Disclaimer:

The following is true. I can't explain it, don't want to. Don't even know what I am going to do if I have another dream. Some of you will think I am a nut case. Be my guest. Some of you will think I made this up and it's not very interesting. Good for you. The world is a much stranger place than I can explain and if that will satisfy your need for normality, you are welcome to it. Problem is, this is real, and this is my life. The rest of you, the ones who relate, well, it may be the reason we know that things that go bump in the night may be more than just the cat.

I will tell my tale here. It has no moral. In the scheme of things, it is just an anomaly, maybe making me a freak of nature.

It started a long time ago, I don't even know how old I was. But sometimes I knew where things were. It was a strange thing but it led to me being punished for taking things in the first place. And worse, being thought a liar by my family. Did I always know where things were? Of course not. Just enough to look bad. But I was too young to understand that was a problem.

I only have had a few of the totally freaky episodes. I will tell of them here.

When I was a teenager hanging out with my friends I had the strangest feeling that something had happened to one of our friends. I felt strange. Disconcerted or I don't know, disconnected. We spent the night looking for the friend it was to effect. We didn't find him that night. We didn't know where he was. The next day or the day after that we did find that friend. He told us that his best friend had died in a car accident. He had died the night that I felt strange. Almost to the minute. How very strange.

The second (although there may have been more that I don't remember anymore) was when I moved to Milwaukee. My friend and I were going out there on a bus. I wasn't, quite, running away-I was over 18-but I didn't want my parents to know where I was going. I was going to stay with a friend that I had met on a Quaker retreat. Dave. Trouble is, I forgot his address, left it in my car which was back in Jersey. I told my friend that we would be able to find him as he lived in the area where the hippies were. I had a dream on the bus. It was about getting to Milwaukee and the only part that I now remember is my friend and I walking up a sidewalk and a guy walking out of the door and I said "Dave?" And the guy laughed and said no, but Dave was inside. (Don't know what made me think it was Dave, looked nothing like him but I was afraid that I had forgotten what Dave looked like.)

Anyway, when we got to Milwaukee we got off the bus and I looked at my friend and said, this can't be downtown, we must have gotten off too soon. When we found someone to talk to, they assured us this was downtown. (I thought the buildings were too short-it was a smaller town in those days. Shorter, too). We were walking around for a while.

I asked someone for a water fountain and they directed us to the police station. We didn't know that most people at that time called the thing you drink water from a "bubbler" and a water fountain was a thing you found in a park that shot water in the air.

Anyway, we walked to the corner, the streets were pretty deserted-it must have been a Sunday-and some guy leans out of his car and asks us where we are going. We looked at him, there were two of us, one of him, so we took a chance. Things were safer back then.

When we got to the car he asked us where we were going and we explained that we didn't have the address, but we were going to the east side to find someone named Dave. He told us the east side was pretty big could we narrow it down. I told him of the story of meeting Dave at a retreat and he says "Quaker Dave?" Well, Dave was a Quaker so he said he would give us a lift to the guys house and if it wasn't the right Dave at least the guy was a Quaker and he was Dave. When we got there, we got out of the car and started walking up to the house and some guy walked out. I said "Dave?" and he laughed and said no, but Dave was in the house. I looked at my friend and she said she got the shivers. Just like my dream. Plus what were the odds of finding someone in a large city that knows the person you are looking for? Yes, our driver had delivered us to the correct Dave.

I started drinking when I hit my twenties. Everything was getting to "loud". I knew I dreamed of the rape the night before I was raped. I just didn't know it was me. When I drank, the voices would stay out. I would always hear the voices before I would drift off to sleep. Like I was eavesdropping into someone else's mind. I would hear what they wanted on grocery list, someone crying about love, is the dog out, very mundane things. But I would skip from person to person. It just felt weird.

The drinking worked most of the time.

I did have an awake episode that was very strange.

I was at work, typing away. I did data entry then, it is easy to drift when you don't have to think about what you are doing. Well, I started thinking about the Kennedy, Johnson thing. You know, Johnson was VP while Kennedy was president and a Johnson was VP while Lincoln was president. Then I started to really drift, thinking what would it be like if the president was shot today? And I felt like I was talking to someone, saying go on, do it, you know you want to do it. And the person was reluctant but I kept chanting, do it, do it. And then I was dreaming (but still awake-kinda') that the president had been shot. (That would have been Regan.) And then I was thinking of Hinkley, only I thought to myself that I must be thinking of Huntly and Brinkly and was just putting them together. It was very strange and got stranger still when one of my work friends came in the door to our work room and announced that the president had been shot. I thought that I had spoken out loud and someone mistook it for me hearing news on the radio (which I didn't have access to). I was so embarrassed. But then, it turned out real.

My next one was actually a series of two episodes. Both strange, but not connected until much later. I had been to the mall downtown where I lived. (Milwaukee). I had been shopping and had a lot of packages. I was tired but before heading home on the bus I decided to relax and have a beer at Apricot Annies. I went in and sat and ordered. A very short time later a guy walks in and sits a couple stools away from me. I looked over at him and at the same time he looked over at me. He had the coldest blue eyes I have ever seen. My thought at that time was this guy looks like he could kill me and think nothing of it. The moment was broken by someone calling his name, he turned around and smiled at his friend and I thought oh, ok, he's gay. But I was still freaked enough that I gathered up my packages and left right away. I told my friends about the impression I had, but of course, because these things can't be real everyone kinda' heard it and forgot it.

Later on in the year, and I admit to having a suggestive mind, I had gone to see Silence of the Lambs. I went to bed and started dreaming that I was in a bed and I wasn't myself. Instead I was a guy and there was another weird guy there. He was spaced off. Sitting on the end of the bed just staring straight ahead. It was very strange. I felt like I was on State Street. I don't know how I knew that, I just felt that that was where I was. I told him that I needed to go to the bathroom. He moved then. I don't remember much more of the dream except in real life I had to go to the bathroom. I kinda' woke up and went to the bathroom and in my mind the walls were covered with blood although I could see my walls and they were just walls. It was very confusing and I did go out to my livingroom to sit because I had to wake up, I did not want to go back to a nightmare.

I think they found Jeffrey Dahmer not too long after that. Yes, I had told my friends about that dream too. But they don't remember because, of course, that can't be real. Thing is, the two are related because the dude in the bar was Jeffrey Dahmer. When I saw his picture in the paper it clicked.

The next big one that I had was when I was sick one day and stayed home. I was tired and laid down on the couch. The next thing I know I am dreaming about Princess Diane and she was in a car wreck because people were chasing her. When I woke up I was crying and my thought was "They killed her." I wanted to call someone and tell them. But what was I going to do? Call England and tell them not to let Princess Diane get in a car? I mean when I thought about it, it was kinda' silly. But the dream felt really real. Ya' know? I did tell one of my friends about the dream but even I admitted it was kinda' silly. I never asked if she remembered me telling her the dream. I mean, she would have no reason to remember my ramblings. And who else would I tell? I mean, who would you tell? It's only a dream.

The last one, the last dream I had was the worst. Again, I was sick, really sick-high temp and everything. My spouse and I had moved to a new city. I was home alone lying on the couch and fell asleep. In my dream, I was standing on the Jersey shore, across from New York. Someone was standing next to me. I could see a couple of buildings were on fire. Then one of them collapsed, and then the second one a little while later. Everyone in the dream was crying, and I woke up crying and again the dream felt real. It was even sillier than the Princess Diane dream but I really wanted to tell someone, anyone. I had dreamed of the people who were planning bad things earlier in the dream and then dreamed of the buildings collapsing and I really wanted to tell someone. But there is no one to tell. Who would believe me? Wouldn't you just think the person was crazy. I had thought about calling the FBI, but they would probably label me a nutcase. Who would believe the World Trade Towers would collapse?

I don't always dream true. Most of my dreams are as stupid as the next persons. You know, can't find the English class even though I have been out of school umpteen years, or really stupid stuff or just nightmares that scare that mean nothing.

But sometimes I am right, and it scares me.