ESP messages... are no more limited to events of the present than they are to nearby locations. In perhaps a majority of instances, time intervals, just like intervals of distance, are simply not indicated in the messages of ESP. Compare, for instance, two typical experiences, involving widely different time intervals: the dreams of two young women, each of whom, never having held a job before, dreamed of a future one.

One was a girl in California who dreamed she was walking along the street of what she knew to be a small western town. She says, "The sidewalk was of boards and the buildings overhead extended out to form a wooden roof over it. I was carrying what seemed to be a small overnight case and I knew the name of the town was 'Tomb-' "

When the job materialized, this girl, with two companions, was traveling through several southwestern states modeling dresses. They stopped at Tombstone, Arizona, for dinner one night and she walked down wooden sidewalks, as she says, "carrying the model's inevitable make-up box which was about the size of a small overnight case," as in the dream.

The second girl, this one in Texas, dreamed she was a maid working for a couple with children, and in the dream was especially impressed with the furniture in the living room. She says: "I saw a tall ebony cupboard with satinlike finish with sprays of white flowers on each side. It was glass-enclosed at the top with locked doors. Inside the cabinet on the shelves were little green figurines resembling jade and queer little Chinese images like idols and images that looked like dragons."

Later, in a different city, she took a maid's job with a couple who had two small children. "Upon entering the home and turning around to set my suitcases in the hall, I came face to face with the black Chinese cupboard of my dream. On the ebony shelves were green figures, idols and Chinese-made dragons sitting behind glass-enclosed doors."

Characteristically, the two realistic dreams pictured details that later proved to be true. Before they did, a series of intervening events occurred, but the time necessary for them to occur was not hinted at in either instance.

The girl who went to Tombstone says: "I answered an ad for an office worker in a textile-manufacturing plant. I did not get that job but signed a contract with them to go on tour that summer with the manager, his wife, and three other girls. We were to go through Southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico, and it was the manager who decided to stop for dinner in Tombstone."

And the girl from Texas writes: "Years passed, and in the course of events my mother passed away and I began to work out, first at one type of job and then another. I finally moved to Houston, where I accepted a maid's job with a couple who had two children on December 26, 1952--seventeen years after my dream."

--Louisa E. Rhine

EDITOR'S NOTES

I included this pair of dreamlets because a 17-year prediction is rare. Though by no means the record--see White-Faced Mare, Ocarina, or Buffalo Person!

Rhine's correct that predictive dreams rarely volunteer their date. But they can note the calendar if they're motivated--see calendrical dreams. If you have a lot of apparent predictive dreams, you could adapt a trick from lucid dreamers: check the date frequently, so if you dream of a slice of future life, maybe future-you will check the date for you! Now if present-day dreaming-you can just recall it as you wake...

I admit I haven't bothered; most of my predictive dreams are fairly immediate, so I focus on prompt action when a dream urges it. That's hard enough!

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Hidden Channels of the Mind by Louisa E. Rhine, 1961, p. 98. Accounts untitled and dreamers' names witheld; I added titles & bylines only as search aids.

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