I have had 4 premonitory dreams over the past 3 years which have come true. The first dream I had was about a woman, unknown to me in the dream, who allowed a man into her Florida apartment. I know it’s Florida because I use to live there, and I see palm trees from the windows. It’s as if I am watching a movie. I try to tell her to not let him in, to be careful, but she is oblivious. He starts to hit and beat her, and when he reaches for some kitchen tools, I start to walk out of the apartment in horror, not wanting to see what he is going to do. I scream at him to stop but he is oblivious to my presence. I leave the apartment.

The next dream I have is about a car accident. In the dream my father is driving erratically. I am in the back seat and decide to put my seat belt on. As soon as it is on, he veers into the left lane ditch and the car starts to roll. I feel the up and down motion of the car. When it finally lands, I crawl out the window. I am suddenly in a hospital ICU looking into a room with someone lying in the bed, I don’t know who. I ask my mother who all the people are surrounding the bed, and she says she sees no people. I ask her how can she not see all those people? She replies, “Oh, those are the people watching over us. The spirits are here to help.” The dream ends.

The night before Sept. 11th I suddenly got very ill, throwing up the entire night. Because I was sick, the next morning my husband decided to not go to his job in Washington, D.C. We wake up to the news, and D.C. is evacuated, and he is safe at home.

I then had a final dream about my sister-in-law. In the dream a man is following her. He is a white male with brown hair, unknown to me. He is stalking her. She has the flu and seems very unaware of her surroundings. I try again, as in the first dream, to talk and to warn her, but it is no use; I am merely an observer. As she gets to the door of the apartment he pushes her in, beats and rapes her. I am horrified. Although I don’t see what is happening, I just know it is. I am then in the hospital with my brother and he is crying, and we are telling him how sorry we are this happened to his wife. We are all devastated. I wake up.

Three days after my dream of the car accident my younger sister was in a car accident, in which her car veered into the left lane ditch. The car rolled, she was not wearing her seatbelt, and she was thrown from the vehicle into the right lane of the opposite highway. She lived seven days in the ICU and then passed away from severe injuries. This was in Feb 2001.

A week ago my cousin was killed in her apartment, then set on fire. She was beaten and raped. A white male with brown hair was seen fleeing the scene at the same time the fire alarms were going off. I realized as soon as my mother told me that this is the first dream I described, and the last one, together.

After the first two dreams came true—the car accident and the 9-11 crash—I thought I should say something about the dream of my sister-in-law being killed. I called to ask my brother to tell his wife to be careful, to watch anyone following her. I also warned my sisters and a few cousins, all females who I thought might be affected. I wasn’t able to warn my cousin that was killed.

My concern now is that it seems that I am helpless to prevent these things from happening. This has made me feel afraid and scared of what is to come, and I wonder if there is anything I can do to prevent bad things from happening. Also, it seems I only dream of bad things to come. I am frustrated, and not finding many answers. I do believe in God, and in an afterlife, but I guess I am questioning why I am able to see such horrible events. If you have any ideas I am open to it. The story of my cousin’s death was in the Orlando Sentinel, if you need to confirm its accuracy.

Looking for answers,

—Diana, Age 26, Married, USA

Hi Diana—

I am very sorry to learn of all the troubles that have recently befallen your family. Dreams of precognition, as a rule, are more common among family members than among friends or acquaintances.

The occasion of precognitive dreams always is destabilizing, because it forces us to reevaluate our comfortable worldview. All the while, we also feel like perhaps we are going crazy, or that we are imagining things. Your dream report shows a progression in your awareness of your ability. At first you were uncertain of it, but now you want to know how best to use it—which I believe is a calm and wise approach to your dilemma.

People who discover psychic ability in themselves usually go through a familiar sequence of development. First a person will dismiss a precognitive dream or vision as a coincidence. Then, as the events continue to happen, he or she will begin to wonder. Then usually an event happens that convinces the person beyond doubt, and next the person feels very destabilized and “singled out” by the world (why me?). Once this point is reached, and one acknowledges that one genuinely appears to have an ability, hopefully one tries to learn, as calmly and level-headedly as one is able, what role it can play in his or her life. Can I help myself and my family from dangerous situations and events? Can I help other members of my broader family? Ideally, the ability will be seen as a gift of sensitivity that can be incorporated into one’s everyday life, without undue anxiety and without eccentricity.

One thing that I wish to point out to you is that your sensitivity to very serious disruptions in the vibrational field around you—your sensitivity to your sister’s approaching death, to your cousin’s brutal murder, and to the terrorist attacks on the morning of 9-11—are not always negative. Specifically, if you were indeed anticipating the terrorist attacks the night before they occurred, and if this was responsible for your illness, then your sensitivity to this event helped protect your husband’s life. Because you were not feeling well, he decided to stay home to be with you. You did not want him to leave you.

In this light, I hope you will not view your ability as a curse, or as only negative. The unfortunate truth of your current situation is that you just lost two family members who were close to you in sudden accidents. Your dreams show that you were sensitive to these approaching events in their lives. But your dreams and intuition also helped protect your husband.

The biggest hurdle of understanding that people with precognitive ability need to surmount is to learn to not feel guilty for being unable to stop or warn people of impending events. After your sister’s death, you tried to warn your cousin, and you succeeded in protecting your husband. It is wise to listen to your intuition, and to make decisions in your life based upon it, but I stress that you have to leave assigning guilt and blame for your ability completely out of the picture. These areas, surely, are beyond your realm of responsibility. By extension, I do not believe that you are responsible for their death in any way. Instead, you simply were close enough to them, and sensitive enough to the “subtle energy” of the vibrational spectrum around you, that you were able to sense their deaths. It is a mystery how it occurs, but I repeat that you should not feel guilty about their deaths, and your actions or inactions. This is not your place or responsibility.

I encourage you to continue to pay attention to your dreams, to learn how they relate to and reflect the events of your waking life. And I hope that this extraordinary season of trial for your family is over, and that the process of healing has begun.

Dear Dream Doctor—

I appreciate your response very much. I guess a part of me needed to hear an assurance that I was not going crazy.

Over the past week I have thought over your response, as well as conversations with my loved ones, and I guess my feeling is that this cannot be viewed as some sort of curse but just something I am sensing, as you stated. Something I am being tuned in to through my dreams. I can only try and tell the ones I love of any dreams I feel are important and leave it at that.

Not all of my dream experiences have been disturbing premonitions. I also have had several dreams involving my sister who passed in the car accident. I cherish them as true messages from her. In the first she told me she loved me, even on “the other side.” In the last one I had with her, I was struggling over a request from my mother to name my next child after my sister. (I just found out I am expecting my 4th child). I somehow was not getting the feeling that it was something my sister would have wanted, but since my mother asked, I was struggling with it. My husband and I were discussing it, and I said, “Well, maybe God will give us the answer. When I hear it from Jeni’s lips to name the baby after her, I will.”

That night I dreamt that my mother and I were in a big park trying to find our way back to my house, when I saw my little sister running across the field. When I dream of her, she is always about 10 years old, (although she passed at 20). I think it is because this is what I most remember about her, since that is how she was when we spent the most time together. I stopped her to ask her how to get back to the house, when I realized out loud in the dream that I needed to ask her something.

So I said, “Jeni, I need to ask you something. Do you want me to name the baby after you?” She immediately said, “No, that’s my name, it’s me.” And I said, “Are you sure?” And she said yes, sounding exasperated that I even needed to ask. So I immediately seemed to get the answer. I later noted that it was my mother with me in the dream, the one who had asked me to name the baby Jeni, the one whom it was important to. So many of my dreams are wonderful like this, and I awake with an overwhelming feeling of happiness, like my sister is around.

I realize that it’s only been a little over a year since her death, and our family is not ready for someone else to be Jeni. It’s still her, and should remain special for a while longer. I think that is why she said, “It’s my name, it’s me.” It’s just too soon for the name to take on a new meaning. I think this is why it just wasn’t ringing out like something I wanted to do, but since my mother had asked, I was still feeling obligated.

Luckily my mother is wonderful and understanding of my dreams with Jeni, and takes them as messages to herself as well as me, and she understood immediately. My sister was very possessive when she was here. She loved her unique name spelling, and when my nephew was born on her birthday when she was ten, she was devastated. She kept saying we would never remember it was her special day first. So her saying, “It’s my name, it’s me” was exactly something she would say.

I so appreciate you taking such a thoughtful approach to my dilemma. I have put a journal and pen by the bed to write down my dreams when I awake, especially when I wake up and have that overwhelming feeling that it is a message. At least then the details will be preserved and I can study them later.

Thanks again.