"The Science of Premonitions" (Dr. Larry Dossey)

[Berserk]

By "science," Dr. Dossey has in mind replicable lab experiments that confirm compelling anecdotal cases. See the intriguing Dossey interview below:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...3D3569D21757F924BBFD3D3569D21757F92&FORM=VIRE

For me, the real "scientific" question here is this: When do mere "coincidences" become so improbable that it becomes reasonable to invoke paranormal causal agency apart from the space/ time continuum. For this thread I will initially focus on my own frequent experiences of premonitions. I invite readers to discuss these testmonies and post their own experiences with this phenomena.

 

[Berserk]

In my view, the premonitions I'll share establish the existence of a spiritual dimension. Here is my first premonitory experience :
(1) At age 19, I was a Winnipeg college student. About 5 years my senior, my friend Dallas was the leader of our church youth group of about 150. I had just been Best Man at his wedding and was now invited to the newlyweds post-Christmas dinner. After eating, we played table tennis in their basement. Dallas mentioned that he was going deer hunting in northern Manitoba the next day and I instantly felt a sense of dread. It seemed as if I saw his skeleton and was certain that he would be killed in an accident if he went on this trip. Horrified, I felt compelled to share my premonition with him. He was offended and blamed my so-called premonition on my anti-hunting views. I had no such views, though I've never gone hunting myself. What could I do? I had no evidence beyond my certainty. I guess I hoped God would confirm my premonition to Dallas.

A few days later, we had a New Year's Eve service at our church. What happened when I arrived at the church was straight out of a horror movie. 3 young girls in our youth group approached me, giggling, and said. You do know that Dallas was killed yesterday in a hunting accident. He was riding a snowmobile with his gun placed near him and hit a bump. The resulting jolt caused his rifle to discharge into his shoulder. He bled to death before his hunting buddies got him to a doctor. The girls giggled and one said to the other, "Wow, I guess we sure ruined his day!" It was as if Hell was taunting me for my friendship with Dallas! What was so funny about their youth leader's death? I charitably assumed that their was just a nervous laughter. I later obsessed over what this tragedy meant. Why was I given this premonition if it would be useless to prevent his death? And was his death predestined fate?

 

[Berserk]

(2) My next premonition after Dallas's accidental shooting happened just before Christmas at Princeton Seminary. I regularly dined with a great and very witty guy named Ted in our refectory. Ted already had 2 masters degrees and had just been accepted into the NT doctoral program at Cambridge U in England. I went to his dorm room to borrow his Cambridge catalogue, so I could apply to Cambridge as one of my potential grad schools. When Ted gave me the catalogue, I again seemed to see his skeleton in a premonition that his death was imminent. This time, though, I said nothing because I had no idea where the danger lay and, in any case, I had been unsuccessful in deterring Dallas from his hunting trip. When I returned to seminary after Christmas vacation, I learned that Ted and his friend Ken were driving home for Christmas together, but their car spun out on ice and crashed into a pole. Ken broke his arm, but Ted was killed. When I reflected on why I was given this premonition, the only interpretation that made sense was that I was meant to pray that Ted would be spared. Unfortunately, I could not bring myself to accept that the premonition was accurate and instead just tried to put it out of my mind. But I would soon learn that my premonitions were always accurate.

 

[George-ananda]

I invite readers to discuss these testmonies and post their own experiences with this phenomena.

Are these the only two times you had this type of premonitory experience?

I wonder if your thinking that you were 'given' these premonitions by an outside agency is not correct. It may be that premonitions are a real ability not understood. Many speculate animals (like dogs) have premonitions and it is easy to see why this ability gives selective advantage. Many think that humans succeed with logical/analytical thinking at the expense of their right-brained more psychic side.

 

[rocala]

Hi Berserk, a fascinating story. The part about the giggling girls is truly nightmarish. I presume that you were local to them? As time went by was there any further contact such as apology or explanation?

 

[Berserk]

Rocala, no, the giggling girls never apologized or explained themselves, but they certainly alienated themselves from me. Dallas worked hard as the leader of our youth group of about 150. He deserved some respect for his efforts, not laughter at his death. I truly felt like I was in a horror movie that night. Recently, my former church put out a large photo album listing all the church leaders from around 1938 to the present. Dallas's name was oddly missing from the otherwise complete list of the church's youth leaders. As his Best Man at his wedding, that omission greatly saddened me. He was a great guy. Nor could I face his wife who overheard my argument with Dallas about my premonition. Within months, I have moved to the USA to pursue graduate studies.

No, George, I have had other premonitions which I will describe in future posts. The truth is, I don't know. If, say, God or an angel gave me those premonitions, then my question is their purpose. What comes to mind is that I was given them to prompt my intercessory prayer for the person's safety. But I didn't do that in these 2 cases because I was determined to deny the reality of these premonitions. Like many others, I am normally oriented towards logical rather than intuitive thinking and I seem to drift back and forth between left and right brain dominance. As you will see, I have had other premonitions that seemed to have a different and clearer purpose. The issue is complicated by the lab research described in Dossey's book (see video) indicating that we are all capable of premonitions at any moment.

I created this thread for 3 reasons: (1) to raise the question of whether "miracles" are special acts of God which set aside the laws of nature or whether such paranormal experiences simply illustrate laws of consciousness, of which we are at best dimly aware; (2) to challenge conventional materialist perspectives of the universe; (3) to demonstrate how paranormal experiences are not always limited by time. As my next post will show, these questions profoundly affect theodicy, the philosophical/ theological problem of evil (unfair suffering, etc.).

 

[George-ananda]

No, George, I have had other premonitions which I will describe in future posts.

I enjoy paranormal subjects so I will await with baited breath.

(1) to raise the question of whether "miracles" are special acts of God which set aside the laws of nature

I think of it more like introducing a further 'willed' force into the equation but it's the same idea.

or whether such paranormal experiences simply illustrate laws of consciousness, of which we are at best dimly aware;

I think that is sometimes also the case.

(2) to challenge conventional materialist perspectives of the universe;

I'm the Poster Boy for challenging materialist perspectives on RF!

(3) to demonstrate how paranormal experiences are not always limited by time. As my next post will show, these questions profoundly affect theodicy, the philosophical/ theological problem of evil (unfair suffering, etc.).

Sounds like good discussions. The 'time' things can really play head-games with our conventional view of reality.


One more thing. When you respond to something on RF use the 'Reply' button on the lower right OR use an @ sign followed by the user name (i.e. @Berserk ) as that way the user receives an Alert letting him know someone replied to him.

 

[Skwim]

An interesting look at Dr. Dossey, of the OP link, and his veracity HERE, which starts out by saying:

"Be careful what you wish for, Dr. Dossey, you just might get it
If there’s one thing about the so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) movement that I’ve emphasized time and time again, it’s that its adherents have a definite love-hate relationship with science. They hate it because it is the single greatest threat to their beliefs system and the pseudoscience that underlies it. At the same time, they crave the legitimacy that science confers. They crave it not because they have any great love for science. Quite the contrary. It is simply that they recognize that science actually delivers the goods. Of course, they believe that they deliver the goods too, but they come to this belief not through science but rather through all the cognitive shortcomings and biases to which humans are prone, such as confusing correlation with causation, confirmation bias, not recognizing regression to the mean, and being fooled by the placebo effect. Whether it’s through a misunderstanding of science or less innocent reasons, they go to great lengths to torture it into superficially appearing to support their claims through a combination of cherry-picking of studies that seem to support them and misrepresenting ones that don’t, discussions of which abound right here in this very blog."​

.

 

[Berserk]

Well, Skwim, Dossey's studies have repeatedly been replicated, and he does claim that the experimenter's skepticism to the subject can inhibit positive correlations. Still, your point illustrates the reason for my question about "mere chance" in my OP. Readers will have to decide if there's a more mundane explanation of my premonitions. I think they refute a strictly materialist view of reality.

The relevance of premonitions to the problem of evil is eloquently illustrated by an experience of Methodist missionary, Dr. E. Stanley Jones. I myself am a retired United Methodist minister, who was previously a religious studies university professor for 12 years. Jones has been called the Billy Graham of India. He knew Mahatma Gandhi and wrote the book about him that inspired Martin Luther King. Jr.s nonviolent approach in the Civil Rights movement. Jones shares this paranormal experience.

He was scheduled to be a keynote speaker at a missionary conference in Dehli and needed to book a flight in Madras. As he waited in a very long line, he heard an inner voice warning him to get out of line. He dismissed this voice as personal paranoia. But as he drew closer to the front of the line, the voice became more insistent: "I said, `Get out of line!'" Shaken, he did so, and sheepishly called the man in charge of the conference and explained his embarrassing reason for backing out of his commitment. Well, the plane crashed and hundred of Indians (Mostly Hindus) were killed. The Indian press somehow heard about his premonition and several reportgers clamored for an interview. One reporter presumptuously said, "So in effect you're saying that God loves you as a Christian so much more than those Hindus that he alerted you, and let them all die!" Dr. Jones replied," O No, I'm sure that God loves all those Hindus at least as much as He loves me. It's just that I was the only one who knew to listen."

Now I wouldn't have made that claim, but his answer both intrigues and puzzles me, especially in view of my own premonitions. To me, it suggests that God limits Himself to certain laws of consciousness which some intuitives can benefit from either as an act of grace or as a developed gift--or both. Jones was a very cnntemplative man and that discipline may have aided his premonition. But ultimately I don't know the answer. Still, this story haunts me whenever I engage others in a discussion of theodicy. My other premonitions are less dramatic than this,, but are also relevant to this theological problem. I'll share them in future posts.

 

[Berserk]

(3) My next premonition at Princeton Seminary came in the form of a nightmare in which my life was threatened and I pleaded with God for mercy. The next day, I drove to the Newark College of Engineering, where I was doing field work as a chaplain assistant. As I was driving home in the dark on a freeway, my motor suddenly died and my car slowed to a stop. I was fortunate to walk off the freeway through the heavy traffic and my car was totaled by another car shortly thereafter. I called 2 friends, Mike and Peter, from my dorm and they came and picked me up. Both of them said they too had experienced a nightmare the night before. At least in this case, the premonition seems intended to alert me to my personal danger and to induce me to pray for God's protection.

(4) A subsequent premonition came to me when I was a professor in Western New York. Itinvolved a woman who read auras. I didn't believe in aura reading; so I dismissed her claim that I would soon overreact to a disastrous experience. At the time I was renting a nice garage apartment. I had just bought a Toyota in Colorado Springs (while visiting my brother) and had driven it back to western New York. I suddenly had a premonition of a threat to my new car. I asked my landlord if I could park it in his driveway, but he refused. The next day, I was watching late night TV, when I heard a loud crash. A drunken 19-year-old girl had crahed into my car parked on the street and totaled it. The aura reader was right: I did overreact, partly because of my anticipation that something like this was about to happen. I later asked myself if my premonition was intended to prepare me to embrace this mishap in the right spirit.

 

[Berserk]

(5) My next premonition was clearly the most edifying and I do consider it a manifestation of the spiritual gift St. Paul calls "the word of knowledge." I had just finished my year of teaching and was looking forward to a much needed vacation. It was Friday and I was contemplating travel plans, when I was overwhelmed by a premonition of an imminent death that would affect my life. But who and how? The more I tried to put my sense of dread out of my mind the stronger the impression grew. By Sunday, I feared it might be a premonition of the death of a close family member. That Monday morning, I was about to bolt out of my door to have breakfast at a favorite restaurant, when an inner voice seemed to shout, "Sit down! You are about to hear about the death!" Stunned, I sat down by the phone and instantly it rang. It was the professor in charge of our summer graduate theology program. She told me that Cassian, a visiting Catholic professor had not shown up for his first class (Pauline Theology); so some students went to the on campus apartment where he was staying and got no answer to their knocking. University officials opened the apartment and found Cassian dead in bed. My colleague said she didn't want to cancel the class and that I was the only professor still around qualified to teach that course on short notice. I agreed and had an unusually fulfilling teaching experience with a group of very intellectually curious grad students. in this case, I feel that God was preparing me to sacrifice my vacation plans. despite my fatigue, to fulfill a teaching role I might otherwise have rejected.

 

[Berserk]

Let me pause to reflect on the question of whether my premonitions require divine revelation or whether they might be explained in terms of poorly understood laws of consciousness and a fresh perspective on the classic mind/ body problem. Perhaps it is not either/ or. The fact that I saw into the future suggests that my mind was somehow able to perceive "outside of time." Of course, any claim of divine revelation precludes scientific testing. Should premonitions be understood in terms of an extended mind beyond conventional time or in terms of mind as just a function of the brain? Dossey's research has already been considered. But biologist Rupert Sheldrake has conducted many more well replicated experiments on the extended mind question on both animals and humans. Check out Sheldrake in this YouTube video entitled "The Extended Mind:"

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...5EBEF3610558D21D74775EBEF3610558D21&FORM=VIRE

Unlike Dossey, Sheldrake ties telepathy in with his well developed and experimentally based theory of morphic resonance that I suspect provides a definite upgrade to the conventional Darwinian principles of natural selection and genetic mutation. On this see:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...CF4DE2FE49720626754ACF4DE2FE4972062&FORM=VIRE

I'd love to hear your response to both these Sheldrake videos.

 

[George-ananda]

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...5EBEF3610558D21D74775EBEF3610558D21&FORM=VIRE

I just watched most of the first one (one hour and a half each). Now I think he is spending too much of his energy looking over his shoulder and responding to these devout no-holds-barred materialists (pseudo-skeptics who are often mislabeled 'skeptics'). I think he needs to move on and discuss details of his morphic resonance theory with diagrams and etc.. The number of experiments done followed by even more will never get the pseudo-skeptics to acknowledge the so-called paranormal. The problem is the media will always go to these pseudo-skeptics and the game goes on forever in the public mind.

Unlike Dossey, Sheldrake ties telepathy in with his well developed and experimentally based theory of morphic resonance that I suspect provides a definite upgrade to the conventional Darwinian principles of natural selection and genetic mutation.

I agree.

 

[Berserk]

(6) When I was a United Church of Christ interim minister in Buffalo, NY, Eleanor regularly attended our prayer group (4-6 people). As in my present location in Washington state, we were amazed by our answers (e. g. Doctors decreed that a baby would not leave the hospital alive, and the baby was healed!). But that's not why I'm talking about Eleanor. I'll never forget the note attached to my windshield wipers after I finished a long walk. It said that Eleanor had just been killed in a fiery car crash. In her totaled car were several get well cards that she had planned to send to sick people or people in surgery.

After the funeral, I met her sister Joan in a restaurant. Joan's grief was sweetened by a dream premonition Eleanor had related to her on the day of the fatal crash. Eleanor was in her house, when her late husband Nick came downstairs and said, "Come on up, honey. I want to dance with you again." Eleanor saw some deceased relatives upstairs and sensed that "upstairs" was a symbol for the afterlife and that "dance" was a symbol of death. She loved to dance with Nick, but this time declined, saying, "O no, I'm not ready for that yet." By late afternoon she was dead.

Joan shared this verification. At roughly the time Eleanor died, the cuckoo clock in the living room stopped. The same clock had stopped many years previously when her husband Nick suffered a fatal heart attack, shoveling snow and when her son, Nick, Jr,, recently committed suicide, distraught over his failed marriage. These odd coincidences, and especially the dream premonition, convinced her sister Joan that a divine providence was mysteriously at work in the timing of Eleanor's death.

 

[George-ananda]

Joan shared this verification. At roughly the time Eleanor died, the cuckoo clock in the living room stopped. The same clock had stopped many years previously when her husband Nick suffered a fatal heart attack, shoveling snow and when her son, Nick, Jr,, recently committed suicide, distraught over his failed marriage. These odd coincidences, and especially the dream premonition, convinced her sister Joan that a divine providence was mysteriously at work in the timing of Eleanor's death.

Interesting to me is clocks show up in so many stories again and again.......I wondered if Moody touches on this?

 

[Regolith Based Lifeforms]

Well, Skwim, Dossey's studies have repeatedly been replicated, and he does claim that the experimenter's skepticism to the subject can inhibit positive correlations. Still, your point illustrates the reason for my question about "mere chance" in my OP. Readers will have to decide if there's a more mundane explanation of my premonitions. I think they refute a strictly materialist view of reality.

The relevance of premonitions to the problem of evil is eloquently illustrated by an experience of Methodist missionary, Dr. E. Stanley Jones. I myself am a retired United Methodist minister, who was previously a religious studies university professor for 12 years. Jones has been called the Billy Graham of India. He knew Mahatma Gandhi and wrote the book about him that inspired Martin Luther King. Jr.s nonviolent approach in the Civil Rights movement. Jones shares this paranormal experience.

He was scheduled to be a keynote speaker at a missionary conference in Dehli and needed to book a flight in Madras. As he waited in a very long line, he heard an inner voice warning him to get out of line. He dismissed this voice as personal paranoia. But as he drew closer to the front of the line, the voice became more insistent: "I said, `Get out of line!'" Shaken, he did so, and sheepishly called the man in charge of the conference and explained his embarrassing reason for backing out of his commitment. Well, the plane crashed and hundred of Indians (Mostly Hindus) were killed. The Indian press somehow heard about his premonition and several reportgers clamored for an interview. One reporter presumptuously said, "So in effect you're saying that God loves you as a Christian so much more than those Hindus that he alerted you, and let them all die!" Dr. Jones replied," O No, I'm sure that God loves all those Hindus at least as much as He loves me. It's just that I was the only one who knew to listen."

Now I wouldn't have made that claim, but his answer both intrigues and puzzles me, especially in view of my own premonitions. To me, it suggests that God limits Himself to certain laws of consciousness which some intuitives can benefit from either as an act of grace or as a developed gift--or both. Jones was a very cnntemplative man and that discipline may have aided his premonition. But ultimately I don't know the answer. Still, this story haunts me whenever I engage others in a discussion of theodicy. My other premonitions are less dramatic than this,, but are also relevant to this theological problem. I'll share them in future posts.

I know what this is, i've seen it too and my skepticism did NOT inhibit the positive correlations, it made them 'worse'. This was NOt something to ignore and it scared the living sh*t lout of me because i was so skeptical and non-accepting of the repeating coincidences AND the poor people i was dealing with, WITHOUT Compassion until i decided to try to rest it. Based on the information coming in the coincidences, i decided to take a different approach by actually testing the information or at least researching it. I found so many seemingly impossible correlations that i began to notice they basically behaved in a way that was consistent with each occurrence. That told me i had something affecting physical mass in a predictable way and yes, it definitely included a lot of verifiable information from... uh, someone i love who is deceased. I tested that too and got consistent results every time. I got hold of it now and i know how to use it a bit for very good purposes, but my favorite thing about it is that it can deliver useful information about things you can't see yet. A perceived premonition will always be accompanied by a coincidence that is so well placed and timed, that it can't be anything else. If you are clear, healthy well tuned and practiced with it those coincidences will always come just before you really NEED that information. When the real situation actually occurs, i find that the information is a very close match to it and i automatically know just what to do. That's the most amazing part. I'm so far ahead of the situation that what would normally be very bad circumstances for me are rendered harmless as i blow right on by without any resistance, or i'm gone before it even happens. it's a really great way to detect the hidden intentions of others and the really vivid premonition dream is especially accurate and useful for avoiding such horrors as car accidents involving little kids.
That one actually happened, but instead of having my car in motion i saw the kid,locked the brakes and turned off the engine. The very mother in my dream and that very kid in front of my car approximately 36 hours after the dream! I notified mom of her wayward kid and she was pretty shocked to see where her kid was just seconds after looking away.
I CANNOT make this **** up! i have no idea what's around the next corner or at the next stop, but when the situation's information matches the premonition's information and the preceding physical coincidence's information are a match, I KNOW the actual situation as soon as i see it! there is no greater form of proactive response to a given situation and I'm very happy in my life because of this coincidence phenomenon thing. From what i can tell, the whole thing including deceased loved ones is something woven into the fabric of the universe. It's effects are not supernatural because they are affecting physical reality, mass, force, and all living things as well as inanimate materials through out the entire universe. In the deep universe pics from the Hubble Space telescope and in every random scattering pattern of any material you can think of, there is a recognizable pattern. recognizable because it occurs everywhere at all scales of size from the smallest quantum light scattering effect to the colorful glowing clouds of indistinguishable galaxies at the edge of the viewable universe, the pattern's smaller features which are identical from one natural phenomenon to another seem to most closely match the crystalline structure and typical features to be found observed and matched to ... ya know what? This is still so weird to me but.. Star sapphires. I actually compared my star sapphires to space pics and it sure looks like a pretty close match to me. maybe these premonitions and coincidences have something to do with a kind of mathematically repeating, but very complex crystalline structure. The structure is base on very simple geometry that is multiply superimposed over itself so many times that the original hexagonal structure is all but completely hidden, but still visible to a trained eye. I used the scientific method as my guide to observe and test this thing to see if it could even be real, i'm publishing it here and it looks like i have some peer review that may support my claim up above me here. Rip me to shreds if you think i'm FOS.
I CAN'T unsee what i've seen and my life is forever changed from what it was, much for the better, so whatever it is,
I LIKE It!

 

[George-ananda]

@Regolith Based Lifeforms Can you give us a typical example of what this phenomena looks like? Maybe explain the one with the car/mother/kid again more slowly as I didn't understand it.

 

[Regolith Based Lifeforms]

Yes, here's an example: I meet some folks that seem strangely like family, but they are very different from me and the family i grew up with. I recognize their set of information as identical to a set of information i have within me, but until i meet them, there is no way for me to understand my set of information that bears no symmetries to my environment, family or any of my friends that i grew up with. At 7 years old i have a vivid dream of a Hispanic man i have never seen. He's crying and telling me that something i've done has caused the ruination of his education, his career and life, but i cannot determine what it is and i cannot speak in the dream to ask him what it is. After 41 years, this is a still vivid memory, i'm 48 and living in Colorado for the last 18 months, hanging out in a bar and hoping to get a job there as a bartender.
On May 10, 2010 i left California for Colorado and i had another one of those very rare vivid dreams,just days before leaving Cali. It seemed to be showing Colorado from the beginning to the end of my stay there, like a long all night movie. Lo and behold, the first incident from the dream was getting pulled over by the state troopers, just inside the Colorado state line, let go without a ticket, then saw Grand Junction where i stopped for gas with it's long loopback detour to get back on I 70 East and just crawling with sheriffs and cops at the moment of my passing through, JUST like in the dream.
I had many such instances of recognizing people and places from that dream.
On November 19, 2011 at 12:00 noon this guy comes through the bar looking for his sister who is a fairly regular customer. She's not there, so he leaves. At 2 PM he comes back and comes directly toward me, (oh, sh*t) why am i afraid? He's not big or threatening in any way and very soft speaking. He also happens to be vaguely Hispanic. He asks if i remember him and i say "yes, you're *****, ***'s brother, i remember i met you in August for just a brief moment, how are you?" The next thing he says is really the strangest thing i've ever heard. He immediately says "(My name), I'm having a problem you might know something about and can help me with, would you please come to my home with me, so we can have a drink and discuss it there."
......!
Now i'm more afraid, still don't know why. All i can think of to say is "THIS IS HIGHLY IRREGULAR. Can't we just go to the other bar up the street?"
He said he didn't want to air his business at the bar at all. Now right here, the bartender who has known and worked with this guy for twenty years tells me he's completely OK and tells me to go ahead, don't worry about a thing. When we go inside his apartment, BOOM! i recognize it immediately! What do not see is why i would have any reason to be afraid of him in his surroundings. it all looks really nice and well kept. I gradually lose my fear and think he's a really nice guy after all. The dream gave NO indication that he was dangerous either and i quickly recognized him, categorized as "the nice man" from my dream just before coming to Colorado. I DO NOT recognize him from my dream from my childhood, but for some reason that's the farthest thing from my mind. I began to spend more time with him and he was mentoring me on how to be more mature, Real and Honest. Why? Because he could see i wasn't really any of those things - FACTUAL and correct.
He asked me a very personal question about my sexuality to which i obviously lied, but he appeared to be kind and gentle about it at first.
On December 26, after about 6 weeks of keeping up this lie he really caught me up and gave me the business over just about everything i was doing. His anger boiled over and as i tried to leave he became violent and i could not get away from him at all until i let my jacket slip over my head as he was holding onto it instead of me. I called the police and filed an autographed report against him for assault and didn't see him for three days. On December 29, 2011 i saw him again and we had a calm discussion about what had happened and he asked me if i had signed that police report. Yes.

"(My name), By signing that report, do you know what you've done? "
(In Colorado it's impossible to withdraw a criminal assault charge if you have filed a signed complaint)
" This has ruined everything! my school, my career, my whole life! "
And he was crying.
I stayed around him after his time in jail and tried to help him reconstruct his life, but it was pretty much impossible. As i spent more time around him i got to know more about him and this is when i found out how similar we were in some profound ways. I discovered that my mysterious set of information was a match for him and his family. I also met his deceased father, by actually putting on the man's ring he had left to my friend before he died in 1998. Why did i even do that? i have no idea.
Dad was a distinctly recognizable presence and he showed me something amazing and real and as awake and alert can possibly be. This presence wanted me to go to the bar up the street and to do it immediately, so i went, wondering what i might see. Sure enough in about a minute a man at the bar with Dad's same first name began to describe how he had addressed a disrespectful colleague at the college where he worked that day. I already knew what my friend sounded like and apparently, now i was getting to hear what Dad sounded like when he was alive! It turns out that Dad drove me to go to the genealogy dpt. of the city library. In the records i found a branch of my genetic relatives under MY full name. My great great uncle came to the town in 1871 and his descendants showed to be living there as of the 1940 census. I also learned where My grandfather's oldest brother AND my middle name came from for the first time!
How did i come by this? By looking up my friends ancestry first, NOT mine! I also got my friend's dad's name, with a middle initial E. ... pretty weird, but at this point, business as "usual" ??
So, ...ok, i'll just ask him, it seems to work.
I say "Dad, what's your middle name?"
Dad: "Ephraim."
I immediately headed from the library for my friend's sister after that,
(he was in trouble again and unavailable for comment)
hoping to find her at her favorite haunt - Bingo!
I ask:
"(Her name), What's your dad's middle name?"
Her: "Ephraim".
She had NO IDEA where i had just arrived from.

 

[Regolith Based Lifeforms]

As for the child in front of my car, that was fairly simple. Just last year, May 19, i had a dream about backing out of a parking spot at the grocery store right next door to me and a kid falling down in front of my car, so close it looked as though i hit him and hearing the mother start screaming. In the dream it was about middday, sunny and warm. I'm in my car and i see this little kid (boy) walk from beside his mother who was already parked, next space to my left. Gold Mercury Villager minivan. Mother is standing on the passenger side of her vehicle, baby girl in arms, little boy about five standing at her right side. In just seconds he's quietly walking toward a point in front of my car, but as he's in front of the car and i'm backing up there should be no problem, right? Not in this dream, it was just too close to tell if he hit his head on any part of my car because he was so short that i could not see him over the hood of the car.
- BAAAH!
I wake up rather upset at about 5:30 AM and immediately decide i MUST keep an eye out for this in real life! may 20 passes uneventfully and is cloudy and cool, but May 21 is a bright sunny day and I'm AT that grocery store next door, fully awake and alert at 11:30 AM. I parked in the only spot i could for that near the door and it WAS the same spot i parked in during the dream. NO minivan to the left of me, i run in and back out of the store in about 7 minutes, got in my car, started up the motor and looked left. There's the minivan, the mother standing on the passenger side of her vehicle, baby girl in arms, little boy about five standing at her right. I RECOGNIZED the little boy, so i said to myself, "Let's see what happens" and with a gleeful smile i locked the brakes, shut the engine off and watched closely. In just seconds the boy inexplicably walks away from his mother's side, directly to that point in front of my car, disappearing completely below the hood of my car. ther was a planter curb in front of my car as well for the child to trip over and not much room between that and the front bumper.
I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT!!!
In the real waking life version of events i let out a wailing "HEEEEEEEEYYYY!!!", then hollered "DO YOU SEE WHERE YOUR KID IS?!" to the mother, who was shocked at how far her kid had gotten in just seconds.
She gabbed him up and thanked me profusely, but i told her to thank my dream from 36 hours prior instead, because without that, if that kid had walked over to the front of my car and fallen down over that curb, my car would have been in motion and it would have been a very bad scene. Mother was looking down into her purse and digging while this was going on BOTH times, so she would not have seen the full sequence of events and i certainly might have been in big trouble for being so careless and assuming that the child would be safe.

 

[Regolith Based Lifeforms]

In the interest of testing for this coincidence/premonition thing and to put constraints on possible influences by the other stories on this thread, i have only read the top post until now. As i begin to read, it's already that very same weirdness i have come to be familiar with.