This is a chronological list of possible paranormal experiences. Most involve seeming "precognitive" dreams, or more generally some improbable "repetition" of events or experiences that challenge rational explanation. Most of the accounts are from my personal journal which I have kept, sporadically, since 1969. This journal now comprises 23 volumes. In the first several years dream accounts predominated, often followed by interpretations from a psychological perspective. Later more daily life was recorded, and since 2005 very few entries of any kind appear. I never expected this writing would be made public, so some of it is in an abbreviated style, and most of it was not composed with the care I would now prefer. However, to provide the best evidence for or against paranormal content, I have preserved here much original text. Such text is always dated, and appears in quotes. There may be minor edits but only if they do not effect evidential value. Deletions may be indicated by "...".  Particular thoroughness is exercised in those cases (nos. 4, 5, 6, 8, 13) where a dream was written down before events happened that matched dream content. Many composed comments are dated "3/2010" when I initiated this web page. Comments added to quoted original text are placed in square brackets.

Several more experiences have been added since 3/2010 and some of the comments made then have been edited. A few of the accounts here are not evidence for the paranormal. These are given for their possible interest, or to make some point. Of the anticipated events here, none were of any great significance to myself or others. It is all trivia, as far as I can tell.

In a final section I have identified some recurrent features of the dreams here, and offered some general comments about precognition. This subject is not only an unwelcome guest in the scientific world view; neither does it fit in comfortably with religious philosophies. When I started recording my dreams long ago I did not believe that "precognition" was possible. However experiences described below convinced me otherwise, though whether there is a "knowing" involved, or just some mysterious and noisy repetition, who can say? In any case, the world appears to be far more complicated, more interconnected, than we currently comprehend.

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CONTENTS: 1. Phantom Home  2. Heidi's Dream and Headache  3. Calling Danny  4. Surprise Permission  5. Out of Control  
  6. Capadoccia  7. Special  Delivery   8.  Black Uniforms  9. NPR Event  10. Snow Queen  11. Crab or Lobster  12. White Rainbow  
13. Superior Hangings  14. Freed Animals  15. Tunnel Flower  16. Quatal Nunashish   17. Buda Pest  18. Piano Tuner  19. Amazing Glass  
20. Shadow Shadow  21. Twin Pipes   22. Two or Five, Whatever  23. Simultaneous Alarms  24. Another Aunt  25. Closet Outlets  
26. Goodluck Jonathan  27. Twin Problematic Greetings  28. Dog Stories  29. Southampton Hospital      Analysis

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1. Phantom Home

1945, age 8. Text: 3/2010.  From memory.
From 1943 to 1946 my family lived in a small house on the summit of the Palos Verdes Hills (southwest of Los Angeles). The house was adjacent to a Press Wireless receiving station where my father worked. At this time there were few roads or structures in the area. We were surrounded by open fields which were usually planted in lima or garbanzo beans. One day I walked about a half mile to the south along a dirt road. I heard music playing, and looked across the fields, about a mile, to a spot where there was a ramshackle dwelling abandoned when its Japanese residents were interned. But instead of seeing this "Jap shack" (as the locals called them), I saw a well maintained home with a green yard. The music was coming from this house. I was surprised that a house could have been built so quickly, but took it as a fact. When I returned home I told my mother where I had seen this new house. She said this was impossible, that no construction had taken place there. The next day I looked for the new house but it was no longer to be seen. Instead the ramshackle dwelling was back in its place, surrounded by dry weeds. My brother and I eventually explored the area. The image to the right is of a small (3.7 inch high) bottle from Japan that I found in a refuse pile next to the abandoned house.

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2. Heidi's Dream and Headache

9/1969, late evening. Oxnard, California. From my journal, volume #1.
DREAM (Heidi): "She goes out with a man (sometimes me but changing toward the end) for an evening date. He drives a car in which the back has room to sleep in. That back and the whole car are "beige". They go to a movie which costs $4.10 each. Later, though the back of the car is available, they go to a motel. They get a room upstairs. There is a large window out of which she sees a car go by in the night. This slightly disturbs her and her escort pulls the drapes." END

3/2010, Lompoc.
In 9/1969 I was between jobs and in the process of moving, and had been out of state for over a month. So I was looking forward to an evening out with my girlfriend Heidi, and met her at her home in Camarillo in the early evening. Almost immediately she recounted the above dream she had the night before, expressing surprise that she had remembered it so well. This is the only dream that Heidi ever reported to me, as I recall.

We drove to Oxnard and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant that I had eaten at several times. Heidi had never been in this restaurant before. After dinner we drove to a friend's house where I was staying alone (he was on vacation). Immediately after entering the front door, Heidi looked across the living room at a sliding glass door and a very odd look crossed her face. A lone car had just passed on a road behind the house, and Heidi said the interior of the house, and the lights of the passing car, looked exactly like what she had seen in her dream. This was the first time she had ever seen my friend's house. Then she put her fingers to her right temple and complained of the sudden onset of a migraine headache, a disorder that often afflicted her. I pulled the drapes closed across the sliding glass door, thinking she felt observed. I had not taken her comment about the dream seriously. At this time I did not believe precognition was possible.

Later in the evening we drove back to her home in Camarillo. I had used her car to take her to dinner, instead of my truck. We parked in front of her house, and she looked back and expressed surprise at how similar her car looked to the one in the dream. Her father had taken out the back seat that morning to move some prunings. The upholstery in the back was beige, as in the dream, and there was a pillow and blanket that one could use for sleeping. Before, in telling me the dream the first time, we had both assumed the car in the dream represented my truck, which had a small camper. The association with her car had not occurred to us until she looked back over her shoulder at its interior. I still did not take her comments about precognition seriously. But then she asked: "I suppose you're going to tell me the meals cost $4.10?" For a moment I did not remember the price of the meals. But soon I realized the meals in fact cost exactly $4.10 (two combination dinners at $1.95 apiece plus 20 cents tax).  I had decided we would go to this restaurant before she told me the dream, and had anticipated that we would order the combination dinners. I now (2010) do not remember what movie tickets would have cost in 1969, but at the time it was obvious that they did not cost $4.10, either singly or for two.

This $4.10 "coincidence" shocked me, and it was at this moment that I first began to think that precognition was possible. And then I remembered that I had considered taking her to a movie, and also had thought that we would go upstairs to the second floor in my friend's house. That was where my guest  bedroom was, but Heidi's migraine pain had continued so I had taken her home early. After I returned to Oxnard I wrote the above dream account in my journal, and also made loose notes about what had happened that evening.

Except for some very minor edits, I have exactly reproduced the brief description of the dream above as I recorded it in 1969. This event occurred within a week or two after Sept. 18, 1969 (the date of the previous entry in my journal). I did not date this entry. The above account of events subsequent to her telling me the dream is mostly based on the notes I made at the same time. According to the Social Security Death Index, Heidi died in 2006.

2011. Lompoc. By searching on Google using "migraine, paranormal" I discovered that migraine headaches are often associated with paranormal experiences. I had not previously known this.

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3. Calling Danny

November, 1969. West Los Angeles, Pico Blvd. From memory, 3/2010.
I was lying on my back on my bed on a Saturday afternoon, alone in my apartment. I dozed off a bit, which was rare for me at that age. I had a dream, or more like a hypnagogic hallucination, that I heard the phone ring. I picked up the receiver and an unfamiliar female voice said "Danny?"

I awoke immediately and marveled at the seeming reality of the experience (the phone was not ringing), and thought about it. The only people who still called me "Danny" were my mother and brother. But this was not my mother's voice. Just then the phone actually did ring. I picked up the receiver and heard, in an unfamiliar female voice say "Danny?" It turned out to be a friend of my mother who had known her in Saudi Arabia, and had just visited her in Florida. My mother had given this woman my phone number in Los Angeles to call me because she was coming out here. I was not told to be expecting a call. This is the only time in my adult life that I have gotten a call from someone, who was not my mother or brother, who called me "Danny."

I did not record this experience in my journal. But over the years I have told it to many people and remember it well. By contrast I have rarely recounted precognitive dreams, which are more complicated. Often the listener to this will respond with a similar experience of their own, such as thinking of a person just before they call.

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4. Surprise Permission

January 21-22, 1970. Los Angeles. From journal, volume #2.
"Went to bed using the 'meditation on the throat' technique to enter the dream state consciously."
DREAM: "I got up &  went to bathroom, came back, my pants dropped on the floor & stayed there. I got in the bed. The sleeping bag mat was on the floor beside me. I got off the bed and lay on my back on it. My knees were against my chest. Either I or someone was holding my legs this way. ... There was an uneasiness - as if resistance against a sexual advance - resistance and helplessness. Suddenly I realize I am hallucinating the experience - not 'dreaming' - or dreaming and knowing it ..." END
   "PS. Afternoon that day - the Yoga position - told us to fart - the mat - unexplained pain in throat - ... shoes were taken off."

3/2010
Later that day, after I had written down the above preface and dream exactly as above, I went to a scheduled yoga class at UCLA for the first time. We exercised on mats about the size of a sleeping bag mat. Well into the class the instructor had us lie on our backs and bring our knees up to our chests and hold them that way. He then embarrassed us all (I presume), by advising us that we should go ahead and "fart" now, that this position was designed for that. No one in the class farted. At the same time I noticed an unexplainable pain in my throat. Only when writing the PS, in the evening of the same day, did I connect this pain in the throat with the "meditation on the throat" technique that I  had used the previous night. I am aware that the PS reads as if not written on the same day, but it was. This was in my second journal volume, and only later did I strive to be more accurate and complete with my entries.

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5. Out of Control

5/22/1971. New Port Richey, Florida. From journal, volume #3.
DREAM: [Much omitted] "Later I am alone in the back seat of the car in a small local town. ... The wind is blowing strongly and I notice an approaching whirlwind. I'm concerned that it may move the car (which is parked next to a lawn - court house?). It [the whirlwind] centers on the car and the car moves over the curb and onto the grass. Other whirlwinds appear and the car moves faster and faster in one large circle. I think of trying to get into the front seat but I debate that it may be dangerous to climb over, or that I don't have time. The car is going at a dangerous speed (40 mph) and I fear it will hit something." END
COMMENT: " ... But most interesting is the fact that the manifest content seems based on a scene in a movie I saw the day after the dream! (Fathom - Raquel Welch - saw the last part of this movie). In one scene she was alone in a light airplane that was spinning down out of control. She struggled to get into the front seat to control the plane."

3/2010.
The movie Fathom is available for online viewing on Netflix. I recently watched it and confirmed that the scene described above was present. I am fairly certain that I wrote up the dream before I saw the movie. This was at a time that I usually recorded dreams upon waking. I think the comment was written a couple days later.

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6. Cappadocia

8/26/1971, 4 AM. New Port Richey, Florida. From journal, volume #3.
DREAM: "I am a leader - or usually just a working member - of  a construction crew that is erecting a sky-scraper in an ancient town in the Middle East someplace (Turkey?). The town's name is 'Selechrine' (pronounced 'Selekreen') and is an archaeological site of an ancient city (later ascertained to be early Christian or Byzantine). Its main feature is a labyrinth of vast tunnels and underground churches. The new construction is understood to be a hotel for tourists, though there are virtually no people presently living at the site. ...
   "I am on the 15th and top floor of the uncompleted building; the floors are not in, but others and myself move about unconcerned on the girders high above the ground. [Much omitted] Now ... I descend from the building and enter the tunnels.
   "(This phase of the dream is somewhat distinct and more interesting than above). The tunnels are perhaps 50 feet high - and further down them I will find high vaulted chambers like underground cathedrals.  I think of the enchantment of them - wonder at their antiquity, but Christian symbolism makes me think 'they are not so old after all.' [Much omitted] Now I begin to see vast underground chambers - all made with stone - their interiors dilapidated and worn - damp and in shadows - but always the overhead vaults secure. Projecting stones appear on the floor. I have turned about  now and am returning to the surface. In an underground cathedral on my left I see a robed man and wonder if these holy places are still being maintained. Continuing upward, soon a man overtakes me from behind and talks to me (always slightly behind me and out of sight). He speaks of his regular long walks in this and other tunnels. I don't speak for some time - and I wonder if he is a denizen of these regions - perhaps some occult figure. But now he mentions he is working on other tourist buildings in the area - a complex called 'Futurama.' "

3/2010 (Using notes made on 8/26/1971, afternoon)
I recorded this dream and the first comment on it upon awakening at 4 AM. The above fragments are exact quotes from that record. At about noon that same day my mother suggested I look at an issue of Aramco World magazine (May - June, 1971) that I had not seen before. She thought I might like to look at some pictures of birds it contained. Taking it up, I noticed that an old friend whom I had met in Saudi Arabia in 1954 had an article in it - The Caves of Cappadocia. I read it for a while without associating it with the dream, until I came to words about the underground "imitation vaults" and pictures of "cave-churches." Cappadocia is a famous Byzantine archaeological site in Turkey. I thought of the unseen man in the dream who was working on "Futurama." Skeptical, I wondered if I could have seen the article before and forgotten about it. No, I would surely have remembered an article by my friend of years before. Though we had not maintained contact, I remembered his name well, and knew that he was employed by Aramco. I documented this apparent precognition shortly after first seeing the magazine. I have provided a complete and exact transcript of the recorded dream made before the fulfilling event, and the comments made immediately afterward. I still possess the spiral bound journal book (#3), and keep the issue of Aramco World inside it. 

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7. Special Delivery

10/1/1971. New Port Richey, Florida. From journal, volume #3.
DREAM: [Much omitted]  "Then someone entered my room - I didn't see him but it was a male voice telling me the 'blimp racing team' at UCLA had dreamed of me and ... they would be contacting me."

3/2010 (based on notes of 10/1/1971)
After a bit more of the dream I awoke with the feeling that the dream was precognitive, but could think of no one from UCLA that might contact me. Suddenly the door bell rang. It was a special delivery letter for me from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. I was not at all expecting to hear from them because they had returned some employment forms I had submitted several weeks before. My image of this organization was that they were the people who released weather balloons (cf. blimps). I had gone to college at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and also to UCLA. I had no chance to record this dream before the fulfilling event occurred, but did so in detail after receiving the special delivery letter. I have uploaded the complete dream transcript and original commentary here. I put the envelope in my journal. It is still there.

9/7/2013.
I have put a scan of this letter here, front and back. At the time, the door bell rang just after I woke up and was pondering the strange dream. You can see on the image of the back of the envelope the post office time annotation Oct. 1, 1971, 7:30 AM.

             

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8. Black Uniforms

11/25/1971, 3 AM. Live Oak, Florida. From journal, volume #3.
DREAM: "I am living in times of great protest among the youth. It may be contemporary but there is some implication it is in the future ...There is to be a great rally in a large oval stadium. I join crowds headed for the stadium. We cross a river and enter the stadium. ... We take a position before the crowds in the stands. I look to our right and see armed troops dressed in black and standing in ranks." [Much omitted]

11/25/1971, 7:30 PM. Live Oak, Florida.
"Recorded previous dream in the morning. That afternoon I heard there was going to be a Thanksgiving Parade in Live Oak [where we were visiting relatives of my mother]. I had not known of this parade previously. I walked over to the court house where the band stand was (a decorated flat bed truck trailer), and situated myself across the street from it. After a while the parade started up and after a few lead vehicles the local junior Naval ROTC marched by. They came from my right, in ranks, with rifles, dressed in black! Compare this to the dream report: 'I look to our right and see armed troops dressed in black and standing in ranks.' ... the parade proceeded in the direction of a football stadium. ... It should be noted that I saw one of these boys in uniform before the parade but after the dream. However possibly I saw one in uniform the day before the dream and forgot about it. Note again (cf. "Cappadocia'') that the dream itself had a 'time travel' theme."

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9. NPR Event

Events: 12/1971. New Port Richey, Florida. From memory, 3/2010.
Sometime during 1971 I had briefly discussed precognitive dreams with my father, and he did not believe that the phenomenon was possible. Neither had I until a close friend had a convincing example a few years before. My father's disbelief in precognition did not concern me, but his rejection of even the possibility of consciousness after death seemed to be one cause of his depressing belief that his life was meaningless.

I had been speculating about the nature of consciousness, thinking of an individual awareness as manifesting whenever certain processes took place. Based on these speculations, I hatched a quirky plan to try to induce my father to have a precognitive dream, hoping that this might greatly expand his belief in what was possible. Precognitive dreams had forced me to recognize that there was much about the world that we did not know. However I did not expect this to work  - for one, my father did not seem to be interested in his dreams, and I could not remember him ever recounting one to me. Still, one night, after he had gone to bed, I went to the beach several blocks away and spent over an hour going through a procedure that I had devised based on my speculations about consciousness. This involved repetitive visualizations attempting to produce in my own brain the essential process that gave rise to my father's consciousness, and attempting to make a change therein that might cause a precognitive dream. I did not tell anyone about this project, nor could anyone have found out.

The next morning my father acted no different than he normally did, and I assumed that my odd project had no effect on him. Living in the house next to us was an elderly couple my father called "Captain and Kitty." In the early afternoon Kitty called my father and asked him to take her the Captain to the hospital, something he had done before as I recall. Neither my mother nor I went with him. Soon after my father returned from the hospital he said something to us that was close to this.

As I recall, neither I nor my mother said much in response, and I never again talked to my parents about this incident. They have since both passed away.  Though I had written down many dreams in my journal, including some dreams of others, I never recorded these strange events until now. For this reason I do not know the date of the incident, though it likely was in December, 1971.

I acknowledge that the following two objections carry some weight.  

(1) Since I did not record the events at the time, considerable drift or elaboration in important details could have occurred over the decades. However this was an amazing event to me; I believe I still remember it clearly after the passage of 40 years. There is a chance that I shifted the key number. At the least, I remember with total certainty that my father reported a precognitive dream on the one night that I attempted to induce such. I referred to this event in my journal (only) as follows, and below in 1984.

10/7/1984. Evening. Oxnard, California.  From journal, volume #6. (Prior omitted)
"In my very remarkable precognitive experience involving a deliberate attempt to induce such in my father's dream, the "coincidence" involved the number 129."

1/29/1994. 11:23 PM. Oxnard, California. From journal, volume #19. (Prior omitted)
"Later I told him of my little miracle in New Port Richey, and my method of 'making things happen' by pattern matching."

(2) My father could have simply made up the dream after he returned from the hospital, perhaps in order to please me. That is still a remarkable coincidence, considering my efforts the prior evening. But this objection is very unlikely, knowing my father and how unlikely he would have sought to deceive me in this way, even if done thinking it was in my best interest. Actually, my father thought that my interest in precognition was harmful to me (maybe he was right).

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10. Snow Queen

7/26/1975. Los Angeles (recorded in Oxnard).  From journal, volume #3, 6 page stapled insert. Some minor revision.
"Charmaine's Precognitive Imagery."
     "Yesterday evening (Friday) I went to Los Angeles to see Charmaine for the first time in many months. After dinner we bought tickets for a movie (The Fortune) and first browsed in a small store near the theater in Westwood. It had a large stock of note cards - many with children's book illustrations. I bought three, showed them briefly to Charmaine but it was rather dark at the time. The next morning she told me how her therapist was having her create images and act in them. She had mentioned this briefly before I had bought the cards the day before. In one of her images she imagined herself on an ice flow, there was a throne and her therapist had her imagine sitting on it. When she told me this I realized I had a card of "The Snow Queen" illustrating a Hans Christian Anderson story. Producing this we noticed it had a woman sitting on a throne on a block of ice in an ice flow! In another image she had seen herself as wet, emerging from the ocean, not knowing which way was home, and getting a ride in a passing vehicle. These exact elements were present in the movie we saw. "
    " ... I am not sure how much, if any, of the snow queen's image she told me before I bought the card - certainly not the ice flow. Until her image was described I hadn't noticed that the throne was on an ice flow on the card. Recall that J. W. Dunne (An Experiment with Time) said day dreams had as much future content as regular dreams."

3/2010.
I seem to have lost the notecard of the Snow Queen. But a web search suggests it was by Edmund Dulac. This appears above. There is a good chance that Charmaine had seen this image before and this influenced the visualizations with her therapist. And it is no great coincidence if I picked this card independently. The anticipation of the movie imagery is more difficult to explain. I did not record this in sufficient detail, and my memory of it has faded. The movie The Fortune is available only on VHS, and at a high price. I have not seen it again to check the above description.

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11. Crab or Lobster

8/17/1975. Huntington Beach, California (recorded in Oxnard). From journal, volume #3, 6 page stapled insert.
    "Met a woman, Judy, in Huntington Beach whom I was matched with in a computer dating service.  She had a 3 year old boy. Shortly before the child was to go to the baby sitter he began to cry. I went in to his room and got him to talking about his books. He started telling me about his favorite - Donald Duck as a detective. On one page was a picture of 5 or 6 sea animals. He pointed to the picture and named the creatures. But he called a lobster a crab. His mother (on my correcting him) said she was the source of the misidentification.
    "Later I was watching television with his mother. Toward the end of the Cher Show people were dressed as food. A man had a crab around his neck. Cher said something very close to: "it should have been a lobster."

3/2010.
It could probably be checked to see if the Cher TV show in question had been broadcast prior to my meeting Judy and her son. If so, Judy could have seen it, making her more inclined to make the misidentification to her child. If not, this unexplained error may have been precognitively influenced by the line in the television program she was to see later. Many precognitive events seem to involve some cerebral dysfunction, or transposition.

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12. White Rainbow

7/8/1984, 9:10 PM. Dream that morning. Oxnard, California. From journal, volume #5.
DREAM:  [First paragraph omitted] "In one scene I am in a vacant lot next to an old (brick?) building. I see what I think is a fossil next to the building. Then, in fear, I think it is a live snake. Then I see it is dead, and all that is left is its skin over a fine network of bones (more like some vegetable husk than a vertebrate skeleton). The head of the snake is thrust inside a hole in the building.
     "The scene shifts to a gray hill. An old man is summoning me. He says 'use me,' and implies he has much to teach me. He is hardy looking, wizened, but not educated. I doubt if he has much to teach me, but out of respect I go to him. He points out to the horizon. Above the horizon is a large hood of gray clouds. Only a little line of bright sky shows under the clouds and [above] the horizon. Here are four white bands of light. They are all that can be seen of a rainbow. The old man makes a point of the rainbow being double. The second rainbow comes in more clear now.  I wonder why the light is white, instead of the spectral hues.
     "The man says the doubling of the rainbow, its appearance, is prophetic - he says something like 'you should be very concerned about that.'
     "Trying to guess his intent, I say 'you mean that this means its going to rain a lot?' He says yes, but I am doubtful."

7/8/1984, 9:15 PM. Oxnard.
COMMENTS: "I told Sharon of these dreams - but wrote them in the evening. While driving back from a day in Santa Barbara  ..., a little north of Ventura, I looked in the mirror and saw a strange glow behind - around and under a heavy but discontinuous blanket of low lying fog. I told Sharon to look, and as I turned back myself, I noticed a striking similarity to the 'rainbow' scene of previous night. There was the low gap of illuminated sky between the horizon and clouds. But the light of the cars were like the rainbow, and at the moment I looked back, two cars were clearly visible and their headlights were positioned right above the horizon, in the strip of light.
   "I immediately thought of the dream scene and reminded Sharon of the dream I told her, she confirming it, including my puzzlement over the 'white rainbow.'
   "Within a second the car lights behind me were no longer aligned with the horizon.
    "It is interesting that in the dream scene a prophetic character was announced, as in at least one of my previous dreams and in my father's '129' dream."

3/2010. Lompoc.
I have faithfully reproduced above my original writing on this dream; however it does not explain the event adequately. The precognitive target was entirely a visual experience, not easily described with words. What I saw on the highway was a hood of dark but oddly glowing clouds, with a thin band of brightness between these clouds and the horizon. As I looked, two cars, in adjacent lanes, appeared in the band above the horizon with their headlights on. Thus I saw a band of light with two pairs of much brighter white lights separated by a gap. The same image was seen the previous night in the dream. But in the dream a fanciful interpretation was constructed to explain the scene. The pairs of white lights marked the beginning and end each of two concentric rainbows. All rainbows have such concentric pairs, the outer one being weaker or not visible at all. In some other dreams of mine I believe narrative content has also been constructed to explain an internal visual perception, sometimes unlike anything that might be seen in the waking world.

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13. Superior Hangings

10/7/1984, morning. Oxnard. From journal, volume #6.
DREAM: "(Much forgotten) I am in a hall, and see a row of bodies hanged by the neck and suspended for public view. They are the victims of British colonial punishment. Around me are others of the oppressed culture, but I am white, the same as the oppressors. I collect myself, and begin to shout about the cruelty of the British. My sentences seem very eloquent, but there are long pauses between them. 'Is this a display of superior British culture?' I say. (Much forgotten). Later I notice some of the bodies are just small dolls, naked, some held by string about the legs."  END

10/7/1984, evening. Oxnard. Some editing.
COMMENT: "Just watched the Reagan - Mondale debate. Certainly Mondale got the better of it.
   [Paragraph omitted] "I had planned to go to the Old Time Fiddler's Convention, but instead went to the UCSB library. Looked at books on political cartoons. ... In one book, Art and Politics , Fitzgerald, Greenwood Press, 1973, on page 87, I encountered a cartoon from The Masses, Aug. 1915. It shows two Negroes dead on crosses. The caption is 'In Georgia: The Southern Gentleman Demonstrates His Superiority.' Before the crosses stands a southern 'colonel' type. Note that in the last dream recorded (this morning, and also told to my wife before leaving) I saw 'victims of punishment,' implicitly of a different race from myself. I denounced this, saying 'Is this a display of superior British culture?' ... In the dream I had the oppressors as 'British' - in the book, on the page facing page the anti-lynching cartoon, is a picture of the British lion leaping from England on some fighting foreigners. Another curiosity: in both cases the artist is Robert Minor. My brother's first and middle names are 'Minor Robert.' [omissions]
    "I had never seen this book before, though I had half expected to look at political cartoons today. I would not call this a convincing example of precognition, but it has that curious mix of multiple coincidence and permutation that seem to characterize such experiences. And there is no question of the prior recording of the dream.
    "Now I recall why I record dreams in such detail - one principal reason was to pick up on any precognitive detail - since minor elements may be involved. Perhaps 'precognition' is a poor word - it does not seem sensory or perceived - there is just some structural convergence of two causally unrelated experiences. Thus both in the dream and the cartoon, humans are killed and suspended [for public display], and this act is satirically denounced as claimed superiority. In the book, the perpetrator jumps over from the next page to match the dream, and my brother's names are permuted.
    "Incidentally, a month or so ago, Sharon and I put a 'double whammy' (simultaneous) on Reagan, that he would stumble over his words. It was all in fun, well, half in fun. Seeing him stumble repeatedly tonight was fun. I got a good laugh when he said something like 'I will affirm without hesitation my belief in God' - but in saying this he hesitated! - on the word 'hesitate,' - saying 'hes ... hesitate.' Check the tapes if you doubt me. Note the curious doubling over a meaning and delivery - like some semantic snare. It actually makes me doubt his sincerity - his belief in God - for the first time. I have doubts myself, but I don't conceal them."

3/2010.
The dream was recorded in the morning before seeing the book at UCSB. It appears above in its entirety. After some intervening accounts of routine events, the comment to the dream was written in the evening after returning home. I have deleted some unrelated observations from this. Both in the dream and in the book, one mocks the pretensions of "superiority" by a culture that elevates for public display the victims of its cruel punishment. This in itself is not strongly evidential of precognition. But seeing these cartoons in this book would have personal significance to me because of the combination of two familiar names. Likewise seeing the article on Cappadocia had a personal significance because I knew the author (see Cappadocia). This seems to increase the likelihood of  being a target of precognition. Perhaps the transposition of "Minor" and "Robert" even adds to that likelihood, sparking the transposition of cause and effect in the waking versus the dreaming domains.

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14. Freed Animals

12/11/1984. Oxnard. From journal, volume #6. Comment edited 3/2010.
"Bob, my office mate, mentioned that 'animal liberation' released some captive animals in Los Angles yesterday. He mentioned rats and horses - some had herpes. This caused me to remember a particularly vivid dream fragment from the night before."

DREAM:  "I am in Los Angeles, many previous events are forgotten. I am walking next to a railroad track (perhaps the one along Santa Monica Blvd.). Across the track I see large African mammals, walking in the same direction (east) as I, parallel to the tracks but always on the other side. I wonder what they are doing free, and speculate that they may have been released, or escaped as a result of some previous (but vaguely remembered) catastrophe, perhaps an earthquake or war.
   "I stare up into the sky and see an immense giraffe, his head and neck towering many times higher than possible - and I see other herbivores, all much larger than life. The image of these giant, stately animals moving gracefully against the sky is very striking."

COMMENT: "The idea of deliberate release was not so clear in the dream, and could have been a 'back formation' since I did not record the dream until after hearing of the news of the release. Still captive animals were unexpectedly free in Los Angeles - in both dream and reality. At the time I had not lived in Los Angeles for 17 years. All together this is not weighty evidence for precognition. Interesting though is the sudden remembrance when hearing Bob mention the release, and the particularly vivid dream image."

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15. Tunnel Flower

Below is the exact record of what I recorded in my journal in 1988, based on two telephone calls with friend Jana.

8/6/1988. Carmel, California. Recorded in Oxnard, California. From journal, volume #10.
"Jana, the day before yesterday, told me of this 'strong and pleasant and unusual' dream."
DREAM: "She enters a tunnel or cave. But it is not foreboding, and is lined all about with a single type of flower. This flower is like a Tiger Lily, but not exactly (black & white with yellow). She comes out of the tunnel at the walkway to her attic (where her mother's things were stored). Later her mother is present in the dream (her mother died last December or November). There are pleasantries exchanged." END

8/6/1988. By DWV, Oxnard.
COMMENT: "I was very interested in the striking imagery of a tunnel lined with flowers. I asked Jana to try to obtain a picture of one of these flowers. Yesterday when I called her she concluded the conversation with this remarkable incident. After telling me of the dream and after describing the flower, the next day she saw her daughter carrying the very same flower in her home. Here is how she got it. Jana's ex-husband had a cake for them. He works in a hotel a mile or so north of Jana's home. Someone had thrown out a corsage. He saw this flower and thought Jana might like it so taped it onto the cake box. He thought it was an 'orchid.' He does not habitually give Jana flowers. This is only about the third or fourth dream Jana has told me. The flower is not so common - and she described it to me before it appeared in her home.  She did not tell her ex-husband about the dream. She described the dream as unusual and vivid, and I took a particular interest in the flower."

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16. Quatal Nunashish

5/3/1989. Ventura County, California. Recorded in Oxnard. From journal, volume  #13.
    "Alan has gotten involved with a congregation of the Native American Church. ... On Saturday he will return to Pine Mountain for another church ceremony.
    "He was introduced to this group, that lives on a ranch on the Ojai side of the Pine Mountain Inn, by Paul. ... There is a medicine man, ... who has encouraged Alan and implied he may be suitable for advanced training. So far Alan has participated in two sessions in a smoke house with four or five other men. They beat drums, throw water on hot rocks, take turns praying (to 'grandfather'), and sing. ... Certain rituals are observed, but there is little doctrine. The group emphasizes equality of the races, peace, ecology, family life, sobriety. The leaders, others, travel much to other Native American Church groups. They prefer family involvement, so Alan suggests I come."

5/13/1989, 7:39 PM.
     "I followed Alan to Pardner's ranch this morning. We parked and walked up a footpath past the ranch house. [Much omitted] Alan went to the Toyota to get two large bottles of Pepsi he brought for Ken, the medicine man. We went to his trailer and he invited us in. ... He talks deliberately, in excellent English. He is a Chippewa, and that was his native tongue until he was removed to a Catholic Reformatory School at age six." [Much omitted]
     "[Ken] started talking about a large hole (natural) behind an aged Chumash's home up Quatal Canyon (Ken aspirates the 't' in 'Quatal'). A spirit comes out of that hole - it is about 12 feet tall and featureless. It is harmless, but plays tricks on people. It checks to see how people are treating the land. Ken said it came by Pardner's ranch once. It shook their trailer - he thought there was an earthquake.
    "Alan then said he had seen this himself. He said it was wearing a hat, had a black void for a face, was 12 feet tall and slender and his car was shaken." [omissions]
    "I am fascinated by this. Ken placed little importance on it, maybe he has much better spirits he deals with. ... I read in California's Chumash Indians, a Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History publication [p. 41], of the nunashish - dangerous creatures inhabiting the lower tier of this three tiered world. They come up to our Middle World at night, where they are likely to frighten anyone who should chance to see them."

3/2010. Lompoc, California.
Since Ken's description of this spirit somewhat matched the traditional nunashish, he could have been influenced by contact with local Chumash. The "aged Chumash" he referred to was probably Grandfather Semu, who lived 6 miles up Quatal Canyon. One of Ken's young cohorts lived with Grandfather Semu. However the early account by Alan was completely independent of Chumash legends or sightings. This created much interest among friends of mine at the time; one from work was eager for us to camp out in Quatal Canyon. Attributing reality to an entity based on independent observations of it is the stuff of ghost lore. Note also the kinship of this entity to European traditions of headless specters.

3/30/2010. Lompoc.
Today I talked to Alan on the phone and asked him what he remembered about the above happenings. He remembers seeing an entity like Ken described but only in a dream, and the location was not Quatal Canyon. Instead, he was living in Los Angeles and the setting of the dream was in the parking lot of a local market. He did remember his vehicle being shaken in Quatal Canyon at night, more than once. I now remember him telling me about this memorable dream many years before, and it being in Los Angeles. Perhaps back on 5/13/1989 Alan did not elaborate on how or where he had seen something like the spirit Ken had just described. So I falsely presumed the sighting was the same place as the car shaking. This revised version is not as interesting as the one originally recorded. But note there, that Ken doesn't actually say he saw the nunashish either, but both Alan and Ken report unexplained shaking in or near Quatal Canyon. Here is a link to some photographs of this beautiful canyon by David Rock.

7/25/2012. Lompoc, California.
According to a recently received email there have been independent sightings of tall nocturnal entities with non-reflective surfaces, sometimes wearing what appears to be a broad brimmed hat - these further south off Highway 33. I also have learned that both Ken Littlefish (Ken) and his brother Paul Sky Horse Durant (Paul) have passed away.

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17. Buda Pest

5/25/1990, 10:43 PM. Oxnard. From journal, volume #14.
    "Last night I woke up at around 3 AM .... and turned my radio on to KPFK-FM. A taped Alan Watts lecture was on, and he mentioned a story about a woman who lived in Buda and her lover who lived in Pest. I have never heard before (that I can remember) that Budapest was once these two cities. I even wondered if it were true, thinking that instead it was a play on words [since Watts often lectured on Buddhism.]
     "Driving to work this morning, listening to KCSU-FM, the announcer introduced a piece by stating that it was written to celebrate the anniversary of the merging of Buda and Pest."

3/2010. Lompoc.
     If both broadcasts had been selected to commemorate an anniversary of the merging of Buda and Pest then the above would not at all have been surprising. However a Google search reveals that Buda and Pest were merged on 17 November, 1873, not in May. Even so, we are still in the realm of coincidence. However I very rarely listen to the radio in the middle of the night. Thus one might ask: why did I happen to wake up at 3 AM and turn on my radio? Was it my way of producing an anticipation of an unexpected statement I was to hear within a few hours?

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18. Piano Tuner

7/18/1992, 8:22 AM. Oxnard. From journal, volume #17.
     "Dreamed about a piano tuning last night. A child wanted to play while the tuner worked. I told the child he couldn't do that, that it broke the tuner's concentration.
     "Then this morning, just now, a piece finally ended on KPFK-FM. The host said he had a couple calls, and that one was from a piano tuner. This was the first sentence I heard this morning - the music had been playing before."

8:51 AM.  "I'm getting more into this 'piano tuner' event. True, I didn't write the dream down first. And I suppose there is a chance I could have made it up. But that seems extremely unlikely. Once reminded of the dream (by the announcer's mention of a piano tuner) I immediately recalled it in some detail. That is typical of dream recall. In the dream I recall feeling that I may have been too supervisory with the child - that I was over estimating how much the piano tuner had to concentrate. But in reality obviously you couldn't tune while someone was banging on the keys."

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19. Amazing Glass

12/13/1992, 10:33 AM. Oxnard. From journal, volume #18.
     "Forgot to mention - there was an unusual 'Mary episode' in Oxnard about a week ago. An image of the virgin appeared as dirt on a window. People began to come. Eventually there were hundreds. At one point some asshole fired a couple rounds, wounding two people. After that the apartment manager had glaziers replace the window. While carrying it away the image was destroyed by the hands of the faithful, who wanted to receive benefit by touching the image. I suppose if Mary were to appear in the flesh she would be torn limb to limb. A personal note to this unusual event - it happened at 5361 Perkins Rd - my old apartment building, in fact directly below my #5 apartment. Duane had told me it was near where I lived, so I went there [and confirmed the location]. There were no more people, no image. But the front lawn and shrubbery were completely trampled and destroyed. When I first moved there, there was an elderly Scottish (?) woman living in that apartment. She used to play an organ-choir version of Amazing Grace over and over."

3/2010.
     There is very little paranormal aspect to this story, but it is interesting and allegedly appeared in the Los Angeles Times, though I never read a press account myself. If anyone tracks this down I would love to get a copy. There could be errors in my second hand account above. There was a rumor that the woman who lived in the apartment had a premonition a year previous that Mary would manifest to her. Both the elderly woman and myself had moved away years before. I must have heard Amazing Grace coming from below me a hundred times.
     Before finding the above account in my journal books recently, I had remembered and told this story differently. I had the music by bagpipes, the image of the Virgin appearing a full month before I was told about it, and I had completely forgotten about the shooting victims. This shows how the memory can change details, shift things in time, or delete important features altogether. If precognition is a fact, we should not be surprised if it treats future content with the same disrespect.

Jan. 9, 2014
Using newspaperarchive.com I found reports on this incident in the Oxnard Press Courier, dates Dec. 8, 10, 11 and 12, 1992. The above 1992 description is fairly accurate. The image was first seen on Monday, Dec. 7.  The shooting occurred two days later when an estimated 300 people had gathered to view the image. A man and his wife were injured in the foot and ankle. A controversy arose when the glazier said he would sell the image to the highest bidder. It was reported he had an offer of $200. The image had been all but erased as described above. Eventually the property manager put it in storage. In the last article on the incident a neighbor said "the apparition was not a miracle, but instead an accumulation of dirt on glue left from a cardboard cutout of the Virgin Mary that was on the window last year."

While attempting to printout these articles I tried to go to page 14 in the Press Courier, which had a continuation of its Dec. 11 page-one story on the event. The software for newspaperarchive.com is awkward, and I wound up on page 12 instead. An article appeared there at the top of the page titled: "Imports stomp Dutch clogs." That very night, while visiting some friends here in Lompoc, a woman brought out some wooden shoes she had bought. I had never seen wooden shoes before, and was surprised at how thick they were. Nor can I ever remember seeing any other newspaper article about wooden shoes.

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20. Shadow Shadow.   8/26/1996, 7:47 PM. Oxnard, From journal, volume #21.

     "As usual I was walking with Shadow behind Oxnard College this morning at around 7:05 AM. I was walking on a dirt road; Shadow was not visible, having entered the rows of potted Christmas trees to my left. I was in a state of reverie, ... and thinking of what I had written to W. H. I saw Shadow come out from between a couple potted trees, trot ahead of me, and turn right where the road made a 'T' ahead of me about 20 feet. A few seconds later I saw Shadow come out from between the same two pots! My mind raced, as I tried to imagine how she could have circled around so fast. Quickly I realized it was impossible, plus I was beginning to have a strange feeling about the situation. I thought to myself: 'Oh my God, you suppose she is going to do the exact same thing I just saw?' And so in suspense I watched her trot ahead of me just the same, and then she turned right just as before! It was shocking and amazing. I at once thought it would be hard to remember the incident - so told myself to remember it. And I went up to Shadow, and noticed she wasn't panting, which she would be if she had circled around (but there was not time anyway)."

3/2010.
Unlike most of the events here, I told a few people about this the same day, even though it is one of the least believable. What was most striking for me was what I experienced in the few seconds immediately after Shadow came out from between the same two potted Christmas trees the second time. My dog not only repeated the course I had seen previously, but did so with the exact same motions - such motions being something a dog owner gets very keen on, especially with an athletic hound like Shadow. My best explanation is that in the state of contemplation I was in, somehow I saw what was to happen several seconds before it actually happened. Above left is a picture of myself and Shadow in Oxnard around 1993. To the right is a scan from my journal showing the layout of the area I was in and the course Shadow took.

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21. Twin Pipes

5/22/1999. Lompoc, California. From journal, volume #23.
    "Went to the Nipomo swap meet today; ... I was looking around in one of the sheds and saw a cheap recorder in its original package. Taped next to it ... was another recorder of a different color. This triggered a memory of a dream from that very morning in which I saw a curious panpipe; two pipes attached, but they are of different colors. I play them and marvelous Arabic sounding music is produced. I wonder how I learned to do this."

3/2010.
When a waking event triggers the memory of a dream from the previous night, caution requires that we consider if the dream narrative in its entirety could have been constructed instantaneously. But many dreams are remembered in this fashion. It is simpler to presume these are actual memories of dreams, rather than some instantaneous phenomenon that produces identical results. Further, content may be dreamlike, as in the above where it seems an unlikely panpipe is posited to explain the waking experience of a taped together pair of cylindrical instruments of differing colors.

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22. Two or Five, Whatever

Aug. 10, 2010. Exactly as written in Journal #24, except "X" for an actual name and "[my step grandson]" added.  Entered Oct. 25, 2015.

   "Now here is something weird. On Sunday X called and was desperate for money (as always). X told me his brother promised him $500 but he had not gotten it yet. But a few days before he had called and told me his brother had promised to send him $200 but he had not gotten it yet. I confronted him on the discrepancy and he became annoyed and said: 'Two hundred or five hundred, whatever.' He hung up on me. He called back twice to apologize.

    Now that is not weird, however the next day (yesterday) I got a call from a young man who called me 'Grandpa'. I said 'is this Michael?' He said yes and then told me he was on a fishing trip to Niagara Falls. He and a friend had met two Canadians and they all got stopped by Canadian police. The Canadians had drugs and they were all arrested. The cops told him he would get off, but he needed $2,000 bail. Later, perhaps inadvertently, he changed this to $5,000 bail, which he wanted me to send to him. I was already suspicious, since he did not sound like Michael. I asked why he did not call his mother. He said that she did not answer and he only had one call. I told him he did not sound like Michael and challenged him to tell me the name of my dog that he had liked so much ("Lobo"). He said "Spot", then another name. I told him he was not Michael and hung up. I called Michael  [my step grandson] - he was still in Santa Barbara.

    Only until that night did I realize this. (1) X called me probably wanting to borrow $200, and a few days later called hoping to borrow $500. (2) The next day someone tried to con me out of $2,000, later changing it to $5,000."

11/23/2020. I have edited this entry slightly to prevent identification of X.

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23. Simultaneous Alarms

7/13/2011. Lompoc, California.  From journal , volume #24.  Edited 1/27/2012.
A couple days ago I was making lunch and watching the TV program Disappeared, a true-crime drama about people who have disappeared, usually as a victim of crime. In the TV story, the narrator said something like "they would soon get a letter that would set off alarms" and just then my smoke alarm went off! I had pushed down some toast a second time and forgotten about it. My smoke alarm goes off at most once or twice a year.

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24. Another Aunt

7/13/2011. Lompoc, California. From journal, volume #24. Rewritten 1/27/2012.
A couple weeks ago Y called me in a very delusional state and said her estranged son had come to see her from San Diego and had married Y's older sister. This was a very bizarre fantasy: her son has not talked to his mother for over 10 years, has been married for many years, and his aunt is probably 30 years older than him.

A couple days later I called Y to again suggest this was a delusion. By then she had regained clarity and was embarrassed to talk about her prior delusion. That night I saw the excellent film Another Year. In this, the female friend of a couple falls for their son - much younger than her. The son does not encourage her and does not call her as she had asked. Eventually he marries a woman close to his own age. The older woman is crushed, and talks to the young man's mother. She finally comprehends her folly when the mother compares her to being like an aunt to her son.

11/23/2020. I have edited this entry slightly to prevent identification  of Y.

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25. Closet Outlets

1/27/2012. Lompoc, California.  From journal, volume #24. Edited 1/27/2012.
The following dream was not recorded before the fulfilling event occurred, but it was very well remembered since it was very disturbing and I woke up and got out of bed.

DREAM: I have to follow someone into a maze of rooms. Alone, I go into a room and from there look about for another door to enter. Seeing none, I enter a closet where some clothes are hanging. I turn to my right and see a small closed door. It is only about 4 or 5 feet high. I start to open this door but then become fearful that this will lead me into a series of restricted spaces in which I may become trapped. My anxiety increases and I decide not to open the door. I awake. END

Later next day I decided to do a chore I had been putting off for weeks. My internet DSL service had slowed way down. I had called service at my ISP and their last suggestion was that I try using a different telephone wall jack. I did not think this was the problem but hooked some extra line I had bought to a jack in my kitchen. Surprisingly, this gave me adequate download speed, but with further checking I discovered the problem was not a defective wall jack, but the connecting cable I was using. The old (defective) cable led from my bedroom through a hole in the wall in my closet that my ex-wife had made to an adjacent room where my computers are located. In replacing this I got the plug of the new cable stuck in the hole in the wall, and could not push it through nor retrieve it without possibly damaging the fragile plug. Then I realized the similarity to the dream - (1) I enter a closet looking for an outlet, (2) I find it to my right, (3) concern that it is too small halts my activity. Note that I never imagined that the problem was with the line, and that I might have to replace that. Instead I had been advised to have Verizon check the signal, and then to suspect that either my modem, router, or the wall jack was the problem. Thus having to find and utilize an opening in the closet wall was never anticipated.

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26. Goodluck Jonathan.

6/22/2012. Lompoc, California. Entered 6/23/2012.
Yesterday I saw a TV news item about a political crisis in Nigeria. I was amused to learn that the current President of Nigeria is named "Goodluck Jonathan." I thought of how the culture in Nigeria must differ from ours that such a name would be selected for a child, and wondered if the name itself had benefited Mr. Jonathan's political career. I planned to tell a friend about the name, but forgot.

That night I was reading items in the Encyclopedia of Graffiti (Reisner & Wechsler, 1974). It was late, so I decided to turn out the light and go to sleep. First, I turned over the book and read the last of a list of graffiti on the back of the book, on the dust cover. This was the item:

Fortunatus you sweet little darling you great fornicator, someone who knows you writes this. (Pompeii, 79 A.D.)

An online Latin dictionary verifies that one of the meanings of "Fortunatus" is "lucky."

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27. Twin Problematic Greetings

9/4/2013. Lompoc, California. Entered 9/7/2013.
(1) At about 7:40 PM on Sept. 4, 2013 I heard a radio interview that revealed that: An American had asked an Asian man "How are you?" and the Asian man judged the inquiry to be more personal than it actually was.
(2) At about the same time: An Asian man sent an email from my computer (remotely) to an American asking "How are you?" and the American judged the inquiry to be more personal than it actually was.

For details of this "synchronicity" see: Twin Problematic Greetings.

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28. Dog Stories
Sept. 22, 2017.  Lompoc, California. 

Zeno. Oh how I loved that dog.



I have withdrawn an entry ("Zeno and the Light", 10/9/2015) about possible telekinesis (Zeno making a light come on) since the light came on again the same way recently, even though Zeno died on July 1, 2016.  To replace it, below are two dog stories, the second having a ghost aspect.





 

(1)
    I once had a black female Akida-Visla mix dog. This was Shadow, who brightened my life for 16 years (see Shadow Shadow above). She loved to play tug of war with me, using the cut off leg of an old pair of jeans. She always played hard, as if this were some antelope leg that her life depended on. One day I was very sick, sitting on the couch miserably. Shadow came to me with the pant leg, exactly as if inviting me to play the tug game. I grabbed it and pulled. It came out of her mouth easily - she was letting me win.

(2)
    About eight years ago I had two dogs, Lobo and the above mentioned Shadow. Both were getting old, and Shadow in particular was over 17 years old and on her last legs. However, suddenly, Lobo had to be put down. Afterwards, Shadow would stare down at the empty place on the living room rug where Lobo used to lay. A week after Lobo died I found Shadow lying dead on a walkway in the side yard.
     A few days later I called my son in Utah about the deaths of Lobo and Shadow. Both had been his dogs originally. At that time my son was married to a Chinese woman who, though well educated, believed in ghosts. My son told me that recently she had heard a scratching sound at the front door. She opened the door, but nothing was there. Then, a week later, she experienced the same thing. The first time it was about a day after the death of Lobo, the second time a day after the death of  Shadow. She reported this before she heard that either dog had died. That was the only time she reported hearing any unexplained sounds.
    

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29. Southampton Hospital

4/8/2017. Lompoc, California.
Last night I got together with a group of people that meet weekly to share a Netflix film. I talked briefly with the man seated next to me, Richard, as I had several times before. On the subject of the war years, I told Richard that my family had driven across the country in 1943 from New York to California. He asked me where in New York and I told him Freeport. He then said that he too had lived on Long Island. I told him I was born in Southampton.

The movie we watched later was the 2016 documentary Harry and Snowball, about Harry de Leyer and his champion jumping horse Snowball. About two thirds through the movie there was a scene showing a sign for Southampton Hospital.

Comment 4/9/2017
This is within the range of coincidence. However both my mention of my birthplace, and even more the scene in the movie, had little motivation. There was an equestrian event in Southampton in which Snowball competed, and I suppose showing the hospital sign was the filmmaker's way of identifying this location. I was born in this hospital in 1937.

Comment 5/16/2019
Months after I added the "Southampton Hospital" event to this list, I was searching Google on my name and discovered that there is a doctor named Daniel Vanarsdale (no relation) that currently practices at Southampton Hospital. I added it to the information already presented here but did not make it clear that initially just the odd repetition of my birthplace in the movie had seemed sufficient to be noted on this page. I have also edited the above 4/9/2017 comment.

 

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Analysis

3/2010 +
First, I generalize the concept of "precognition" so that it applies to all the possible examples above. Also, this avoids saying more than we know, and may provide some hints for where to look for new genres of the paranormal. By event I mean anything experienced by a person that can be effectively  described. For example: a scene in a dream or movie, a day dream, a real world happening, a thought or intent, a fantasy or delusion, something spoken or read, sense perceptions, natural phenomena, presence at a time and place, etc. Events may influence other events, in part or whole, directly or indirectly as by intermediate events. We say two events manifest a "hyper-coincidence" if:


For a typical precognitive experience the two events of the hyper-coincidence are ordered in time: first a pre-event such as a scene in a dream, and second a post-event such as a worldly happening which is recognized to eerily match the pre-event. Often a pre-event in a dream will be remembered only when the post-event is experienced. A post-event that depends on an act of volition by the dreamer should not be considered a hyper-coincidence, since even if the dream has been forgotten, it could influence the post-event. Precognition is necessarily statistical in nature - there can never be absolute certainty that events have not unfolded as they have due to chance. But when there is more than one anticipation in the same dream, the close-to-zero probabilities of each repetition multiply in assessing the probability that the dream as a whole manifested a hyper-coincidence. This produces the near certainty of precognition. Examples of such multiple anticipations appear above in Cappadocia, Heidi's Dream and Headache, NPR Event and, less convincingly, in Surprise Permission, White Rainbow, and Southampton Hospital. 

In assessing the probability of chance causation an important consideration is the interval of time between the pre-event and the post-event. Thus if you dream of a scene that eventually you see in a movie, chance causation is much more likely if years have gone by and in the interval you have seen a hundred other movies. Generally, this involves sample sizes. Suppose you dream that your next door neighbor knocks on your door dressed in a clown suit and asks to borrow some cinnamon. The chance of that actually happening the next day are likely millions to one, definitely a hyper-coincidence. But suppose it did happen, but you had no such dream. If then you could search some online file of a million dreams, finding one to match this post-event would not be so remarkable. No such data base exists now, but caution is necessary in evaluating online attempts to register "prophetic" dreams. Similarly, published evidence for precognition of famous catastrophes is unconvincing. Further, to make a better story, we are told that the disaster itself was foreseen. But first learning of the disaster seems more likely to be the anticipated post-event, not the unseen disaster itself. To claim the contrary should require supplying details of the disaster before they are made public. If someone dreams of an odd scene and then sees it in a movie, I doubt if anyone would claim that this was precognition of the making of the movie, rather than precognition of seeing the movie.

All but perhaps one of the above precognitive dreams were fulfilled the very day after the dream. This is not typical of examples in the literature, and may be a personal trait. But all of the post-events above are trivial; they do not involve life changing possibilities, nor events reported by the press. If trivial post-events occur much later than a day or so, by that time the pre-event is likely to be forgotten and the hyper-coincidence will not be recognized.

The Buda Pest experience above falls within the range of coincidence, but it illustrates the possibility that both events of a hyper-coincidence may be nearly identical real world experiences. If fleeting dream images can anticipate worldly experiences, why should we on principle reject the possibility that worldly events themselves can anticipate other worldly events? Or in the curious Crab or Lobster experience, a mother's misidentification anticipates a worldly experience. Coincidence is a possibility here also, but this example was worth giving to suggest the great variety of hyper-coincidences that may exist.

Many published examples of "precognition" imply a person experiences a subsequent event, but the phenomenon seems much more general, and in none of the above examples would any one have been able to make a prediction. Instead the post-event comes as a surprise, a partial and unexpected repetition, often with transpositions and other variation, not as a sought for and orderly revelation. Claims of foreknowledge of a personal or public disaster receive much attention, and these often involve predictions or saving actions. So predictive capacity should not be ruled out, but such claims are inherently subject to the sample size problem discussed above. For example, a very common paper chain letter of prior decades warned that a recipient discarded the letter in disbelief, and died nine days later. That is certainly a true claim! In fact, likely this happened over 35,000 times! This follows simply from the vast circulation of the chain letter and basic death statistics (see Chain Letter Evolution - calculation).

Often, during some phase in a person's life, essentially the same dream will be experienced on many nights. Such recurrent dreams may also be collective. For example, probably millions of people have dreamed that they were back in school and experiencing frustrating difficulties. It is a bit puzzling that people may have this dream even before they learn that others have had the same dream. Other recurrent dreams may be strictly personal, or at least presumed to be so. For example, for many years I had dreams in which three men with questionable reputations appeared. Other details of these dreams were totally different, so these three scoundrels rated only as a recurrent feature.

In the Special Delivery dream I was told that the blimp racers "would be contacting me," and after I woke up I had the feeling that the dream was precognitive. In the Cappadocia dream, an unseen man tells me he is building "Futurama." In my father's dream in NPR Event, after giving him a number, a disembodied voice tells him he "will find out" what it means. In the White Rainbow dream, a old man tells me that an image is "prophetic."  In all these dreams there is content that declares the dream to be precognitive; and in two cases, a particular dream element is specified that is to manifest in the waking world. In three of these dreams the declaration of precognition is by a person, unseen except in the White Rainbow dream. The personifications involved could be interpreted to mean that the dreamer is in contact with some metaphysical being that is staging the precognition. Alternatively, these persons, seen or unseen that make the declaration, may be dream rationalizations, just as in a dream of flying one can imagine it is taking place on a world with little gravity. Whether causative or explanatory, such declarations rank as a recurrent feature of my precognitive dreams. Personification, in dreams and elsewhere, provides an agency explanation for unusual experiences. But explaining dream content as the act of a spirit may be like explaining illness as caused by witchcraft.

It is a surprising fact that three or four of the above twelve precognitive dreams have post-events which (1) relate to personal facts about the dreamer, and (2) would be considered coincidences by themselves, even in the absence of a dream. In the Superior Hangings dream, my attention to the post-event is guaranteed by the first and last names of an artist, these names having family significance. Similarly, the post-event of the Cappadocia dream involved a magazine article that was written by an old friend of mine. In the NPR Event event, the actual number of a hospital room matched my birth date. Finally, in the Special Delivery event, the target experience is receipt of an unexpected letter addressed to me. However this receipt is not, by itself, what we would consider a "coincidence." Like the above pre-event declarations, these post-event personal coincidences rank as a recurrent feature in my precognitive dreams. Such recurrences may hint at what is going on in precognition, and if they involve the post-event, they may help in designing more revealing experiments.

Three examples of transposition occur in the experiences above (Crab or Lobster, Superior Hangings, Twin Problematic Greetings). This could simply be the result of noise in the transition between two events, just as transposition errors often occur in manual data recording.  But it is possible that transposition has a causative role in some paranormal experiences - such as by attracting awareness to events linked by this surprise relationship.

Less specific forms of a surprise post-event appear in other items above. In the Calling Danny hypnagogic experience, the name "Danny" was a personal surprise both in the post-event and the pre-event day dream, since the voice on the phone was not that of my mother in both cases. But this was not in itself a coincidence. It would have been if the call were a wrong number. In the Surprise Permission dream, the post-event was odd and embarrassing, but not related to me personally. The Buda Pest oddity is completely impersonal. Likewise the Twin Pipes and White Rainbow dreams both have post-event visual experiences that are odd but neither personal nor involving a coincidence. In the second of Two Coincidences, an extremely unlikely pre-event anticipates an unremarkable post-event. So my events involved with precognition definitely have some regularities, though note a pre-event being somewhat unusual is probably an inherent necessity since otherwise a matching post-event may not be so improbable.

Just one convincing precognitive dream, communicated to witnesses prior to the post-event, undermines the orderly view of the world that has taken millennia to develop. Even quantum mechanics, with its possibility of interconnectedness and simultaneous influence, has trouble digesting precognition. Material replicators, such as animal bodies, benefit from the relative permanence of physical structures and the universality of the physical laws that they are subject to. By contrast, coherent experiences, should any have self-developed periodic manifestation, are easily disrupted or destroyed by the vagaries of mentation and powerful environmental influences. But experiences can be created with so little energy and in such great variety, that it seems likely some have planted influences that favor their subsequent repetition. Perhaps it is a fundamental principle of awareness that some "events" noisily sustain or replicate themselves if there is an opportunity.

It is difficult to explain why certain events might be perpetuated in some form and others not. But it is also difficult to explain why we may long recall certain things that have little significance, like a bad joke heard in childhood, and totally forget other experiences of more import. That most events seem transitory and singular may be due to a pervasive interference with repetition, just as omnipresent friction in our earthly environment obscures our awareness of Newton's first law: that objects retain uniform motion unless acted upon by a force.

6/2019
The new subtitle of this web page ("I suppose you are going to tell me ...") was spoken by a dear friend who has passed on. This sentence changed my view of reality (see Heidi's Dream and Headache above). Previously the subtitle was a quote from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," spoken by the White Queen. A recent web search revealed that famous scholars, including Carl Jung writing on "synchronicity", have featured this quote. So I replaced it. But Carrol's creativity, his relating precognition to memory, deserve mention.

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