This is a chronological list of possible paranormal experiences. Most involve apparent precognition in dreams or waking states, by myself or someone I knew well. There is no second hand retelling of other's stories here, though I suspect that the majority of people who record many dreams will also experience surprising "coincidences." The accounts are mostly from my personal journal which I have kept, sporadically, since 1968. This journal now comprises 23 volumes. In the first several years dream accounts predominated, often followed by interpretations from a psychological perspective. Later more daily life was recorded, and in the past few years very few entries of any kind appear. I never expected this writing would be made public, so some of it is in an abbreviated style, and most of it was not composed with the care I would now prefer. However, to provide the best evidence for or against paranormal content, I have preserved here much original text. Such text is always dated, and appears in quotes. There may be minor edits but only if they do not effect evidential value. Deletions may be indicated by "..." Particular thoroughness is exercised in those several cases where a dream was written down before events happened that matched dream content. Recently composed comments are dated "3/2010." Some of the accounts are not significant evidence for the paranormal. These are given for their possible interest, or to make some point. Of the anticipated events here, none were of any great significance to myself or others. It is all trivia, as far as I can tell.

In a final section I have identified some recurrent features of the precognitive dreams here, and offered some general comments about precognition. This subject is not only an unwelcome guest in the scientific world view, neither does it fit in comfortably with religious philosophies. When I began recording my dreams over 40 years ago I did not believe that "precognition" was possible, nor was it my intent to put it to a test. However the following personal experiences eventually convinced me of its reality, though whether there is a "knowing" involved, or just some mysterious and noisy convergence, who can say? In any case, the world appears to be far more complicated, more interconnected, than we can currently comprehend. 

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CONTENTS: 1.Phantom Home  2.Hotakino  3.Heidi  Remembered  4.Calling Danny  5.Surprise Permission  6.Out of Control  7.Capadoccia  8.Special  Delivery  9.Black Uniforms  10.Triple Coincidence  11.Snow Queen  12.Crab or Lobster  13.White Rainbow   14.Superior Hangings  15.Freed Animals  16.Tunnel Flower  17.Quatal Nunashish  18.Buda Pest  19.Piano Tuner  20.Amazing Glass   21.Shadow Shadow  22.Twin Pipes   23.Analysis

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1. Phantom Home

1945, age 8.  Text: 3/2010.  From memory.
From 1943 to 1946 my family lived in a small house on the summit of the Palos Verdes Hills (southwest of Los Angeles). The house was adjacent to a Press Wireless receiving station where my father worked. At this time there were few roads or structures in the area. We were surrounded by open fields which were usually planted in lima or garbanzo beans. One day I walked about a half mile to the south along a dirt road. I heard music playing, and looked across the fields, about a mile, to a spot where there was a ramshackle dwelling abandoned when its Japanese residents were interned. But instead of seeing this "jap shack" (as the locals called them), I saw a well maintained home with a green yard. The music was coming from this house. I was surprised that a house could have been built so quickly, but took it as a fact. When I returned home I told my mother where I had seen this new house. She said this was impossible, that no construction had taken place there. The next day I looked for the new house but it was no longer to be seen. Instead the ramshackle dwelling was back in its place, surrounded by dry weeds. My brother and I explored the area. The image to the right is of a small (3.7 inch high) bottle that I found in a refuse pile next to the abandoned house.

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2. Hotakino

9/11/1968. Oxnard, California. From journal, volume #1.
DREAM: "I hear the words: 'The name is ...'  Then there is a pause and I expect my name - 'VanArsdale' - but the sentence is finished with 'Hotakino.' "  END

3/2010
I recently searched the WWW for "Hotakino" The only matches referred to its use as a pseudonym on two juvenile role playing sites, presumably by just one person. I was unable to contact this person. I do not see any paranormal content to the above dream, and include it here only on the chance that the person who has used "Hotakino" will find this page with a search and contact me. Perhaps other coincidences will then come to light that make this more interesting.

The web is so vast that any random two syllable word is likely to be found, especially when foreign languages are considered. "Hotakino" has four syllables, and it ranks as an oddity that a match was found. This is supported as follows: I searched with Google for "_otakino" where the first letter was substituted for by each letter of the English alphabet. The only find other than "Hotakino" was "Potakino," which is a Russian place name.

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3. Heidi Remembered

9/1969, Camarillo, California. Recorded in the evening in Oxnard. From journal, volume #1.
DREAM (Heidi): "She goes out with a man (sometimes me but changing toward the end) for an evening date. He drives a car in which the back has room to sleep in. That back and the whole car are beige. They go to a movie which costs $4.10 apiece. Later, though the back of the car is available, they go to a motel. They get a room upstairs. There is a large window out of which she sees a car go by in the night. This slightly disturbs her and her escort pulls the drapes." END

9/1969. Oxnard, California. From journal, volume  #1.
COMMENT: "This is perhaps the only dream Heidi ever reported to me - certainly the most detailed. She told it to me early in the evening, expressing surprise that she remembered it so well. We ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Oxnard and went to a friend's house where I was staying (he was still in Arizona). While standing before a sliding glass door, a look of recognition crossed her face and she commented on the similarity to the dream - a car had passed as she walked up. [At this same time Heidi put her hand to her right temple and complained of the onset of a migraine headache, a condition she frequently suffered from.] I pulled the drapes, feeling she felt observed (having either forgotten or not been told of this act in the dream yet). Later in the evening we drove back to her home in Camarillo. I had used her car (as I often did). Parked in front of her house she looked back and was surprised by the similar appearance of her car to the one in the dream. For her father had taken out the back seat to move some prunings (deciding to after her dream). The upholstery in the back was also beige and there was a pillow [and blanket] there. Before, in telling the dream the first time, we had both assumed the car with sleeping room represented my truck which had a camper [with a bed]. The association with her car had not occurred to us until she looked back then. And until this time I had not thought much about the dream or its correlation with the present. But then she asked 'I suppose you're going to tell me the meal was $4.10?' I couldn't remember at first (also momentarily didn't remember the $4.10 from the dream) but soon realized it was in fact $4.10 ( two combination dinners at $1.95 apiece plus 20 cents tax).  And I also remembered that her dream account was $4.10. Further, I had decided to go to this restaurant before seeing her and had even planned to get this same order. She had never been there before. And I had considered going to a movie (not unusual) and thought about going upstairs with her in my friends house. During this evening she had a headache."

3/2010. Lompoc.
Except for some minor editing, I have exactly reproduced the brief description of the dream above, as I recorded it in 1969 after Heidi told it to me, probably later that same evening. The comment is likewise preserved, but some additional information of this well remembered event has been added and appears in brackets. The original writing is awkward, but considering the purpose here I have left it largely intact. This event occurred some time after Sept. 18, 1969 (the date of the previous entry in my journal), but I failed to enter a date for it. According to the Social Security Death Index, Heidi died in 2006. It was this dream that first forced me to take precognition seriously.

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4. Calling Danny

1969. West Los Angeles, Pico Blvd. From memory, 3/2010.
I was lying on my back on my bed on a Saturday afternoon, alone in my apartment. I dozed off a bit, which was rare for me at that age. I had a dream, or more like a hypnagogic hallucination, that I heard the phone ring. I picked up the receiver and an unfamiliar female voice said "Danny?"

I awoke immediately and marveled at the seeming reality of the experience (the phone was not ringing), and thought about it. The only people who still called me "Danny" were my mother and brother. But this was not my mother's voice. Just then the phone actually did ring. I picked up the receiver and heard, in an unfamiliar female voice, "Danny?" It turned out to be a friend of my mother who had known her in Saudi Arabia, and had just visited her in Florida. My mother had given this woman my phone number in Los Angeles to call me because she was coming out here. I was not told to be expecting a call. This is the only time in my adult life that I have gotten a call from someone, who was not my mother or brother, who called me "Danny."

I did not record this experience in my journal. But over the years I have told it to many people and remember it well. By contrast I have rarely recounted precognitive dreams, which are more complicated. Often the listener to this will respond with a similar experience of their own, such as thinking of a person just before they call. .

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5. Surprise Permission

January 21-22, 1970. Los Angeles. From journal, volume #2.
"Went to bed using the 'meditation on the throat' technique to enter the dream state consciously."
DREAM: "I got up &  went to bathroom, came back, my pants dropped on the floor & stayed there. I got in the bed. The sleeping bag mat was on the floor beside me. I got off the bed and lay on my back on it. My knees were against my chest. Either I or someone was holding my legs this way. ... There was an uneasiness - as if resistance against a sexual advance - resistance and helplessness. Suddenly I realize I am hallucinating the experience - not 'dreaming' - or dreaming and knowing it ..." END
   "PS. Afternoon that day - the Yoga position - told us to fart - the mat - unexplained pain in throat - ... shoes were taken off."

3/2010
Later that day, after I had written down the above preface and dream exactly as above, I went to a scheduled yoga class at UCLA. We exercised on mats about the size of a sleeping bag mat. Well into the class the instructor had us lie on our backs and bring our knees up to our chests and hold them that way. He then embarrassed us all (I presume), by advising us that we should go ahead and "fart" now, that this position was designed for that. No one in the class farted. At the same time I noticed an unexplainable pain in my throat. Only when writing the PS, in the evening of the same day, did I connect this pain in the throat with the "meditation on the throat" technique that I  had used the previous night. I am aware that the PS reads as if not written on the same day, but it was. This was in my second journal, and only later did I strive to be more accurate and complete with my entries.

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6. Out of Control

5/22/1971. New Port Richey, Florida. From journal, volume #3.
DREAM: [Much omitted] "Later I am alone in the back seat of the car in a small local town. ... The wind is blowing strongly and I notice an approaching whirlwind. I'm concerned that it may move the car (which is parked next to a lawn - court house?). It [the whirlwind] centers on the car and the car moves over the curb and onto the grass. Other whirlwinds appear and the car moves faster and faster in one large circle. I think of trying to get into the front seat but I debate that it may be dangerous to climb over, or that I don't have time. The car is going at a dangerous speed (40 mph) and I fear it will hit something." END
 COMMENT: " ... But most interesting is the fact that the manifest content seems based on a scene in a movie I saw the day after the dream! (Fathom - Raquel Welch - saw the last part of this movie). In one scene she was alone in a light airplane that was spinning down out of control. She struggled to get into the front seat to control the plane."

3/2010.
The movie Fathom is available for online viewing on Netflix. I recently watched it and confirmed that the scene described above was present.

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7. Cappadocia

8/26/1971, 4 AM. New Port Richey, Florida. From journal, volume #3.
DREAM: "I am a leader - or usually just a working member - of  a construction crew that is erecting a sky-scraper in an ancient town in the Middle East someplace (Turkey?). The town's name is 'Selechrine' (pronounced 'Selekreen') and is an archaeological site of an ancient city (later ascertained to be early Christian or Byzantine). Its main feature is a labyrinth of vast tunnels and underground churches. The new construction is understood to be a hotel for tourists, though there are virtually no people presently living at the site. ...
   "I am on the 15th and top floor of the uncompleted building; the floors are not in, but others and myself move about unconcerned on the girders high above the ground. [Much omitted] Now ... I descend from the building and enter the tunnels.
   "(This phase of the dream is somewhat distinct and more interesting than above). The tunnels are perhaps 50 feet high - and further down them I will find high vaulted chambers like underground cathedrals.  I think of the enchantment of them - wonder at their antiquity, but Christian symbolism makes me think 'they are not so old after all.' [Much omitted] Now I begin to see vast underground chambers - all made with stone - their interiors dilapidated and worn - damp and in shadows - but always the overhead vaults secure. Projecting stones appear on the floor. I have turned about  now and am returning to the surface. In an underground cathedral on my left I see a robed man and wonder if these holy places are still being maintained. Continuing upward, soon a man overtakes me from behind and talks to me (always slightly behind me and out of sight). He speaks of his regular long walks in this and other tunnels. I don't speak for some time - and I wonder if he is a denizen of these regions - perhaps some occult figure. But now he mentions he is working on other tourist buildings in the area - a complex called 'Futurama.' "

3/2010 (Using notes made on 8/26/1971, afternoon)
I recorded this dream and the first comment on it upon awakening at 4 AM. The above fragments are exact quotes from that record. At about noon that same day my mother suggested I look at an issue of Aramco World magazine (May - June, 1971) that I had not seen before. She thought I might like to look at some pictures of birds it contained. Taking it up, I noticed that an old friend whom I had met in Saudi Arabia in 1954 had an article in it - The Caves of Cappadocia. I read it for a while without associating it with the dream, until I came to words about the underground "imitation vaults" and pictures of "cave-churches." Cappadocia is a Byzantine archaeological site in Turkey. I thought of the unseen man in the dream who was working on "Futurama." Skeptical, I wondered if I could have seen the article before and forgotten about it. No, I would surely have remembered an article by my friend of years before. Though we had not maintained contact, I remembered his name well, and knew that he was employed by Aramco. I documented this apparent precognition shortly after first seeing the magazine. The complete record of the "Cappadocia" dream and comments made the same day appear here. I still possess the spiral bound journal book (#3), and keep the issue of Aramco World inside it. 

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8. Special Delivery

10/1/1971. New Port Richey, Florida. From journal, volume #3.
DREAM: [Much omitted]  "Then someone entered my room - I didn't see him but it was a male voice telling me the 'blimp racing team' at UCLA had dreamed of me and ... they would be contacting me."

3/2010 (based on notes of 10/1/1971)
After a bit more of the dream I awoke with the feeling that the dream was precognitive, but could think of no one from UCLA that might contact me. Suddenly the door bell rang. It was a special delivery letter for me from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. I was not at all expecting to hear from them because they had returned some employment forms I had submitted several weeks before. My image of this organization was that they were the people who released weather balloons (cf. blimps). I had gone to college at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and also to UCLA. I had no chance to record this dream before the fulfilling event occurred, but did so in detail after receiving the special delivery letter. I have uploaded the complete dream and original commentary here. I put the envelope in my journal. It is still there.

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9. Black Uniforms

11/25/1971, 3 AM. Live Oak, Florida. From journal, volume #3.
DREAM: "I am living in times of great protest among the youth. It may be contemporary but there is some implication it is in the future ...There is to be a great rally in a large oval stadium. I join crowds headed for the stadium. We cross a river and enter the stadium. ... We take a position before the crowds in the stands. I look to our right and see armed troops dressed in black and standing in ranks." [Much omitted]

11/25/1971, 7:30 PM. Live Oak, Florida.
"Recorded previous dream in the morning. That afternoon I heard there was going to be a Thanksgiving Parade in Live Oak [where we were visiting relatives of my mother]. I had not known of this parade previously. I walked over to the court house where the band stand was (a decorated flat bed truck trailer), and situated myself across the street from it. After a while the parade started up and after a few lead vehicles the local junior Naval ROTC marched by. They came from my right, in ranks, with rifles, dressed in black! Compare this to the dream report: 'I look to our right and see armed troops dressed in black and standing in ranks.' ... the parade proceeded in the direction of a football stadium. ... It should be noted that I saw one of these boys in uniform before the parade, but after the dream. However I could have arranged myself so the unit came from my right. Note again (cf. "Cappadocia'') that the dream itself had a 'time travel' theme."

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10. Triple Coincidence

Events: 12/1971. New Port Richey, Florida. From memory, 3/2010.
Sometime during 1971 I had briefly discussed precognitive dreams with my father, and he did not believe that the phenomenon was possible. Neither had I until a close friend had a convincing example a couple years before. My father's disbelief in precognition did not concern me, but his rejection of even the possibility of consciousness after death seemed to be one cause of his depressing belief that his life was meaningless.

I had been speculating about the nature of consciousness, thinking of an individual awareness as manifesting whenever certain processes took place. Based on these speculations, I hatched a quirky plan to try to induce my father to have a precognitive dream, hoping that this might greatly expand his belief in what was possible. Precognitive dreams had forced me to recognize that there was much about the world that we did not know. However I did not expect this to work  - for one, my father did not seem to be interested in his dreams, and I could not remember him ever recounting one to me. Still, one night, after he had gone to bed, I went  to the beach several blocks away and spent a couple hours going through a procedure that I had devised based on my speculations about consciousness. This involved repetitive visualizations attempting to produce in my own brain the essential process that gave rise to my father's consciousness, and attempting to make a change therein that might cause a precognitive dream. I did not tell anyone about this project, nor could anyone have found out.

The next morning my father acted no different than he normally did, and I assumed that my odd project had no effect on him. Living in the house next to us was an elderly couple my father called "Captain and Kitty." In the early afternoon Kitty called my father and asked him to take her husband to the hospital, something he had done before as I recall. Neither my mother nor I went with him. Soon after my father returned from the hospital he said something to us that was close to this.

As I recall, neither I nor my mother said much in response, and I never again talked to my parents about this incident. They have since both passed away. There is another "coincidence" to this, my birthday is January 29, in other words, 'one twenty nine'! I did not even think of this until a week or so later.  Though I had written down many dreams in my journal, including some dreams of others, I never recorded these strange events until now. For this reason I do not know the date of the incident, though it likely was in December, 1971.

The three "coincidences" are: (1) My father reported that he had a precognitive dream on the very night that I tried to induce such, unknown to him. (2) My father dreamed that he would find out what the number 129 meant, and the next day the room number assigned to his friend by a hospital was 129.  (3) The room number was the same as the date of my birthday. I acknowledge that the following two objections carry some weight.
(i) Since I did not record the events at the time, considerable drift or elaboration in important details could have occurred over the decades. However this was an amazing event to me; I believe I still remember it clearly after the passage of 40 years. At the least, I remember with total certainty that my father reported a precognitive dream on the one night that I attempted to induce such. I referred to this event briefly in a 1984 journal entry and again in 1994 (see below).
(ii) My father could have simply made up the dream after he returned from the hospital, perhaps in order to please me. In that case, only coincidence #1 remains totally valid, but #3 is likely valid unless my father also lied about the room number. This objection is not easily refuted, unless one knew my father and thus knew how unlikely he would have sought to deceive me in this way, even if done thinking it was in my best interest. Actually, my father thought that my interest in precognition was harmful to me (maybe he was right). And deception by others can not explain the first precognitive dream I reported above involving the images of Cappadocia.

10/7/1984. Evening. Oxnard, California.  From journal, volume #6.
In discussing the "Superior Hangings" dream (see later) I wrote in my journal the following. "In my very remarkable precognitive experience involving a deliberate attempt to induce such in my father's dream, the "coincidence" involved the number 129. This was also my birthdate (Jan 29, 1937, Southampton, New York)."

1/29/1994. 11:23 PM. Oxnard, California. From journal, volume #19.
     "Ate lunch with Bruce at Tugs. Later I told him of my little miracle in New Port Richey, and my method of 'making things happen' by pattern matching. I won't see him again before he goes in for the bone marrow transplant Monday. I gave him a hug when I left."

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11. Snow Queen
7/26/1975. Los Angeles (recorded in Oxnard).  From journal, volume #3, 6 page stapled insert. Some minor revision.
"Charmaine's Precognitive Imagery."
     "Yesterday evening (Friday) I went to Los Angeles to see Charmaine for the first time in many months. After dinner we bought tickets for a movie (The Fortune) and first browsed in a small store near the theater in Westwood. It had a large stock of note cards - many with children's book illustrations. I bought three, showed them briefly to Charmaine but it was rather dark at the time. The next morning she told me how her therapist was having her create images and act in them. She had mentioned this briefly before I had bought the cards the day before. In one of her images she imagined herself on an ice flow, there was a throne and her therapist had her imagine sitting on it. When she told me this I realized I had a card of "The Snow Queen" illustrating a Hans Christian Anderson story. Producing this we noticed it had a woman sitting on a throne on a block of ice in an ice flow! In another image she had seen herself as wet, emerging from the ocean, not knowing which way was home, and getting a ride in a passing vehicle. These exact elements were present in the movie we saw. "
    " ... I am not sure how much, if any, of the snow queen's image she told me before I bought the card - certainly not the ice flow. Until her image was described I hadn't noticed that the throne was on an ice flow on the card. Recall that J. W. Dunne (An Experiment with Time) said day dreams had as much future content as regular dreams."

3/2010.
I seem to have lost the notecard of the Snow Queen. But a web search suggests it was by Edmund Dulac. This appears above. There is a good chance that Charmaine had seen this image before and this influenced the visualizations with her therapist. And it is no great coincidence if I picked this card independently. The anticipation of the movie imagery is more difficult to explain. I did not record this in sufficient detail, and my memory of it has faded. The movie The Fortune is available only on VHS, and at a high price. I have not seen it again to check the above description.

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12. Crab or Lobster

8/17/1975. Huntington Beach, California (recorded in Oxnard). From journal, volume #3, 6 page stapled insert.
    "Met a woman, Judy, in Huntington Beach whom I was matched with in a computer dating service.  She had a 3 year old boy. Shortly before the child was to go to the baby sitter he began to cry. I went in to his room and got him to talking about his books. He started telling me about his favorite - Donald Duck as a detective. On one page was a picture of 5 or 6 sea animals. He pointed to the picture and named the creatures. But he called a lobster a crab. His mother (on my correcting him) said she was the source of the misidentification.
    "Later I was watching television with his mother. Toward the end of the Cher Show people were dressed as food. A man had a crab around his neck. Cher said something like "it should have been a lobster."

3/2010.
It could probably be checked to see if the Cher TV show in question had been broadcast prior to Judy misidentifying a lobster as a crab. If so, Judy could have seen it, making her more inclined to make the misidentification. If not, this may be a precognition, with reversal, of the line in the television program she was to see later that night. Her making this error can be seen as constituting a minor cerebral dysfunction, which could make precognition more likely, as a migraine headache may also.

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13. White Rainbow

7/8/1984, 9:10 PM. Dream that morning. Oxnard, California. From journal, volume #5.
DREAM:  [First paragraph omitted] "In one scene I am in a vacant lot next to an old (brick?) building. I see what I think is a fossil next to the building. Then, in fear, I think it is a live snake. Then I see it is dead, and all that is left is its skin over a fine network of bones (more like some vegetable husk than a vertebrate skeleton). The head of the snake is thrust inside a hole in the building.
     "The scene shifts to a gray hill. An old man is summoning me. He says 'use me,' and implies he has much to teach me. He is hardy looking, wizened, but not educated. I doubt if he has much to teach me, but out of respect I go to him. He points out to the horizon. Above the horizon is a large hood of gray clouds. Only a little line of bright sky shows under the clouds and [above] the horizon. Here are four white bands of light. They are all that can be seen of a rainbow. The old man makes a point of the rainbow being double. The second rainbow comes in more clear now.  I wonder why the light is white, instead of the spectral hues.
     "The man says the doubling of the rainbow, its appearance, is prophetic - he says something like 'you should be very concerned about that.'
     "Trying to guess his intent, I say 'you mean that this means its going to rain a lot?' He says yes, but I am doubtful."

7/8/1984, 9:15 PM. Oxnard.
COMMENTS: "I told Sharon of these dreams - but wrote them in the evening. While driving back from a day in Santa Barbara  ..., a little north of Ventura, I looked in the mirror and saw a strange glow behind - around and under a heavy but discontinuous blanket of low lying fog. I told Sharon to look, and as I turned back myself, I noticed a striking similarity to the 'rainbow' scene of previous night. There was the low gap of illuminated sky between the horizon and clouds. But the light of the cars were like the rainbow, and at the moment I looked back, two cars were clearly visible and their headlights were positioned right above the horizon, in the strip of light.
   "I immediately thought of the dream scene and reminded Sharon of the dream I told her, she confirming it, including my puzzlement over the 'white rainbow.'
   "Within a second the car lights behind me were no longer aligned with the horizon.
    "It is interesting that in the dream scene a prophetic character was announced, as in at least one of my previous dreams and in my father's '129' dream." (Triple Coincidence)

3/2010. Lompoc.
I have faithfully reproduced above my original writing on this dream; however it does not explain the event adequately. The precognitive target was entirely a visual experience, not easily described with words. What I saw on the highway was a hood of dark but oddly glowing clouds, with a thin band of brightness between these clouds and the horizon. As I looked, two cars, in adjacent lanes, appeared in the band above the horizon with their headlights on. Thus I saw a band of light with two pairs of much brighter white lights separated by a gap. The same image was seen the previous night in the dream. But in the dream a fanciful interpretation was constructed to explain the scene. The pairs of white lights marked the beginning and end each of two concentric rainbows. All rainbows have such concentric pairs, the outer one being weaker or not visible at all. In some other dreams of mine I believe narrative content has also been constructed to explain an internal visual perception, sometimes unlike anything that might be seen in the waking world.

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14. Superior Hangings

10/7/1984, morning. Oxnard. From journal, volume #6.
DREAM: "(Much forgotten) I am in a hall, and see a row of bodies hanged by the neck and suspended for public view. They are the victims of British colonial punishment. Around me are others of the oppressed culture, but I am white, the same as the oppressors. I collect myself, and begin to shout about the cruelty of the British. My sentences seem very eloquent, but there are long pauses between them. 'Is this a display of superior British culture?' I say. (Much forgotten). Later I notice some of the bodies are just small little dolls, naked, some held by string about the legs."  END

10/7/1984, evening. Oxnard. Some editing.
COMMENT: "Just watched the Reagan - Mondale debate. Certainly Mondale got the better of it.
   [Paragraph omitted] "I had planned to go to the Old Time Fiddler's Convention, but instead went to the UCSB library. Looked at books on political cartoons. ... In one book, Art and Politics , Fitzgerald, Greenwood Press, 1973, on page 87, I encountered a cartoon from The Masses, Aug. 1915. It shows two negroes dead on crosses. The caption is 'In Georgia: The Southern Gentleman Demonstrates His Superiority.' Before the crosses stands a southern "colonel" type. Note that in the last dream recorded (this morning, and also told to my wife before leaving) I saw 'victims of punishment,' implicitly of a different race from myself. I denounced this, saying 'Is this a display of superior British culture?' ... In the dream I had the oppressors as 'British' - in the book, on the page facing page the anti-lynching cartoon,  is a picture of the British lion leaping from England on some fighting foreigners. Another curiosity: in both cases the artist is Robert Minor. My brother's first and middle names are 'Minor Robert.' [omissions]
    "I had never seen this book before, though I had half expected to look at political cartoons today. I would not call this a convincing example of precognition, but it has that curious mix of multiple coincidence and permutation that seem to characterize such experiences. And there is no question of the prior recording of the dream.
    "Now I recall why I record dreams in such detail - one principal reason was to pick up on any precognitive detail - since minor elements may be involved. Perhaps 'precognition' is a poor word - it does not seem sensory or perceived - there is just some structural convergence of two causally unrelated experiences. Thus both in the dream and the cartoon, humans are killed and suspended [for public display], and this act is satirically denounced as claimed superiority. In the book, the perpetrator jumps over from the next page to match the dream, and my brother's names are permuted.
    "Incidentally, a month or so ago, Sharon and I put a 'double whammy' (simultaneous) on Reagan, that he would stumble over his words. It was all in fun, well, half in fun. Seeing him stumble repeatedly tonight was fun. I got a good laugh when he said something like 'I will affirm without hesitation my belief in God' - but in saying this he hesitated! - on the word 'hesitate,' - saying 'hes ... hesitate.' Check the tapes if you doubt me. Note the curious doubling over a meaning and delivery - like some semantic snare. It actually makes me doubt his sincerity - his belief in God - for the first time. I have doubts myself, but I don't conceal them."

3/2010.
The dream was recorded in the morning before seeing the book at UCSB. It appears above in its entirety. After some intervening accounts of routine events, the comment to the dream was written in the evening after returning home. I have deleted some unrelated observations from this. Both in the dream and in the book, one mocks the pretensions of "superiority" by a culture that elevates for public display the victims of its cruel punishment. This in itself is not strongly evidential of precognition. But seeing these cartoons in this book would have personal significance to me because of the combination of two familiar names. Likewise seeing the article on Cappadocia had a personal significance because I knew the author (see Cappadocia). This seems to increase the likelihood of  being a target of precognition. Perhaps the transposition of "Minor" and "Robert" even adds to that likelihood, sparking the transposition of cause and effect in the waking versus the dreaming domains.

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15. Freed Animals

12/11/1984. Oxnard. From journal, volume #6. Comment edited 3/2010.
"Bob, my office mate, mentioned that 'animal liberation' released some captive animals in Los Angles yesterday. He mentioned rats and horses - some had herpes. This caused me to remember a particularly vivid dream fragment from the night before."

DREAM:  "I am in Los Angeles, many previous events are forgotten. I am walking next to a railroad track (perhaps the one along Santa Monica Blvd.). Across the track I see large African mammals, walking in the same direction (east) as I, parallel to the tracks but always on the other side. I wonder what they are doing free, and speculate that they may have been released, or escaped as a result of some previous (but vaguely remembered) catastrophe, perhaps an earthquake or war.
   "I stare up into the sky and see an immense giraffe, his head and neck towering many times higher than possible - and I see other herbivores, all much larger than life. The image of these giant, stately animas moving gracefully against the sky is very striking."

COMMENT: "The idea of deliberate release was not so clear in the dream, and could have been a 'back formation' since I did not record the dream until after hearing of the news of the release. Still captive animals were unexpectedly free in Los Angeles - in both dream and reality. At the time I had not lived in Los Angeles for 17 years. All together this is not weighty evidence for precognition. Interesting though is the sudden remembrance when hearing Bob mention the release, and the particularly vivid dream image."

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16. Tunnel Flower

Below is the exact record of what I recorded in my journal in 1988, based on two telephone calls with friend Jana.

8/6/1988. Carmel, California. Recorded in Oxnard, California. From journal, volume #10.
"Jana, the day before yesterday, told me of this 'strong and pleasant and unusual' dream."
DREAM: "She enters a tunnel or cave. But it is not foreboding, and is lined all about with a single type of flower. This flower is like a Tiger Lily, but not exactly (black & white with yellow). She comes out of the tunnel at the walkway to her attic (where her mother's things were stored). Later her mother is present in the dream (her mother died last December or November). There are pleasantries exchanged." END

8/6/1988. By DWV, Oxnard.
COMMENT: "I was very interested in the striking imagery of a tunnel lined with flowers. I asked Jana to try to obtain a picture of one of these flowers. Yesterday when I called her she concluded the conversation with this remarkable incident. After telling me of the dream and after describing the flower, the next day she saw her daughter carrying the very same flower in her home. Here is how she got it. Jana's ex-husband had a cake for them. He works in a hotel a mile or so north of Jana's home. Someone had thrown out a corsage. He saw this flower and thought Jana might like it so taped it onto the cake box. He thought it was an 'orchid.' He does not habitually give Jana flowers. This is only about the third or fourth dream Jana has told me. The flower is not so common - and she described it to me before it appeared in her home.  She did not tell her ex-husband about the dream. She described the dream as unusual and vivid, and I took a particular interest in the flower."

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17. Quatal Nunashish

5/3/1989. Ventura County, California. Recorded in Oxnard. From journal, volume  #13.
    "Alan has gotten involved with a congregation of the Native American Church. ... On Saturday he will return to Pine Mountain for another church ceremony.
    "He was introduced to this group, that lives on a ranch on the Ojai side of the Pine Mountain Inn, by Paul. ... There is a medicine man, ... who has encouraged Alan and implied he may be suitable for advanced training. So far Alan has participated in two sessions in a smoke house with four or five other men. They beat drums, throw water on hot rocks, take turns praying (to 'grandfather'), and sing. ... Certain rituals are observed, but there is little doctrine. The group emphasizes equality of the races, peace, ecology, family life, sobriety. The leaders, others, travel much to other Native American Church groups. They prefer family involvement, so Alan suggests I come."

5/13/1989, 7:39 PM.
     "I followed Alan to Pardner's ranch this morning. We parked and walked up a footpath past the ranch house. [Much omitted] Alan went to the Toyota to get two large bottles of Pepsi he brought for Ken, the medicine man. We went to his trailer and he invited us in. ... He talks deliberately, in excellent English. He is a Chippewa, and that was his native tongue until he was removed to a Catholic Reformatory School at age six." [Much omitted]
     "[Ken] started talking about a large hole (natural) behind an aged Chumash's home up Quatal Canyon (Ken aspirates the 't' in 'Quatal'). A spirit comes out of that hole - it is about 12 feet tall and featureless. It is harmless, but plays tricks on people. It checks to see how people are treating the land. Ken said it came by Pardner's ranch once. It shook their trailer - he thought there was an earthquake.
    "Alan then said he had seen this himself. He said it was wearing a hat, had a black void for a face, was 12 feet tall and slender and his car was shaken." [omissions]
    "I am fascinated by this. Ken placed little importance on it, maybe he has much better spirits he deals with. ... I read in California's Chumash Indians, a Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History publication [p. 41], of the nunashish - dangerous creatures inhabiting the lower tier of this three tiered world. They come up to our Middle World at night, where they are likely to frighten anyone who should chance to see them."

3/2010. Lompoc, California.
Since Ken's description of this spirit somewhat matched the traditional nunashish, he could have been influenced by contact with local Chumash. The "aged Chumash" he referred to was probably Grandfather Semu, who lived 6 miles up Quatal Canyon. One of Ken's young cohorts lived with Grandfather Semu. However the early account by Alan was completely independent of Chumash legends or sightings. This created much interest among friends of mine at the time; one from work was eager for us to camp out in Quatal Canyon. Attributing reality to an entity based on independent observations of it is the stuff of ghost lore. Note also the kinship of this entity to European traditions of headless specters.

3/30/2010. Lompoc.
Today I talked to Alan on the phone and asked him what he remembered about the above happenings. He remembers seeing an entity like Ken described but only in a dream, and the location was not Quatal Canyon. Instead, he was living in Los Angeles and the setting of the dream was in the parking lot of a local market. He did remember his vehicle being shaken in Quatal Canyon at night, more than once. I now remember him telling me about this memorable dream many years before, and it being in Los Angeles. Perhaps back on 5/13/1989 Alan did not elaborate on how or where he had seen something like the spirit Ken had just described. So I falsely presumed the sighting was the same place as the car shaking. This revised version is not as interesting as the one originally recorded. But note there, that Ken doesn't actually say he saw the nunashish either, but both Alan and Ken report unexplained shaking in or near Quatal Canyon. Here is a link to some photographs of this beautiful canyon by David Rock.

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18. Buda Pest

5/25/1990, 10:43 PM. Oxnard. From journal, volume #14.
    "Last night I woke up at around 3 AM .... and turned my radio on to KPFK-FM. A taped Alan Watts lecture was on, and he mentioned a story about a woman who lived in Buda and her lover who lived in Pest. I have never heard before (that I can remember) that Budapest was once these two cities. I even wondered if it were true, thinking that instead it was a play on words [since Watts often lectured on Buddhism.]
     "Driving to work this morning, listening to KCSU-FM, the announcer introduced a piece by stating that it was written to celebrate the anniversary of the merging of Buda and Pest."

3/2010. Lompoc.
     If the Alan Watts lecture was also selected to be played on the anniversary of the merging of Buda and Pest than the above is not at all surprising, and even if not we remain in the domain of coincidence. However it is worth noting that I very rarely listen to the radio in the middle of the night. Thus one might ask: why did I happen to wake up at 3 AM and turn on my radio? Was it my way of producing an anticipation of an unexpected statement I was to hear within a few hours?

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19. Piano Tuner

7/18/1992, 8:22 AM. Oxnard. From journal, volume #17.
     "Dreamed about a piano tuning last night. A child wanted to play while the tuner worked. I told the child he couldn't do that, that it broke the tuner's concentration.
     "Then this morning, just now, a piece finally ended on KPFK-FM. The host said he had a couple calls, and that one was from a piano tuner. This was the first sentence I heard this morning - the music had been playing before."

8:51 AM.  "I'm getting more into this 'piano tuner' event. True, I didn't write the dream down first. And I suppose there is a chance I could have made it up. But that seems extremely unlikely. Once reminded of the dream (by the announcer's mention of a piano tuner) I immediately recalled it in some detail. That is typical of dream recall. In the dream I recall feeling that I may have been too supervisory with the child - that I was over estimating how much the piano tuner had to concentrate. But in reality obviously you couldn't tune while someone was banging on the keys."

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20. Amazing Glass

12/13/1992, 10:33 AM. Oxnard. From journal, volume #18.
     "Forgot to mention - there was an unusual 'Mary episode' in Oxnard about a week ago. An image of the virgin appeared as dirt on a window. People began to come. Eventually there were hundreds. At one point some asshole fired a couple rounds, wounding two people. After that the apartment manager had glaziers replace the window. While carrying it away the image was destroyed by the hands of the faithful, who wanted to receive benefit by touching the image. I suppose if Mary were to appear in the flesh she would be torn limb to limb. A personal note to this unusual event - it happened at 5361 Perkins Rd - my old apartment building, in fact directly below my #5 apartment. Duane had told me it was near where I lived, so I went there [and confirmed the location]. There were no more people, no image. But the front lawn and shrubbery were completely trampled and destroyed. When I first moved there, there was an elderly Scottish (?) woman living in that apartment. She used to play an organ-choir version of Amazing Grace over and over."

3/2010.
     There is very little paranormal aspect to this story, but it is interesting and allegedly appeared in the Los Angeles Times, though I never read a press account myself. If anyone tracks this down I would love to get a copy. There could be errors in my second hand account above. There was a rumor that the woman who lived in the apartment had a premonition a year previous that Mary would manifest to her. Both the elderly woman and myself had moved away years before. I must have heard Amazing Grace coming from below me over a hundred times.
     Before finding the above account in my journal books recently, I had remembered and told this story differently. I had the music by bagpipes, the image of the Virgin appearing a full month before I was told about it,  and I had completely forgotten about the shooting victims. This shows how the memory can change details, shift things in time, or delete important features altogether. If precognition is a fact, we should not be surprised if it treats future content with the same disrespect.

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   21. Shadow Shadow

8/26/1996, 7:47 PM. Oxnard, From journal, volume #21.
     "As usual I was walking with Shadow behind Oxnard College this morning at around 7:05 AM. I was walking on a dirt road; Shadow was not visible, having entered the rows of potted Christmas trees to my left. I was in a state of reverie, ... and thinking of what I had written to W.H. I saw Shadow come out from between a couple potted trees, trot ahead of me, and turn right where the road made a 'T' ahead of me about 20 feet. A few seconds later I saw Shadow come out from between the same two pots! My mind raced, as I tried to imagine how she could have circled around so fast. Quickly I realized it was impossible, plus I was beginning to have a strange feeling about the situation. I thought to myself: 'Oh my God, you suppose she is going to do the exact same thing I just saw?' And so in suspense I watched her trot ahead of me just the same, and then she turned right just as before! It was shocking and amazing. I at once thought it would be hard to remember the incident - so told myself to remember it. And I went up to Shadow, and noticed she wasn't panting, which she would be if she had circled around (but there was not time anyway)."

3/2010.
Unlike most of the events here, I told a few people about this the same day, even though it is one of the least believable. What was most striking for me was what I experienced in the few seconds immediately after Shadow came out from between the same two potted Christmas trees the second time. My dog not only repeated the course I had seen previously, but did so with the exact same motions - such motions being something a dog owner gets very keen on, especially with an athletic hound like Shadow. My best explanation is that in the state of contemplation I was in, somehow I saw what was to happen several seconds before it actually happened. Above left is a picture of myself and Shadow in Oxnard around 1993. To the right is a scan from my journal showing the layout of the area I was in and the course Shadow took.

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22. Twin Pipes

5/22/1999. Lompoc, California. From journal, volume #23.
    "Went to the Nipomo swap meet today; ... I was looking around in one of the sheds and saw a cheap recorder in its original package. Taped next to it ... was another recorder of a different color. This triggered a memory of a dream from the previous morning in which I saw a curious panpipe; two pipes attached, but they are of different colors. I play them and marvelous Arabic sounding music is produced. I wonder how I learned to do this."

3/2010.
When a waking event triggers the memory of a dream from the previous night, caution requires that we consider if the dream narrative in its entirety could have been constructed instantaneously. But many dreams are remembered in this fashion. It is simpler to presume these are actual memories of dreams, rather than some instantaneous phenomenon that produces identical results. Further, content may be dreamlike, as in the above where it seems an unlikely panpipe is posited to explain the waking experience of a taped together pair of cylindrical instruments of differing colors.

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Analysis

First, we generalize the concept of "precognition" so that it applies to all the possible examples above. Also, this avoids saying more than we know, and may provide some hints for where to look for new genres of the paranormal. By "event" we mean anything that may be  experienced  - for example, a scene in a dream or in a day dream, a real world happening, a thought or intent, a fantasy or delusion, something heard or read, sense perceptions, natural phenomena, presence at a time and place, etc. Events may influence other events, in part or whole, directly or indirectly as by intermediate events. We say two events manifest a "hyper-coincidence" if:


For a typical "precognitive" experience the two events of the hyper-coincidence are ordered in time: first a "pre-event"  such as a scene in a dream, and second a "post-event" such as a worldly happening which is recognized to eerily match the pre-event. Often the dream will be remembered only when the post-event is experienced. Since the post-event follows the pre-event it is assumed it could not possibly have influenced the pre-event dream. However even if the dream has been forgotten, it could influence a post-event that depends on acts of volition by the dreamer. Precognition is necessarily statistical in nature - there can never be absolute certainty that events have not unfolded as they have due to chance. But when there is more than one anticipation in the same dream, the close-to-zero probabilities of chance causation, roughly, multiply in assessing the probability that the dream as a whole was due to chance. This produces the near certainty of precognition. Examples of such multiple anticipations appear above in Cappadocia, Heidi Remembered, Triple Coincidence and, less convincingly, in Surprise Permission and White Rainbow.

In assessing the probability of chance causation an important consideration is the interval of time between the pre-event and the post-event. Thus if you dream of a scene that eventually you see in a movie, chance causation is much more likely if years have gone by and in the interval you have seen a hundred other movies. Generally, this involves sample sizes. Suppose you dream that your next door neighbor knocks on your door dressed in a clown suit and asks to borrow some cinnamon. The chance of that actually happening the next day are likely millions to one, definitely a hyper-coincidence. But suppose it did happen, but you had no such dream. If then you could search some online file of a million dreams, finding one to match this post-event would not be so unexpected. No such data base exists now, but caution is necessary in evaluating online attempts to register "prophetic" dreams. Similarly, published evidence for precognition of famous catastrophes is unconvincing. Further, to make a better story, we are told that the disaster itself was foreseen. But first learning of the disaster seems more likely to be the post-event. To claim the contrary should require supplying details of the disaster before they were publicly announced. If someone dreams of a scene and then sees it in a movie, I doubt if anyone would claim that this was unexplained cognition of the making of the movie, rather than precognition of seeing the movie.

All but perhaps one of the above precognitive dreams were fulfilled the very day after the dream. This is not typical of examples in the literature, and may be a personal trait. But all of the post-events above are trivial; they do not involve life changing possibilities, nor events reported by the press. If trivial post-events occur much later than a day or so, by that time the pre-event is likely to be forgotten and the precognition will not be recognized. I suspect it is rare to remember dreams after 24 hours have passed - even if written down, most are soon forgotten.

The Buda Pest experience above falls well within the range of coincidence, but it illustrates the possibility that both events of a hyper-coincidence may be nearly identical real world experiences. If fleeting dream images can anticipate worldly experiences, why should we on principle reject the possibility that worldly events themselves can anticipate other worldly events? Or in the curious Crab or Lobster experience, a mother's misidentification anticipates a worldly experience. Coincidence is a possibility here also, but this example was worth giving to suggest the great variety of hyper-coincidences that may exist. If we look and fail to find a type, little harm has been done.

The term "precognition" (and all its  synonyms) suggests a prior "knowing," but the phenomena seems much more general, and in none of the above examples would a person have been able to make a prediction. Instead the post-event comes as a surprise, not as an expectation. Claims of foreknowledge of a personal or public disaster receive much attention, and these often involve predictions or saving actions. So predictive capacity should not be ruled out, but such claims are inherently subject to the sample size problem discussed above. For example, a very common paper chain letter of prior decades warned that a recipient discarded the letter in disbelief, and died nine days later. That is certainly a true claim! In fact, likely this happened over 35,000 times! This follows simply from the vast circulation of the chain letter and basic death statistics (see Chain Letter Evolution - calculation).

Often, during some phase in a person's life, essentially the same dream will be experienced on many nights. Such recurrent dreams may also be collective. For example, probably millions of people have dreamed that they were back in school and experiencing frustrating difficulties. It is a bit puzzling that people may have this dream even before they learn that others have had the same dream. Other recurrent dreams may be strictly personal, or at least presumed to be so. For example, for many years I had dreams in which three men with questionable reputations appeared. Other details of these dreams were totally different, so these three scoundrels rated only as a recurrent feature.

In the Special Delivery dream I was told that the blimp racers "would be contacting me," and after I woke up I had the feeling that the dream was precognitive. In the Cappadocia dream, an unseen man tells me he is building "Futurama." In my father's dream in Triple Coincidence, after giving him a number, a disembodied voice tells him he "will find out" what it means. In the White Rainbow dream, a old man tells me that an image is "prophetic."  In all these dreams there is content that declares the dream to be precognitive; and in two cases, a particular dream element is specified that is to manifest in the waking world. In three of these dreams the declaration of precognition is by a person, unseen except in the White Rainbow dream. The personifications involved could be interpreted to mean that the dreamer is in contact with some metaphysical being that is staging the precognition. Alternatively, these persons, seen or unseen, that make the declaration may be dream rationalizations, just as in a dream of flying one might, for example, dream that this is taking place on a world with little gravity. Whether causative or explanatory, such declarations rank as a recurrent feature of my precognitive dreams.

It is a surprising fact that three or four of the above twelve precognitive dreams have post-events which (1) relate to personal facts about the dreamer, and (2) would be considered coincidences by themselves, even in the absence of a dream. In the Superior Hangings dream, my attention to the post-event is guaranteed by the first and last names of an artist, these names having family significance. Similarly, the post-event of the Cappadocia dream involved a magazine article that was written by an old friend of mine. In the Triple Coincidence event, the actual number of a hospital room matched my birth date. Finally, in the Special Delivery event, the target experience is receipt of an unexpected letter addressed to me. However this receipt is not, by itself, what we would consider a "coincidence." Like the above pre-event declarations, these post-event personal coincidences rank as a recurrent feature in my precognitive dreams. Such recurrences may hint at what is going on in precognition, and if they involve the post-event, they may help in designing more revealing experiments.

Less specific forms of a surprise post-event appear in other items above. In the Calling Danny hypnagogic experience, the name "Danny" was a personal surprise both in the post-event and the day dream, since the voice on the phone was not that of my mother in both cases. But this was not in itself a coincidence. It would have been if the call were a wrong number. In the Surprise Permission dream, the post-event was odd and embarrassing, but not related to me personally. The Buda Pest oddity, if it somehow could be considered precognitive, is completely impersonal. Likewise the Twin Pipes and White Rainbow dreams both have post-event visual experiences that are odd but neither personal nor involving a coincidence. So our post-event, the targets of precognition, definitely have some regularities, though just being unusual is probably an inherent necessity since otherwise a match to a dream will not be so improbable.

Just one convincing precognitive dream, verified by witnesses, undermines the orderly view of the world that has taken millennia to develop. Even quantum mechanics, with its possibility of  interconnectedness and simultaneous influence, has trouble digesting precognition. If God plays dice, is he rolling too many doubles? 

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