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Post by turbonium on Jan 3, 2006 3:42:44 GMT -4
I might have felt foolish posting this topic in years past, but as I get older (I mean "mature" ) I find it unimportant to worry about being heckled over such things. Some may see it all as complete nonsense, because of the huge industry existing with phony "psychics", etc. on TV, newspapers, so-called "Prophecy" websites, and in little "Tarot Card Reader" or "Crystal Ball Reader" type of shops just off your local Main Street. While I agree 100% with this view regarding the overall "scam" industry, one area outside of this has proven, even if only to myself, to be worth mentioning. First, it's obviously nothing "provable" in the basic definition of offering tangible, supportable evidence. How can one prove a "sense" or "feeling" that warns you to not "do this", but to "do that" instead? Two separate times some years ago I experienced a very displeasant, "dark" feeling during the time when the people I was with, or soon to be with, met tragic fates. I should also note there were a couple of other things "psychic"-related. I won't go into the details of these events right now, but I was interested in knowing - have any others here experienced anything along these lines? Most here like to stick with scientific or "down to Earth" topics, which is why I thought it might spur something quite far from the usual threads.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 3, 2006 5:41:06 GMT -4
I think you’ve described a classic problem with trying to examine supernatural events. Namely, focusing on events that did happen and not the hundreds of times you’ve had a sense of dread and nothing happens. If you take the non-events into account then these kind of supernatural phenomena don’t lift their heads above random chance. Especially dubious to me are premonitions. I just don’t see how you can get information about an event before that event actually occurs. What generated the information (it can’t be the event because the event ain’t happened)? And then there's the problem of how that supposed information was transmitted and received. Spare me!
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Post by nomuse on Jan 3, 2006 6:27:43 GMT -4
I act on premonitions.
But I have to qualify this statement carefully. I do not believe in any form of psychic power or predestination. It is of course quite easy to apply hindsight to say that some "sixth sense" warned you of a danger, and forget the countless times there was a tingle but no danger, or a danger and no tingle.
However, I do believe in the ability of our minds, senses, instinct to extract useable material from what might be considered the faintest of cues. A slight change of the light, a bare whisper of sound (or even a change in the sound field around one), the faint pulse of displaced air -- all can signal to that old monkey brain that someone or something is behind you and it's time to duck or perish.
I've been embarrased when I've acted on that impulse that says something is about to fall on my head. And I've also stepped aside a time or two from something that would have left me much less able to intellectualize the experience.
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Post by Kiwi on Jan 3, 2006 7:48:17 GMT -4
I agree with Nomuse about "the countless times there was a tingle but no danger, or a danger and no tingle" because I've had plenty of those, along with a few "premonitions" that have been reliable and kept me out of trouble. So it really does come down to an issue of signal and noise.
Mothers of young children can usually relate the most experiences.
But the ones that really baffle me are the ones where I recall an oddball dream after waking and simply dismiss it as that, but eventually the dream comes true in the form of something I see on TV, and it's most baffling when it's part of the news, so the event had not occurred when I had the dream a few weeks before. This has happened a few times over the years and more frequently recently, but it's usually something pretty trivial.
The first example I recall was back in 1970. I woke up one morning, convinced that I'd seen a small portion of an episode of "Dad's Army" on TV. We didn't have TV in our flat, and although my girlfriend's flat had TV, it took me a while to convince myself that I hadn't visited her that night, nor anyone else who had TV. A few weeks or months later, I saw exactly the same things during an actual transmission of "Dad's Army." A possible explanation is that because New Zealand was often way behind the UK and US in broadcasting popular programmes back then, maybe I somehow picked up the thoughts of people somewhere else in the world who were viewing that programme.
However, that explanation doesn't work for an advance dream about news on the TV, and the best-known example I dreamt about, roughly three weeks before the event, was the one of Whacko Jacko dangling his young child over the balcony. I was preparing dinner in the kitchen one night, heard the announcer talking about Michael Jackson, and immediately recalled the dream and "saw" it again. What I saw on TV was identical to the dream -- I had seen the actual TV transmission and not viewed the event from a different angle in the dream. It was pretty freaky to know in advance what I would see. Unfortunately there was no-one else around to tell at the time. I made a point of watching the late news just to see it again.
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Post by nomuse on Jan 3, 2006 8:19:39 GMT -4
Heh. Off the subject, but I once woke from a very odd dream in which Michael Jackson was trying to buy the "Elephant Man"'s bones. It wasn't until two weeks later that I found out this was an actual news story that had been on the clock radio that usually wakes me up.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jan 3, 2006 8:28:47 GMT -4
Heh well this morning I had a dream about an eartquake that was in area with Indians. There was a 7.2 off the coast of Fiji this morning. For those that don't know Fiji, there are two groups of people there for the most part. Native Fijians, and Fijian Indians.
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Post by Retrograde on Jan 3, 2006 9:23:59 GMT -4
For those that don't know Fiji, there are two groups of people there for the most part. Native Fijians, and Fijian Indians. Yes, and they don't always get on so well...
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lenbrazil
Saturn
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Posts: 1,045
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Post by lenbrazil on Jan 3, 2006 10:00:46 GMT -4
I think most of us can tell stories like this. In 1981 a friend of mine and I were talking about the "zero factor" and I joke that no one would want to kill Reagan because no one would want to make Bush president, just then my fiends dad told us Reagan had just been shot.
On another occasion I went to the top of the WTC with my sister and we wondered if it would be possible for someone to jump because there were several fences between the observation deck and the edge of the building. A few hours after we left a man managed to do that and parachuted from the building.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 3, 2006 10:19:37 GMT -4
As lenbrazil says, we can all tell stories like these, even an arch-sceptic like me. I once dreamt that I was eating a giant marshmallow and when I woke up my pillow was gone!
However, I still consider peoples prediction stories as largely coincidence, maybe sometimes formed by subliminal input and often containing a large amount of hindsight.
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Post by turbonium on Jan 6, 2006 0:58:18 GMT -4
I think you’ve described a classic problem with trying to examine supernatural events. Namely, focusing on events that did happen and not the hundreds of times you’ve had a sense of dread and nothing happens. If you take the non-events into account then these kind of supernatural phenomena don’t lift their heads above random chance. Especially dubious to me are premonitions. I just don’t see how you can get information about an event before that event actually occurs. What generated the information (it can’t be the event because the event ain’t happened)? And then there's the problem of how that supposed information was transmitted and received. Spare me! I understand your point about only noticing the bad events in "hindsight" because something subsequently happened that seemed to "link" them, while forgetting about the many other times you felt "a sense of dread" because nothing else happened (at least that you noticed). It's a very valid rationale for many of these things. However, I really should have described more clearly how I "felt" on the two occasions I mentioned, because they really were quite distinct from any other similar moments I've experienced. The first event was about 20 years ago. I was staying overnight at the home of a girl I'll call "Susan", whom I'd just met a few days earlier (ahem..in my young wayward days of foolishness). The house was shared by "Janet" and her two kids. Earlier that evening we sat in the living room, which had a very unique coffee table. It was handmade, with a round top of solid wood planks, each of them about 5 or 6 inches square. It was very impressive looking. The dream (nightmare) that I experienced was an extremely real-feeling and vivid event in which I was being, well, murdered.. I have never previously or since this had a similarly horrid nightmare, nor of anything else that has seemed so "real" by comparison. I awoke with the same sickening sense of "darkness" about the environment. I just felt an overwhelming urgency that I had to leave the house immediately. Two days later, I grabbed my Monday morning newspaper off the front porch. On the front page was a large photo showing the interior of a house gutted and blackened from fire. My friggin' jaw dropped because the only object identifiable in the destruction was a round table with a thick wood planked top. The article confirmed it was the same house, and had been destroyed by fire the night after I was there. "Janet" and her two children died in the fire. Of course, it wasn't a classic "premonition", defined as a prediction of a specific future event. I've never had this happen to me. Claims by others that this has happened remains "dubious" to me, as well. However, if I had ever experienced anything close to this nightmare on other occasions, it could easily explain the event as "random chance" - where, from one out of the hundreds of similar times, they seem to be linked by noticing a subsequent event. But, (and thankfully), I haven't ever had the same heightened sense of "dread" that I did that night and morning. If it really was "random chance", the odds of it happening would be quite staggering. The only one time ever in my life where I think I'm actually dying for real in a dream, and the next night three people die in the house I had the dream...
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lenbrazil
Saturn
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Posts: 1,045
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Post by lenbrazil on Jan 6, 2006 13:31:24 GMT -4
Turbonium -Don't ignore that your death in the dream was very different from how that family died. It could just be a coincidence. Also it's common for people to forget their dreams, IIRC people don't remember most of their dreams so it's quite possible to did have that or a similar dream on other occasions.
For every case like yours there are many more cases of people who have dreams like that and nothing happens.
My dad is elderly and in poor health. My sister keeps on having "premonitions" of him dying. Unfortunately sooner or later one of them will come true.
Incredible coincidences do happen.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died the same day, and that day happened to be July 4, 1826 the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence which Jefferson wrote with the assistance of Adams and a few others. This is only one of several ways the two men were associated.
Earl Warren was succeeded as Chief Justice by Warren Earl Burger.
About a month ago two sons of a sheriff in the US died in separate car crashes the same evening. He drove by the wreck of one (without knowing it) on the way to the other.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 6, 2006 13:34:09 GMT -4
A nice story, my aunts tell me dozens of these but can anybody answer my previous question?:
"It must be Quantum" Mustrum Ridcully.
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Post by turbonium on Jan 7, 2006 4:53:34 GMT -4
Turbonium -Don't ignore that your death in the dream was very different from how that family died. It could just be a coincidence. Also it's common for people to forget their dreams, IIRC people don't remember most of their dreams so it's quite possible to did have that or a similar dream on other occasions. For every case like yours there are many more cases of people who have dreams like that and nothing happens. My dad is elderly and in poor health. My sister keeps on having "premonitions" of him dying. Unfortunately sooner or later one of them will come true. Incredible coincidences do happen. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died the same day, and that day happened to be July 4, 1826 the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence which Jefferson wrote with the assistance of Adams and a few others. This is only one of several ways the two men were associated. Earl Warren was succeeded as Chief Justice by Warren Earl Burger. About a month ago two sons of a sheriff in the US died in separate car crashes the same evening. He drove by the wreck of one (without knowing it) on the way to the other. Yes, it's true that the dream was not of a fire in which I was killed. The similarity between the two "events" was that it was a dark feeling of death I had the night before the fire, and the next morning when I felt an urgency to leave. I won't discount the possibility of it being a fantastic coincidence. But it still leaves me wondering, as it likely always will..... Another event happened not to me, but my grandfather and uncle during WW II. My mother, the sister of my uncle, told me this story - and she has never been one to make up or embellish a story or its details. One day in early November 1943, my grandfather was in a board meeting when he suddenly stood up, ran to the window and said (paraphrasing), "Oh my God, I hear an airplane crash diving!" As he kept staring out the window, he repeatedly asked the other people in the room, (again, paraphrasing) "Can't you hear that airplane in distress?" Everybody else in the room said they couldn't hear anything at all. They hadn't a clue over why he kept ranting on about this "airplane crashing". It was later found out that at the exact time and day my grandfather was doing this, my uncle (his son) was involved in training exercises over the east coast, when the fighter plane he was piloting crashed, instantly ending his life. This is not an incident that I believe can be easily explained as a remote coincidence.. My grandfather was a doctor by profession, always very calm and reserved. He had never acted in this manner before. His son had been in the service as a Flight Sergeant for over two years before the accident occurred. In my view, there seems to exist certain "senses" that at least a small percentage of humans (if not all) possess which are not yet understood, and remain largely unidentified. Of course, I could be wrong........ Btw, Kiwi, I have also had similar "deja vu" types of experiences in my life. They were also very trivial events, and I have no explanation for why they happened, either.
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Post by PeterB on Jan 7, 2006 6:50:20 GMT -4
I've also had the same sort of experiences that a few have described on this list, but I've also been well aware of some spectacular failures on my part.
This is the key, remembering the misses as well as the hits. There may be something to research in these experiences, which is why it's well worth recording them as you feel them. But people have to be honest and record all the feelings, not just the ones which come true.
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Post by mitrabor on Jan 7, 2006 7:50:40 GMT -4
If you look lustfully at a woman from behind, she will often spin round and glare at you, despite her apparently having no way of knowing she is being looked at and from what direction. This is "sixth-sense"
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