[MAC]

So the directions worked even though they were intended for someone else! Wow - this is like the idea of the philosophers stone - what you need is somehow given to you by the universe...

where else could what you need come from ?

jobs

One or two houses / universes over ?

Or ... simply the universe next door ?

Cam

[jobsaboba]

jobs

[Susan Leybourne]

Yes, The directions from the wrong James, helped me find the right James house. It was odd that both James' live opposite a school .

[Anthony Peake]

This reminds me of an event that took place about twenty three years or so ago. Myself and my then partner Jenny had been invited for a meal at a work associates home in the Suffolk village of Belchamp Walter. It was late November and a very foggy grey English autumn evening. Jenny and I drove over from Colchester and straight into deepest, darkest Suffolk. Now Suffolk is an intriguing county with lots of history, some of it very strange. For example close to where my friend Terry lived is the village of Woolpit. A very strange event took place here in the 12th century (http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/suffolk/folklore/the-green-children-of-woolpit.html) and a few miles in the other diresction can be found the village of Borley, notorious for Borley Rectory, supposedly the most haunted house in Britain (http://www.borleyrectory.co.uk/). The area has a haunting feel even on a Summer's afternoon but on a cold, misty dark November evening the country lanes go on forever and once off the main roads one can very easily get lost, particularly in the late 1980's before things such as sat-nav and mobile phones. Now I had never been to Terry's house. Indeed I had never been to that part of Suffolk before so it was a drive into the unknown.

Jenny and I left Sudbury and drove into the lanes. We quickly became disorientated by the myriad of tiny tracks, the cobweb of small lanes that seemed to go on forever and the ever thickening fog. Suffolk is very rural and sparsely populated and soon we were hopelessly lost in an area neither of us knew at all. Because road signs were also a rarity and many villages didn't announce themselves in any way we became quite confused. Indeed I was to subsequently discover that we had driven through Borley and that this village, because it is plagued by "ghost hunters" does not announce itself as being Borley .... so there we are driving down totally unlit country lanes. We did this for about twenty minutes and we were getting nowhere, probably simply going round in circles, or driving miles out of our way. I decided that we had to stop and ask where we where. We saw the light of a house a few scores of yards ahead and I decided to stop the car and get out to ask directions to Belchamp Walter. I left Jenny in the car and walked up to the front door. I knocked on the door and Terry answered it. "Great to see you, we were worried you might get lost in the fog." I just looked at him in shock. I took me a second or two to take in what had just happened. I then went back to the car to give Jenny the news that of all the houses in that part of Suffolk that I had seemingly picked at random was the one I was looking for. She was as stunned as I was. Indeed what was stranger was that we were due to arrive at eight o'clock and Terry informed me that my knock on his door coincided exactly with the eighth chime of his hall clock .... He had commented to his wife how punctual we had been!!!!

[Susan Leybourne]

Hi Tony,
Your story reminded me of an event many years ago, when I was working on a Japanese TV documentary called Wonderzone "the search for the Cottingley fairies" We were in Cottingley near Bradford trying to locate the waterfall where the girls had originally seen the Fairies. Frances who was one of the girls all those years ago had long since forgotten how to get to the place, so it was basically lost in the annals of time. The house where the girls had lived was now occupied by very unhelpful people who were not interested in helping the documentary crew. One of the other contributors, Joe Cooper, who wrote a book on the event, suggested that Susan tune in and find a friendly household, that might allow us through to the back of the house, where we might have a better chance of locating the waterfall. I tuned in and decided on a house, knocked on the door and asked the man if we might come through his home as we were looking for the waterfall. The man's face lit up as he told us "Come through it's at the bottom of my garden !"