Many precognitive experiences concern complicated situations involving people and events which the subject could scarcely expect to control. This is particularly true when the event is of public, rather than purely personal, concern.

A woman in New York awoke one morning very depressed because of a bad dream. "I had clearly seen a plane crash at the shore of a lake and the roof of the third cottage on that dirt track in flames as a result. There was only one man and he burned up. I tried to write two overdue letters that morning, but I found myself telling my correspondents about it and also the fact that the fire engine would go in by the canal and be unable to get to the plane until it was too late. It was so clear that I was conscious of every plane that went over that day.

"Late in the afternoon I was at the electric range stirring something for dinner when I said, 'That's the plane--the one that's going to crash! Robert, stop the firemen before they try the canal; they have to take the Basin road and they don't know it.'

"My husband went outdoors to listen, put his head in to say, 'That plane's all right,' only to have me shriek, 'It is not!' Within seconds the plane crashed, the firemen took the canal instead of the Basin road, the pilot was burned to a crisp, the cottage was only slightly damaged... and I was a wreck for weeks wondering how I could have prevented it."

EDITOR'S NOTES

Well... I suppose it wasn't an easy call, but if the dreamer had run out to divert the firetruck herself, she might have ended up with a burnt dinner and an unburned pilot. But she stirred on, sticking to her wifely job, trusting her husband to do the man's job. That didn't pan out.

Compare her failure to the histrionic (but effective) action taken by a ship engineer's wife in Tin Fish, or the clandestine (but effective) actions of a circus clown in Nina's Ring, or the hesitant (but effective) actions of a skeptic's wife in Chandelier.

My advice? In a world of skeptics, often the only recourse is to do it yourself. And let the dinner burn.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Hidden Channels of the Mind by Louisa E. Rhine, 1961, p. 181-2. Account untitled, author's name witheld; title & byline added to aid searching & indexing.

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