Has anyone here ever experienced precognition? To be more specific, have you ever somehow KNOWN what was about to happen with no possible explanation?
It has only happened to me once. I’ll try to describe the experience instead of bothering with too much of the back story, unless someone really wants to hear the details.
Anyway… It took place in a materials science building at Purdue University. I was only there for a few days for an engineering workshop. I’d never been there before and haven’t been there since.
I was just standing there, and all of a sudden I had the sensation of a momentary blackout. As far as I could tell, it only lasted for a split second. When it ended, my mind was immediately focused on what felt like a memory, but one of something I hadn’t actually experienced yet. I quickly realised that the ‘memory’ was in the setting I was currently in, and the beginning of the memory was currently happening in real life. I put two and two together, and figured what I was envisioning was the immediate future. Long story short, the next 30 seconds or so went exactly as they did in my vision. (IE: they sped up a machine they were demonstrating, I knew exactly what everyone was going to say, and I knew that a person was going to drop something on the ground, etc.)
There is simply no way this could have been a ‘lucky guess’, because there was no guessing involved. Suddenly there was a complete vision of the next thirty seconds of my life, and it played out accordingly. One thing I suspect is that the vision I suddenly had was a memory of a dream, and that the congruence of the present and the dream triggered a sudden recall.
This experience turned my attention to other psychological/spiritual phenomena. I have read a few books on matters like these, as well as books on out of body experiences/astral projection. I have actually had some success with experiencing the first stages of an OOBE. On my first success I couldn’t believe it was happening just as the book said it would, and my excitement pulled me out of it immediately.
Now this is going to sound extremely, facetious but I swear it was true. No really!
I had deja vu about sitting down with friends, watching tv and having a rambling conversation. Admittedly, this is what Saturdays normally degrenerate to, but I just felt weird. I don’t really know how to explain it, I just had a feeling for 20 seconds I’ve done this before. There was no blackouts, flashes or anything fancy, just a nagging feeling I seen/read/dream this before.
Another time I was thinking about a glass dropping, and it happened about 2 seconds later. Tried it again, but no dice. I guess I got lucky.
Just my two cents and a rambling discussion of deja vu. I’m sure someone’s going to fill us in on selective reporting and humans’ habit of pattern finding, but it still doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s pretty cool.
:shrugs:
Not quite, but sort of. I’m an attorney, criminal defense, and as the courts are quite fickle, you don’t always go to trial on the day you are first assigned. However, I have always “known” whether a case would go or not (sometimes you go on the first day, sometimes you have several trial settings) because I could “see” it in my head. If I don’t get the picture, it doesn’t go. I’ve never been wrong. One time, I told my client that I just felt like his case would be finished that day. We were set for trial, but were second in line, and there were no more jury panels for that day. Still, I had a feeling it would be done and told him so, but didn’t have an explanation why. (Naturally, he thought I was nuts – which is why I usually don’t tell my clients my premonitions!). We were reset, and sent off. Later that afternoon, I got a call from the DA – they dismissed the case.
Another time I was visiting my sister, and had plane reservations back home. On the way to the airport, I just felt like I wasn’t going home that day, and told her so, because I just couldn’t see it in my head. But that was ridiculous – I had the plane ticket after all. Got to the airport, but had misread the ticket and missed the flight by an hour. (damn time zones!). It was that incident that made me start paying attention to premonitions.
I’d buy the “pattern finding” or “selective reporting” argument if it was just one thing that happened. I seriously doubt there could be a pattern that would account for about 5 different peoples’ responses to a conversation about some machine I had never seen before, let alone knew the functioning of.
I’ve repeatedly started humming a song (one I haven’t heard in a while), and then have it come on the classic rock station I listen to a few minutes later.
Then there was the time when I was in 8th grade. It was a Sunday, and I woke up with this feeling that something HORRIBLE had happened. But nothing had that we could tell. My dad was so concerned I overheard him say something to my mother about the way I was behaving. Monday came, forgot all about it. Wednesday came, mother showed up at school during the middle of the day and herded me and my sister home. Why? Her mother had died alone in her house and wasn’t found until that day. From what the medical examiner could determine, we were told that she had died on Sunday.
Several years ago, when I was living in Dallas with a very close friend of mine, I was invited to Six Flags by a bunch of friends who were still in college. I had a fantastic time, up until about lunch. Then, as I was sitting eating my burger, I got the strangest sensation. It’s very difficult to describe, but the result was like someone had grabbed me by the ear and was directing me to Get Home Now.
I put down my hamburger, wiped off my hands, and said, “I . . . uh . . . have to go home? Sorry, guys. See you later.”
I left them puzzled, walked as fast as I could back to my car, and drove home, the whole time thinking “the hell?”. When I got home, my roomie was just seeing her boyfriend and his mom to the door. Everything looked normal, but my roomie had this edge to her behavior that had me thinking she was about to lose it.
Finally, after the boyfriend and his mom left, my roomie walked into the bathroom with me trailing her asking “What’s wrong? No, really, tell me what’s wrong.” She picked up a plastic stick and handed it to me. It was a pregnancy test, and it was positive.
Her divorce wasn’t final. Her estranged husband had threatened to kill her if she saw anyone while they were still married, and her parents were hardline Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her boyfriend was a complete slacker who’d already fathered one child, and her job already sucked most of her energy out of her.
She’d taken the pregnancy test just before the boyfriend showed up, around about the time I was eating that hamburger.
