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I'm seriously freaked out.

JP1283

Thinker
J
Joined
Apr 2, 2005
Messages
235
Hi guys. I have something I need to talk about.

My best friend, who has claimed to have had some psychic ability (which I haven't really believed in) has told me in the past that she has had a feeling that she will die in a car wreck. I brushed this off.

Then I was talking with a mutual friend of ours. Apparently, she has had three different experiences where she dreamed of a friend or family member dying in a car crash. Last night she had one about Shannon (our friend.) This really struck me, and it's bothering me. To the point that I am going to call my friend tomorrow and tell her not to drive.

I sound crazy. I know that. But I am seriously freaked out right now. Part of the reason is, I lost a friend in a car wreck back in November and I don't want to lose my best friend like that again, or at all.
 
Tell her to take the challenge and prove the "psychic" wrong. You might add, "don't drink any alcohol" just in case. On the other hand, chit happens, you can't control the world and you can't live in a bubble.
 
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Your mutual friend it seems is obsessed with people dying in car crashes, so consequently there will be a constant stream of predictions from her repetitive dreams of such incidents. If she carries on like this, eventually she may, over her lifetime get one right, but that would be by random chance.

There is a high chance of any of us dying in a road accident. I lost both my sister and father-in-law in separate road accidents several years ago.

One good thing about us humans, is that we cannot predict the future, and that is an absolute blessing, not a frustrating limitation. When someone claims to predict the future from dreams or from so-called premonitions, they are only following a long tradition of predictive behaviour going back to Biblical times and beyond, when such premonitions had great significance for the then, unenlightened.

I have had repetitive dreams of being killed by a tornado, ever since I was a child, but so far, at the age of 61, so good, and as I live in the UK, there is far less chance of that happening than for someone living in Kansas.

Dreams and premonitions say more about the state of mind of the dreamer than the actual potential reality of the dream itself. There can often be an underlying irrational fear or phobia that is expressed in the process of dreaming. Dreaming can be a cathartic experience, and an outlet for fears of insecurity perhaps, or some deep memory of an unpleasant earlier experience.

I can remember once just out walking with my wife through a market a few years ago, and for some unknown reason at a certain point had this terrible and irrational feeling of dread. Some people would put this down to a premonition or a memory at that location, of some unpleasant prior event. It turned out to be a symptom of an anxiety problem that I was suffering from. Happily, I got better and the experience was never repeated again.

I wish you and your friends well!
 
Thank you for your well wishes. I wrote the previous post right after the whole thing started about an hour ago, and I left out a big part apparently. Sara (the mutual friend of myself and Shannon) said that on the three separate occasions, each person died in a car crash within two weeks of her having the dream. I'm sorry I didn't mention that earlier, and please don't think that I'm spamming the board here or changing stories.

That's the part that is scaring me the most. Now, all I have to go on is her word. If I assume her word is accurate, then that would mean that she is telling the truth about each person close to her dying the same way she dreamed they would. If that happens to Shannon, I don't know what I'll do.
 
JP1283;2600802 Then I was talking with a mutual friend of ours. Apparently said:
In regards to your mutual friend and her three dreams...how many of them came true?
Click to expand...
 
From what she said, all three of them came true within two weeks of her having the dream.
 
JP1283 said:
From what she said, all three of them came true within two weeks of her having the dream.
Click to expand...

Interesting! In that case, I'd do some more investigating. For example, did any of those people exhibit risky behaviour? For example, were they prone to drinking and driving? Did they regularly drive in an unsafe fashion? Also, I'd be curious to know whether these were the only accident-death dreams this person had, or whether these were the only three that came true.

In the first case, what you'd be trying to establish is if there were other cues that might have set off her worries; if a person has problems with alcohol, for example, that significantly increases the chance of that person being involved in an automobile accident (that is, if they drive under the influence).

In the second case, what you'd be looking for is observational bias (counting the hits, ignoring the misses). This is harder to do, because people tend to entirely forget the misses...
 
I asked Sara tonight if she has had the dreams about other people; she says she hasn't, only about those that died, and that the dreams don't happen very often. She did name the specific people, all of which I didn't know. I don't remember all the names offhand (one of them was named Erik, who was her ex.) I could ask her though and find some evidence, maybe through newspapers.

It's just got me a little freaked out...my best friend tells me that she thinks she'll die in an auto accident, and then someone totally different has that dream about her after dreaming about other people in auto accidents. Should I be thinking about slashing her tires so she can't drive right about now?
 
Shannon is a safe driver, save for talking on her cell phone once in awhile as we all do. She would never drive drunk, and always has a place to stay with a friend if she does drink too much.
 
JP1283 said:
Shannon is a safe driver, save for talking on her cell phone once in awhile as we all do. She would never drive drunk, and always has a place to stay with a friend if she does drink too much.
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There are things you can worry about -- such as Shannon's ability to drive, how careful she is when she does, etc. And there are things you can't, such as the other people (defensive driving only takes you so far). The question you have to ask yourself is: is it worth it to live in fear, or to ask my friend to live in fear? For how long -- the rest of her life? That's why I recommend the research -- you should eliminate all of the other possibilities (unconscious cuing, confirmation bias, etc).

I certainly wouldn't recommend slashing her tires. Chances are, she'd get them fixed and start driving again, right? ; )

Edited to add: I don't talk on my cellphone while driving, ever. I did a couple of times and realized how badly it changed my ability to drive (for the worse). Almost got into an accident, in fact. If Shannon is using her cell phone at all, I would advise her to simply turn the thing off when in the car, or to learn to ignore it.
 
JP1283 said:
Hi guys. I have something I need to talk about.

My best friend, who has claimed to have had some psychic ability (which I haven't really believed in) has told me in the past that she has had a feeling that she will die in a car wreck. I brushed this off.

Then I was talking with a mutual friend of ours. Apparently, she has had three different experiences where she dreamed of a friend or family member dying in a car crash. Last night she had one about Shannon (our friend.) This really struck me, and it's bothering me. To the point that I am going to call my friend tomorrow and tell her not to drive.

I sound crazy. I know that. But I am seriously freaked out right now. Part of the reason is, I lost a friend in a car wreck back in November and I don't want to lose my best friend like that again, or at all.
Click to expand...
Everyone should be wearing seatbelts and driving safely regardless of these warnings.

I tell people this all the time that think if they know a person has HIV they will be more careful. More careful than what? Than usual? One needs to be careful in cars all the time. Who cares about any warning?

And since none of us can really quit moving from place to place on the roads whether you drive or take a bus, taking the same precautions when driving (passenger and driver) should be what you do all the time anyway.
 
This is probably the wrong thread to bring this up in, but after a glass of wine....oh well.

When I was 16, I had a boyfriend, Allen, who at 18 was killed in a car accident. Before he died he had visited an aunt back east (we were in So CA) who was into all sorts of occult stuff. This was the 60s mind you, everyone was into the occult. His aunt told him he was born 9 months after another relative (I think cousin) was killed in Korea in the war. She said Allen was living the second half of the relative's life and would also die young. It was really creepy when it came true.

But it was a coincidence and coincidences happen. Driving in a VW, no seatbelts, he let his friend drive for an unknown reason. There were beer cans in the car, I don't know if they were drunk but they probably were. The friend took a curve too fast, they spun out into an oncoming car. That is what killed them. They both died.

Cars are safer now. More people wear seatbelts. We could prevent many deaths if everyone wore seatbelts and took the basic precautions driving. That is more important than some silly premonition.
 
These so-called premonitions would be MUCH more convincing if the person having them wrote them down at the time, rather than claiming after the fact, "I saw it coming".

I'm sure your friend believes her dreams are accurate foretellings, but I'm equally sure she's deluded. Forget about it. The future doesn't exist yet, and nobody can see it.
 
What did cross my mind is...if she really saw the deaths coming, wouldn't she have done everything in her power to stop them? I laid in bed last night thinking of ways to stop Shannon from driving for the next two weeks...I must be going crazy. That's what fear mixed with OCD will do to you. Thank you for your responses.
 
Have you heard of "confirmation bias"? It is often referred to as "remember the hits, forget the misses".

In other words, your friend is adamant she dreams of car crashes rarely and that when she does, they come true. Has she any record of this? Does she keep a diary, or a log of her dreams? Confirmation bias often plays a huge role in getting people to believe they have predicting powers based on dreams or intuition. Ask your friend about it. "I just know it's true" is a very bad argument. If she doesn't already, encourage her to keep a log of her dreams.

Oh, the other possibility is that your friend is a psycho serial killer who sabotage cars, but I'm sure you've thought of that already. ;)
 
hey JP, I joined the forum. LOL.

Sounds like its more of a freaky coincidence, I think that sometimes people tend to look at them more than they should. Who really knows what the truth is, but I wouldn't jump towards the supernatural without evidence.

I think those who claim to have "psychic abilities" are actually people who can read others well in body language and facial expressions, and are good with people socially, and like to grasp at straws when it comes to their "psychic" ability.

Truth is that lots of people die in car crashes and have accidents. All you can do is encourage Shannon to be smart for her own personal safety. I think coincidences are just that coincidences, I have one friend who thinks that coincidences are signs from god, so when things don't work out, he gets depressed. So I feel sorry for him. Coincidences happen to everyone everywhere.
 
JP1283 said:
Hi guys. I have something I need to talk about.

My best friend, who has claimed to have had some psychic ability (which I haven't really believed in) has told me in the past that she has had a feeling that she will die in a car wreck. I brushed this off.

Then I was talking with a mutual friend of ours. Apparently, she has had three different experiences where she dreamed of a friend or family member dying in a car crash. Last night she had one about Shannon (our friend.) This really struck me, and it's bothering me. To the point that I am going to call my friend tomorrow and tell her not to drive.

I sound crazy. I know that. But I am seriously freaked out right now. Part of the reason is, I lost a friend in a car wreck back in November and I don't want to lose my best friend like that again, or at all.
Click to expand...

Just in case you want Belz...'s cold advice:

Let him/her drive. There is no such thing as premonitions, and believing in them will only hurt you in the long run.

I've stopped knocking on wood a while ago.
 
JP1283 said:
Apparently, she has had three different experiences where she dreamed of a friend or family member dying in a car crash.
She has claimed to have had these 'prophetic' dreams.
Some possible explanations are:
She never had any such dream.
She had the dreams after the event and either lied or deluded herself about the timing about the timing.
She had the dreams, along with many other dreams, before the event and they had nothing to do with prophecy.
An impossible explanation:
She had the dreams before the event and they were prophetic.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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