Dreams of death scare us. Fortunately, most of them can be interpreted in a metaphorical, allegorical sense. But what about cases of prophetic dreams that predicted death? Philosopher Sharon Rowlett is trying to figure out the topic, using data from a recent study.
In December 1975, a woman named Allison woke up from a nightmare in which her four-year-old daughter Tessa was on the train tracks. When the woman tried to take the child to safety, she herself was hit and killed by a train. Allison woke up in tears and told her husband about the nightmare.
In less than two weeks, Allison and her daughter were at the station. Some object fell on the rails, and, trying to pick it up, the girl stepped after it. Allison saw an approaching train and rushed to save her daughter. The train hit them both to death.
Allison’s husband later told dream researcher Dr. David Ryback what had happened. Devastated by the terrible loss, the man shared that the warning he and Allison received shortly before the tragedy gives him a kind of solace. It “makes me feel closer to Allison and Tessa,” he wrote to Ryback, “because something I don’t understand has alerted my wife.”
There are many dream stories that warn of death, writes Sharon Rowlett, philosopher and author of a book about coincidences and the role they play in human destinies. “It is very likely that you or someone you know had a similar nightmare. But could they be just a coincidence? In the end, a lot of dreams about death never come true – who even watches them?
It turns out that at least one person has tracked such stories. Dr. Andrew Puckett himself was skeptical of the idea that dreams can predict the future. He began to keep a detailed diary of his dreams to prove that his “prophetic” dreams were nothing more than random products of brain activity.
In 25 years, from 1989 to 2014, he recorded 11 of his dreams. He took notes immediately after waking up and before the dreams could be “checked”. In 779, Paquette published an analysis of his death dreams.
Seeing the death of a friend in a dream, the scientist woke up with full confidence that the dream was prophetic.
Puckett began the study by checking his own “database”. In it, he singled out dreams in which someone died. He searched for the dreams that he saw before he received information about the death of the dreaming person. In the diary, there were entries about 87 such dreams involving 50 people he knew. At the time he did the analysis, 12 out of 50 people (i.e. 24%) were dead.
The research didn’t stop there. So, 12 people actually died in the end. The doctor went over his notes and counted the days or years in each case between the dream and the real event. It turned out that for 9 out of 12 people the “prophetic” dream was the last of the dreams about this person. Puckett’s other dreams about them happened much earlier and, accordingly, further from the date of death.
The average interval between a dream about the death of a friend and the real end of his life was about 6 years. Obviously, even if the dream is considered prophetic, it is impossible to rely on the prediction of the exact date of death.
Most striking was the case when Puckett had such a dream on the night before the death of this man. At the same time, during the previous year, Paquette, neither himself nor through mutual acquaintances, maintained contact with him. However, having seen the death of a friend in a dream, he woke up with full confidence that the dream was prophetic. He told his wife and daughter about him and the very next day received an email with the sad news. At that time, the dream really predicted a real event.
According to Sharon Rowlett, this case suggests that you can learn to distinguish between dreams associated with death. The former serve as a warning that death is real – it has just happened or will soon come. The latter either say that death will happen after some time, or use it as a metaphor.
Further analysis of Puckett’s work and this topic as a whole can yield interesting results, Sharon Rowlett is sure. The challenge is to find enough people who are willing to record dreams over the years and provide records for study.
About the Expert: Sharon Hewitt Rowlett is a philosopher and author of The Reason and Meaning of Coincidence: A Closer Look at the Astounding Facts.