A Strange Occurrence

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meltzerboy

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I was just talking to a very close friend of mine who is Italian Catholic, and he told me his elderly 93-year-old mother was awakened from sleep by a voice she heard calling her. The voice was that of a good friend of hers who recently passed away, an elderly Jewish woman. The voice spoke to her by name and asked her to come outside to see her. My friend’s mother proceeded to open the front door of her home and tripped and fell against the fence. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured. Now the weird part. My friend spoke to his sister about what had happened, and his sister told him she had sent him an email TWO DAYS EARLIER DESCRIBING THIS EXACT EVENT, which she had dreamed. Sure enough, my friend checked his computer and found the email from his sister.

What do you make of this? I’ve always heard about such telepathic and spiritual experiences, but never in relation to someone I know well and trust.
 
It’s a little unsettling when it happens, isn’t it? My mom and sister dream about deceased family, friends, and things to come. Me, no dreams, but somehow, I know when something will happen. It doesn’t happen often.

I have no idea why it happens, or where it comes from, but I like to think, they are messages from G-d.
 
It is unnerving, but there have been enough reports and witnesses to it that I have no doubt that it does indeed happen.
 
Some possibilities that come to mind are:
  1. Somewhere along the line the facts have gotten mixed up in this account, or way too much interpretation went in to, for example, comparing the contents of the email to the later events.
  2. It is a strange coincidence. If there are 10 million one-in-a-million events that could occur, probably about 10 of them will actually happen, despite the extreme unlikelihood of any one of them happening. That’s why extremely unlikely things like winning the lottery do happen to some people.
  3. This is an unexplained natural phenomenon, perhaps having something to do with the incompleteness of our understanding of time and of the human mind.
  4. This is an unexplained supernatural phenomenon, whether good or evil.
 
meltzerboy said:
What do you make of this? I’ve always heard about such telepathic and spiritual experiences, but never in relation to someone I know well and trust.
Click to expand...
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.
 
Aelred_Minor said:
Some possibilities that come to mind are:
  1. Somewhere along the line the facts have gotten mixed up in this account, or way too much interpretation went in to, for example, comparing the contents of the email to the later events.
  2. It is a strange coincidence. If there are 10 million one-in-a-million events that could occur, probably about 10 of them will actually happen, despite the extreme unlikelihood of any one of them happening. That’s why extremely unlikely things like winning the lottery do happen to some people.
  3. This is an unexplained natural phenomenon, perhaps having something to do with the incompleteness of our understanding of time and of the human mind.
  4. This is an unexplained supernatural phenomenon, whether good or evil.
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My friend is not the kind of person to overly interpret messages in light of events that take place later, although I realize, as a psychologist, we all have this cognitive bias. I didn’t see the email myself but am very curious. The statistics reasoning is a possibility, albeit a highly unlikely one. Likewise, it is true there is so much we don’t know about the natural workings of the human mind. Although I’m skeptical of such happenings, as is my friend, I tend toward the fourth possible explanation, and would like to believe it is a benevolent supernatural phenomenon rather than a demonic one. Thank you for your analysis.
 
asia53 said:
It’s a little unsettling when it happens, isn’t it? My mom and sister dream about deceased family, friends, and things to come. Me, no dreams, but somehow, I know when something will happen. It doesn’t happen often.

I have no idea why it happens, or where it comes from, but I like to think, they are messages from G-d.
Click to expand...
Only once did I have a dream, the night before, that foretold the future. It was about the first essay question on my comprehensive psychology doctoral exam, which was so vivid I was sure that would be the question. And it was! Thanks for your comment.
 
meltzerboy said:
What do you make of this? I’ve always heard about such telepathic and spiritual experiences, but never in relation to someone I know well and trust.
Click to expand...
I’d be interested to see a copy of the e-mail, to compare it with the account you gave of the incident. Such would clarify whether the e-mail was specific enough, and sufficiently correct on every point, for it to count as prophetic.
 
meltzerboy said:
Only once did I have a dream, the night before, that foretold the future. It was about the first essay question on my comprehensive psychology doctoral exam, which was so vivid I was sure that would be the question. And it was! Thanks for your comment.
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Nothing like this has occurred to me, but I find such episodes intriguing. Did you write down the question that you had dreamt about before you actually saw the exam the next day?
 
meltzerboy said:
I was just talking to a very close friend of mine who is Italian Catholic, and he told me his elderly 93-year-old mother was awakened from sleep by a voice she heard calling her. The voice was that of a good friend of hers who recently passed away, an elderly Jewish woman. The voice spoke to her by name and asked her to come outside to see her. My friend’s mother proceeded to open the front door of her home and tripped and fell against the fence. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured. Now the weird part. My friend spoke to his sister about what had happened, and his sister told him she had sent him an email TWO DAYS EARLIER DESCRIBING THIS EXACT EVENT, which she had dreamed. Sure enough, my friend checked his computer and found the email from his sister.

What do you make of this? I’ve always heard about such telepathic and spiritual experiences, but never in relation to someone I know well and trust.
Click to expand...
My grandmother used to have dreams about specific people in the days leading up to their deaths. Some of these people were terminally ill or had serious health problems (her mother), but others died unexpectedly (my father, her 11-year-old nephew). The dream was always the same: the person who was going to die would appear at her kitchen door with blood on their face. And each time, the bloodied person was dead in a week or so.

I know. It sounds like the plot of a schlocky horror movie, doesn’t it? 🙂

Frankly, I don’t know what to make of her dreams. If just about anyone else claimed to be able to foretell the deaths of friends or family, I’d be very skeptical. But I in my heart believe my grandma really had these dreams; she was a quiet, retiring woman who gained nothing emotionally when her family found out she had them (some of her relatives were really harsh about it), and these dreams caused her a lot of emotional distress.

I don’t know how many of these dreams she had in her life or when she started having them, but I do know that she prophesied the deaths of my grandfather’s brother (killed in a hunting accident), her youngest nephew (killed by a drunk driver at the age of 11), her mother (kidney cancer), her sister (sudden heart attack), and my father (killed in action in Vietnam).

What caused these dreams? Why my grandma? I have absolutely no idea. 🤷

Luna
 
Trebor135 said:
I’d be interested to see a copy of the e-mail, to compare it with the account you gave of the incident. Such would clarify whether the e-mail was specific enough, and sufficiently correct on every point, for it to count as prophetic.
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I’m going to ask my friend to send me a copy of it to check the details. Thanks.
 
Luna_Lovecraft said:
My grandmother used to have dreams about specific people in the days leading up to their deaths. Some of these people were terminally ill or had serious health problems (her mother), but others died unexpectedly (my father, her 11-year-old nephew). The dream was always the same: the person who was going to die would appear at her kitchen door with blood on their face. And each time, the bloodied person was dead

Frankly, I don’t know what to make of her dreams. If just about anyone else claimed to be able to foretell the deaths of friends or family, I’d be very skeptical. But I in my heart believe my grandma really had these dreams because she was a quiet, retiring woman who gained nothing emotionally when her family found out about these dreams, and these dreams caused her a lot of emotional distress.

I don’t know how many of these dreams she had in her life or when she started having them, but I do know that she prophesied the deaths of my grandfather’s brother (killed in a hunting accident), her youngest nephew (killed by a drunk driver at the age of 11), her mother (kidney cancer), her sister (sudden heart attack), and my father (killed in action in Vietnam).

What caused these dreams? Why my grandma? I have absolutely no idea. 🤷

Luna
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It doesn’t sound like her prophetic ability was a blessing for your grandmother. And it happened too many times to be a coincidence. Thanks for relating this story.
 
I have had many deja-vu dream over the years, at least one including a vista that I had never visited before. They can happen. This is odd in that it was a dream that would happen to another person, but otherwise not that exceptional.
 
A friend of mine says she has these “imaginations in her head” and that later on the events take place just as she had seen them. She says it has happened more than a dozen times. She said her mother had told her of the special circumstances surrounding her birth. In short, she was a miracle baby. I didn’t know what to tell her. I’m also very skeptical seeing as it could just be voodoo at work again.🤷
 
Bonjovie said:
A friend of mine says she has these “imaginations in her head” and that later on the events take place just as she had seen them. She says it has happened more than a dozen times. She said her mother had told her of the special circumstances surrounding her birth. In short, she was a miracle baby. I didn’t know what to tell her. I’m also very skeptical seeing as it could just be voodoo at work again.🤷
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I was going to express puzzlement at your mentioning of Voodoo, but then I looked at your location–Lagos, Nigeria.

How much syncretism occurs among Christians in your country? Have you seen firsthand or heard secondhand of incidents caused by the practice of Voodoo, whether for good or ill?
 
I’m totally baffled why Christians should find such occurrences a matter for wonderment. The Christian religion, most notably the Catholic denomination, is as supernatural as you can get. Absolutely bizarre to my mind. After Christ’s crucifixion, ghosts were seen walking about Jerusalem.

St John Bosco was said to have made a pact with a close childhood (or youthood!) friend of his, that whoever died first would visit the other one, supernaturally of course. The friend died first and woke him up in the middle of the night and chatted with him, I believe, keeping his promise. Then there was his ghost-dog protector, Grigio, who’d suddenly appear from nowhere when he was in physical danger.

The ghost of my brother woke my sister up in the middle of the night and just looked at her, didn’t say a word - she said for about two minutes, if I remember correctly (which is not guaranteed). She said he seemed to be reassuring her. She had had major problems with her kidneys.

My brother was a wonderfully Christian agnostic, full of compassion, though he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve; and my sister seems to be similar, though she told me a while ago, that she had had a near-death experience, when she had had a very serious operation as toddler. And she is desperately, desperately prosaic. Horatio woud have seemed like Walter Mitty in comparison.

My sister’s late mother-in-law, a particularly lovely lady, knew the instant one of her sons drowned while a naval cadet. She was so psychic, that when she called out from the living room to my sister and mother who were in the kitchen, that someone else in the family was at the door, they ignored her, assuming it was an apparition she was seeing. The only problem was… it was bucketing down with rain outside!

When she visited a friend of hers, she always saw her lfriend’s late husband sitting in his usual chair, smoking his pipe. Ghostly apparitions must have happened to billions of people all over the world in every age, it seems.

Personally, I’ve never seen a ghost, a poultergeist tends to throw things in my vicinity. It happened the other evening. This time I couldn’t see what it had thrown, but as ever it was thown hard. During the Last week of Lent, last year, it or another poultergeist had thrown a small plastic-rimmed mirror past my head onto the floor behind me as I was at the sink. And a few days before, it had hurled something small from a bookcase in our hall at the outside wall of the bathroom, which is a few feet away and to which the bookcase stands perpendicular.

Some of the lads in my troop in the army Germany saw ghosts, too, but you usually had to pump the information about it out of them. They would have been quite frightening.
 
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