Do some people have a premonition of their own death?

[RedOnce]

Pravda 7/3/2006

People experience a premonition of their own death

No one knows at what turning point in fate one’s fateful hour will come and what exactly will take us from the earthly world to one whose form we do not know. Nevertheless, there are some people on earth who can see this moment coming. Mystical and unfathomable intuition is what allows people to find the key to this impenetrable secret.

“Coming in from work one evening, my wife, who was only 20 years old, unexpectedly announced: “I’m just so tired, maybe I’ll be leaving this world soon,” writes Grigoriy Doronin from Sergiev Posad. “The next day we were involved in a car accident. My wife died, but I survived…”

“Last summer my husband and I came to the town where I was born and grew up to spend some time with my parents,” relates Inna P. from Samara in a letter. “One day, standing on the balcony and looking out onto the Volga , he suddenly said, “Would you believe that I’m going to die here?” Of course I was shocked by this question, as my husband was in perfect health. But a few weeks later he suddenly died of a heart attack.”

There are a huge number of similar examples. American doctors William Green, Stefan Goldstein and Alex Moss, studying the phenomenon of death, researched thousands of stories behind patients who died suddenly. Their results show that most people had anticipated their own death. Admittedly, their premonition did not come in the form of prophetic statements or timely preparations for their burial, but in a specific psychological state and often in the desire to put their affairs into order. It emerges that shortly before their death many people experience a state of depression which can last anything from a week to half a year.

http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/07-03-2006/76986-death-0

What do you think? Have you had any experience with this?

[LaurenG]

1. Well, I haven't died yet but I dreamed of my fathers death for two

weeks prior to it. I also had a premonition about a serious car accident the night before it happened. I think that if you think of time as non linear it makes sense.

[RedOnce]

11. I wonder what clued you in?

Had you been worried about him? Was it common for you to dream about him?

[LaurenG]

14. No it wasn't common to dream of him

I would just wake up in tears in the middle of the night. It was the same dream over and over again. The night before he died I didn't dream it anymore. It was a relatively stress free period in my life at the time so I don't know why. I will say that I felt as if I was prepared for his death when it did come very suddenly. I felt as if I'd been grieving for two weeks anyway. I have never dreamed of anyones death before or after so it was an anomaly that I'd prefer NEVER happen again.

[H2O Man]

2. Perhaps the most famous

recent American example would be Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr's moving speech the night before he was killed.

[moobu2]

3. I just don’t buy the premise

I guess my main issue would be that I’m sure just as many people make statements about their own deaths and they don’t die in any time relation to that statement.

We all die at some point so the odds are that some people will make a statement and just happen to die sometime soon after. These examples are just coincidences etc...

[trotsky]

9. Exactly.

I guess my main issue would be that I’m sure just as many people make statements about their own deaths and they don’t die in any time relation to that statement.

Probably far, far more. But the human tendency is to remember the hits, and ignore the misses.

[RedOnce]

15. Have you or has anyone close to you had a similar coincidence?

[Brilligator]

4. No, just coincidence

People say things all the time that might seem erily prescient if they were to die later. Statistically, some of these people are bound to die not long after uttering that, it's just a coincidence.

To paraphrse John Allen Paulos said, "The amazing thing would be if coincidences didn't happen". (Or was that Dawkins?)

[greyl]

7. Welcome to DU! :) nt

[malmapus]

5. Had something like this with best friend in HS

Still weirdest thing, I can remember that day almost like it was yesterday. Was a cold day in October but there seemed to be some odd feeling I couldn't shake off. Always drove my bud home and picked him up for school, heck I was his wheels since he didn't have any. We were very tight, was practically the brother I never had heh. But yeah, driving him home that day was the last time I saw him alive, he died that night in a car crash that involved another friend.

I wish I knew if it was a premonition or what, never had a feeling like that since even in the Army where I had a few close calls of my own.

[EST]

6. No proof exists for any such thing.

Confirmation bias seems to be the culprit in these cases.

[Taxloss]

8. This is broadly a matter of coincidence.

We think of our own mortality much more than we would like to admit.

But I think that it is possible to detect that one is nearing the end of one's natural life - not foresee an untimely accident, but to detect that things are failing, that the light is dying. My Grandfather suddenly started doing paperwork and putting his affairs in order, writing down his last wishes, in the week before he suffered his third and final heart attack - but he was late in his 80s, had been ill for a long time, and was a doctor, so I'm certain that his awareness that his number was up had nothing to do with the supernatural. Still, it was ever-so-slightly creepy reading his last wishes on the day of his death, knowing that they had been written only days before.

[mcscajun]

10. Indeed they do -- Abraham Lincoln did, even to the cause of his death.

Lincoln had a precognitive dream about his own untimely death and it is well documented. He related the dream to his close friend, Ward Hill Lamon:

About ten days ago, I retired very late. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room. No living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds met me as I passed alone. I was puzzled and alarmed. Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room. Before me was a catafalque on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng or people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. "Who is dead in the White House?" I demanded of one of the soldiers. "The president," was his answer. "He was killed by an assassin."

[greyl]

12. there's more to that story...

Lamon's account may be true, although he has been criticized for having "fed the fire of superstition that people were kindling about the name of Lincoln" (Lewis 1973, 294). In fact, however, Lamon had added a sequel to the story which is invariably ignored:

Once the President alluded to this terrible dream with some show of playful humor. "Hill," said he, "your apprehension of harm to me from some hidden enemy is downright foolishness. For a long time you have been trying to keep somebody-the Lord knows who-from killing me. Don't you see how it will turn out? In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on some one else." (Lamon 1895, 116-117)

In any event, that Lincoln should have dreamed of assassination-even his own-can scarcely be termed remarkable. Prior to his first inauguration in 1861, Pinkerton detectives had smuggled Lincoln into Washington at night to avoid a change of trains in Baltimore where an assassination plot had been uncovered (Neely 1982, 16-17). Lincoln had subsequently "received untold number of death threats" (St. George 1990, 66), and on one occasion had a hole shot through his top hat by a would-be assassin (Neely 1982, 282).
http://www.csicop.org/si/9905/i-files.html

[thecrow]

13. I had a dream prior to a major motor cycle accident

I woke up very scared, of course..but brushed it off.

A short time later, maybe two weeks, I was involved in the very same accident that I had dreamed. While it happened, I had this strange feeling of "oh, here is that dream again", then lost consciousness. When I regained conciousness, I was wondering where I was, for I should have been in bed. Then I realized I had really driven off a cliff!

[manic expression]

16. Yes, it happens n/t

[Nikia]

17. Some may, but some just have those dreams

My grandmother, for example, believed that she would not live into adulthood. My father believed the same thing. After losing two ex boyfriends in the same summer, my sister believed that she would be dying soon. My father-in-law who has had some health problems believed several times that he would never see us again. None of these people died.
I think that even if we did have premonitions about such things, it would be difficult for most people to know whether it was a premoition or a random dream or worry.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

18. Sort of

I knew my grandmother was going to die within the year. At Christmas, we did our usual toast of cider, wishing each other good health and expressing the hope we'd all be there next Christmas. Although my grandmother was in good health, I had this feeling she was going to pass over. She died the next March of complications from a fall. She was, at the time, the person I was closest to-I think the emotional bond can make it so that you know somewhat about things like this.

And some people know in dreams-most everyone knows about Abraham Lincoln's dream just days before he was shot.

[greyl]

19. from post #12 re Lincoln

Once the President alluded to this terrible dream with some show of playful humor. "Hill," said he, "your apprehension of harm to me from some hidden enemy is downright foolishness. For a long time you have been trying to keep somebody-the Lord knows who-from killing me. Don't you see how it will turn out? In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on some one else." (Lamon 1895, 116-117)

(i'm on her ignore list)

On the grandmother thing, is there anyone who doesn't consider the mortality of their oldest relatives several times a year at least? It's no evidence of premonition if you've been saddened by their eventual passing within the year, imo.

[shrike]

20. My husband dreamed of a co-worker's death

And it turned out to be correct. In every detail.

For the record, I believe in psychic ability, but not in psychics.

[Evoman]

21. BS

Three years ago, I remember I had a series of dreams that my mom was going to die in her Grand Am.

My mom is still alive, and she sold her grand am about six months ago.

I've had plenty of days I've said things like the people in those stories. They have never happened. But if they had, it would have just been a coincidence, and right now my family would be quoted in this stupid article.

For example, the guy with the heart attack. Maybe he just thought..man, I'm going to be here the rest of my life. This is probably where I will die. If he had died 10 years into the future in that place, would this still be a good story?

On edit: Oops, i didn't mean to respond to your post. I'm sorry if I sound like I was saying that your full of BS. That was not my intention!

[u4ic]

22. I haven't had experience with my own

considering I'm still alive. ;)

I did, however, dream about a death which happened the next day.

I knew where it was going to happen, how, but not who.

I woke the next day knowing someone was going to die.

That evening, I found out who...my next door neighbour's son. It was at the place I had dreamt (a certain coffee shop that rarely had large trucks visit), how (a semi in a snowbank - the son was on the snowbank, slid, and slipped underneath as the truck was going by).

I don't see why it couldn't happen to some. Stranger things have happened.

[TreasonousBastard]

23. I had an uncle who knew the exact day and time he would die...

a judge told him.

[progressoid]

24. What the H*ll?

“Coming in from work one evening, my wife, who was only 20 years old, unexpectedly announced: “I’m just so tired, maybe I’ll be leaving this world soon,” writes Grigoriy Doronin from Sergiev Posad. “The next day we were involved in a car accident. My wife died, but I survived…”

So there is a connection between being tired and car accidents?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

25. Yes , undoubtedly.

I've had premonitions of my own death, and a remarkably vivid dream about my sister's.

We're both still alive, however...