This really happened to me, and I find it rather strange. I talked about it with my Father on the day Katrina hit the southern coast. The day before was when news media had really started talking about the coming storm. The night before that, I dreamed about it. The dream was like this: I was on a deck at the top of a cliff on the coast, some kind of bar or restaurant with five or six other people, faceless. The weather was pleasant, but it turned cold, then windy, then overcast, then stormy. Then my companion got one of those looks, like the expression of someone who has just realized he is about to be consumed by a large animal, one with lots of teeth.
When I turned to see what s/he was gaping at, the background music stopped. A huge tornado was forming across the bay at the next headland, and by huge I mean absolutely. Fucking. Massive. The wind had come up suddenly and this huge black abomination of a thing was so incomprehensibly large that I was instantly terrified, we all were. It covered a huge swath of land and extended far out to sea, an immense angry twist of violent kinetic energy. Despite the wind, the air was eerily devoid of sound except for a periodic, metallic thud, like an audible harbinger of certain death. I knew I was going to die. This thing was so utterly huge, escape would be impossible. I was very, very scared.
There were a few moments of stunned silence, and then panic grabbed us all and wrenched us into action. And not the smart, thinking kind either, just raw panic. Tables went flying as we ran somewhere, anywhere, even though I knew we would never save ourselves: the twister covered most of the horizon; I couldn't even see it all without turning my head. There were fleeting seconds of frantic, pointless chaos, and during the course of it I awoke. I felt disturbed for a while but I have a strong imagination and quite often dream vividly, so I took a few minutes to cool off and let my racing heart rate calm down. Then eventually I went back to sleep and thought no more of it.
The next day I heard about Katrina.
Anyway, I'm not really one for the paranormal. I'm mostly a pretty logical thinker and the lack of evidence makes me cynical. You must have known somehow, I told myself. Saw an early news report walking down the street without really noticing, subconscious grabbed the info and turned it into something else, that seems the most logical explanation. But I have an eidetic memory for that kind of stuff, and I know that didn't really happen.
I'm not suggesting anything specific, I just think it's a little odd, is all. There's probably a good argument to be made for one's experiences being affected by collective consciousness in some way, which is another controversial phenomenon but one which has been observed in various animals many times.
It's just bizarre when it happens to you.
Comments
Carl Sagan had something to say on this topic, and I'll paraphrase: We dream a lot. And the world is a big place. It's not strange that we occassionally have prophetic dreams-- what would be strange is if we *never* had them.
On a related note, I have the 'big-scary-storm' dream myself, periodically. It's freaky. It's always massively world-bustingly epic, as you've vividly described. I can control my dreams now, so they don't scare me anymore, but that was the only one that consistently freaked the crap out of me, well into adult-hood. Why do we have this dream, I wonder?
Posted by: JT at September 3, 2005 08:19 AM
All rights reserved. Watch yourself.
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