Night. I'm at my parents' house looking out the back at Polhemus Canyon. Rustle in the brush--a deer? Then I get a glimpse. That's no deer! A baby elephant.

Next I spot a huge boar... well, a weird blend of boar and... elephant? Tusks, shortish prehensile snout. Some common ancestor of both, thought long extinct, but hiding out in the chaparral?

Finally a true adult elephant appears--the baby's mom. She's shy and quiet, seems scared. She slowly sidles along the fence and into the backyard, along the side, eyeing me. I'm afraid I'll provoke anger or panic and she'll run thru the livingroom windows. They're floor to ceiling, it's dark, she may not even see the glass till it's too late...

For just a moment, I glimpse a fourth creature on our roof--a big cat, but bipedal, reared upright, with handlike front paws and long hind legs. And... intelligent! Peering down at me curiously.

She's beautiful. Instantly I want to meet her. Date her. Be her mate.

But I fear her claws; she may be wary of all humans. Cats can be fierce in defending their independence.

And I'm not sure where to look for her--in the toolshed on the side of the house? Up on the roof by the chimney? But if I find her hiding place, she may think I want to exploit her or turn her over to the mob of cops and animal control officers converging on our neighborhood--drawn by the elephant.

I'm scared, but I slip along the side of the house alone, calling softly...

But while I'm seeking the catgirl, the one all the neighbors fuss about is the elephant. Who just wants to be left in peace with her baby.

One says "I thought it was a dream--I woke up in the middle of the night--but all you other witnesses prove she's real." A helicopter comes and hovers with a searchlight as the cops try to track the elephant.

Rough draft of farewell-party poster, 1990, Wayan

NEXT DAY

I go to work and my co-workers ask me to draw the poster for Lisa's farewell party.

I like Lisa, so I say "Sure. But what theme should it have?"

"Well" says her best friend, "Can you draw elephants? She really loves them."

So I do... though I'd still rather meet that catgirl on the roof.

THIRTY YEARS LATER

At the time, I was excited by the catgirl; now what interests me is the dream's hint of prediction. When I first built the World Dream Bank I emphasized long storylike dreams with clearer psychic hits; enough to convince me that ESP wasn't all fraud or coincidence.

But parapsychology, then fringy but still considered science, is now often mocked as total pseudoscience--unfairly, in my view. ESP is quite replicable by anyone open-minded and patient enough to keep a dream journal for a year or more, and score your own dreams fairly--and J.W. Dunne showed that's not easy. Cognitive bias is a two-edged sword.

So I'm posting more examples of the full range of ESP-ish dreams, to show just how common they are (and often, how humdrum--despite the popular view, quite few are Premonitions of Doom--most are Nudges to Fix your Brakes). A majority of published dream journals have least a few dreams the authors considered psychic--see Mark Ian Barasch, Al Davison, Carl Jung, Jack Kerouac, Anna Kingsford, Vladimir Nabokov, Nancy Price, and Rick Veitch.

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