A question that comes up when considering precognitive cases is whether they always involve some occurrence the person will himself later experience. Sometimes they do not.

A woman whose understandably unsigned letter is the only-such to be given in this book, says that when she was a girl in college she phoned her mother one weekend that instead of coming home as planned she would have to stay and finish an experiment on Saturday afternoon.

"Then," she says, "Saturday evening on my way back to the dorm a man I shall call Bill asked me if I would go with him on a picnic the fraternity he belonged to was having the next day. It was at a lake some fifty miles away. I had dated Bill occasionally before and said I would go.

"I thought no more of the matter until about ten o'clock the next morning when Mother phoned me. She was upset, I could tell, and asked me please not to leave the dorm that day but to stay there in my own room, saying she would explain when I came home the following weekend. I comforted her by saying I would and promptly upon hanging up the phone began gathering things I would need for the picnic, including my bathing suit. But I was a little worried over the phone call, as my mother is not an excitable woman and it was not like her to worry about me.

"Bill arrived in his car about then and we drove to the lake. We were the only couple to go in swimming that day and when we came out we did not go immediately to the bath houses to get into our dry clothes, as it was a warm day and the bath houses were on the far end of the park, a drive of about three miles. Along toward sunset, though, we drove to the bath houses and changed. The drive back led through two stretches of forest where there were no picnickers and it was here that it happened. To make a long story short--I can think of no way to soften the word--I was raped. It is to be remembered that Bill was not a roughhouse type. He came from a well-to-do family, was president of his fraternity and was well liked on the campus. I was too shocked and ashamed to mention it to anyone and to this day no one knows, though it got around the small campus that Bill and I had had a fuss and weren't dating any more.

"The following weekend I went home, and as soon as we were alone Mother asked me if I had stayed in the dorm Sunday. Recalling her phone call, I assured her that I had, not wanting to remember the happening of that day. I asked her why she had made the request, and she laughed and said she just wanted to be sure I had studied, but after some persuasion she told me the truth.

"She had had a dream Saturday night in which she saw me at the lake with a boy who met Bill's description very well, and she told me about the rest of the dream, which was practically word for word what happened on the way back from the bath house. Mother said she knew it was silly, but that the dream was so vivid that it had upset her. I successfully concealed my shock and comforted her as best I could, assuring her that no such thing had happened.

"I am very happily married now and have a son of my own, so for necessity I want my name to remain secret. I do hope that this may be of some use to you as it is not easy for me to remember this incident."

The dreamer, the mother in that case, never even found out that the dream came true.

SOURCE

Here, a vital warning is wasted due to squeamishness between Anonymous 32 and her daughter. Had 32 told the dream when she had it, instead of expressing mere worry, the shock of hearing Bill described as a rapist might have convinced her daughter not to go.

Her daughter responded in kind; Anonymous 32 died ignorant. Was this shame, as the daughter implies, or a desire to spare her mother pain? Or a quiet payback, convincing her mom she was a mere worrier, not psychic?

No matter how you read their symmetrical silence, it's troubling. Though not as troubling as good old popular Bill. Free to date-rape again.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Hidden Channels of the Mind by Louisa E. Rhine, 1961, p. 38-9. Account untitled & unsigned; I added title 'Bill' & byline 'Anonymous #32' for indexing only.