The vast majority of premonitory dreams appear during natural or induced sleep.

They would assume a hallucinatory visualization form in which one would find a succession of images, taking on cinematographic or furtive appearances, sometimes being confused with real facts or taking the form of symbols. In the latter case, the meaning of the symbols would not appear fully revealed until after the actual occurrence of the event.

It also happens that premonitory dreams present themselves under the hallucinatory form of hearing : a voice, often familiar or recognized, announces a future event in a more or less enigmatic way.

Finally, we also note premonitions transmitted in the form ofunstoppable driving impulse. The individual is driven by this impulse to commit absurd or unwanted acts: for example, a person who retraces his steps, changes place or route, and thanks to this absurd choice escapes a serious danger that threatened him .

Premonitory dreams almost always yield negative, painful or unhappy events. Some oppose this observation by claiming that we do not remember the banal premonitions, insignificant, neither sad nor cheerful.

Premonitory dreams seem more perennial than ordinary dreams. The individual remembers it clearly when waking up and attaches a more marked interest to it than usual: he can therefore tell it, write it down, comment on it. However, these actions, which should contribute to its lasting memorization, do not have the desired effect and the dream becomes quickly foggy. According to individuals who experience it, the memory of the dream returns instantly when the events seen in the dream actually come true.

Individuals experiencing the premonitory dream would record only secondary elements, sufficient to glimpse it, but not to penetrate it and therefore avoid the announced event. 

There are 7 main types of premonitory dream:

Self-premonitions of illness or death

Premonitions of illnesses or deaths of people other than oneself

Premonitions of significant events not involving death

Premonitions of trivial and practically unnecessary incidents

Weather premonitions

Premonitions that save

Premonitions that determine the possible accident.

The scientific community disputes the existence of the premonitory dream. It is believed that a link between a dream and an event that occurred in the future does not prove that the dream anticipated the event. The concept goes against current knowledge of time and relativity. The first hypothesis adopted to explain the impression that thousands of people have each year is the coincidence.

The well-known phenomena ofautosuggestion, theorized for the first time by Emile Coué, are regularly mentioned to explain that an event seen in a dream can happen. The dreamer would therefore do everything, unconsciously, to reproduce the scene or the event he has visualized. 

Sometimes the solution of a problem that is difficult to solve comes to us in a dream. Technically, this is not really a premonitory dream, but it is a close and scientifically valid phenomenon. The best-known story is undoubtedly that of Kékulé, a quote from which will be found below. A chemist by profession, he managed to discover the spatial formula of benzene while sleeping, while he had worked there for weeks without success. It is accepted that the psychological obstacles that hampered his waking thinking were lifted during his dream.

« We do not have sufficient reason to suppose that premonitions, if they exist, consist of some kind of tiny private miracle, intended to help us in the incidents of our life, spiritual or temporal. On the contrary, we must consider them as special manifestations of a law hitherto ignored, or even imperfectly known. » Proceedings of the The Society for Psychical Research, Vol. V, p. 344.

« Let’s learn to dream, gentlemen, and then maybe we’ll find out the truth. Let us learn to dream, but let us refrain from revealing our dreams until they have not been evaluated and tested by reason, by the understanding of our waking states. »Kékulé, 1890.