Sometimes, real life can be just as strange as fiction. These short stories start with normal, everyday moments — a late-night noise, a random coincidence — but quickly turn unsettling. They’re all based on events that could actually happen.

I live with my mom. One night, I couldn’t sleep and heard her walking around and cooking at 2 a.m. In the morning, she came home from her night shift and scolded me for leaving a dirty pan on the stove. She hadn’t been home all night.

At 2 a.m., I woke up to 16 missed calls and a text from my pregnant daughter saying, “Mom, help me!” I rushed to her apartment, but she’d been asleep the whole time. The message and a photo of a baby came from a panicked new mom who had accidentally dialed the wrong number.

I was adopted from South America and had no memory of my birth parents. In college, I had a mentor named Mike. Years later, I received photos of my late birth mother — and there was Mike in the pictures. He was my biological father.

A girl who had a crush on me somehow moved into the apartment directly across from mine, even though I never told her where I lived. In a big city, the chances of that being random were very low.

One morning, I took my usual meds and felt dizzy. The pills looked different, so I checked online — they were for a heart condition I didn’t have. The pharmacy had given me someone else’s prescription by mistake. Doctors later told me another dose could’ve been dangerous.

My mom once woke up to strange noises and called the police. It turned out my brother’s remote-control car had picked up radio signals and was crashing around the kitchen.

I once dreamed my husband and I had triplets, but they started disappearing one by one. A week later, I found out I was pregnant with three babies. Sadly, I lost them all due to complications.

My hallway light flickered every night at 3 a.m. I thought it was something paranormal until I realized it happened when my upstairs neighbor used the microwave.