Can dreams predict the future?

Interesting write up and subject matter. This article tends to suggest "premonitionary" dreams are more of just a "law of probability", or "coincidence" than of a clairvoyant peek into the future.

Not sure where I sit on this.

I can recall personally having a dream of terrorists blowing up a large building the night before 9 / 11, and jolting up in a sweat, with my heart pounding out of my chest. It was VERY realistic feeling. Just a mere coincidence? Perhaps, perhaps not...

Let's hear your dream stories and opinions on this folks...

Agree or disagree? Can dreams consciousness truly see the future? Or are these mere "laws of probabilty" at work?

Aberfan is a small village in south Wales. In the 1960s, many of those living there worked at a nearby colliery that had been built to exploit the large amount of high-quality coal in the area. Although some of the waste from the mining operation had been stored underground, much of it had been piled on the steep hillsides surrounding the village. Throughout October 1966 heavy rain lashed down on the area and seeped into the porous sandstone of the hills. Unfortunately, no one realised that the water was then flowing into several hidden springs and slowly transforming the pit waste into soft slurry.

Just after nine o'clock on the morning of 21 October, the side of the hill subsided and half a million tonnes of debris started to move rapidly towards the village. Although some of the material came to a halt on the lower parts of the hill, much of it slid into Aberfan and smashed into the village school. A handful of children were pulled out alive during the first hour or so of the rescue effort, but no other survivors emerged. One hundred and thirty-nine schoolchildren and five teachers lost their lives in the tragedy.

Psychiatrist John Barker visited the village the day after the landslide. Barker had a longstanding interest in the paranormal and wondered whether the extreme nature of events in Aberfan might have caused large numbers of people to experience a premonition about the tragedy. To find out, Barker arranged for a newspaper to ask any readers who thought they had foreseen the Aberfan disaster to get in touch. He received 60 letters from across England and Wales, with over half of the respondents claiming that their apparent premonition had come to them during a dream.

One of the most striking experiences was submitted by the parents of a 10-year-old child who perished in the tragedy. The day before the landslide their daughter described dreaming about trying to go to school, but said that there was "no school there" because "something black had come down all over it". In another example, Mrs MH, a 54-year-old woman from Barnstaple, said that the night before the tragedy she had dreamed that a group of children were trapped in a rectangular room. In her dream, the end of the room was blocked by several wooden bars and the children were trying to climb over the bars. Another respondent, Mrs GE from Sidcup, said that a week before the landslide she had dreamed about a group of screaming children being covered by an avalanche of coal, and two months before the tragedy Mrs SB from London had dreamed about a school on a hillside, an avalanche and children losing their lives. And so the list went on.

Believing that you have seen the future in a dream is surprisingly common, with recent surveys suggesting that around a third of the population experience this phenomenon at some point in their lives. Abraham Lincoln reportedly dreamed about an assassination two weeks before being shot dead, Mark Twain described a dream in which he saw his brother's corpse lying in a coffin just a few weeks before he was killed in an explosion, and Charles Dickens dreamed of a woman dressed in red called Miss Napier shortly before being visited by a girl wearing a red shawl and introducing herself as Miss Napier.

What could explain these remarkable events? Are people really getting a glimpse of things to come? Is it possible to see tomorrow today? It is only in the past century or so that researchers have managed to solve the puzzle.

In the 1950s the pioneering US psychologist Eugene Aserinsky helped pave the way for a new science of dreaming. He showed that waking up a person after they have spent some time in the REM state is very likely to result in them reporting a dream. The decades of work that followed have yielded many important insights. Almost everyone dreams in colour. Although some dreams are bizarre, many involve everyday chores such as doing the washing-up, filling in tax forms, or vacuuming. If you creep up on someone who is dreaming and quietly play some music, shine a light on their face or spray them with water, they are very likely to incorporate the stimuli into their dreams. However, perhaps the most important revelation was that you have many more dreams than you might think.

Full Article:

www.guardian.co.uk...

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


"Can dreams predict the future?"

I certainly hope NOT.

Interesting story DD, good read.

From a young age have had deja vu in real life where I had dreamt the exact situation. oddly however 75% of the time I wont remember the dream fully until the similar event. So im not sure if its the brain filling in gaps in a dream that begins in a similar setting etc, but it is very convincing for me and I didnt tell anyone about this for fear of being labeled weird.

When I was 16 as well I was clipped by a car on my walk home and my mum told me that my Dad had a dream the night before that I was hit by a car on the same road! (this was a long walk home as well thaty included many roads and my Dad told my mum as he said that it was particularly horrible and real)

I think there could be a strange link somehow but can't be sure and I certainly dont understand it. There was a guy who told his wife he would win the lottery after a dream he had about the winning numbers and he did in fact win to her shock thinking he was deluded! That was in the papers all over for a day or so, but if true I think thats fascinating. IF you win the lottery why would you need that additional lie? Papers certainly wont offer money for the story to anyone who's just won millions (not in the UK anyway)

Gonna make me sound nuts but when i ask to see something from the next day in my sleep i tend to see items or hear phrases and sometimes even see people in my sleep that pop up the next day. last time i did it it was so nuts i stoped, i seen a person i used to know in my sleep. she stated she was gonna freak me out and i woke up. next day she contacted me in AIM. Although I admit I am occasionally mildly delusional.

Ten years ago I was working in a printing shop. One night I dreamed one of my co-workers was arrested for beating his wife. Less than a week later he didn't show up to work one night. After he came back a few days later the rumor around the shop was he was indeed, arrested for spousal abuse. I asked him why he was gone the last few days and he was in jail for beating his wife. Its not as significant as seeing a building going down, but I do think dreams can be prophetic. Based on other minor things Ive dreamed in the past, I think alternate realities can be seen in dreams too.

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


Aberfan is about 15 miles up the valley from my home village. I grew up to tales of this event - even though it occurred decades before. Even years later the sheer horror of it remained alive throughout the valleys and mining communities.

A significant part of those tales included the detail of the girl who dreamed of black. As a child, this both fascinated and scared me half to death. I remember wondering how she felt, being the only one of her age alive - always wondering, always being a reminder to everyone else about what they'd lost.

I remember the tales unnerving me as a child, particularly as I lived in a very similar mining valley - coal and coal waste piled high everywhere. I used to hope that I'd have dreams too if something like this happened in my village!

As an aside, on hearing the news of the landslide, hundreds of men from our village (my grandfather included) and surrounding villages begged, borrowed and stole cars/vans etc to travel there and help out with the digging. Every man - miners, postmen, school teachers etc. Even now, this thought touches me and makes me feel proud.

More information on the disaster: Aberfan Disaster Archive

Ya I get Deja Vu quite often and have no idea how to explain it because the fact you can't remember why you think you've seen what you've just seen (if that makes sense). I think i read or saw a TV show probably within the last 2 years that says Deja Vu is merely where your brain slows down then speeds back up???? Thus causing you to think you saw something before when in fact it's just catching you back up. Wow...what I said makes no sense, lol. Maybe someone can explain it better.

One thing that I've tried 2x now and have been extremely delighted. Before you go to bed tonight...ask the lord to "Enlighten" you during your dreams. Both times I've had weird dreams. The first one was about JC himself and the one last night was about space travel. Very weird dreams and could be random but just wanted to see if anyone else can try this.

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


As with yourself, I recall having a dream that was realised quickly in reality. I dreamt one night that my grandfather had died. I was woken from this sleep with the news that he had passed away in the early morning from a sudden and massive heart attack.

I thought it coincidental and slightly bizarre at the time. I suppose to a certain extent I still do.

I've had plenty of dreams where people close to me have died and yet in reality they're still alive. So, with that in mind, perhaps my grandfather dream coming true was actually nothing more than probability at play.

I keep an open mind

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


Although it is hard to comprehend that the future can be seen in dreams,i am a believer .I had a dream,many years ago of an aircraft tail sitting on top of a hill that sloped down toward the airport.The livery was that of Korean air.
About a year later Korean Air flight 801 crashed while on approach to Guam and the tail was shown on the news,the same picture i had seen previously in my dream.Why was i shown this vision ?I have no known connections to this flight .
video.google.com...#

Yes I believe so 100% and I say this from personal experience.

The first dream I had that came to truth literally caused me to have a complete breakdown due to what it involved. I had the dream and the next day my dream happened.

I have had dreams since then that have happened in my real life. It can make dream time a little uncomfortable for me because when I have a dream that seems real I always wonder or worry if it is something that will happen to me. I have lucid/vivid dreams as well but sometimes I have a dream and it really just kind of sticks with me or scares me. I dont know how to explain it and ATS is the first place I have really discussed this and even then I don't discuss it much. I did make a thread on a dream I had that really disturbed me when I saw two things from my dream in real life. Both were things I could never have seen before since the dream was years before I saw these things. One was a building where I currently live, a builiding I had never seen before I moved to the area and the other was a military style gas mask that came out a few years ago and when I saw it I got chills. The dream I had was not a pleasant one and I hope it never comes true. The way things have been in the world lately I worry more and more about it coming to pass so to speak....

I also have deja vu like crazy to the point that I freaked my friend out for 20mins on the phone one time because I knew exactly what he was gonna say. I also have intuition that is quite scary at times and I don't really know how to explain it other than I get this feeling and like a vision in my waking mind about a situation and later on it happens. I find it really hard to trust my intuition even though they say to always trust it. My problem is I don't know when I should. I am a very analytical person so when I get that feeling I question the feeling and myself and the situation. I never know what i should do. I feel that if I go with my intuition I might make the wrong choice even though they say your intuition is always right. I'm always second guessing myself even though my gut is usually always right even though I tend to ignore it and I guess that could be due to fear of the unknown.

Yes, I do believe that dreams can predict the future or prepare us for the future. I once dreamed the same dream for eight days in a row. On the ninth day, I experienced this dream and it is one of the most profound experiences that I have ever experienced. The repeating dream was this; all that was seen in my dream was a brilliant blue sky. I could see no ground or any trees or structures of any kind. I only saw a brilliant blue sky with a stream of light clouds. I could not even see myself. I also know that I was running and I could hear this strong wind and a loud thundering behind me. That's it for eight days.

On the ninth day, I woke up again wondering what the heck that was about. I allowed it to pass and we traveled out of town to visit friends that we had not seen in several years. We caught up on old times and had a wonderful time. Our friends had acquired horses in our absence and the children were excited to see them. We were taken outside and my friend opened the corral gate and she and the older children had made it into the corral before me and my daughter who was then almost two years old. Their dogs had also arrived ahead of my daughter and me and were barking and spooked the horses before we could ever make the distance. The horses began to rear back and jump and all of a sudden they ran out the gate right towards us. I screamed to my older children to run. I then looked straight at the horses and saw they were coming right for me and my daughter. My instinct was to just turn and run. My daughter was holding my right hand and I was pretty much dragging her.

I had not run very far until I "felt" this click. I felt this click and it was if I had blinked into some where else. I momentarily clicked right into my dream that I had dreamed for eight days. All I could see is blue sky and all I could hear was the wind and the thundering behind me but, this time I knew what the noise was. I then just as quick as the blink of an eye clicked back to running holding my daughter's hand.

I was nothing but a passenger now. It felt like I had been placed in a chair within myself and watched as things happened. My body was running as a finely tune machine that I did not recognize. As I watched myself run, my right arm lifted my daughter and threw her at my chest level to my left. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Toddlers are not light and I was throwing her with such ease at chest level. I turned my head throughout this whole process just watching in awe as she flew so, so, far out of the way. Just as I thought now I see she is safe, I was hit. I flew up high and landed hard on the ground. I was not seriously injured but, if I had still been holding my daughter's hand at the moment of impact, she would have been trampled. I was much taller and she was so little. I made contact with the front of the horse in the chest area. There was another horse directly to this horse's right running right along side it. She would have been trampled by one if not two of the horses and being so small, I do not believe she would have survived.

Call it a precognitive dream or a place to prepare me or open me up for divine intervention but, there is no doubt in my mind that the purpose of this dream, the same dream I had for eight days in a row, was to save the life of my daughter and I am grateful.

The night before the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, I dreamed I was riding shot gun in a black pickup. Suddenly we were sailing off into space. Time slowed and it seemed the fall went on forever. I turned to the driver, whom I did not know and oddly said "I can't believe your killing me". I did not hit bottom, but woke up. The next day there was a black pickup down on a concrete slab, in the news coverage. I don't know if the people survived, or even who was in that truck. One thing I have to say, if there really is a thing called precognition or prophetic dreaming, I hope I don't have it. In my dream I had no way of knowing where I was, so no warning could have been given, and what a burden to know something horrible is going to happen, but not know where or when, or be able to at least try to stop it. Doesn't sound like a gift to me, more like a curse.

By coincidence, I found this article in the Daily Mail today: Can your dreams predict the future? by Richard Wiseman, the Professor of Psychology at the Uni of Hertfordshire.

He concentrates on the Aberfan example in his article and seeks to explain its occurrence through the Law of Large Numbers:

Let’s take a closer look at the numbers associated with these seemingly supernatural experiences. First, let’s select a random person from Britain and call him Brian.

Next, let’s make a few assumptions about Brian. Let’s assume Brian dreams each night of his life from age 15 to 75. There are 365 days in each year, so those 60 years of dreaming will ensure Brian experiences 21,900 nights of dreams.

Let’s also assume an event like the Aberfan disaster will happen only once in each generation, and randomly assign it to any one day. Now, let’s assume Brian will remember dreaming about the type of terrible events associated with such a tragedy only once in his entire life.

The chances of Brian having his ‘disaster’ dream the night before the actual tragedy is about a massive 22,000 to one.

However, here comes the sneaky bit. In the Sixties, there were around 45 million people in Britain, and we would expect one person in every 22,000, or roughly 2,000 people, to have this amazing experience in each generation.

What are your thoughts?

i have already contributed/added to this DreamCenters data base.....

www.nationaldreamcenter.com...

Post Your Dreams - It's Free!
The National Dream Reporting Center

•DreamBase (read or post Dreams)

•DreamStore (Sleep aids and such)

•DreamBlog (occasional posting)

If you've found this site, it could be that you've had a dream that the Universe wants you to share with other humans. Go to the DreamBase and write down your dream for others - it's absolutely free because we're trying to collect as much data as possible in our publicly searchable database.
[...]

sometimes 'dreams' are springboards for the waking mind and the intellectual mind to
build up a story-board or a personal screen-play of some future significant event
which one will avoid at most any cost... even to being derided as a Nut Job or a paranoid
schizophrenic - instead of just a person with foresight (often mixed up with clairvoyence or psychic abilities)

reply to post by DimensionalDetective

Because You humans have been here before.
God had you reborn, so that you all wont feel bad on why he sent 99.1% of you awful deceitful thieving nasty, ungodly humans straight to HELL.

Its not that dreams that are predicting the future, it’s that you’re remembering a time in which you was on earth, and god just wants you all to see how you was so you won’t think his judgment was unfair.

So to break it down.
You all are the walking dead….PERIOD!
Dejavues, dreams coming true, dreaming of the future all explained in less then 4 minutes.

reply to post by DimensionalDetective

I don't know if dreams can really predict the future or not, but here is one of my experiences:

When I was in high school, I was seeing this boy for about four months. We went to different schools, but he would come to mine and see me every morning before I had to go to class. He called me one night and said he wouldn't be there to see me for the next few days because he was helping his adult sister move into she and her family's new house. I had already started having nightmares at that point days before he said he wouldn't be at school. I never told him about the nightmares. I started having a different nightmare each night, but all my dreams involved my best friend, my boyfriend breaking up with me out of nowhere on the grounds that he had cheated on me, and being so devastated in the dream that I killed myself or somebody else. A few days after he called me to tell me he wouldn't be at school, his best friend was waiting for me at my algebra class with a note from my boyfriend. He broke up with me in the note, which was completely out of the blue. I had just talked to him the night before on the phone and he seemed fine. I found out months later that he had broken up with me to be with my best friend, whom he had been cheating on me with. Nobody was killed, lol.

I'm hoping my dream does not come true that I had this morning. I was in an extremely tall building that I believe may have been hundreds of stories tall. I remember it was extremely tall. Anyway the part I remember was that I got in an elevator with a glass wall where I could see miles and miles on the outside edge of the building. Somebody was in the elevator with me. We started going down at a lot faster rate than normal. A bit alarming but thought maybe it was normal. I tried taking a picture of the scenary with my digital camera I had with me but it was getting hard to see out of the window due to fog?? Fog this high up didn't make any sense. Anyway the elevator seemed like it was almost in free fall. I started thinking maybe we were going to die if the emergency brakes did not activate. Maybe the emergency braking system broke. This went on for a while. I started thinking this was going to be it but after the lower levels floors approached, the elevator started to finally slow down. Whew what a relief I thought.

I was glad to get off that elevator. It might have been the tallest building in the world or one of the tallest but I thought I was going to die in it. Anyway after I got off my nightmare continued. I discovered I was 2000 years in the future. I was stuck there. They had lots of weird advanced technology that I knew nothing about and it was not compatible with my 21st century digital camera. I visited some tombstones because everyone I knew was dead. At least that was the same. That is the cemeteries were still there along with tombstones from 2000 years ago. Everything I was familar with was pretty much gone. I thought it was amazing the building I was in was still there. At least there were people and an advanced city where I was at. People survived and progressed. However I felt depressed feeling like I was stuck in the future and everyone I knew was dead. I had no job, no friends, no home, it was all gone. Even the technology I was familar with was gone.

Then I woke up feeling drained and tired.

Some of mine have within two days on average. I love when it happens because it validates my inner workings and knowing. It helps breed trust in my connection with my inner and outer life through events and symbolism. A type of dialogue. PREcognitive, PREdiction. PREdetermined. People don't want to believe in dreams because it would mean that there might be such a thing as destiny in our daily lives and that goes against having free will. People are willing to believe in destiny on the big things. but the big things are connected by dots just like everything else.

Yes, precognitive dreams are real.

I'll try sticking to dream-related precognition to stay on topic and say 4 for sure. Two I cannot detail because they are government (lies)/military secrets that haven't been made public. I did write the appropriate government entities at the time and warn them in advance; so, there is an actual record.

The other two were both personal/family related which is the most common type.

One, we had a full Summer drought and zero percent chance of rain in the near, medium and long range forecast. In my dream, it was raining and I was on my way home from work. At a certain, exact, particular freeway section where traffic enters ... my white ford vehicle was involved with a collision with a yellow volkswagon.

At work the next day, it started raining just before I left for home. The dream hit me. I took a different route home ... one I'd never taken. I successfully avoided making my dream a self-fulfilling prophesy BUT.

BUT, my sister (same date and hour) was driving her BF's white ford vehicle and had a collision with a yellow volkswagon. It was at a completely different part of town though, and a different model shape. I found out a few days later.

I don't believe in fate ... or didn't ... but then I had to re-think the fate/no fate concept and decided that SOME things are fated and if you avoid the fate ... the energy is re-channeled elsewhere. So, sister got my fate for me.

Two, the other personal dream I had years later.

Another auto wreck dream; but, this time it was dad's red toyota and a 4 door, large silver/grey chrysler sedan at a very particular intersection have a head on collision while passing. I recognized the detailed realness of the dream as that which I got in previous dreams that panned out.

I drove to dad's house because I didn't get a phone answer. I got there and the red toyota was gone. I went freaky (slightly) and pounded on the door. Dad was inside asleep. WHEW! Okay, I tell dad my dream and he laughed and said, "You won't have to worry about this one (dream) coming true ... your sister (other sister) borrowed the toyota last night."

Now, in my dream I had not seen the driver as it was from the driver's eyes that I saw the dream. I told him the dream wasn't about him, it was about his vehicle. I wanted to warn my sister; but, Dad (wisely and prudently) advised me NOT to tell her, because if something did happen, it would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. So, I agreed and obeyed and did not phone her.

That night, she totaled the red toyota in a head-on collsion with a large 4 door silver/grey chrysler sedan at the exact intersection, in the same way (passing).

Other events were dreams but not dreams ... they were more like "sudden, instant dreams". I've excluded them.

P.S. - You'll know a precognitive dream when you get one - it's nothing at all like your regular dreams. Mine were in extreme detail - I could smell the rain, see every gadget on the dashboard etc.

Also, I did eventually have a serious auto accident myself many years after all of the above and it was NOT preceded by a precognitive dream. Maybe I'm past that sensitive stage in life now.