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News at Eleven

Dreamed 1948/10/27 by a widow-in-process

When a person says, as does a woman in New York, "Never before or since have I had any such premonition," one wonders at once if it involved some great personal crisis, and what form the experience took. This woman goes on to say,

"It occurred on the night of October 27, 1948. I was in bed resting, reading a little. My husband was lecturing at a school some miles away. Finally I turned off the light and was falling asleep when I was brought back to full consciousness by my heart suddenly beginning to beat like a sledge hammer. I turned on the light. It was a few moments after eleven.

"I lay down again, only to have the furious beating get worse still. It felt as if my heart was leaping out of my body. I couldn't imagine what was happening, and got very frightened. But after a little time the wild beating ceased and I dozed off.

"At twelve-thirty the doorbell rang. Two policemen were there to tell me my husband had died of a cerebral hemorrhage at a little after eleven."

The event was indeed highly critical and important, the form of the experience far from common. It seems probable that it was a telepathically induced hallucinatory experience, the pain or general bodily symptoms modeled to some extent on those of the dying person. Since no idea, no rational accompaniment of any kind got into consciousness, the difficult, almost inhibited expression of an item secured by ESP is suggested.

We may presume that each individual expresses his ESP in the form that is easiest or most appropriate for him; then, when an unusual effect like the one above occurs, one supposes that it was the only or the easiest method of ESP expression available for this person, one which possibly only an extreme crisis could induce.

EDITOR'S NOTE

This highly somatic ESP experience wasn't a dream, but I included it here because I've had something much like it and am curious if other readers have. Now and then, I get mysterious pains that warn me to call my two sisters and see if one is ill or injured; one usually matches my "symptoms". Interestingly, even though I've learned to recognize it as sympathetic pain, I sometimes call the wrong sister! Like this woman, I apparently sense the kind of distress a loved one is feeling without necessarily knowing who it is.

This jars with Rhine's theory that somatic ESP is a last resort used when no other 'channel' is open. I've had many apparently predictive or telepathic dreams and useful intuitive flashes while awake. And I do get prompts, in dreams, to call my sisters when something non-medical is up. Yet this other phenomenon persists--for shared pain only!

My advice: don't panic! You're neither crazy nor a masochist. Some bonds just seem rooted in the body.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Hidden Channels of the Mind by Louisa E. Rhine, 1961, p. 161. Account untitled, author's name witheld; title & byline added to aid searching & indexing.



LISTS AND LINKS: pain in dreams and visions - family - death - empathy, telepathy, and ESP in general - more Louisa Rhine - similar cases: Clairagony & Listen to your Wife - New York City

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