Eleven is the fool’s number in the Netherlands. 11 November (11-11) is the day the Councils of Eleven are elected. It marks the beginning of the carnival season ending in the celebrations of carnival in February. In the former Roman Catholic areas of the Netherlands, the south, forty days of fasting ended with a feast of excessive eating and drinking, in which people dressed in costumes. In any case, in the Netherlands, eleven is associated with oddity.

Apart from being the fool’s number, eleven is the first double-digit number. Eleven is like a repeating of the same strange event. That is often the nature of coincidences. Something unusual might happen. And that might make you wonder, but if something similar or related happens again shortly afterwards for unexplained reasons, that could be amazing.

There have been several incidents of this kind in my life. For instance, I was once making a bike trip. A car door suddenly opened in front of me. I could barely avoid a collision. Within ten minutes on the same trip, it happened again with another car on another road. These coincidences can occur by chance, but if many of such coincidences happen in one life span, that could make you wonder.

My son Rob had two biking accidents that injured him. The first happened near our home just before the home of a retired physician who could help him with his injuries. The second transpired on our holidays in Ameland just before the home of a retired physician who could help him. That is odd, even more so because these were the two only biking accidents he ever had.

Just before the discovery of Natural Money, a strange accident occurred before our house in Sneek. A car had crashed on a lamppost. The lamppost broke off. Two men stepped out and hared away. A few years later, I realised that the accident may have been a prelude to the deluge of strange events that came later on. That same day I biked towards IJlst, a village near home. There I found a broken-off lamppost already removed. That was remarkable because it was on the same road as our house as it is on the road to IJlst.

The following happened when I was visiting my father in Nijverdal. I was driving on a narrow road in the vicinity. An oncoming car hit the rear-view mirror, and it broke off. A few weeks later, my father had the same type of accident in his car. As far as I know, never before or after had anyone I knew had an accident of this kind.

Ingrid and I have one specific person with whom they can’t get along. They both have the same last name. In the case of Ingrid, the person has been a friend previously. She had unreasonable demands, so at some point, Ingrid decided not to see her again. In my case, it is the lawyer living next door. He first demanded to cut down the trees in my garden. Later he required me to remove overhanging branches. I did so without mutilating the tree. He later ordered his gardener to do a more thorough job, and now the tree is damaged. He further commanded that I would remove the pine needles that fell in his garden. This demand had no legal basis, and his actions may have been illegal, depending on how an expert would assess the damage done to the tree.

In August 2014, we were waiting for a traffic light near home in Sneek. In the back of the car before us sat a guy who looked like my cousin Rob. And so I told Ingrid about that. My cousin and I had been best friends for over a decade. We made the funny newspaper together. Immediately after I finished speaking, four trucks from the transport company Leemans came from the right. My cousin Rob had once decorated a truck of Leemans. When I was eighteen, I went with him on holiday, hitchhiking in Scandinavia. A truck driver from Leemans brought us to Sweden.

I had never seen a Leemans truck in Sneek before. They were there because of railroad construction work. My cousin came from Haaksbergen, a village halfway between Eibergen, where I was born, and Enschede, where A******* was born. In June 2015, we left Nijverdal after visiting my father. Haaksbergen was in the news because of a shooting incident.¹ Haaksbergen had been on the news a few times because of electricity failures,^{2 3}, skating,⁴ and a monster truck accident.⁵ And so I said to Ingrid that Haaksbergen is in the news quite often. Just after I had finished speaking, we passed a Leeman’s truck by the side of the road.

In 2014 a woman rang our doorbell. Her father was about to turn eighty. He had lived in our house during the 1950s. She wanted to give him a tour around his old home as a birthday present. She made an appointment to visit us the following Saturday. She showed up with her sister and father, and I gave them a tour around the house. A few hours later, the doorbell rang again. Ingrid opened the door to an elderly woman with her daughter and son-in-law. They asked if they could see the house because she had lived there in the 1960s. Both groups had taken up this idea independently and hadn’t spoken to each other.

In July 2014, we went on holiday to Sweden and Norway. My son Rob wanted to visit Hessdalen Valley. People have spotted mysterious lights there. Those lights look like orbs and are known as the Hessdalen orbs. Some people have claimed they were UFOs. When we were in Hessdalen, we went to a viewing point on the top of a hill. A few Norwegian guys stood there already for hours, hoping to photograph a UFO. We didn’t see anything unusual. We took some pictures of the environment. After we had returned home, we noticed orbs on one of the photos we had taken there. Orbs on photographs are a phenomenon unrelated to the Hessdalen orbs, so this is remarkable.

Latest revision: 8 February 2023

Featured image: Orbs on a photograph taken at Hessdalen, Norway (2014).

1. Schietpartij Haaksbergen, politie geeft beelden vrij en toont auto schutter. RTV Oost (7 May 2015) [link]
2. Leger helpt Haaksbergen bij stroomstoring. Nu.nl (26 November 2005). [link]
3. Stroomstoring treft Haaksbergen en omgeving. De Volkskrant (29 March 2007). [link]
4. Natuurijsbaan. Wikipedia. [link]
5. Derde dode door ongeluk monstertruck Haaksbergen [link]