# Has anyone ever had an experiance like this? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 13, 2011, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514 "2011-10-13T08:54:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/1 "2011-10-13T08:54:41Z")
I know this sounds really freaky as hell, but has anyone ever had an experiance like this? It’s been driving me nuts, as I’ve almost started to think I’m crazy. Anyway, I have a friend. I have had what I would call “flashforwards” of her. The best way I can explain it is that it’s like a TV picture of her turning on in my brain that I can see for a few seconds . And then after that I will see her or hear from her. The first incident was I was working a shift at a folk fest not even thinking of her. Our modus operandi was to basicly meet up whenever we ran into each other, as she is a very off the grid hippie (she actually just got a cell this year) I had not seen her previously…had simply walked down from my camp to my worksite. Suddenly I had one of those “flashforwards” Then I had a VERY strong complusion to attend the next concert. We were reunited for the year then. Then the next time something like this happened, I was at a bookstore, again not even thinking of her…Had one of those “flashforwards” The next day, I went down to get the mail from the PO Box. I looked at the box, and immeditaly thought " I got something from my friend." I had only received one previous letter, so there was no real pattern to derive from. Sure enough I got a postcard from her…Very weird. Has anyone else ever experianced anything like that? Could there be a rational explantion for those “flashforwards?” It’s really confusing and scaring me. And I swear I am not making this up. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/2 "2011-10-13T09:01:37Z")
Our brains are very good at making patterns. They don’t remember all the times you had weird feelings but didn’t receive a message from your friend your just thought about. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/3 "2011-10-13T09:50:03Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Our brains are very good at making patterns. They don’t remember all the times you had weird feelings but didn’t receive a message from your friend your just thought about. This is called confirmation bias. It can be quite hard to accept as an explanation, but our minds and memories really do play some quite elaborate tricks on us at times, ---
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/4 "2011-10-13T09:51:38Z")
Wow, thats aboutasweirdasyoucanget! ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/5 "2011-10-13T10:14:48Z")
Certain things will trigger past memories; it could be a smell, a room, a store, a bird, a sunset, somebody else doing a certain action, a movie etc etc. Often for me these memories will not be consciously registered and dispelled as background noise unless my mind is wandering and not particularly focused. Those memories can trigger other memories, and my WAG is most memories have people involved. I’m not discounting ESP so you could try mentioning these occurrences and see if your hippie chick friend had the same thoughts at the same time. If she didn’t then maybe you could try to understand why these thoughts are so powerful to you. Could it be that she or her lifestyle is particularly attractive to you? ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/6 "2011-10-13T13:35:56Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > Wow, thats aboutasweirdasyoucanget! And straightforward too. None of that bucketybuck thrown in to mislead you. ---
**Author:** ![Brandus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@Brandus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brandus)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/7 "2011-10-13T14:05:19Z")
I agree with griffin1977. Our brains make mental maps of people, especially those we care about, and it can become scarily good at predicting their behavior and feelings. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/8 "2011-10-13T14:09:19Z")
> [@BubbaDog](#): > > And straightforward too. > > None of that bucketybuck thrown in to mislead you. Man, get out! ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/9 "2011-10-13T14:37:38Z")
AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet writes: \> . . . she is a very off the grid hippie (she actually just got a cell this year) . . . So I guess I must be even farther off the grid, since I don’t own a cell phone at all. I must then live on some commune out in the middle of nowhere, surviving entirely on my own homegrown fruits and vegetables, plus what I get from selling the quilts I make at craft fairs. I must not own a car or have a Internet connection and don’t have to pay taxes because the government doesn’t know of my existence since I don’t have a bank account or a credit card and only use cash in any transaction. Except that’s not true at all. I live in a huge metropolitan area. I own a car. I’ve had an Internet connection for 14 years. I have several bank accounts and credit cards. I’ve worked in the same job for 30 years and make a pretty good salary. Everybody knows of my existence, including telephone companies who regularly call me up trying to sell me calling plans that include cell phones. Some of us just don’t want cell phones. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/10 "2011-10-13T16:30:54Z")
This is better suited to IMHO than GQ. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/11 "2011-10-13T17:21:12Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > Has anyone else ever experianced anything like that? Yes, I used to get that all the time with my mother. One of us would call the other, and the other would say “I was just about to call you!” A possible explanation is that I sometimes contemplate calling her for weeks before actually picking up the phone. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/12 "2011-10-13T17:46:38Z")
Well, the flashes are just an immediate communication from your right brain. It has no language, so talks to you this way when there isn’t time to route something through the left-side language center. Ferinstance, once when I was driving down a lonely stretch of road, I looked down to see that the needle was buried at the end of the speedometer - 120 mile per hour. I started to jam on the brakes but got an immediate flash picture of the brake mechanism disintegrating. Given that info I lifted my foot from the gas and allowed the car to slow down to a reasonable speed on it’s own. Right brain to the rescue! Both of yours could be explained by smells. If she walked by your work area or down the path you took before you were there, you smelled without seeing her, and your right brain communicated this important information. Likewise when you got near the mailbox - her scent would have been on the postcard. (perhaps not the bookstore part - unless you walked through the mailroom to get there and the postcard was already in the box?) We process scent at a very deep, instinctive, level, and most of us never purposefully draw it’s wider information into our conscious thoughts. But that information is being processed in the background all day every day. Scent is our strongest memory association. ---
**Author:** ![Wakinyan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wakinyan/32/352_2.png) [@Wakinyan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wakinyan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/13 "2011-10-13T20:03:22Z")
What is a “flashforward”? I never heard the word before and googling this turns up only a tv series. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/14 "2011-10-13T20:09:43Z")
I’ve never had that experience before, but I can tell that I’m about to. ---
**Author:** ![Zulema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/db5fbb/32.png) [@Zulema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zulema)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/15 "2011-10-13T20:18:39Z")
I have had this experience before. Out of the blue some person will pop into my head that I haven’t seen or heard from in years and pretty soon that person will have an unexpected contact with me. Sometimes it’s in a dream. ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/16 "2011-10-13T20:58:13Z")
> [@Zulema](#): > > I have had this experience before. Out of the blue some person will pop into my head that I haven’t seen or heard from in years and pretty soon that person will have an unexpected contact with me. Sometimes it’s in a dream. A perfect example of the confirmation bias **Mangetout** described. How often do people you haven’t heard from in years pop into your head and then _not_ show up unexpectedly? The answer is, “all the freaking time,” but these instances are so trivial and mundane that you quickly forget about them. Once in a while, just by chance, a random thought about an old friend will actually correspond to an unplanned encounter with same. This is in actuality neither weird nor freaky; but it understandably stands out in our minds when it happens. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2011, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/17 "2011-10-13T21:04:01Z")
Something like that happened to me last night at work. I was walking past a door that simply does not open without a Security escort. Some people were standing in front of the door, and I thought “it’s a good thing that door never opens, or it would hit those two guys.” Sure enough, the door opened in the 3 seconds I was looking at it, hitting one of the guys standing in front of it. There was no Security escort. Extremely strange heebie jeebie feeling followed. ---
**Author:** ![PandaBear77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@PandaBear77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PandaBear77)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2011, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/18 "2011-10-14T01:22:47Z")
Yes, this has happened to me. Kinda cool ain’t it 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2011, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/19 "2011-10-14T01:28:56Z")
I have never _experianced_ an _experiance_ like this. ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-had-an-experiance-like-this/599514/20 "2011-10-14T01:44:42Z")
This is called “Vardøger” in norwegian - the spirit of a living person preceding and heralding their arrival. Some people have them, some don’t. Mostly the person has no control over them, and some people are better at seeing them than others. Something similar, although nor quite the same thing, is called a “Fetch” in english - the ghost of someone still alive. Not saying there is something supernatural going on, but the experience must be fairly common, if it has it’s own mythology.