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Umbrella

Dreamed before 1963 by Anonymous #17 as reported by J.B. Priestley

FOREWORD

In 1963, writer J.B. Priestley put out a request on a BBC show for examples of strange experiences with time, whether waking or dreaming. Over a thousand responses came: predictive dreams and visions of varying clarity, accuracy and credibility. The following year he published many examples (though withholding most dreamers' names for privacy reasons) in his book Man and Time. This is one of the thousand. It's notable in that this dream was cryptomnesic (recalling facts lost to the conscious mind--the location of the lost umbrella) but also apparently predictive (the restaurant girl's words)--but only if its advice was acted on.

--Chris Wayan

UMBRELLA

...a man with whom I have corresponded on other matters, and know to be reliable, sent me the following:

One day my wife went with our youngest son to lunch out and do some subsequent shopping. Several days later she recalled that she had left her umbrella somewhere, but could not recall where. About three weeks later she had a dream and told it to the boy. The dream told of a return to the restaurant to enquire whether the umbrella had been left there. The girl in the restaurant replied to the enquiry: "Oh yes, mother took it upstairs and said she would keep it if nobody asked after it as she liked the birdhead handle." In the dream, the girl then fetched the umbrella and handed it over. On the strength of this dream my wife went with our son and enquired at the restaurant, when the girl spoke the very words heard in the dream and handed over the missing umbrella.
Notice that the girl's speech makes it impossible for this to be a dream of a past event--leaving the umbrella in that place and the mother taking it upstairs. The girl's speech is in the future. And the decision to inquire about the umbrella makes the dream precognitive. But if no such action had been taken, what would the dream have been then? We are already in deep waters.

--JB Priestley



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