Precognitive dreams

If you think that you dreamed about some event before the event occurred you are not alone, 17.8% to 38% of people reported that they experienced at least one precognitive dream according to some studies.
To classify dream as precognitive it must the these criteria:

• Dream must be told or recorded before its fulfillment

• Dream must include enough details to render chance fulfillment unlikely

• The possibility of interference from actual knowledge must be excluded

• Self-fulfilling prophecies must be excluded

• Telepathic influences can not explain the occurrence of the precognitive dream

Although I had few dreams about future events as a child, I would usually discard any paranormal thoughts with generic explanation of “deja vu”, after all the events were usually random snapshots of my life, nothing worth recording, talking or thinking about. Unfortunately because I didn't record them, I can't call them precognitive but that changed in middle school. One day I had a dream that I am siting in the locker room of the gym, I just had the shower and I am now putting on my clothes. While sitting alone I look in front of me and there is a big window with view to the west side of city, reddish sunlight illuminates white buildings that I had never seen from that angle and I feel slightly disappointed because I expected that I will be able to see the stadium.

At the time I was going to that gym with one friend who was also my classmate, one day while we were in locker room I told him about the dream in one of our small talks. Dream was weird because our gym had locker room on east side of the mall so there is no way that window with view on the west side of city can exist.

Fast forward a few years, I am finishing really hard academic year at university, since exams were over I had enough time for the gym again. In the meantime gym was renovated, they expanded over the whole last floor of the mall and now locker room is on the west side of the building. After training sessions and showering I found myself sitting in the locker room looking through the window in front of me with clothes in my hand. I see white buildings that I had never seen from that angle illuminated by reddish sunlight. Fascinated by the view I try to find the angle from witch stadium will be visible but with no success, so I think to myself “shame that stadium isn't visible from here”. At that moment, I remembered that I had had a dream about the whole thing. That thought was like the switch that brought back the memory of that dream. This time I know that it is not “deja vu” because I told my friend about that dream, so I had the “record” of it, that was my first and only dream that fills all criteria for precognitive dream.

While reading about this phenomena I found out few interesting historical records that blew my mind, here are most interesting examples.

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand:
On June 28, 1914, Monseigneur Joseph de Lanyi, Bishop of Grosswarden, had a terrifying dream, in which he saw a letter bordered in black lying on his desk. The letter bore the arms of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who had at one time been his pupil. In the dream, the Bishop opened the letter and saw a strange drama being enacted. The Archduke was sitting in the car with his wife, while a crowd milled around outside. A man stepped out of the crowd and fired two bullets into the car.

Superimposed on this scene were the words of the letter:
Your Eminence, dear Dr. Lanyi, my wife and I have been victims of a political crime at Sarajevo. We commend ourselves to your prayers. Sarajevo. June 28, 1914. 4 A.M.

The Bishop woke up trembling, looked at his clock and saw that it was 4:30 A.M. He got up immediately and wrote down the details of his dream, which he dispatched in a letter to his brother, Professor Edouard de Lanyi. Later that morning, about ten hours after the Bishop's dream, Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were murdered at Sarajevo as they sat in an automobile. Two bullets were fired, one of them fatally wounding the royal couple.

Aberfan disaster:
In 1966, a landslide of waste from a coal mine slid into the South Wales village of Aberfan. The local school was destroyed by the landslide, killing 144 students and teachers. A British psychiatrist, John Barker, came to the village shortly after the landslide. Barker was researching what happens to people when they believe they’re about to die. He collected 76 accounts of premonitions of the Aberfan landslide, 60 of which he followed up on.

A notable premonition was submitted by the parents of Eryl Mai, a 10-year-old girl killed in the accident. The day before the accident, the child had reported to her mother a frightening dream. She had dreamed that her school was no longer there and that it had been covered by “something black.”

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln:
President Abraham Lincoln reportedly dreamed of his own death. Lincoln’s friend and law partner, Ward Hill Lamon, later described the dream as Lincoln recounted it to him. Lincoln dreamed of people sobbing, and in his dream, he went to investigate. In the East Room of the White House, he found a corpse dressed for a funeral. Lincoln asked the figures in the dream what happened. One reported to him that the president was assassinated. In reporting this dream to Lamon, Lincoln appeared disturbed and frightened. Later, Lincoln clarified the dream to Lamon. The president assassinated in his dream was not Lincoln himself, but some other president. This was the dream he had just nights before his assassination on April 14, 1865.

As you see all three events here are tragedies and this is the case with most of the historical recorded premonitions. I think that this is because people are more likely to write about them if they are about tragic events, that gives impression that premonitions are generally warnings but I would not say so. From my experience I would say that hey are something like “checkpoints” in our lives, sings of big changes or some important experience.

Over the course of my life, I had 3 more dreams that I unfortunately didn't record before fulfillment, which is necessary to differentiate precognitive dreaming from other phenomena such as deja vu experiences, memory distortions, and merely chance occurrences.

In one dream, I was standing near a roundabout looking at the tunnel behind it. The tunnel was really weirdly shaped, something between a V-shaped and a U-shaped tunnel. It was illuminated by orange lights from the inside, and you could see the end of it since it was straight. As I was looking at it, one golden sports car was driving in a circle on a roundabout like it was on display in the shop. An unusual tunnel shape etched that dream in my memory. I was thinking about it after waking up because, from the engineering perspective, shape did not have optimal force distribution like a standard U shape, and it seemed like the wrong choice for the tunnel.

A few months later, I was on a trip to Budapest with my friends. As I was looking around the city I saw one weird-looking tunnel. I had the feeling that I had seen it before, but I ignored it and continued walking. My friend stayed behind me because he was taking pictures. When I noticed that we were more than 30 feet apart, I stopped for a few seconds so that he can catch up with me. When he came near me, he started showing me the images while describing how one sports car was almost "posing" at the moment he was taking the picture of the tunnel.

The other two dreams were fulfilled on the same day when I visited Kiev. In one of them, I was waking in the ruins of the city at night and came across a big empty paved area. In the middle of that area, there is a huge concrete arch illuminated by reflectors around it. While looking at the top of the arch I see a big crack that was so perfect that I had the impression it was made on purpose. While looking at it, I couldn't believe that arch was still standing. When I awoke, I had a lot of questions: why would someone build an arch in the middle of an empty space, why would someone intentionally make crack in it, how didn't it collapse and why did I have this strange dream?

Then, after a few days, I found myself in Kiev. It is night time and I am exploring the city. I saw a big arch in the distance, and it looked like something worth checking out. After few minutes of walking I came in front of it, I was mindblown when I saw the crack at the top. It instantly associated me on a dream I had. The crack was created with black paint, and during the night it looks like real crack on first glance.

Unfortunately, I did not come to any satisfying conclusions about this phenomenon. In the scientific literature, precognition is explained by a combination of paranormal beliefs, selective recall, tolerance for ambiguity, coincidence, and subconscious connections. But from my personal experience, I would say that some of these dreams have just too many details for fulfillment by chance. Take for example the case of Bishop Lanyi and try to explain it by scientific rationalisation.

So, if you believe you have frequent precognitive dreams, start recording them in a dream diary (digital format, so you can easily search them by keywords), and you'll have proof that you're not crazy.