# What the Leonids, "24", and the NYC tragedies have in common **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 20, 2001, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-leonids-24-and-the-nyc-tragedies-have-in-common/94459 "2001-11-20T20:00:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tygr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/df788c/32.png) [@Tygr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tygr)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2001, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-leonids-24-and-the-nyc-tragedies-have-in-common/94459/1 "2001-11-20T20:00:13Z")
We got up at 4am Sunday morning to watch the meteor shower. We “ooh”-ed and "ahh"ed and shivered until the sun started coming up, then traipsed back to bed. I got back up a little while later and looked out the front window. The sky was dark again, which I thought was weird, since the sky had been getting very light earlier. I watched a few more meteors streak across the sky and then a 747 crashed a mile from my house. I went outside as I felt another one hit the ground somewhat further away. As I walked across my lawn towards the crash I looked up and saw a jumbo jetliner pass silently about 150 feet over my head. I was still looking up at the meteors as I felt it hit the earth. As I turned from the wreckage burning in the woods back towards my house I looked up and saw planes and meteors falling from the sky. I remember thinking to myself, “This is so horrible, it must be a dream. I’ll make myself wake up now.” But I didn’t wake up. It just kept happening… Of course, I did wake up eventually. My nightmare had long-since changed into some other dream, but the image never really resolved itself by the standard practice of waking up immediately and telling myself it was just a dream. I hardly ever have nightmares (maybe once a year at most). But this was most assuredly the worst, most vivid one ever. I know where it came from, too. The previous evening we’d finally watched our tape of the premier episode of _24_. ((_SPOILER!!_)) A plane exploded at the end of that episode. Earlier in the week, of course, a plane crashed in NYC. And before that was 9/11. And watching the Leonids, I thought they looked like fireworks - just as close, only a few hundred feet in the air. I guess I’ve finally had my 9/11-related nightmare. And no matter how often I tell myself it was just a dream, I have yet to rid my mind of the images. It felt so terribly, horribly real. ---
**Author:** ![Rosebud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rosebud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rosebud)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2001, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-leonids-24-and-the-nyc-tragedies-have-in-common/94459/2 "2001-11-21T01:38:40Z")
Mine haven’t been as bad as that one, Tygr, but what we do have in common is that I didn’t start having plane crash dreams until a while after 9/11. I did dream that I was _on_ a plane, and that the security was lousy, a night or two after, but the crashing and war dreams didn’t start right away. The night after the plane crashed in Queens, I had one in which a plane came down nose first into the park near my building. Very vivid. Ugh…