ESP Experiences

I occasionally ask people if they have had
parapsychological experiences―-about a third of people admit to such.   Examples of such are 
(a) premonition of an event (either future or currently happening in another place) or an object, which could come in a dream, a vision or a gut feeling,
(b) a feeling that an acquaintance was in need of help, 
(c) had a dream and later found out an acquaintance, possibly a    character in the dream, simultaneously had the same dream
(d) on a single occasion performed inordinately well in some physical or intellectual event.
(e) discovered the solution to a personal or analytical problem in a dream.
(f) Encountered, or know someone who encountered the spirit of a deceased person.

A few examples I have been told about:

(a) An individual playing a competitive sport on one occasion performed much better than he had ever done before.   In one case the person was the weakest player on his high school golf team.  Once at an important tournament he felt able to visualize every shot before he took it and scored several strokes better than he had ever done.    In another case, the individual was playing in a high school basketball game was able to visualize every shot and move he was about to take, and played the best game of his life.

(b) A woman, who has taught at a local community college for many years, in the 1980’s bought a residence in Champaign with her then husband that had been occupied by three elderly sisters.   When one
died, the other two moved into a nursing home and the house was sold.    For several months, my acquaintance, her then husband and her son (then 3 or 4 years old) would hear footsteps about the house, and have items move while they were out of the house.  The son claimed to have seen the image of an elderly woman.   The incidents stopped when a second sister died.

(c) A woman I know has a three-year-old daughter who was born after the woman's father had died.   The daughter has described encounters with her grandfather.

(d) A college faculty member has told me of an acquaintance who rented a house in Urbana and moved out when it was haunted.    The owner admitted that the previous tenants had a similar experience.

(e) A woman in her late 20’s recalled, at about age 12, telling her best friend of a dream she had the previous night in which her friend had a role.  Her friend admitted having the same dream.

(f) A woman I know many years ago went cycling with a male acquaintance.   They  stopped at an abandoned farmhouse.   They  both had the feeling that they had been there together  in some distant past

Among the paranormal experiences I have had: 

(i) Once when about to enter a local pub, I had a clear vision of a woman I do not get along with.   She was in the pub with a friend.   

(ii) On a bright sunny day with neither winds nor clouds, the electricity went off in my house for 10 minutes when I was about to use my computer to write someone a caustic letter.

(iii) I have had an image pop into my mind, thinking it as disturbingly present, and then realize the image came from a dream I had.       The most unnerving have been dreams in which I committed a horrible murder.  
For several days thereafter in the waking world I had this feeling that I was in danger of arrest for this crime. 

(iv) I was sitting between the driver and another passenger in the front seat of a friend's van on a winter day.    We were on about to pass a section of road that I know is sometimes icy.   I had this desire
to mention to the driver that this section is sometimes icy, but didn't because the driver and the other passenger were in the midst of a conversation.   As we drove over the section we skidded several feet. 
(No accident occurred fortunately.)

(v) I have had dreams start where they had left off at some previous night.  

(vi) I used to have dreams of my walking in colorful forests with the trunks and leaves of trees being all sorts of bright colors.   I subsequently attended a Van Gogh exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York which contained paintings from the last 2 years of his life, most of which seemed to match scenes from my dreams.   I never had such dreams again.

(vii) I went through a period of two years or so when I had occasional nightmares.   I eventually developed the ability to wake up from a dream when I felt it was to evolve into a nightmare.

(viii) I once took a local class about developing one's intuition.  Once evening a week, for several weeks, we tried various psychic experiments.   Only one worked for me.    The leader placed a section of a magazine ad in a sealed letter sized envelope and asked us to sketch or write what was on the ad, before unsealing the envelope.   I sketched a house, a car and a telephone and two other objects all on the
circumference of a circle.     When I opened envelope, my ad was from a phone company, with five objects arranged in a circle including the three I just mentioned.

(ix) I entered a Subway sandwich shop in Urbana IL (where I live) and ordered a six-inch turkey sandwich on honey wheat bread with provolone cheese.  A moment later I thought that I probably would prefer “pepper
jack” cheese, but didn’t bother to change my order.  I walked off for a moment to take a cup and fill it with soda and returned to the counter and noticed that the high school girl who had taken and was preparing
my order had put “pepper jack” rather than provolone cheese on my sandwich.  I mentioned to her that I had asked for provolone, but requested that she leave the “pepper jack” because I had actually thought about wanting “pepper jack.”    For some strange reason I
felt as if she had anticipated my preference, and was curious enough to ask her if she ever had other "ESP"-like experiences.   She said she had them regularly and cited the example that she sometimes finds a lost item at her high school and knows immediately to whom it belongs, although the item bears no name.    She also mentioned that “It does not
work all the time.”  (May 24 2006)

(x) I was watching a professional football game at a pub between the Chicago Bears and Arizona Cardinals.  The favored Bears were losing 23-3 and had possession with a bit over two minutes left in the third quarter.   I “said” to myself that if the Bears scored in this quarter they would win the game.  I felt the urge to express this intuition to the person sitting next to me, but did not.   I looked away for a few minutes, to read a newspaper, but looked up again to see the Bears
defense, with several seconds left in the third quarter, recover a fumble and run it in for a touchdown.  In the fourth quarter, the Bears recovered a second fumble and ran it back for a touchdown, returned a punt for a touchdown―giving the Bears a 24-23 lead.  On a final drive, Arizona reached field goal range, but their kicker missed―and the Bears won. (October 16, 2006)