Firstly, I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in ghosts, fortune telling or any of that rubbish. But I can’t explain this.
Last year, my wife and daughter went on holiday to Turkey with a tour operator called XL.
On the day they were due to fly home, I woke up at 2am. I had a compulsion (I can’t describe it as anything but that) to check the news. No, it’s not something that has happened to me before. I switched on my laptop and went to a news site where it said that a few minutes earlier XL had gone into liquidation, and that all flights were cancelled.
I went to a flight sales site, and found a couple of tickets leaving at roughly the same time as the original flight, at a very low price. I phoned my wife - who was somewhat surprised at my call. They got home successfully, unlike thousands of others. I watched the flight availability and prices through the day. An hour later, at 3am, the only tickets that were available cost ten times what I paid. By 7am, there were no tickets left. So, if I hadn’t woken when I did with that compulsion, my family would have found it very difficult and/or expensive to get home.
It wasn’t a premonition, or a compulsion - it was standard behaviour that garnered a result.
The number of times you have had this impulse to check the News and you got no follow up of any note would number in the hundreds.
Premonitions require details - if you had a vision of a collapse of the company (and some evidence that you did before you checked) then that might be something. But what you had was a vague feeling that had no details and led you to an event that would be unremarkable on its own.
But, as I said, waking up at 2am to check the news is not standard behaviour for me. What makes you think I’ve had the impulse to do this hundreds of times? Because I haven’t. I really don’t understand what you’re saying.
OK, premonition might be the wrong word; but it certainly was a compulsion - and I should know, because I experienced it.
You’re ascribing relevance to the 2am as it appears to relate to the subsequent event, but in fact there is no relevance. You have had the same “compulsion” at other times of day, but as they led to nothing special you can’t recall that “compulsion” anymore.
And I’ve yet to see anyone completely dispel the idea that bookings for transportation involved in serious accidents has a tendency to be considerably below the daily averages, and why that might be.
Well, no. I like looking at news sites, but what makes this event different is that I woke up with a desire to get the news. This has never happened before or since. Why did it happen then when it did have a personal consequence? I do know the difference between ‘compulsion’ and just wanting to.
And I do want to re-emphasise that superstition and ‘spooky events’ are complete anathema to me.
Because it was two unrelated events that you are connecting together by a tenuous link, and which you now find hard to look back at without that apparent connection dominating your memory of it.
Well, I for one am willing to say “wow, that’s freaky.” You all are a bunch of kill joys!
I’ll share a friend’s creepy story. She comes from a small town in Wisconsin, and had been teaching in China. One day she was hanging out at a restaurant in a large but fairly remote Chinese city. She spotted a strange looking foreigners- he was tall and had almost albino coloring. A few minutes later, he walks up to her and says “excuse me, are you from small town in Wisconsin” She was too shocked to do anything more than nod, and he simply walked away.
I’ve had freaky coincidences happen before too, but I know they’re just coincidental.
I used to live in a small town, and there used to be this guy I’d see around a lot. He had a distinct appearance which made him memorable, and he sauntered along the main streets often enough for me to notice him from time to time.
Once I was in a completely different town, just for one day, and for some reason as I was sitting in a Cafe having breakfast, I thought “It would be really weird if I was to see someone here I’d know” and that particular guy was the example I had in my mind.
Not ten minutes later he walked right past the Cafe. And what’s more he glanced in the window and looked straight at me.
It was quite weird.
But it was just an odd coincidence. I figure I actually saw him earlier that morning in my peripheral vision and thus he was planted into my subconscious.
I woke up at 2am. I rarely do that; when I do, a visit to the bathroom, or a quick read is all that happens. I have never used my laptop.
I really wanted to read the news. No other thought was in my head. This is a fact. I presume this is your ‘tenuous link’. Why tenuous?
When I read the news, it had a consequence.
#1 and #3 happened. That is indisputable, unless, of course you think I am delusional or making all this up.
After #1, I experienced #2 which lead to #3.
Believe me, I would love it to be happenstance or coincidence or a random sequence of events or something. I am as sceptical as you appear to be about this. But it happened, and I’m not convinced by your explanations.
We posted at the same time. Your example clearly was for the reason you describe. I don’t think my experience is similar. (But YMMV, of course.)
I’m starting a new post rather than keeping on editing my previous one.
I agree it was a coincidence, but not for the reason you gave. I don’t think seeing someone you’ve seen in one town in another would be *that *unusual. It’s happened to me several times. The fact that you’d seen him earlier and he was in your subconscious has nothing to do with him popping up later.
It’s seems more likely to me that you were subconsciously concerned about your family’s travel plans and that’s what got you up at 2 am. I’ve been the same way when my wife was traveling. Your feeling of unease led you to check the news, which coincidentally gave you the heads up that the travel company went belly up. Weird, and lucky for your family, but really just coincidence.
Either that, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster touched you with his noodley appendages.
Where’s the harm in thinking it was a premonition? Whatever it was, it worked out for the best. I doubt the OP is suddenly going to start a new business providing premonitions to others. We have all had similar experiences where we cannot say what or why we chose to do X, but in looking back, it seems that somehow we knew which was the best course to take. Be it instinct, angels, ghosts, premonition, subconsciously putting together of evidence not immediately apparent, it worked out for him. Does how really matter?
Why this need to dissect and destroy someone else’s views on their own experience? Let him have his premonition. If the OP came here and started spouting premonitions or whatever about other Dopers, then I can see slapping him down. I don’t understand this need to deflate/dismiss others’ anecdotes. One of the lesser appealing Doper traits.
When I was 10 years old, I went with my mom and stepfather to visit relatives in Brazil over my winter break. On New Year’s Eve, my great aunt and uncle, a couple of family friends, and the three of us got tickets for a boat–the thing to do in Rio is go out in the water on a party boat and watch the fireworks set off from the shore.
When we got to the harbor, my great aunt took one look at the boat we had tickets for and said there was no way she was getting on it. It didn’t look like it had anything wrong with it, and we tried to talk her into it, but she put her foot down. We ended up getting tickets for a different boat and just tossing the ones we had.
The boat we were supposed to go on capsized and sank. The majority of people on it died, including a popular Brazilian actress.