Murray: I don't think anyone here is talking about glimpsing into the future, just of being inexplicably aware on some level of something happening elsewhere in the present or the recent past.

Let's go down the list of "premonitions":

(from nutty) Max had a weird anxiety that all was not well at home, while Mudcat was crashing or had already crashed.

(from me) I had a crushingly heavy sense of depression while the terrorist hijackings of September 11th were already in progress, perhaps at the time the planes took off or perhaps when the hijackers first killed a passenger aboard one of the airliners. But obviously the hijackers had boarded the plane before my sensation occurred.

(from SINSULL) Mary had the thought that her son had an injury, called home and momentarily heard the commotion over the phone as her son came into the house, but he had already been struck in the face before he came in the door.

(also from SINSULL) Mary felt that something was wrong while she was in Manhattan, and an explosion occurred as she stopped to call her friend, but the pressure that caused the explosion was building as she sensed that something was wrong. Maybe she smelled gas, or felt a change in air pressure. But SINSULL has already stated that both of these experiences of hers happened at the same time as her "feeling" about them, not after that feeling.

(from Helen) Helen felt something really bad was happening a week before an earthquake hit the area where she was standing, but even us non-geologists know that there are changes that occur underground long before the earth's surface actually quakes. I'm sure Helen simply sensed these changes, just as some species of animals are known to do.

(from Jeri) Jeri had a dream about her aunt, then heard immediately upon waking that her aunt had died. Not knowing the particular circumstances, I can only guess that one of two things happened: (a) As Jeri was close to waking up but still asleep, she could hear her mother's conversation and her mind processed the information in the form of a dream (this has happened to me as well as to friends of mine), or (b) perhaps she really did receive some sort of "visit" from her aunt's spirit (who knows? I don't dismiss the possibility). In either case, her aunt certainly died before the phone call was made, while Jeri was still asleep.

(from Robin2) Robin dreamed that her (his?) son had a traffic accident, and her son called her the next day to tell her about an accident similar to the one in the dream. Again, I don't know the circumstances, so I don't know if the dream and the accident happened at the same time, but the accident definitely happened before the phone call!


So, Murray, your description of "having a feeling of foreboding at 8:00 in the morning and disaster striking at 9:20" is not accurate for any of the anecdotes in this thread. Again, in the first 5 examples, including SINSULL's explosion and Helen's earthquake (and my ...wait, I can't say "my terrorists"), the disaster was already in progress when the "premonition" was felt. Maybe we should drop the prefix "pre" and just call them "monitions"!

I suspect that if we hear more details about Jeri's and Robin's experiences, we'll find that the same is true (that the dreams did not precede the actual events).

Now, this is not to say that I don't agree with you that some "premonitions" are false; I do agree! But I also want to point out that some people are more finely attuned to what's happening around them – more receptive to signals – than are others. Perhaps some feeling that someone passes off as "nothing" is actually a sensation of some event about which the person is never notified!

I also have a hard time with the concept that anyone can see into the future accurately on some psychic level, rather than just make educated guesses or murky statements that can be interpreted to fit just about any circumstance. But I've yet to read any post here in this thread that suggests a claim to have predicted anything, or to have been aware of any event before it started happening.