When Dreams Come True

Anna's second marriage had broken up and she had returned home to her mother's house. Her husband would not move out of their home and she couldn't get access to collect sentimental gifts or to retrieve the Siamese cat which had been a present from her first husband. Her dream therefore occurred at a time of great stress.

"I dreamed I was walking around the house, which had been stripped bare of all its furniture. My husband had left taking everything but my orange cat which I found in the wardrobe with its head off. As I walked around I heard a voice say 'It's okay, you can come back now'."

The next day Anna returned to her house and it was indeed empty. She found the decapitated cat in the wardrobe.

Anna felt that the preview offered by her precognitive dream helped her to handle the event the following day. "Because I came to terms with having no furniture and my cat destroyed before it actually occurred, I was prepared, so it was not such a shock."

What was happening here? Was Anna seeing the future before it happened, or was the cat already dead at the time of the dream? Did she inadvertently tune into the thoughts of her husband as he left the house for the last time, incorporating the precognitive information into her dream?

The dictionary defines telepathy as ‘the supposed communication of thoughts or ideas otherwise than by the known senses’; in other words, picking up someone else’s thoughts. If you have never experienced telepathy you will find this book extremely challenging. I laughed to myself as I sat down to write the opening paragraph of this chapter and realised that throughout my research into precognition I have made the basic assumption that telepathy is an accepted phenomenon of daily life. I'm not referring to the endless parapsychology papers on ESP and card guessing. Neither am I endorsing well-known entertainers who profess mind-reading skills while deluding their audiences with magic illusion tricks. While some people may well have developed telepathic skills to the level where they can 'tune in and out' at will, I don't believe this is the case for most of us. The usual experience is more often a fleeting 'knowing', a moment's insight instantly chased away by the following thought. Looking back we say 'I knew that was Mary on the phone', or 'I was just thinking about that!'. We might put the kettle on an instant before our 'unexpected' visitor drives into the street, or converge on the same shop at the same moment as our partner to buy some obscure item that has not been discussed. Serve a cynic a bottle of wine and even they will have least one strange story to tell, even if they prefer to sweep it away as a good yarn based on coincidence.

That analytical left brain takes its repose at night while our dreams are freely orchestrated by the more creative, intuitive right brain. Here, I believe, with the guard off duty, we are more receptive to the thoughts of others, which intermingle uncensored amongst the symbolism of our own personally meaningful dreams.

In my own case I often dream that I press the replay button on a telephone answering machine, hear a message, then continue with the main storyline of my dream. That message frequently surfaces the next day. For example, in one dream I received an answering machine message from a male real estate agent telling me that the house we rented would be put on the market before the end of our lease and that we would need to move out in three months’ time. In the dream I told him three months was plenty of notice, so he must mean either three days or three weeks.

The next morning, the phone rang and yes, it was a male real estate agent. Guess what? Right again! When the agent, Andrew Degn, arrived, suitably accompanied by a back-up in case the tenants revolted, I made them a cup of tea and said ‘That's fine. Don't ask me why I say this, but I bet you the house sells in either three days or three weeks,’ and we all laughed politely. It sold three weeks later, to the exact day. The dream was precognitive because it contained accurate foreknowledge of the sale, but how did I gain this information? At the time I was dreaming, the decision to put the house up for sale must have already been made. The note to phone me would have been marked in Andrew’s diary. To that extent the precognition was perhaps based on telepathy. In fact the number of precognitive dreams which involve letters in the mail, articles appearing in the next day's newspapers, or items on tomorrow's television news are manifold and may all be explained in this way. (How telepathy occurs is discussed in Part Two of this book.)

My interest, however, is more in the kind of dreams which cannot be explained in such terms. My quest, prompted by the stranger experiences of my life, is to explain apparent precognition of future events which have not been set in motion.

Returning to my 'house for sale' dream, the more interesting question is the accuracy of the three weeks’ notice reasoned during the dream. Did I pinpoint a sale in three weeks time because that was when it was going to occur, or Andrew get really motivated at my three week suggestion and perform accordingly? Or, or, or ... There are a million questions in between. I'm sure you're already asking them.

I entered the world of dream research full-time six years ago, blending my scientific background with my passion for understanding dreams, perception and reality. I was sure that my curiosity, my need to know and my own unusual life experiences would ultimately lead me to write this book. Firstly, though, I felt I needed to carry out some groundwork in the field of dreams. Somewhere between the symbolism of dreams and our constantly shifting perception of the reality of life is an understanding of precognition and here I hoped to find an explanation as to why so many events in my life were preseen in my dreams or previewed in the strangeness of some memorable days. With the conviction that I might somehow bring rational light into the shaded borderline territory where 'weird things' are left untouched, I marched forward.

My work in dream research has been wholly satisfying on a personal level. I have learned to analyse and comprehend the symbolism of dreams, drawing out the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual and metaphysical relevance, as appropriate, for the dreamer. My basic catchphrase is 'Turning the nonsense of dreams into common sense'. The only sticky bit in the whole analytical process is the precognitive dream. My getaway explanation is always 'Look, 99.9 per cent of our dreams are symbolic, so let's analyse your dream and make sense of it. Let's see if it relates to your life and what you are going through at the moment. If you're worried that your dream about your toddler getting knocked down and killed by a truck falls into the itsy-bitsy category of precognitive dreaming, then heed the warning and watch your child at all times. Meantime, let's analyse!' I still believe this to be the best approach.

I cannot emphasise enough, before you delve further into this chapter that most dreams are symbolic and have very little chance of playing out as actual events in your waking life. If you are not familiar with meaningful dream analysis, I suggest you become so in order to balance what you will read in this book. Okay, warnings complete, let's leave the analytical to one side for a while and look at the evidence for precognitive dreaming.

Precognition, according to the dictionary, is 'supposed foreknowledge, especially of a supernatural kind'; whereas 'premonition' is defined as 'a forewarning'. While many of the examples here could be described as premonitions, I prefer to use precognition to cover all 'supposed foreknowledge', whether or not it seems to carry warning.

The dreams presented in this chapter are examples either from my own dreaming life or from some of the fifty dreamers who responded to the detailed research questionnaire or who contributed their experiences through my research network, The Dream Research Bank. (The full precognitive dreaming questionnaire is presented in Appendix 1.) In search of the evidence for glimpsing future events or details through precognitive dreaming, this chapter raises many questions. Since Part One of this book is dedicated to presenting the evidence for precognition, I suggest you let the questions trickle through you as you read, feel the nature of enquiry but immerse yourself in the experiences. Parts Two and Three focus on answers. To understand the answers, we need to know the nature and breadth of the questions. The evidence acquaints us with the questions.

The following examples, I believe, may incorporate elements of telepathy.

Lorna: "I have, on several occasions, dreamed that someone I know is involved in the death of someone I do not know. For example, I woke one night, almost forty years ago, in severe distress. I told my husband that something had happened to my brother, that someone was dead and my brother was involved but safe. In the morning news broadcast there was a report of two student teachers who died when their motorcycle collided with a bus. My brother was driving the bus."

Cynthia: "Some years ago I had a cat who was due to have kittens any day. One night I had a very clear dream that the cat had four kittens, two lay dead and the other two were missing. Next morning, after telling my husband about the dream, we went outside and found the cat had two dead kittens. After an hour, we found another two chewed up."

Paddie: Paddie was living in Wangaratta when she received word that her father was dying of cancer back home in the States, so she flew over immediately, staying there for the next six weeks. It was a traumatic time as she had been unaware of her father's illness. While there, she dreamed she saw her house in Wangaratta being restumped, and was amazed because her landlords had not given notice of any renovation. Nevertheless, she felt sure the house had actually been restumped. In the end she decided her friend must have told her so on the phone, and that she had only absorbed it subconsciously due to her overriding grief for her father.

On her return to Australia, Paddie was met by her friend, who avidly brought her up to date with all the news, including the restumping of the house. Paddie reminded her that she had already told her about it on the phone, but her friend was quite sure that the phone contact had been prior to the work being notified or carried out. With this confirmation that she had on some level 'seen' the restumping taking place, and that the dream was not simply the surfacing of unprocessed information from a telephone conversation, Paddie felt frightened. Looking back, now, however, she sees her father's death as the beginning of a 'psychic opening', and her initial fear of her dream experience has become instead, amazement.

Many years ago, Heather was awakened at ten p.m. by the sound of a loud shot.

"Thinking it to be in the neighbourhood, I got up and looked outside for signs of the disturbance, but saw nothing. I prayed that help would come to whoever had been shot. Still feeling very disturbed, I went back to sleep at eleven p.m.

"I dreamed of receiving a long letter from my former husband, in which he had written several pages of vitriolic accusations about myself. I read the letter through but didn't wake up. At midnight, I was roused in a state of such terror that I still wonder why the shock didn't cause a heart attack, or death. I felt that some evil presence was trying to take my soul. I was awake and physically paralysed. I couldn't move to turn on the bed light. I was praying to God to save me from this evil.

"After some minutes I was able to turn on the light, get out of bed and go to the phone to ring a counselling agency where I worked as a volunteer counsellor. I was sitting with my back to the wall, but still looking over my shoulder, such was my terror. We talked for four and a half hours after which I relaxed and became very warm and drowsy. I went back to sleep and slept until the phone rang at eleven in the morning. It was my former husband's second wife with the news that he had shot and killed himself. 'The police say that it happened yesterday evening', she explained. That is when I heard the shot, yet they lived over 1,000 kilometres away from me. I later asked my mother in law if there had been a letter, 'Yes', she confirmed, 'The police destroyed it'."

I have many examples on file of people who have dreamed of the death of someone they know, woken up, noted the time and later discovered this to be the precise moment of death. Although a relatively common experience, it is no less overwhelming for the fact that it is shared by many. Does the dreamer tune into the dying person's thoughts, the thoughts of the hospital staff or carers, or the essence of the person's released spirit? Across the range of possibilities, the explanation is most likely telepathy at one of these levels.

I have not macabrely picked death dreams for this section, but they do seem to make up a large proportion of precognitive dreams. This observation is, in fact, a vital clue to the nature of precognition. But more of that later.

The unit next door to Linda had become vacant and she had no idea who would be moving in when she had this dream.

"We were having a very loud party. I saw this elderly man walking towards me with a walking stick and he had a most peculiar gait. He seemed to be walking like an automaton or a wind-up toy. Anyway I was really worried as I thought he was not very well and he would think he had moved next door to a very noisy crowd and wouldn't know that this was the first noisy party we had ever had. (In fact, we've never had one!)"

Two or three days after the dream, Linda was talking on the phone to the lady who had previously occupied the unit next door, and discovered that the new neighbour would be moving in later that day. The new occupant, she learned, was an elderly gentleman who was unwell due to a hip replacement operation which had gone wrong. Apparently he had some wire protruding through his skin.

"When I heard about the man's hip problem, I immediately understood why, in my dream, he was walking in a strange way, which involved a mechanical aspect to do with the hips. I can't describe it, but I can see it in my mind".

Although there were no noisy parties to upset the elderly gentleman, the unit did prove unsatisfactory to him and he moved out within six months.

If this dream is explicable in terms of telepathy, Linda may have tuned in to the elderly man's thoughts as he contemplated the move and his health.

Louise: "Ray and I decided to have a short holiday so we headed off to Byron Bay. We both love this area with its beautiful beaches and wonderful array of wild life. Every morning, just after daylight, we would walk the miles of almost deserted beach. We saw dolphins so close to the shore that we could see their eyes, and the seabirds busily searching for breakfast were a delight. All this and the magnificent power and beauty of the ocean were pure magic.

"I was happy and relaxed when I went to bed on the Tuesday night and slept soundly until 3 am when I awoke from a strange dream. "In the dream, Ray and I were standing in front of a low set house, observing the house at eye level. The roof and walls appeared to be normal, but there were ugly, black, gaping holes where the windows should have been. Inside the house was totally black. It was an eerie feeling looking into these desolate holes. My attention returned to what I was doing, which was stroking a very large, fluffy, long haired cat. The cat was looking at the house and it was very upset about something. I continued to stroke and soothe it, and could feel its soft fur. I spoke to it in a calming way.

"Over to my left I could see Ray who was stroking and soothing a different cat. His cat was sleek and short haired and a different colour, but it was equally upset and looking towards the house. Something about the house had unnerved the cats and I felt it had to do with the awful black interior. We continued to reassure the cats because we didn't want them to go near the house. Then I woke up."

On the Friday Louise and Ray drove home feeling good after their break and vowing to go back soon. When they arrived home They found the house next door had been completely burnt out, though the occupants had escaped safely.

"The roof and walls were intact but the inside was a totally blackened ruin. When I looked in through the non-existent windows, it was exactly as I had seen it in the dream. The dream showed the house as it is now: black, empty and desolate. We then discovered that the fire had occurred on the Wednesday at around 3 am. To say that I was amazed would be an understatement, but what word could I use that would describe the feeling? Even though I have had this type of experience before, it still always amazes me."

Louise has often watched waking life events echo her dreams, and each time she questions the experience from many angles.

"Did I receive a telepathic message when the firemen and TV news crews were asking about us? (They did ask because our house is very close on that side.) Did a telepathic message enter my subconscious mind and become my dream? Was I there in spirit, checking things out? Were the cats not to go near the house because it was still too hot? Or were the cats symbolic of my psychic, inquisitive self needing to be calmed and reassured? There is no doubt in my mind that I did tune into this fire, or the aftermath of it, and this shows me, again, the incredible power of the subconscious mind, that it allows us to tune into things in dreams that we may doubt in reality ... whatever that is! I don't think it matters if I had this dream before, during or after the fire. That I had it at all is the really incredible thing."

No matter how many times we experience precognition, it generally inspires a deep sense of wonder. Even now that I believe I understand the process, I am still in awe. Perhaps more so. Maybe it is this sense of the extraordinary, no matter how palpable, that holds some people back from integrating it into their perception of the reality of life.

The precognitive dreams presented in the rest of this chapter all mirror future events which cannot be explained by telepathy alone.

Living through a situation which was once a dream may empower the dreamer to change the outcome. In doing so, of course, the dreamer never knows whether the original dream outcome would have come to pass; but in some cases, such as Rowyn's, action seems the sensible course to take. While holidaying in the South of France in 1988, Rowyn had a dream which recurred several times during the same week.

"I was a passenger in a car which was travelling along a mountain road. I was seated in the middle of the back seat minus a seat belt, a position I never sit in because I get car sick. A red car came towards us on the wrong side of the road and hit us head on. I flew through the windscreen, dying instantly."

The dream unsettled Rowyn sufficiently to cause her to mention it to one of the other dream passengers who was also sharing the holiday. The two children on the vacation were restless and grumpy, unable to sleep because of their own persistent nightmares, so a day trip was arranged to cheer everyone up. It was a week after the first occurrence of the dream.

"We set out for a picnic on the Italian-French border. I was hesitant about going, but not because of the dream. I just had a nagging doubt that I couldn't explain and I wanted to stay behind. Eventually, though, I was persuaded to go. When we got into the car, the two children had to sit by the windows in the back because there was no seat belt in the middle. I sat there so the boys could be buckled in. At no time did I think of the dream which had occurred prior. It just didn't enter my mind.

"Half way up the mountain I was busy reading, not watching where we were going, totally oblivious to passing traffic. I felt the urge to look up as we approached the tunnel. Coming out of the tunnel was a car and as it came closer I registered that it was on the wrong side of the road and travelling extremely fast and erratic. At that timeMary, who was a passenger in the front, noted the same thing and cried out 'It's going to hit us!' I thought the exact same thing at that moment, her cry mirroring mine in my mind.

"It was in this split second that I thought of the dream for the first time that day and so I immediately threw up my hands and brought my leg up and across my body. As we collided I was thrown forward. Had my arms and legs not blocked my passage, I would have ended up going through the windscreen onto the road. The car which had hit us was red."

The event was identical to the dream except for the ending. Should we assume that Rowyn's recognition of the unfolding dream, which caused her to brace herself against the force of the headlong crash, saved her life? Certainly the waking life event broke away from the dream pattern at the moment she took evasive action. On reflection Rowyn recorded that she felt relieved and grateful that she had been warned and was allowed sufficient time to change events. She said she felt she had been able to choose life or death.

Libby decided her dream was a warning and took preventative action.

"I dreamed that my parents stopped at a corner store petrol station at Cooper Pedy, South Australia, where my father filled up his car with petrol and had a conversation with an old Aboriginal lady who was standing outside. He went inside, paid for the petrol and left. Approximately one and a half miles down the road, I could see he was having difficulty driving because of the dust and the sun glaring in his face. He failed to see a hole in the road and hit it causing their white 4-wheel drive vehicle to roll. My mother died in the crash."

Libby’s parents were in Cooper Pedy at the time and, believing her dream to be precognitive, Libby felt both scared and relieved. At least, she thought, she could warn her parents in advance, so they could be aware of the danger and avoid an accident. She gave them a call.

Two to three weeks later newspaper headlines reported that a bus, approximately the same size as Libby’s parents' white four-wheel drive vehicle, hit a pothole approximately three kilometres down the road from Cooper Pedy. The bus rolled and a lady in her fifties died. When interviewed, the driver revealed that the sun and dust were so bad that he hadn't seen the pothole in the road.

When her parents heard the news and realised the similarities to Libby's dream, they phoned her immediately to let her know they were safe.

By taking action, did Libby change the outcome of her dream? Would her parents have been involved in the accident had she not taken action? Would it have been their accident, or would they have been on the scene and witnessed the one which did eventuate? Or was Libby's dream slightly inaccurate? Or was it totally coincidental?

Geographical locations beyond the dreamer's home often feature in precognitive dreams, particularly when travel of a friend or relative is involved. I believe this is a further clue to the nature of precognition.

Glenys took action on a dream she believed to be precognitive, although she will never know what the outcome would have been had she not done so. The mother of three children under the age of ten, Glenys was in full time employment when her mother-in-law suggested sending the children down to her by bus for the school holidays. Three weeks before they were due to leave, Glenys had a dream - a nightmare.

"I dreamed that the bus with my children on board overturned on the journey. It caught on fire and I could see my middle child enveloped in flames and screaming. I woke in a cold sweat."

Glenys cancelled the holiday immediately. A month later her usual baby sitter was taken sick and sent her daughter around to look after the children in her place:

"The daughter was giving them a picnic in the back yard and boiled the kettle on the portable spirit stove. To make a long story short, my middle child was horribly burnt. Two long years were spent in and out of hospitals and plastic surgery ensued. My in-laws have always maintained that if I had not cancelled the holiday, this accident would never have occurred. I have agonised over this for many years.

"I tell no-one about my precognitive dreams now, because everyone I know believes that if you do predict things correctly you have actually caused them to happen. I even stopped writing them down last year when a friend's father died exactly as I'd dreamed, but I couldn't prepare her and I couldn't show her the dream after the event, as it was, by then, unhelpful to her."

Did Glenys save her middle child by cancelling the holiday? The bus did not crash, but without the child on board perhaps the whole future had been changed. Or did she foresee, in her dream, a burning accident occurring during the holidays, but in an inaccurate context? Are some events in our future unavoidable in the grander plan of things, while precognitive dreams help to prepare us to cope with the inevitable? Or do we indeed cause our futures through our dreams, and if so, why is it that only some of our dreams eventuate? Glenys's anxieties and concerns are shared by many precognitive dreamers: these will be addressed in Parts Two and Three of this book.

How can you take action on a dream if you don't know it is precognitive? From all the answers given in the Precognitive Dreaming Questionnaires and despite continual searching, I have not been able to identify a consistent description of a precognitive dream. Some say they recognise their precognitive dreams because they are 'vivid', 'real' or have 'clarity', but many other people experience all their dreams as vivid, real and clear. For most people the factors seemed individual and specific, like my telephone answering machines, for example. It may be a case of 'know thyself and thy dreams'.

I have often had dreams that have been full of accurate details about the future except for the identification of the person involved. I have found this to be particularly true with dreams warning of death. In my dreams, the person who is about to die may be a different person but have the same first name as the person in the dream, or may be a relative of the dream character. Also I don't see the actual death, but I am given notice of it, or I feel an exhilarating sensation of casting off the heaviness of a physical body. I have come to accept this, in my life, as meaning that I am not supposed to take any action on behalf of, or towards, another person. How can I if I don't know whom the dream concerns? The only action I can take is to prepare myself or to learn from the positive experiences these dreams impart.

Ken's dream left him in the same quandary. He did not know what action to take as a result of his strange dream until he was living the reality of it - when it was too late:

"I was driving along in the car. My wife, Beth, was sitting in the passenger seat. To my alarm, I noticed lying on the road ahead, a decapitated head. In that instant I noticed there was a steel plate on the left hand side of the head. I remember thinking that it was a baby, but it didn't look like a baby. I didn't recognise the face. I swerved sharply to miss it, thinking at the same time that it was dead already anyway. Then Beth yelled 'Look out or you'll hit the tree!'. I woke up feeling sad."

Over breakfastBeth set about helping Ken to look at his dream symbolically, but no matter how relevant she felt her analysis to be, Kendisagreed. Beth takes up the story at this point:

"At eleven o'clock that evening, a car drove into our driveway and Ken went out to meet it. It was the father of one of my nephew's friends. He told us to contact my brother and get down to the hospital immediately because my nephew Ricky was critically injured. 'Dying', he whispered to Ken.Ricky had been a front seat passenger in a friend's car, returning home from band practice. The driver was driving too fast approaching a series of s-bends on a narrow road. The car went out of control at high speed, slewed across the road and hit a tree. The tree hit Ricky. He died in hospital shortly after arrival due to massive brain injury to the left side of his head. When my parents, Kenand my brother arrived at the hospital they were met by a doctor and a counsellor. They were told that Ricky was dead. Mum cried out 'But he was only a baby'. He was nineteen years old."

Beth's interest in dreams and her accomplishment as an interpreter had led to her making a personal study of her family's dreams, and relatives often confided in her. A few days after Ricky's death, she remembered his phone call, back in February that year, following a worrying dream he had just experienced.

"Ricky dreamed he was living back at the caravan park and he was sitting outside with his friends, having a gig. He was feeling good, happy. But then he left them and found himself struggling up a steep hill. Finally he got to the top and there was this guy he used to know, who, in waking life, had died from taking drugs. He said something to Ricky. He couldn't remember what was said, but it worried him sufficiently to phone me and ask my opinion."

A month before his death Ricky did move back to the caravan park to be close to his musician friends. On the day of the accident he had been practising all day with a band he had just joined. They had had their first professional gig the weekend prior, and Ricky was over the moon about it. Apparently he'd had a wonderful day. They were returning home from this band practice when the accident happened. As Beth observed, "It was almost like the dream, apart from going up the hill to be met by a dead friend."

Rebekah didn't realise her dream was precognitive until she was living it either.

"Sixteen years ago I dreamed that my daughter came to me and said 'This is Tony and I'm going to marry him'. He was very short, that was my first reaction, as our daughter is tall and quite big. He was thin and dark and Welsh. I remember feeling appalled and totally rejecting, for he was the antithesis of everything we had visualised for her, especially educationwise."

Six months passed between the dream and the event, which played out in its entirety. When Rebekahwas introduced to the short, thin, dark, Tony who was to marry her daughter, the intervening months had done nothing to mellow her emotional response. As the scene unfolded before her Rebekah realised her dream had been accurately precognitive. Had she recognised this beforehand, she might have prepared herself to give Tony a better reception or to discuss her expectations with her daughter. Instead, the sudden impact of living a dream was so strong that she wonders, looking back, whether she might have overreacted as a result. Certainly she did not welcome the news at the time and it took several rocky years before mother and son-in-law finally became close friends.

In contrast to Rebekah and Ken's experiences, some dreamers recognise certain dreams as precognitive. When they predict sickness or death, they often feel an emotional burden as they await the unfolding of the event.

Carol has an active dream life and records many dreams, both symbolic and precognitive. She can usually identify a precognitive dream by a 'heavy feeling' experienced in the dream, which then stays with her for days, leaving her unsettled. Such dreams are also always in vivid black and white, and her recall of details is usually very clear. The following seemed to be such a dream and she knew it was a preview of something which would run its course naturally. One August, several years ago, Carol recorded in her dream journal:

"I dreamed that my mother in law would have four squares of skin removed from her leg. She was lying on a lounge rather than a hospital bed. The first three squares were okay, but the fourth contained what looked like a black cauliflower."

Carol’s mother-in-law lived overseas and the family had received no warning from her that she was unwell. Then, two or three weeks after the dream, Carol's mother-in-law had a melanoma removed from her leg, which involved cutting one square from her leg and a second for a skin graft. At this point Carol began to feel uneasy. A third square was removed a little later. Carol was hopeful but unconvinced when the doctors told her mother-in-law she was okay. When a fourth square was removed, cancer of the lymph glands of the groin was diagnosed. She died in March, seven months after the dream.

Cynthia felt a similar burden in the face of her precognitive dream.

"The daughter of a close friend was expecting her first child. I had a dream that my friend came running up to greet me at her front gate and said 'The baby - the baby, it's not there any more.' Two weeks later I had a call to say the baby had died at birth. I felt awful."

Sometimes the opportunity to take action on a warning dream is missed because the dream is so symbolic that it's overlooked until the event occurs and the connection becomes obvious. Cheryl's dream involving a big black rhino definitely seemed symbolic.

"I was sitting behind glass in an old house that had been turned into a restaurant. Jed, our dog, was outside laying on the grass looking at me. Behind him was a big black rhino. Its right feet were churning the ground and its head was down. I screamed at Jed to get out of the way but he couldn't hear me."

Less than a week later,Cheryl was heading out of the house with her daughter.

"We were going out. Jed was asleep in the garage. I told him to get out of the way, then went back inside the house because I'd forgotten something. Returning to the car, I reversed out of the garage. The car didn't want to move as if something was holding it. I realised the hand brake was still on, so I released it and accelerated, running over Jed with the right-hand wheels in the process."

Cheryl had run over Jed's head, breaking his jaw. The vet wasn't sure that the sixteen-year-old dog would survive the necessary operation, but, happily, he did. As far as the dream was concerned, Cheryl felt it was related to the accident the very moment it happened. With further thought, she linked her four-wheel-drive with its big black tyres to the dream vision of the big black rhino churning the ground with its right feet. As for being behind glass in the dream, Cheryl noted that she observed the scene through the glass of her car window, which was up at the time of the accident.

Was the symbolism in Cheryl's dream a case of substitution (the rhino for the car, for example), due to inaccurate recall or to being unable to get the full picture? Or was the theme, or idea, inherent in the symbolism a precursor to the actual event?

Not all precognitive dreams are so heavy. Changing the mood from warnings to winnings and from death to new beginnings illustrates the fuller range of precognition. While precognitive dreams about birth are commonly reported, descriptions such as 'a beautiful dark haired boy' are not really detailed enough to qualify for the definitely precognitive category! Here's an identifiable, quirky one from Cynthia though.

"When I was two months pregnant with my second child I had a crystal clear dream of the baby's face. In the left eye there were three dots in the position of five o' clock from the pupil. When my son was born the marks in the left eye were there, in exactly the same position."

Once I dreamed of a job advertised in the small classifieds of the Sydney Morning Herald, under W for Writer (which is a rare classification in Australian newspapers!). I tested the dream and bought the paper. The advert was there and I got the job. It led to a whole new future, though I didn't realise it at the time. The point is that if I hadn't checked out the dream by buying the paper, I would never have known that it was a precognitive dream, and I would also have missed out on a very positive, life changing opportunity. I wonder how many positive life experiences pass us by because we miss or dismiss the associated dreams?

When I admit to experiencing precognitive dreams, people usually ask, 'Can you dream the Lotto numbers?' Although at this point I have not had much success with purposively inducing precognitive dreams I did have a great Lotto dream once. It was the morning of 8 December 1992.

In the dream I visited an old lady who had four large cards face down on a grass verge. She challenged me to read the numbers on the cards without turning them over. I looked at the first one and said, '23', then I said, 'No, I always say 23'. I looked closer and saw a 16. The next two were easy: 4, 19. The fourth card was hard so the woman gave me a clue from which I deduced 'Ace', meaning 1. She said this was the most important card. I woke up and wrote down the five numbers: 23, 16, 4, 19, 1'. I rarely enter Lotto, but was struck that these looked like Lotto numbers, except that I needed six numbers to try. I went back to sleep purposively seeking another number and had a dream featuring an 8.

I asked my husband, Glen, to put these numbers in the next day, but he forgot, and anyway they didn't come up. A few days later he decided to enter them for the Saturday draw instead. As we sat and watched the results on television, the first number to come up was 1, then 4, by which time Glen hid in the kitchen! The third number was 43, then came 28 (not my 23, but not far from it, a 3 looking like half an 8). Two teens came next: 13 and 14, not my two teens which had been 16 and 19. One of the supplementaries was 8, as in my return to sleep to get the last number. If I had noticed the hint in my dream to look closer at what I saw to be 23 we would have had a win. Unfortunately I haven't had another Lotto dream since!

What are the chances of dreaming six Lotto numbers, three accurately (one as one of the supplementaries), one visually similar, and two getting the teens bit right? I did pursue this question, but it's not easy to answer in a few lines. In formal statistical terms, the first Lotto ball drawn is the result of a 1:46 chance, the second a 1:45 chance and so on. Such an approach does not make a distinction between a 16, a 19 or a 42: they're all just balls. In dream terms we see the 16 and 19 as more similar than a 16 and a 42. In dreams the right brain is more active than the left. While the left brain sees mathematical meaning in 19, the right brain sees 19 as a 1 and a 9, or 19 years old or a symbol associated with the twentieth century or a teen, to name but a few examples. So it can be argued that in dream terms, my teen numbers, although they were the wrong teen number balls as far as the Lotto results were concerned, were rather more accurate than a statistician would pronounce through formal mathematical (left brain) analysis.

Similar quandaries exist in applying statistical formulae to other aspects of my dream Lotto selection. Intuitively, and simply, it's a pretty good result, considering it was my one and only Lotto dream, although a statistician would argue that we face exactly the same chances of winning each time we enter the Lotto, regardless of how many times we have done so before.

Apart from the insight into how the dreaming brain handles numbers, the challenging part of this precognition, as I see it, is its timing. We missed the first chance to put the numbers in and they didn't come up. We put them in at the next opportunity and got a good match. Was the dream partly precognitive of the Saturday's draw, a fact which Glen unconsciously knew and responded to by delaying entering the numbers? This seems unlikely given that it was my dream, not Glen's! Or did the dream, and our discussion about it, cause the numbers to come up once we entered the draw and believed we had a chance? Did I sway the selection of the Lotto balls as I watched them on the television? Somewhere perhaps, lost between the Wednesday and the Saturday, is another major clue about the nature of precognition. The Lotto dream will be further addressed later in this book.

Dedicated dreamers aside, most people recall only their most vivid, bizarre or emotionally charged dreams, tossing those which register less impact into waking oblivion. With practise it is possible to recall up to five detailed dreams each night. Once you start to record this level of detail, you will discover that precognitive dreaming covers a whole range of events, and not just the 'biggies' of major consequence to our every day lives. To understand the nature of precognition, it is just as important to investigate clues provided by apparently trivial precognitive dreams as it is to ponder the heavily consequential ones.

So deeply ingrained is this idea that precognitive dreaming equips us with knowledge of great significance or urgency, that seemingly trivial experiences such as HM's can be totally bewildering.

"I dreamed that I was standing facing my Year 6 class and the children were laughing. I looked down and saw that I was wearing my pale blue checked shorts. I knew the children were laughing at them, but I could see nothing wrong."

The next morning HM did not recall the dream until he went to select a pair of shorts for the school day.

"I came across the pale blue pair and the sudden thought hit me: 'This is the pair the dream said I'd have trouble with!' I then thought, 'What superstitious nonsense!' and wore them as if to prove the point. I'd never had any problem with these shorts before!

"At eleven forty that morning I turned my back on the class to write something on the board, when several children began to laugh. I turned to face the class and asked what the problem was, receiving the reply that my shorts had split at the back! Sure enough, the stitching at the seam had completely given way. Luckily the next period at midday was taken by another teacher, so I was able to drop back home and change. I was obviously rather amazed as I subsequently told the full story to the Principal and my wife. The Principal made no comment, but I'm sure he thought I was a bit crazy."

Asked whether he felt he handled the waking life event any differently because of the dream, HM explained,

"I had absolutely no control over the situation, nor did I influence it in any way. I could not understand why the dream did not reveal to me what was actually wrong with the shorts. It ended with me looking down, but as it was in the front I saw nothing amiss. The incident did not really embarrass me, so in fact I had not foreseen anything that would have a great impact on me."

HM was deeply perplexed. He had experienced a few precognitive dreams over the years, but this one bewildered him; it was as if the dream's very insignificance was the most significant factor of all.

Louise noted a whole series of precognitive dreams that predicted such inconsequential details that she didn't even recognise the events when they occurred. An active member of The Dream Research Bank, she was avidly searching back through her dream journals as part of an exercise for another project. In so doing she found what appeared to be seven such 'lost' precognitive dreams. For example:

"I dreamed that my daughter was visiting us with her dog,P, which she often does. P and our dog L were doing what they normally do, which is playing and tailing each other about. Bringing up the rear was the cutest, black and white, roly poly puppy who was trying to get into the action. I remember wondering in the dream where this puppy could have come from.

"Some ten months later this puppy became a reality, although he wasn't even thought about at the time of the dream, and the people who now own him had no plans to get a dog at all. Now when my daughter brings him over to visit and I watch him trailing along behind P and L or trying to get into their game, I am amazed because it’s exactly as I saw it in the dream."

In my own case I made the commitment to myself years ago to record every dream, no matter how small or apparently inconsequential. Such is the life of a dream researcher! I find trivial precognitions occur very frequently and often grouped in the same night, as this little snippet trio illustrates.

These dreams occurred on the night of Monday 17 March 1997, flowing into the morning of Tuesday 18 March.

The first dream involved a plane flight to Perth with a friend, Martin. The second dream was centred outside a coffee shop in Park Road, Brisbane, where I met and mingled with a large group of friends. This seemed to take place after a concert where, my dream journal records, 'a woman a bit like Caro was singing'. I saw an old friend, Brian, in the distance. He was happy chatting to others, and I was busy too, so our paths didn't cross. I noticed the distance between us, as if we were now following different paths. Martin was close by. In the third dream I was busy washing loads of other people's laundry, most of which had been flung into muddy piles throughout a field. I had worked through most of it and was scrounging about underneath an old house to extract the very last load, when a young aboriginal girl came up and warned me of the spiders among the clothes. I looked at my hands and saw that I had one large spider bite on each palm.

Tuesday morning's scribblings in the dream journal were rewarding once I got down to the job, reminding me yet again never to dismiss the smallest dream as invaluable. The interpretations were clear and easy and the resulting observations on how I had been handling those last few days were worthwhile. That, I thought, was that: analysed, understood, absorbed, completed.

I find it helpful to organise my dream journal to allow for daily observations to be recorded. I write my dreams on the right hand pages only, then divide the left hand page into three columns. One column records a very brief diary of my day, including any insights, thoughts, questions or conflicts. Since dreams often reflect or comment upon such things, it is vital to be able to compare day with night, waking events and thoughts with dreams. The second column is for my interpretation of each dream. The third column is for recording things which happen after a dream, but which seem linked to it in some way. In the third column I recorded the following observations.

On that Tuesday a friend phoned to say a dinner party was being organised. He gave the list of guests, one of which was Brian from my dream. (A few days later the event was cancelled, so we didn't get to meet up, as in my second dream.) The next day, on Wednesday, Caro phoned from Perth. Caro phones perhaps two or three times a year. I had not been thinking of her prior to my dream and there was no special reason to expect her to call. She is not a singer.

That afternoon Glen arrived home with a new washing machine. We had been struggling with our old machine for months and had been talking about buying a new one for about the same length of time. It was one of those manana items and if Glen had plans at the time of my dream, I certainly didn't know about them. The trials and tribulations of washing with an exhausted old machine were discussed with regularity, but the fact was no great issue at that particular time. Although I had been happy with my analysis of the dream and the role played by the aboriginal girl, I did vaguely mumble something about the Simpson Desert and aboriginal tribes when I noted the brand of the machine: a Simpson.

The beauty of keeping a dream journal, especially if you make the effort to keep it updated, is that it can be brought out in evidence, a regular occurrence in our house, to which my family will no doubt yawningly attest. Struck by the apparent inconsequentiality of these waking life similarities to my dream, I trundled out the diary and told my tale over a gin and tonic. The family were largely unimpressed since my stories are generally far more goose bumpy and persuasive.

This, however, is the point: in endeavouring to understand how waking life events can follow dreams, we need to include a look at the multiple, small, baffling, yet seemingly insignificant happenings alongside the big mind-blowing epics. Oh, and to finish the story, the spiders did appear, although I escaped the bites. Our house had been thoroughly cleaned that day, and as we were switching off the lights to go to bed, I saw wispy spider threads, backlit by moonlight, embroidered over my two new carved ducks, which had certainly been dusted during the morning. As if on highwires, hundreds of tiny newborn spiders tottered along in single file, following the threads laid before them. I hadn't seen a spider explosion before and Glen told me, as he sucked them up the vacuum nozzle, that spiders often hatch on such a full moon night. Which, I thought, added a bedtime touch of magic to a rather analytical day!

There was an aftermath to this story. Remember Martin from the first and second dreams? He phoned me in late April and told me about his overseas holiday. He had taken in a return trip to the UK and gone in search of a house he lived in as a child. He found it. The name of the street? Park. I told him about my dream and seeing him in Park Road and he worked out from his diary that he was most probably standing outside the house at the time of my dream.

Apart from the spider episode, all my 'third column' notes could be explained by telepathy, picking up thoughts from as close as Glen sleeping beside me, to Caro on the other side of the continent and Martin on the far side of the world! But why these people on that particular night, and why did the spiders explode from the dream into reality too? Wait! The hows and whys belong to Part Two, but trivial precognitive series like these are crucial to answering these questions. For the moment, just remember the questions while we continue with the evidence.

So far the evidence has concentrated on precognitive dreams foreshadowing literal events to come. The focus has been on the outer world events, rather than contemplation of any personally meaningful echo. The following two examples introduce the dimension of meaningfulness, an important consideration in understanding the nature of precognition. Lorna's story derives meaning from the event which followed the dream, whereas mine extracts meaning from the dream which then accelerates the previewed event. The two experiences are different sides of the same coin. The currency is symbolic meaning.

Now in her early sixties, Lorna's recurring precognitive dream started when she was fifteen and at high school in Brisbane.

"It frightened me then and sobers me now. There was a girl in our class who was a member of the Exclusive Brethren. She had never travelled to school by public transport like most of us: her father used to drop her off at the nearest intersection. I travelled by train to Central and walked from there to school. I had never seen her crossing the Elizabeth Street intersection with George Street on the Treasury side. Yet that is where she was in my dream. That was the only comfort I could draw from the repeated dream. The events it contained were not possible because she never travelled the route in the dream.

"In the dream I saw her killed in a traffic accident while she was crossing the intersection. A Jackson & O'Sullivan truck, red with black trim and lettering as all that company's vehicles were, came up George Street from the Gardens and turned into Elizabeth Street, travelling towards William Street. It came rather fast considering the geography of the corner and the number of pedestrians using it. As the truck made its turn, the other pedestrians jumped out of the way. My classmate, however, was struck. Her body was squashed on the road. Her suitcase burst open and her books were scattered. The truck did not stop.

"Then the macabre and, I later realised, the strong symbolic element of the dream occurred. The books gathered themselves back together and poured neatly back into the port which had somehow mended itself. She became unsquashed, got up, her port floated up into her hand and she went on her way as if nothing had happened.

"Each time I had the dream I felt sick and dreaded the walk down George Street. If I could have changed my route, I would, but the school did not permit us to use either Albert Street, because of the brothels, or Edward Street because there were boys by the hundreds, students at another high school. I kept telling myself the dream meant nothing. Nothing could happen because the lass did not use that route and did not travel by public transport.

"One morning, about two months after the first dream, I turned out of Queen Street into George Street and saw her on the opposite footpath, about a street width ahead of me. She was exactly where the dream said she would be. There was no mistake about identity, the slender build, the long dark plaits and our school's uniform. It's hard to describe the feelings I experienced: horror, dread, guilt, expectation, denial.

"I could see a red truck approaching from the Gardens end, too far away to see which firm owned it but I was certain it would be a Jackson & O'Sullivan vehicle. As I approached the intersection, she was about three quarters of the way across. The truck came quickly round the corner. It was a Jackson & O'Sullivan's. People scattered. The truck clipped her suitcase, burst it open and books spilled across the street. She jumped aside, unhurt. Others rushed to help gather her books. She was probably shaken but she continued down George Street. I stood where I was, frozen, still horrified but relieved, incapable of moving but already beginning to assess why I had dreamed the broad shape of the event.

"Two teachers escorted me down to the school and asked several times what was wrong but I could not tell them. I did not even speak of my dreams at home let alone to a teacher we called the death adder. It was roughly ten years before I told anyone about the dream which was as vivid then as it was when it occurred. It is still vivid."

Although the event differed from the dream in that the girl was not killed, Lorna's overriding medium term response was,

"A feeling of guilt resulting in a lot of introspection for motives. I felt variously that I had wished her dead but could not understand why when I did not dislike her; or that I had in some way been reprieved because she had not only not been killed, but was also unhurt; or that the dream was a warning of some kind."

As time passed Lorna was able to piece together some of the symbolic meaning within her dream:

"It took a long time to put the dream into real perspective. She had been on the receiving end of some nasty teasing about religion. In my local area, I had been savagely teased, on religious grounds mostly, so I had some idea how she must have felt. I gradually found myself stepping in and defending her when the teasing became vicious.

"I grew to the conclusion that the dream was probably more symbolic than literal, that it was meant to make me realise that we all have a responsibility for the way we treat others, or allow them to be treated. It was meant to make me see how we 'kill' others in many ways, and that by changing our behaviour towards or among others, or by stopping others from being cruel, we can prevent some 'deaths'."

Lorna's story is enlightening because she was able, years after the event, to look back and see double meaning. On the surface was the precognitive dream and the subsequent event, although the endings were different. On a deeper level Lorna was able to touch meaning.

By the end of December 1996 my work path seemed to be changing course. I had been researching this book for over three years and knew that I would be writing the final manuscript during the first half of 1997. I had a few loose ends to tie, such as finishing the Hypnotism Project I was engaged in and choosing which publisher to sign with. Of that much I was sure. I had no other definite plans.

My broadcasting career with ABC radio seemed to be coming to an end. My weekly 'Dream Talkback' had been established for four years and in the past year, 1996, I had created and co-presented a new weekly ABC radio series entitled 'Reality Matters'. When the ABC was called upon to rip millions of dollars from its budget, each of the co-presenters who had incorporated my programmes into their shows, were made redundant. I followed my dreams which suggested 'out with the old, on with the new', and did not present myself for consideration as part of the new Queensland line-up. I knew my life was changing, but I was unsure which direction to follow.

A dream on 5 January 1997 seemed, at first glance, to reinforce the feeling that my work plans were left hanging in the balance and that it was time to watch the flow of life from an objective distance with total trust. The flow of my future work, I felt from this dream, would take its natural course if I just let it happen. There are always surprises if you create space in your life to let them in. This reasoning is easy to see from my dream.

I dreamed the Brisbane River was the centre of a huge on-the-water festival, a really good and successful idea. I had moved back from the celebrations for a while, but then returned to watch ('watch the river flow') from a viewing grandstand high in the sky. There were no seats. Instead l dangled from an overhead loop, clutching on with my left hand in much the same way as you steady yourself when standing in a tube on the London Underground. My son was hooked onto my right hand. We were aware of the delicate balance ('hanging in the balance') but we were absolutely certain that we'd be safe ('trusted the process').

Then, overhead, Glen flew past in a motorised hang-glider, carrying a walkie-talkie. He was communicating with the crew or organisers on the river, in the heart of the celebrations, who also had walkie-talkies. Glen had kept his important involvement a secret specially to surprise me; which he did!

There was a lot more to the dream, but that is enough to illustrate this story. Avid dream interpreters will already have noted the deeper meaning which pervade the dream, but for the sake of simplicity, let it be said that I understood the full symbolic meaning of the dream and its relevance to my life, and I acted upon it.

Ten days later I had a very short dream which I recorded in my journal as 'The Z Contract'.

In this dream my daughter and I had each been given a book contract from a country which, in the dream, began with a Z and was in South America. In the dream I thought it was Brazil. (Dream logic!) My daughter was filling her contract in, but I didn't, as something about it made me feel uneasy.

Three days after this dream a friend, Sue Manger, phoned to invite me to complete a team of people she had chosen to be interviewed on community television station, Briz 31. I had a function I wanted to advertise and so it seemed a good idea and I went along to prerecord the interview on 22 January.

A day after the prerecording, Sue and Glen hatched a plan and returned to Briz 31 to look at some options. During the discussions, and in my absence, the station offered me the opportunity to take over as host of the show. As my life was indeed 'hanging in the balance' at the time, I decided to do it for a trial period and watch the way 'the river flows'. The studios were in the heart of the city on the river bank, and after each programme I went outside to let the peace of the river wash away the rush of the recording. The production was largely left in our own hands, so Glen ended up taking on a producing role and spent much of his time co-ordinating the team on the studio floor, reminding me of his dream role as 'walkie talkie' co-ordinator of The Brisbane River Celebrations. He had surprised me in the dream in just the same way as he surprised me when he came home with the offer to host the show and then surprised me again with his production abilities.

Four weeks later I perused the Briz 31 contract which was then formally on offer, but for personal reasons I felt uncomfortable with it. I didn't sign. It was weeks later that I looked back through my dream journal and saw 'The Z Contract' (Brazil/ Briz 31?) dream. It was not in my conscious memory at the time we were contemplating the contract.

In truth there was more to the original dream, which came to pass in much the same fashion as the elements described above. These included attitudes, feelings, reference to particular people and reasons for leaving. To elaborate these details could lead you, the reader, into such complicated corners of the puzzlemaze which links dreams to waking life that you may no longer see the trees for the wood. The whole episode remained, for me, a clear case of dream symbolism and meaning appropriate to my personal development and daily decision making, reinforced by elements of that symbolism surfacing in my everyday waking life. This is where our dreaming and waking worlds overlap.

Where did 'hanging in the balance', 'watching the river flow', 'trusting the process' and 'leaving room in my life for surprises to enter' get me, I hear you ask? Well, I learned a lot personally from these experiences and I certainly did discover how to make life slow down in order to let surprises climb on board. In trusting the process I discovered new skills and in contemplating the contract I realised what kind of deal it would take to make me feel comfortable. At the time of writing Glen has gone on to form a production company and is now producing a show for someone else.

(Post Script: Little did I realise the full implication of my future in television when I was writing this chapter. When the manuscript was completed it excited sufficient key people that the material is now being prepared as a documentary series for international distribution. Perhaps you will witness with me the final outcome, the ‘Shape of Things to Come’, via a television channel near you.)

Foreseeing the Future or Previewing the Past?

Basic assumptions can lead us into quagmires of confusion. I'm not at ease with our day-to-day assumption of linear time: that the future follows the present and the present trails the past. Consider the following.

On 17 November 1996 I had a powerful dream that I was in a park where huge explosions were expected and people were covering their heads. The explosion was loud. On the next night I dreamed I was killed because my murderers said I knew too much about a cover-up. They hit me on the back of the head as I lay on my tummy on the floor. I was not dead and I was torn between wishing I had died and the fear of them discovering I was still alive and having to bear the dreadful pain of another hit.

The next month, on Christmas Eve, I received a letter from a close friend, Mike, who was travelling with his wife, Elizabeth, in Central America while writing a book about their journey. He described how, on 15 November, he had found himself in a park in the middle of gunshots. Everyone cowered and hid their heads. As the robbers ran away, they realised that one of the locals in the party recognised them, so they shot him in the back of the head as he lay on his tummy. My friend went over to him and found that he was not yet dead. He died in his arms.

The following extracts from Mike's letter illustrate the similarities between his experiences and my dreams two and three days later.

"I saw the gun swinging from his hand as he approached someone lying flat, face down and absolutely still on the ground. ... the bandit pointed the gun towards the back of the person's head from behind. The gun fired ..... he was breathing ... I held his shoulder and rubbed his back and chatted to him in a mixture of English and Spanish. After a few moments the sound of his breathing stopped, for good. .. I kept stroking his back to let him know that he wasn't alone."

"The question of 'Why?' was soon answered, as people nearby related hearing distinct threats directed at him during the robbery. The threats were personal and indicated that at least one of the bandits knew him. Just before he was killed, the bandit asked the man if he recognised him. He replied it wasn't a problem. The bandit told him it was and then executed him."

Was it just coincidence that I experienced similar circumstances in my dreams two and three days after this event? If not coincidence, it would be easy to argue that I was picking up on Mike's distress telepathically as he relived the terrible events in his mind. Yet again, in my dream I experienced the incredible pain of being hit on the back of the head, just as the dying man must have felt the gunshot wounds which did not immediately kill him. Did I tune into the thoughts and pain of the dying man, or was this a case of projection of Mike's feelings about the man's pain mingling into my dream via telepathy? Or was it all pure dream symbolism, relevant to my personal life alone?

I was aware that I had dreamed of Mike and Elizabeth on three or four occasions since they had left Australia so I decided to look back over my journals and examine those dreams. The details I discovered were uncannily pertinent to the whole episode and to the developments which followed; but these were dreamed up to six weeks before the murder! The dreams themselves were long and detailed and contained whole sequences which seemed to bear no relevance to the event we are discussing here. I have isolated some of the sentences which stood out to me as I reviewed the dreams. Realise that they are extracts only, but notice how much impact they deliver. Remember also that these were the only dreams in which Mike and Elizabeth appeared, and yet each one has at least one item of interest to observe.

"I have a gun made of wrought iron metal, fashioned in circular fretwork - more a piece of art for targeting than a destruction weapon. .. I was experimenting with focussing on targets and shooting at them. Precision and focus were the keynotes and it felt powerful."

"... the dangers of 'modern' travel which we forget. I think of Mike and Elizabethand their flight to America and travelling and I realise that there is always danger in adventure - if you want to adventure, you have to face that. The risks go with it."

Jane's Dream 2, same night as Dream 1, 26 September 1996

"We hear Mike and Elizabeth are back in Australia and I am getting ready to go and meet them at a restaurant but they turn up at home instead saying they're fed up (pun!) with restaurants. They seem quiet (low) but say they have not given up their journey, just decided to make a flying visit home before continuing. Later Mike says we knew that he had to come back for the cancer test: cancer in the abdominal region. He thought he could get the test done in America, but he had to come home. Now it was okay."

Jane's Dream 1, 24 October 1996:

"I have both arms in the air signalling 'surrender'. A camera moves in closely to film my face. This is all being documented. I sit behind a man who I seem to know - perhaps he is a journalist, and chatting to him. I think this is maybe where Mike comes in."

Mike's letter described how they had to 'surrender' when faced with the guns and machetes. Among other things, his prized camera was stolen. They later obtained statutory declarations (documents) from the Central American authorities and copies of the articles which appeared about the murder in the local papers (journalists) and sent duplicate copies of these documents for their insurance claim to us for safe keeping. The newspaper cuttings included photos of the huge funeral procession which I assume was also covered on television.

Jane's Dream 2, same night as Dream 1, 24 October 1996

"I think Mike and Elizabeth have had enough of travelling, or are avoiding it, and I ask Elizabeth if they are going to get to South America. After all, it is nearly November and they should be near the border by now. Mikehas taken a job for a while as some kind of financial adviser/ insurance job in an office. I am talking to him on the phone but I can tell by his answers that someone is listening, so he is giving 'work' answers to give me the clue that he is not telling it how it is. Later I meet Mike. He is thin and not looking well, although he thinks he is healthy and slim. I imagine his rounder face and bigger body which exuded vitality and wonder what has happened."

It's interesting to note the sense of urgency in my dream, the feeling that Mike and Elizabeth should be leaving Central America and moving on to South America by now, considering the murder was still three weeks in the future. The reference to insurance could be seen as recognition of the forthcoming danger or could also foreshadow the insurance claim for the camera they would eventually lodge.

In the event Mike and Elizabeth were concerned that the news did not reach their family and other friends until they were safely back in Australia, when they could physically comfort them and prove they had lived to tell the tale of their whole journey. My dream reference to 'not telling it how it is' came to be reality in the weeks that followed, where a softer version of the camera theft, revolving around a street robbery, was sent home instead. Mike also told us in his letter about the sickness and weight loss that followed the murder.

Remember, these dreams occurred before the murder, and did not involve my immediate life - or did they? One of the beauties of this example is that the dreams straddle the time before and after the event. Also the symbols or correlations get stronger as the date of the actual event is approached. These observations form more vital clues in uncovering the nature of precognition which will become apparent as our discussion unfolds.

Moving past the date of the murder and past the two dreams opening this account, I had a third dream. Again this was only three days after the murder, and I was still in conscious ignorance of the event. I dreamed of running to Mount Kilimanjaro. As my dream journal records:

"I'll just go so far and then stop. No point aiming for the full distance unprepared and I don't have to anyway. I climb a steep but easy path and come to the top of a stunning lookout. Three men are talking on what appears to be the edge and I feel the fear of heights in the pit of my stomach."

In the letter I received from Mike on Christmas Eve he described the murder site as being ‘up the hill’ at a ‘lookout’. He and Elizabeth had climbed a path to a hilltop lookout, and that was where the murder took place. The fear in the pit of the stomach needs no explanation, but again mirrors Mike's ensuing stomach upsets. The dream also questions the need to finish the whole journey and brings up the notion of being unprepared (for what is to follow?). Best of all, I like the pun in the name of the mountain. In best dream language: 'Kill the Man' hums loud and clear in both shape and sound from the word Kilimanjaro.

Put this Mike and Elizabeth sequence of dreams and events to the back of your mind for a while, we'll return to it later. Turn your attention instead away from the evidence presented by precognitive dreams and walk with me into the next chapter to sample the evidence provided by the waking world of precognitive visions.

• 1/1 Accurate information about a future event, of which the dreamer has no prior conscious knowledge, can appear in a dream. E.g. Anna's decapitated cat.

• 1/2 The future event for the dreamer may be the discovery of an event which occurred just before, or at the same time as, the dream. This is commonly referred to as telepathy. E.g. Heather's ex-husband's suicide..

• 1/3 The future event for the dreamer may be the end product of the thought or action of another person which occurred just before or during the dream, and of which the dreamer had no prior conscious knowledge. This is another example of telepathy. E.g. Our rented house being put up for sale.

• 1/4 Future events previewed in dreams frequently appear to concern future events which have not been set in motion at the time of the dream. E.g. Rebekah'sTony dream.

• 1/5 Future events commonly concern:

               * illness, accident and death (most commonly reported); E.g. Ken's dream of Ricky’s death.

                * travel or distance (second most commonly reported); E.g. Several of my Mike & Elizabeth dreams.

               * change (third most commonly reported); E.g. My Brisbane River dream.

• 1/6 A dreamer may discover, in retrospect, a series of dreams over a period of time, which all contain information relating to the same future event. In such cases the amount or accuracy of the information often increases towards the date of the actual event. E.g. My Mike & Elizabeth dream series.

• 1/7 A dreamer may discover, in retrospect, a series of dreams related to a future event occurring for a person known to them. In the absence of conscious knowledge that the event has taken place for that other person, the dreamer may continue to receive information about the (now past) event in their dreams. If the level of detail is beyond coincidence, such dream series suggest that 'time hopping' (dreams referring to past, present and future around a consciously unknown event) is more the case than 'foreseeing' an event. E.g. My Mike & Elizabeth dream series.

• 1/8 Very few dreams, on the surface, contain information about future events. Those which do, however, often show a level of detail beyond coincidence. E.g. My Lotto dream.

• 1/9 Some precognitive dreams are literal. That is, the future event takes place exactly as previewed in the dream. E.g. Rebekah's Tony dream.

• 1/10 Some precognitive dreams are symbolic (or a mixture of symbolic and literal). Unless the dreamer is conversant with dream symbolism, it is not until after the actual event has occurred that the dreamer looks back and sees the connection. E.g. Cheryl's dream of Jed's accident.

• 1/11 A dreamer who understands dream symbolism often sees valid personal meaningfulness in a dream and subsequently acts on the meaning, only to discover at a later date that the dream was also symbolically or literally precognitive. E.g. My Brisbane River dream.

• 1/12 A dreamer, believing a dream to be precognitive, may take action to prevent the previewed event. If completely successful, of course, the future event will not occur, so the dreamer will never know for sure whether the original dream was precognitive. E.g. Glenys's dream of child being burned.

• 1/13 A dreamer, believing a dream to be precognitive, may take action to prevent the previewed event. The event may then unfold to a degree, but with a changed ending, appearing attributable to the dreamer's preventative measures. That is, the dreamer may apparently change the future outcome of an event because of advance knowledge received in a precognitive dream. E.g.Rowyn's car accident.

• 1/14 Some precognitive dreams concerning events which later occur to other people (e.g. death), appear unpreventable to the dreamer. In some cases the dreamer may take comfort from the dream, being able to prepare emotionally for the future event. In some sense this action changes the future in that it changes the dreamer's coping ability, the dreamer's attitude towards the other person, or the relationship between the two. E.g. Carol's cancer dream.

• 1/15 Many precognitive dreams may be overlooked because they are not acted upon, or because the dreamer considers them insignificant. Some dreams, or series of dreams, highlight significant detailed precognition of small, insignificant (in the dreamer's opinion) events. E.g. HM's split shorts.

• 1/16 Identifiable characteristics of precognitive dreams were more individual than shared.