...many ESP experiences... [are] like the light of a lightning flash to the wanderer in the dark. For instance, a woman from Oklahoma found that her experience helped her surmount a period of great anxiety. She was expecting a baby in January, 1952. On the night of October 30, 1951, she dreamed, she says,

I was standing outside a nursery window with my husband, parents and some friends, and we were looking inside an incubator at a very tiny, three-pound premature baby girl. She was ours, and although so very tiny she was very bright-eyed and active and perfectly formed, and we were all of the opinion that such a lively baby would come through all right in spite of being premature and so tiny. In my dream the baby had lots of long black hair, very large bright eyes, a tiny red button of a nose and the tiniest mouth I had ever seen. Her unusually small head had lots of long black hair (to her shoulders) and perfect finger and toenails on fingers and toes no bigger than match stems. A baby perfectly formed in miniature. She was waving her arms and kicking her feet as any normal active baby does and even turned over.

The next morning I told my husband and my parents and another relative who was visiting us at that time. It was such a vivid dream and I shall never forget watching that tiny baby and noticing all the small details about her as only a mother would.

My family and friends dismissed it as one of the many odd dreams which pregnant women are supposed to have. However, just sixteen days later, they were all truly standing at that nursery window looking into an incubator at our tiny two-pound, fifteen-ounce baby girl. A baby perfectly formed in miniature, and in life the exact duplicate of my dream with only one slight exception. Although she was quite active, as in my dream, it was some time before she was strong enough to turn over.

Had I not told anyone of my dream before, I'm sure they would have found it difficult to believe after the baby's birth. Also, as in my dream, I heard so many make the remark that such a bright, normal-acting and lively baby would come through just fine. And she has. In a short time she was a fat roly-poly normal baby. I'm sure my dream helped me over those first anxious days after her birth.

EDITOR'S NOTE

One can argue this dream was subliminal, not ESP--the body sensing its condition on a level far subtler than the technology of the time. But predicting that such a premature baby would flourish--again, rare given the care standards at the time--and even her appearance, do seem both beyond the scope likely even for the subtlest body-sense. But regardless of the dream's source, it's hard to dispute Rhine's guess at its intent: reassurance.

--Chris Wayan--

SOURCE: Hidden Channels of the Mind by Louisa E. Rhine, 1961, p. 191-2. Account untitled, author's name witheld; title & byline added to aid searching & indexing.

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