We were living in Erlanger, Kentucky. My husband traveled as service manager for a large company. On this particular occasion he had traveled all day to reach home--get clean clothes, etc., and take the 8:00 AM flight out of Cincinnati for Cleveland where he had an appointment.

When I reached home at 5:00 PM, I did not know about any of these arrangements. I prepared supper for us and my daughter-in-law. While we were doing the dishes my husband mentioned his intention of flying to Cleveland the next morning. My reaction was strange, even to me. I lashed out in anger, said he wasn't flying anywhere in the morning... if he had to be in Cleveland it would be by some means other than plane. A real argument followed. My embarrassed daughter-in-law went to her room.

My husband, seeing I was quite upset, made arrangements with a neighbor to drive him to the railroad station and he took the 11:39 PM train to Cleveland. I felt guilty about all this, so when I went to bed I could not sleep.

Toward morning I fell asleep and dreamed that I was floating in air with strange objects, and then I started to fall. I woke with a start and as I did, I felt the house shake.

I got up, made coffee, and felt I did not want to be alone in the house. It was a Tuesday and my day off from work, so I took the car and just drove around awhile. I shopped and returned home by lunch time. My daughter-in-law had been trying to reach me by phone. She asked me if I had the radio on. I told her no and told her of my dream and how I felt. It was then she said there had been a collision between the 8:00 AM plane and a private plane. Everyone had been killed!

SOURCE: Working With Dreams by Montague Ullman and Nan Zimmerman, 1979, pages 307-8.

NOTE, 2022

Wikipedia confirms that on Tuesday Sept. 9, 1969, Flight 853 out of Cincinnati hit a private plane, killing everyone on both flights. But it disagrees with Anonymous's daughter-in-law about one crucial detail. Flight 853 headed northwest toward Indianapolis, not northeast toward Cleveland. Those travelers made it alive.

But I'm a pragmatist. Anonymous 56 had a powerful sense that a flight out of Cincinnati was going to crash. She didn't get a flight number or time. Her actions were unreasonable to a skeptic, but, if you'll pardon my contortions here, reasonably unreasonable to anyone who's had such a premonition. She didn't insist her husband never fly again, or hide under the bed in superstitious fear of the unknown; just take the train this once.

If you had a gut-certainty that a planeload of passengers departing your airport were about to die... would you fly? It's a fair-sized airport; odds are you'd live. But why risk it?

Unless you really hate the night train to Cleveland.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites