When I was a boy of 8 or 9, I had a dream that I met a pretty girl on the beach. So powerful was this dream, I was still looking for that girl more than a decade later. I knew her name. I knew what she looked like. The dream had felt so authentic, I was sure she was real.

Psychic flash? Or just pre-pubescent wishful thinking?

I’ve got to think it was the latter. My dreams don’t tend to come true and you can give thanks for that. If they did, we’d all be overrun by winged serpents and other horrors along with pretty girls from the beach.

Others say they have more luck with this psychic business. They have hunches that pan out. They dream of things that later come to fruition. They have sudden feelings that a loved one is in trouble and the phone rings an hour later.

The experts tell us there is no scientific justification for parapsychological phenomena (you knew I was going to say that), and yet polls consistently show that more than half of all Americans believe in such things.

The problem is the other half: If you feel you have psychic abilities, you fear that revealing them will lead to scorn. As witnessed by the compelling report below.

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“I have had many precognitive dreams and other psychic experiences,” says a man who responded to our query. “These include two precognitive dreams since December 2012, both of which can be verified by separate third parties. The most recent was on Easter Sunday afternoon, when I dreamed about a bombing, and told my daughter-in-law. I made the comment, ‘I dreamed about a terrorist bombing, and if it happens, you heard it first from me.'”

Exactly two weeks later, explosions rocked Boston and, in a larger sense, the world. Should this self-proclaimed psychic have reported his dreams and subjected himself to ridicule?

“I had toyed with the idea of calling the FBI, but decided against it for several reasons,” he said. “Although I knew it would be true and soon, I didn’t have a clear date and I didn’t recognize the location. I am new to New England and have only been to the airport and North Station in Boston, so I don’t yet know if the location is similar. I also believe there may be another bombing later this year at a shopping mall, possibly in Anchorage, in late summer or early fall, but I am not sure. I base that possibility on the same dream as the Easter bombing dream. I feel bad now about not reporting the premonition, but I still don’t know where I could have reported it and have had it taken seriously.”

He also foresaw the horrors of 9/11, he says, suddenly shaking and crying on Sept. 10 of 2001. The same rush of emotions struck him two years later in the days before space shuttle Columbia burned up and crashed.

Powerful stuff, and illuminating. The problem with reporting these types of things?

“You may certainly use my experiences,” the fellow wrote, “but please don’t reveal who I am and where I live.”

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Loud, proud and clairvoyant

Fortunately, there are others who believe in their own psychic gifts and they are proud enough. Proud and bold enough to share them with the world, scorn be damned.

Janice McDonald of Lewiston says she has been having psychic flashes since the ’60s. No idea why they began or how long they’ll last, is McDonald, but she was more than happy to share a few.

“My first husband was incarcerated, and one morning at 6 a.m. I woke up with a start and said to myself: ‘Oh, my god, there has been a breakout at the jail.’ But my feeling was that hubby was not one of them. Sure enough, on the news it was reported there was a breakout, and he was not one of them.

“When I was five months pregnant,” McDonald goes on, “I started having labor pains and thought, ‘Oh, my God, something is wrong. It is too soon for this,’ but they were getting stronger. So, I laid down on the couch, hoping to go to sleep and maybe they will go away. They got pretty strong, but I did manage to go to sleep. About an hour or so later, I woke up; the pains were gone and I felt fine. About two hours later, I got a phone call from my mom and she told me I was an aunt – my sister delivered my niece in the same time frame that I was having labor pains. I went through it with her, and we are not twins. I was also hoping I wouldn’t go through this again – going through my own was enough for me.”

You want more?

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One day, out of the blue, McDonald suddenly got dizzy and passed out. She wasn’t sick and could think of no reason why this had happened. Come to find out, her husband had donated blood that very day and – you guessed it – had passed out.

“One evening,” McDonald continues, “when we were in our camper at the Fryeburg Fair, the news was on and the announcer said two EL (Edward Little High School) students were hit by a car. Instinctively I thought of my grandson, and sure enough it was him and another student. Luckily they were not seriously hurt.”

Her particular brand of assumed psychic ability falls under several different classifications. It’s part bilocation, in which a person seems to be in several different places at once. It’s a little bit death warning and a heaping helping of precognition. You might also consider McDonald’s experiences remote viewing or just simple telepathy.

Annette Parlin, on the other hand, considers herself straight medium/clairvoyant. The Temple woman is written about in a book, even: a volume titled “Hauntings from Wayne and Beyond.”

“I am 57 years old and have had these gifts all my life,” she says. “I currently do readings and house investigations to let people know what they may have for paranormal activities.”

She’s a pro, in other words. And when it comes to people who make money from their purported psychic gifts, that’s when skeptics start to roll their eyes. A lot of people don’t believe in extrasensory perception at all, of course, and the idea that someone is cashing in strikes them as pure fraud.

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Most of us, though? Middle of the road, that’s where we stand. Maybe there are people with psychic abilities. Possibly. We have heard some strange things in our day. Sort of.

“I feel like the human mind is vastly untapped,” says Joseph Carro of Biddeford. “Who knows what it’s capable of? I do remember one time where, as a kid, I dreamed something and it ended up happening exactly as it did in the dream. It wasn’t anything cool, like knowing when someone was going to get hit by a truck so I could save them, just a series of questions to which I remembered the answers much to the astonishment of the guy asking the questions. Also, have you ever tried staring at someone from a window and they turned around and looked directly at you? How is that possible?”

How indeed. The human brain, they say, is still as mysterious as deep space. If you suddenly know things you have no business knowing, what other conclusion can you make?

“I don’t think I’m psychic,” says Amber Jo McCaslin of Lewiston, “but I do have dreams that come true. I find it interesting that many that responded here have also had that experience.”

Just what you hoped to hear

Until science learns more about the weird workings of our gray matter, the presence of psychic phenomena will remain debatable. You can’t prove that ESP allowed you to predict the outcome of last year’s Super Bowl, but I also can’t prove it didn’t.

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Chances are good fraud will remain, too – you can’t throw a rock without hitting a sign advertising psychic readings. For a smooth 50 bucks, you are invited into the incense-reeking home of a self-proclaimed seer, who will happily tell what is to come in your otherwise woeful life. A tall dark stranger? A big promotion at work?

Whether or not you believe depends on how much you want it. It also depends on how many clues you provide the seer when you darken her door.

I had a girlfriend once who was a big believer in psychic readings. A dark-haired beauty, she brought me to her favorite prognosticator so we could learn more about our exciting future.

The first thing the Gifted One said when I sat in her chair: “There is a woman in your life. A dark-haired woman who cares for you very much.”

Fortunately, I was able to cancel the check as soon as I got out of there.

I was prepared because I dreamed about it all the night before.

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Which psychic gift is yours?

Apportation: Materialization, disappearance or teleportation of an object.

Aura reading: Perception of the energy fields surrounding people, places and things.

Automatic writing: Writing produced without conscious thought.

Astral projection or mental projection: An out-of-body experience in which an “astral body” becomes separate from the physical body.

Bilocation or multilocation: Being in multiple places at the same time.

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Clairaudience: Receiving messages in thought form from another frequency or realm. It is considered a form of channeling.

Clairvoyance, second sight: Perception outside the known human senses.

Death-warning: A vision of a living person prior to his or her death.

Divination: Gaining insight into a situation via a ritual.

Dowsing: Ability to locate objects.

Energy medicine: Healing by channeling a form of energy.

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Faith healing: Diagnosing and curing disease using religious devotion.

Mediumship or channeling: Communicating with spirits.

Precognition, premonition and precognitive dreams: Perception of events before they happen.

Psychic surgery: Removal of diseased body tissue via an “incision” that heals immediately afterwards.

Psychokinesis or telekinesis: Manipulation of matter or energy by the power of the mind.

Psychometry or psychoscopy: Obtaining information about a person or object through mental means.

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Pyrokinesis: Manipulation of fire.

Remote viewing: Gathering of information at a distance.

Retrocognition: Perception of past events.

Scrying: Use of an item to view events at a distance or in the future.

Telepathy: Transfer of thoughts or emotions.

Transvection: Bodily levitation or flying.

Source: Wikipedia


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