Three Incredibly Strange Lottery Stories

Frane Selak, a Croatian music seems to have his own guardian angel assigned exclusively to him. In 1962 Selak was traveling by train from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik. The train derailed and fell into an icy river and Selak only suffered a broken arm and minor injuries. In 1963 Selak was traveling by plane from Zagreb to Rijeka and the cockpit door blew off the plane and Selak was forced out of the plane. He landed in a haystack. In 1966 Selak was riding on a bus that crashed into a river and suffered minor injuries. In 1970 Selak managed to escape just before his car burst into flames due to a malfunctioning fuel pump. In 1973 another car caught fire and Selak lost most of his hair but suffered no major injuries. In 1995 he was hit by a bus and once again escaped injury. In 1996 he drove his car off a cliff to avoid an oncoming truck and landed in a tree and watched in horror as his car exploded below him. In 2003 Selak's luck changed and he won $1,000,000 in the Croatian national lottery. Selak was offered a spot on an Australian Doritos commercial but refused saying he "didn't want to test his luck." One has to wonder; with all those miraculous escapes why he didn't play the lottery a lot sooner?

Another strange lottery story comes out of New Zealand. A North Shore woman said she purchased a lottery ticket on the advice from her late mother. The woman told the New Zealand lottery that her late mother came to her in a dream and told her to purchase a lottery ticket. The woman then went to Valentines Stationers in Takapuna and bought a $6 Lucky Dip lottery ticket and won $500,000 in the March 20th lottery draw. The unnamed woman stated, "I didn't even have breakfast; I just got up out of bed, went straight to the Lotto store and asked for the cheapest Lotto ticket." The next day her husband checked the ticket and realized they had won half a million dollars. The lucky couple did not cash the ticket until a month later when they journeyed to Wellington to collect the prize. The couple plan to help relatives and take an overseas trip with their winnings.

There have been other cases of dreams leading to big lottery wins. 86 year old Mary Wollens of Toronto, Canada won the Ontario lottery in 2006. Ms. Wollens had already purchased a lottery ticket and in a dream she says she saw "a large lotto ticket and a large check" in a dream. She then went out and bought a second lottery ticket with the same numbers. As it turned out having two tickets with the exact same numbers paid off big! There were three winning tickets and Ms. Wollens had two of them so instead of splitting a $24 million jackpot Ms. Wollens took home two thirds of the prize and claimed $16 million.