One small reason I Believe - I know I'm goinna get blasted....

[Kilgore Trout]

Additionally, it's amazing how much of our memories are created retroactively, based on how we want or expect situations to be explained, or to have them fulfill the need to coincide with a pattern even though one doesn't actually exist.

 

[Nepenthe]

Additionally, it's amazing how much of our memories are created retroactively, based on how we want or expect situations to be explained, or to have them fulfill the need to coincide with a pattern even though one doesn't actually exist.

Beat me to it.
It's diffcult to ascribe much meaning to such incidents in the OP save that I'm glad it worked out for the best. We're notoriously bad at interpreting the likelihood of events; we're pattern seeking animals and our brains are inherently wired to ascribe meaning and statistical relevance to mundane coincidences. The Birthday Problem is one of the more famous examples of how bad we are at judging the likelihood of something.
Like ATS said, memory is malleable so we can remember events incorrectly and reinterpret or fill in the gaps according to our preconceptions.

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

Faulty memory or weighting significance to rare coincidences thereby giving the overall impression of a consistent pattern where there isn't any such thing seem to me very plausible explanations for many weird phenomena. Causually I think there are exceptions but not with much of a strong conviction because of the very obscurity involved in weird phenomena.

There may be many mysterious things happening or there might not. Its a bit of a mystery.

 

[stars]

I put a pot on the stove, turned it on, and never turned it off.

The rest was told to me by my mother-in-law (may she rest in peace).

 

[Alceste]

I put a pot on the stove, turned it on, and never turned it off.

The rest was told to me by my mother-in-law (may she rest in peace).

I think the implication is that your mother-in-law may not have accurately recalled the sequence of events that led her to drop by. For example, if she'd dropped in and nothing was amiss, would she have come to believe she was taking orders from a Saint? The overarching narrative was probably created after the fact, if your mom-in-law's mind worked anything like the rest of ours.

IMO, the faulty memory explanation is not particularly satisfying (it doesn't account for the aspects of my experiences that involved other people, major alterations in my routine or direction that I believed to be the result of an irresistable impulse, and facts I could not have known) but I certainly can't rule it out.

I've often thought of trying to keep a journal of every such impulse and dream and the following events, but since I haven't done it, I've got nothing to produce against the faulty memory argument, or even to demonstrate convincingly that these events actually occurred. So I normally keep them to myself except in the company of other people with similar experiences.