Precognitive Experiences?

[Voidwalker]

So I had this dream recently that kind of makes me think that there is much more to dreaming than i previously thought. A few weeks before my friend's wedding I had a dream I was driving to the beach (to go to her wedding) and a military helicopter flew overhead as I was driving there. I looked up the name of the exact helictoper and it is called a Boeing Ch-47 Chinook. So my friend's actual real-life wedding comes along, and as we are having the ceremony on the beach, the exact helicopter does a flyover. Now, I have grown up next to that beach my entire life almost. And I have never once seen that helicopter fly over the beach while i was there. I just thought that was too odd and a really strange coincidence. Maybe not a coincidence at all? Who knows. What do you guys think? Does this kind of thing happen very often with any of you? I know thats kind of a lame example and I might be grasping at straws here because it's the first time anything of this nature has happened to me so far.

[shadowofwind]

Years ago something like that would happen to me occasionally, and I'd think about it and try to come up with an 'explanation' for it. Maybe, for example, those types of helicoptors do really fly over a lot, but you just don't notice because your attention hasn't been drawn to it from the dream. I'd come up with an explanation like that, then I'd get another experience that couldn't quite be explained that way. So I'd come up with a better explanation. Over time the experiences got stronger, more frequent, and more objectively demonstrable, and the explanations got more and more contrived and ridiculous. By about two years ago I was having experiences like the one you describe several times a week. Now over the past year or so its pretty much stopped again, but I think that's mostly because my curiousity isn't driving it any more. It still bothers me that there's a chasm between two competing ways of thinking about the world, one in which stuff like that happens, and one in which it doesn't. On the one side are flaky people that seem to believe anything that sounds plausible is as good as true. On the other side are narrow people who seem to believe that anything they can't presently 'explain' must not be real. In the middle are people like us who doubt our everyday experiences because the part of ourselves that is in the second group doesn't want to be in the first group. I feel I want to bridge the gap, at least for myself.

[TwoCrystalCups]

Yes it happens. Twice for me last year, i wonder what other precog dreams i will get this year?

[ZeraCook]

I almost always dream about people I haven't seen in months, then See them the after I wake up.

[Z-Grav]

Maybe 5-7 times a year for me. It might be more often, but I'm inconsistent with my dream journal

[rrrrocketrick]

I was having deja vu experiences a while back and looking for an explanation. It occurred to me that the experiences might be due to precognitive dreams come true (I didn't know anything about dreaming or lucid dreaming at the time). I decided to do a quick test of the hypothesis by googling "dream journal deja vu," thinking that it was the sort of thing people who keep dream journals might notice and that it would be a small confirmation if I got a bunch of hits. I did get several hits, so others are at least claiming to have them. I've subsequently had dreams that seem to have a precognitive element, and I've had numerous occasions on which I seem to remember dreaming something that's going on in the "real world," but so far I haven't had any experiences that I can really really be sure about. I incline to think they happen. I actually "bet the farm" on one once. I was teaching in Thailand when a politically powerful student threatened to have me fired because he didn't like his grade (real life). I seemed to remember a dream about this kid about a year earlier (before I even knew I'd go to Thailand) in which he tried to harm me in this way but it backfired, so I decided to stand my ground and see if the dream came true. I got fired anyway. So parts of it came true as remembered and parts didn't. I'm not entirely sure I didn't make the whole thing up post hoc, but I strongly incline to think I had a dream that predicted most of what happened. Strange stuff.

[PlanesWalker]

I used to have déjà vu frequently as a child, but haven't had anything like that in recent memory. It used to freak me out at first. Then I used it to change stuff around. I would be going about my day and see the beginnings of a déjà vu experience unfolding, so I would intentionally change what was "supposed" to happen to see if I could. I found out that if you've seen far enough ahead into the experience you can alter it. Not sure exactly what purpose this would serve, other than my own amusement. Is this a form of seeing into the future? I believe it is. Hulu is terrible btw. Netflix is better.

[Voidwalker]

I was having deja vu experiences a while back and looking for an explanation. It occurred to me that the experiences might be due to precognitive dreams come true (I didn't know anything about dreaming or lucid dreaming at the time). I decided to do a quick test of the hypothesis by googling "dream journal deja vu," thinking that it was the sort of thing people who keep dream journals might notice and that it would be a small confirmation if I got a bunch of hits. I did get several hits, so others are at least claiming to have them. I've subsequently had dreams that seem to have a precognitive element, and I've had numerous occasions on which I seem to remember dreaming something that's going on in the "real world," but so far I haven't had any experiences that I can really really be sure about. I incline to think they happen. I actually "bet the farm" on one once. I was teaching in Thailand when a politically powerful student threatened to have me fired because he didn't like his grade (real life). I seemed to remember a dream about this kid about a year earlier (before I even knew I'd go to Thailand) in which he tried to harm me in this way but it backfired, so I decided to stand my ground and see if the dream came true. I got fired anyway. So parts of it came true as remembered and parts didn't. I'm not entirely sure I didn't make the whole thing up post hoc, but I strongly incline to think I had a dream that predicted most of what happened. Strange stuff. That's really interesting - And really annoying how people who have money and status can bend the law like that. My sister was recently put in jail for 60 days because she hit a "influential" family's daughter for sleeping with her boyfriend. While it was not necessarily the right thing to do, it was two teenage kids dealing with drama and definitely not something that deserves jail-time. Oddly enough I had a dream that dealt with this right before she ever got in trouble. It was one of those close but *not quite right* examples. In it my other sister was on trial and the judge was putting her in jail, and i was describing how good a person she was - but the judge gave me a nasty attitude and said that she and I were going to be punished to the full extent of the law. I totally forgot about that until your post reminded me. Its hard to say. The dream scenario dealt with my other sister who was in trouble for a completely different crime.

[shadowofwind]

I got fired anyway. So parts of it came true as remembered and parts didn't.. That was my experience with a precognitive dream about being fired. With hindsight the firing was planned before I was even hired (long story) and the stuff I didn't see in the dream was stuff that was intentionally hidden in real life also. But I was quite conscious in the dream that something was hidden from me, even though I rationalized to myself afterwards that this was OK. Subsequently my new rule of thumb is that the most common reason people hide stuff from you that involves you is they're trying to fuck you over somehow. So from now on I'll take an impression of that as a red flag, even if I can't see what's being hidden. I'm not entirely sure I didn't make the whole thing up post hoc, but I strongly incline to think I had a dream that predicted most of what happened. Strange stuff. I'm sure I didn't make up my experiences afterwards, in part because I wrote some of the dreams down before the events happened, and retain a time-stamped electronic record. But I completely agree its worth being careful or skeptical about that sort of thing.