I’ve not investigated the idea in any depth, but others have and you can find them if you are willing to look for them.
I had dream premonitions for about a year. Mid-2000 to mid-2001, if you want to get specific.
Yeah, yeah…I’m not exactly a believer in foretelling. But they happened frequently enough to get a bit eerie.
How it would work - at the time, there was a girl that had left me. Broke me up completely, and all that. She had promised that we would remain “friends” but we pretty much broke off contact. I was a mess, of course. I wanted her back so badly. But it wasn’t to be.
For that particular year - every couple months, I would have a dream with this particular girl in it. Not usually an erotic dream, just a dream that she figured in.
Yeah, yeah - brokenhearted fool, you’ll dream about her all the time. But it wasn’t like that. It was usually pretty mundane dreams, and they didn’t occur often, but after the first few occurrences I’d wake up and think “she’ll call today”. And she always did.
There’s no happy ending to this story - she broke my heart again about a year later. But for that particular year it got downright strange. I had resolved not to call her (and I didn’t.) But maybe once every two months I’d have a dream, wake up, think “she’ll call today” and she always did. These were the only calls she made to me; it’s not like we were speaking weekly.
One can probably figure out a more rational explanation to this. Like I said I’m not a believer in this stuff. But that year it was very strange. I can’t explain it to myself.
We will never know for sure, but if I take a stab at a very tenuous link, I can only guess that something in the environment that the two of you shared (work, school, national news maybe?) prompted the calling and the dreaming from the two of you subconsciously.
The day before my aunt’s husband’s father died, my grandmother (mother to my father and my aunt) called my aunt and asked her if anything bad had happened. She had dreamt that my aunt was sitting on the ground wearing a white sobok that is traditionally worn for funerals. Little did either of them know the news that would arrive the next day…
Of coursed when I pressed my dad for details, he says that our grandmother has (not exactly a habit but) a certain tendency to sometimes call about the macabre. She had even called him once or twice in the past to tell him not to drive the car today or whatnot. So the coincidence isn’t quite mindboggling.
I think some people have, for lack of a better phrase, “a third eye” that picks up on things subconsciously.
Others might not notice the shifty behavior in someone, but you do and avoid them - only to find out later it was good that you did avoid that person.
Grandma looking at that boat might have sensed it being too full, or seen a slight leaning of the boat of whatever - she just saw something wasn’t “right” and didn’t let you guys get on it. She might not even have been consciously aware of why it wasn’t right, but just felt it was “off”.
I have heard of many people who remained stopped at an intersection when green light came and sure enough, some other car comes flying through the intersection and would have killed them - maybe they had great peripheral vision that day and noticed it subconsciously.
Regarding the OP - it could be you heard on the news recently there had been another airlines talking about bankruptcy or dropping flights due to the economy…they sat in the back of your head and then that night, thinking about your family about to fly, it came back to you and said, “check to see if they plane is scheduled to fly” or whatever.
I am a firm believer that some people simply are more aware of their surroundings and seem to be “in tune” with what is happening or going to happen. Any mother can tell you of hundreds of examples of suddenly jumping up and running to the kitchen just as the toddler was reaching for the hot water kettle, or grabbing for that book of matches on the counter, etc. How did the mother know? Experience? Most will just say, “I had a feeling…”
Not exactly a premonition, but one day I was sitting in the law firm where I briefly worked and looking out the window - we were on the ground floor. There was a really odd looking guy and he looked me in the eye and I looked at him. He was truly creepy and then he walked on. Something about him and the way he looked at me made me kind of icky.
Shortly after that came 9/11 and they showed pictures of the terrorists who had flown on the planes. Mohamed Atta’s picture popped up and I said, “OMG! That’s the guy who I saw out the window!” I even called the FBI and said I had seen him that summer in Las Vegas and they asked where I worked and said, “Yes, we are aware he was in Vegas in that area at that time. Thanks for calling.” Sure enough, he had booked a cheap hotel room in that area of Vegas and even was seen eating at the local sandwich shop across the street with two of the other terrorists.
Wish it had been more of a premonition than just a coincidence although I don’t know exactly what I could have done. But one thing I can tell you, I wouldn’t have wanted to sit in the same room with him even before I knew the rest of the story.
I’m not sure these things always need a complicated explanation, natural (‘you noticed something subconsciously’) or otherwise – one in a million, heck, one in a billion shots sometimes just happen. In fact, they happen all the time, most of them are just entirely unremarkable – seeing a particular license plate, some random cloud formation, or just you being where you are when you are. In fact, your existence is kind of the most improbable thing ever – depending on generations upon generations of chance meetings and the right sperm cells fertilising the right eggs. And yet, it’s something that happened to all of us.
The thing is that we attach significance to those few times when something contextually remarkable happens, our degree of astonishment depending on the perceived likelihood of the occurrence. Meeting somebody you know in a city of a few hundred thousand inhabitants? Surprising, but it’s happened to everybody. Thinking of somebody you haven’t spoken to or thought of (or can’t recall having thought of) in months and having the phone ring that second, to find out it’s them? Somewhat spooky, but I’m sure almost everybody’s had that one happening, too. And so on, down a spiral of ever-decreasing likelihood (or perceived likelihood – there’s all sorts of cognitive biases influencing how we appraise any given event), with ever fewer people sharing the experience. But, even at a billion-to-one chance, given the number of people around, it’s still gonna be an everyday experience somewhere. And, with all the things that happen to anybody during a lifetime, chances are at some point you’re the one it happens to.
That’s the reason anecdotes are such poor evidence for extraordinary experiences – because, while it may be enormously unlikely for somebody to dream of their flight crashing and cancelling as a result, only to have that flight actually crashing, chances are it’s still something that happens a few times around the globe every year, with no supernatural influences at all.
We tend to have a somewhat fuzzy cut-off regarding the likelihood of events, separating those that can happen from those that there’s no chance in hell for. But that cut-off is entirely our own creation – sometimes, things beyond that line happen purely by chance, and we find ourselves hard pressed to accept this; whether we then construct elaborate scenarios trying to bring the likelihood safely back into ‘can happen’-territory, explaining away some factors as not due to chance at all (blaming something on subconscious perception, for instance), call it a miracle, deducing a genuine transgression of the way things usually work from a singular instance of unlikelihood that exceeds what we can accept, or simply try to get comfortable with the fact that sometimes, even really unlikely things happen, is more of a question of temper than anything, I suppose.
I think it’s a good thing when stuff like that happens, makes us wonder and challenges our assumptions – if nothing else, it reminds us how limited our minds are compared with the boundless possibilities of the real world. That’s not a defeatist statement; on the contrary, it just emphasizes that ‘I can’t explain it, hence, it can’t be explained’ is never a valid deduction. Never confuse the limits of your imagination with the limits of possibility.
I dreamt thisa few days before it happened,not exactly what transpired , but I even mentioned it to my GF, something bad is gonna happen in Baltimore.It didn’t turn out to be bad, but I have never been to Baltimore or even within 300 miles of it.Baltimore means nothing to me.
I also had a bad dream about Cleveland a few days ago,nothing to do with LeBron James leaving,just a bad feeling.
Yeah … what she (he?) said.
There are no coincidences. Just enjoy it 
I agree. Interesting coincidence, neat story. Even if the OP doesn’t normally awaken like that, I’m guessing that having family about to fly home from Turkey is extraordinary enough to “explain” the compulsion.
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You are just being human. The people involved have, so I’ve heard, given you ample reason to worry about their wellbeing over any number of years. And even if they hadn’t, it is natural for a family member to be anxious about the travel plans of a loved one, and to be excited and eager about the pending arrival and return of same.
Born and raised in Baltimore. Something bad is always happening there. It is one of the most violent cities in America. The way some of the rest of us balit-morons think about things, others don’t get and can only call bad - early John Waters anyone?