Wierd Experiences you had that can't be explained...

[Solon]

I guess I'll post this here, just to get your thoughts. Basically I'm going to tell you about something, that even now, kinda is freaky. It happened about 10 years ago. I was going asleep, let me tell you my routine, I turn everything off in my room(I was 17 at the time), except for my one light, so I can read a book and fall asleep after reading it. I had school the next day, so this was around 10pm.

I then had a dream, or rather, a nightmare, and my dream consisted of this: I was running down a dark street, chasing after someone on foot, I had a gun in my hand, I then yelled stop, brought up the gun, the guy I was chasing, it was too dark to see his face, turned around, I heard a pop, then I woke up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, with a searing pain in my neck. I got up, ran into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and weirdly enough, I had a small bruise on my neck, it looked like a stick was jammed between my windpipe and jugular on the right side of my neck. Please bear in mind that this WASN'T a muscle pain, but a bruise, on the FRONT of the neck.

Now, this isn't even the freaky part, I looked at the clock, it was around 3:30 PM. I was so freaked, I woke up my parents(or rather my mother). So we sat down in the living room and talked. The dream was still vivid in my mind, so I recounted everything I remembered, from the feel of and weight of the gun(note, the only gun I have ever held was a .22 rifle in cub scouts, back when I was 10 or so) to the popping sound. Anyways, we talked for hours, basically to calm me down, by then the early morning news was on the TV(mom turned it on earlier to get my mind off the dream), a cop was shot that night, in the neck, he was DOA at 3:15 AM, chasing a suspect down a street on foot. My mother and I just looked at each other and I then seriously freaked out!

To be honest, I don't really know how to interpret this event. I mean, it could have been coincidence, but then again, maybe not. I know its ancedotal, and I never had a repeat of the experience, come to think of it, I never remember my dreams, as a general rule. It just seems to coincidental, too weird to just dismiss out of hand. For example, how the HELL did I get this bruise, I mean, my neck was throbbing for a while, and I had the weird bruise for damned near a week! Getting bruises on your arms or legs while asleep, that is one thing, but how do you get one right next to the windpipe? I mean, when I woke up, I was sleeping on my back and sat straight up reaching for my neck because the pain. Anyways, so what are your thoughts?

[NotGivingUp]

1. you just gave me the chills all over!!! that is very freaky!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

2. The answer is pretty obvious.

You had a vampire trying to give you a hickey. :shrug:

[Solon]

17. You know, if the vampire looked like this, I wouldn't mind...

ON EDIT: Another weird thing about me, at least in the physical sense, I have slightly enlarged Canines, Vampire teeth. They are natural, when my permanent teeth came in, I used to get bloodly lips because I would bite them accidently when I chewed my food, hurt like hell. At the dentist, they actually filed them down, the really weird part is that they grew back out, and are still points. Good thing I learned how to eat with them now.

[Selatius]

3. I hate to sound insane, but you sound like you were out of your body and..

at the crime scene. I guess they call that astral projection or something.

[niyad]

4. for some reason, you were connected to that police officer. the remark

about the astral projection was probably quite correct. as to why you--that I couldn't say, but can imagine how frightening it was.

I have had many strange experiences in my life, so I can understand that you would have found it more than a bit freaky. unfortunately, I tend to feel disasters, mostly earthquakes and things.

[don954]

5. either projection or emphatic scream

which can send a whole experience in an instant, anyone sensitive and unshielded in your area probably heard it.

[terminal_concept]

6. Weird experiences can't be explained.

That's why there is no proof.I know what your talking about but neither one of us can prove it.

[The Straight Story]

10. Amen to that!

But that is why I am frustrated at times when I feel skeptics dismiss it all.

To me there IS a science behind it all, but not as easy as tossing things in a lab environment and reproducing the same results over and over.

This has always been my problem with James Randi and crew - I deeply respect their work in debunking, but I feel at times they could contribute to a branch of science as yet fully unexplored.

I could never meet his challenge because the things I have experienced cannot be duplicated in a lab. It just happens outside my control.

So I keep an open mind. And I sure wish others here would as well...

[Zhade]

24. But how would one use science in this case?

How can this be replicated, repeated, studied? If it can't, it's not science, is it?

I think, at best, this would by nature have to remain in the "weird and unexplained" category. No assuming it means what some have suggested, absent any proof whatsoever, caused it. At the same time, no assuming the OP is lying/crazy/whatever (no evidence of THAT, either).

While we skeptics don't accept unsupported assertions (e.g. astral projection - which I will admit has always fascinated me as a concept, despite the lack of concrete non-anecdotal evidence), that doesn't mean we're all close-minded about the possibility of such things. I for one welcome serious scientific research into such areas. I just don't support assuming things like this exist as believed without such research.

[OneBlueSky]

7. life is about mystery . . . there's a whole lot we'll never understand . .

and that's okay . . .

[LosinIt]

8. my first marriage...

still trying to figure out what that was all about.

[The Straight Story]

9. I have had 3 pre-cog dreams as I call them

That came true and scared me because they did.

I almost won a $50 bet on one too :) Here is that story:

I generally watched pro football, the raiders, and even then not much. Was just not my sport as I was a chess player, but growing up in Ohio you heard about the buckeyes all the time, and mom listened to and watch the games so I was exposed to them.

I met my first wife in 1984 and she was a huge buckeye fan, I could really care less though I did like our team to win. Her brother was even a bigger fan and sold programs at the shoe.

I had had two previous dreams prior to this one which were realistic, ie while they were dreams there was nothing dream like about them - and they showed future events to a T.

I dreamed OSU played USC and lost. By 3 points. And there was a safety in the game if I remember right these 22 years later.

In my dream I saw them playing USC, but I did not know who that team was, I just saw their helmets and remembered the announcer saying they had lost by 3 (OSU). Just another dream to me (and I have dreams nightly, and last nights were bizzare I might add).

A few weeks after the dream I was with my wife (now X and has passed on) and they were talking about the rosebowl and OSU and they showed who they were playing. I instantly recognized the helmets of USC as that was what I saw in my dream.

She was talking to her brother about the game later on the phone and I told her to tell him OSU would lose by 3. He told her he would bet me $50 they would not. I was making 3.35/hr then, so $50 was a lot, and I did not take the bet as it was just a dream. Despite my previous episodes I did not believe in seeing the future in dreams (and am still skeptical on it btw).

Of course OSU did lose by 3. I could have made some bank on that one :)

One of the other two dreams I had was just as dumb (to me anyway).

I was standing in the living room of our home at the time in a leather jacket (pleather actually) and saw myself looking at the TV. There was an ad for the movie Foxes (with Jodie foster I think in it) on the tv. And that was all I remember.

I had that dream in 1977 after my brother came home and told me about Star Wars he had went and seen. Foxes came out in 1980 (just looked it up, and yes jodie foster was in it - and I never saw the movie to this day...).

I still remember to this day seeing that preview on the TV and getting a little freaked out. I got a pleather (light brown) jacket and cowboy hat the previous christmas.

The effect on me to this day:

If I have a dream that is very real I worry it could come to pass.

The last one I recall off hand: I dreamed I was floating above my body, I think I was ten, and seeing myself sleeping. I wanted to be back in my body and I was instantly there and woke up. That night when I went back to bed I dreamed about my brother and sister playing cards, what they had in their hands, the time of day, and a few other things.

This was my first dream I remember coming true. I was maybe 11 or 12. I was standing at the table, my brother said something, then my sister replied, and I saw her hand. I told them both I had seen this in a dream a many months ago and they thought I was nuts.

What they said, the cards they had, the time of day and where I was standing and they were sitting were exactly as I had dreamed it (side note: my brother was sitting at south end of table, my sister the west side, and I was in between. Usually they played at north end and east end, for some reason we always liked mom's chair. As we lived on a street called majestic dr east we knew where things were facing. I mention that because it is a little funny because today we were homeschooling my daughter and teaching her about compasses and n/s/e/w and I remembered this episode, then I came across this thread).

My brother and sister thought I was being silly and making it up, but I was adamant that I had dreamed it.

So nothing major in my life in dreams (but there were other things of great interest to me that went on in my teen years that do relate), just mundane things. But they still resonate with me now that I am 40. And I never forgot them.

[neebob]

32. I had one, too, come to think of it

that wasn't about someone not liking me or being sick. I can't believe I forgot about this.

In 1998, I had an internet romance disaster. I won't bore you with the story except to say that it turned out to be the complete opposite of what I was expecting.

Some time during the phone phase, I had a dream in which for some reason I was holding a pitcher, and an invisible entity started tossing it around. At first I was scared, thinking it was a ghost - because, at the time, I still wanted to believe in spirits and past lives and other hokey stuff - but then it revealed itself to be something more like an angel, and she told me I'd have a baby in June. I told her that was ridiculous, because I was 38 and had already had all the kids I was ever going to have.

Knowing that June was when I would meet my wonderful perfect soul mate (now known as the worst person I've ever had the misfortune of knowing), I chose to take this dream as confirmation that I might get married and live happily ever after, after all. Because that's what I wanted. I was willing to admit that much to myself, despite my public claims to the contrary. And who knows - it might be so wonderful that I would have another baby. Never say never, right?

As it turned out, I did get another dependent. And I believe I'd picked up enough information on the phone to know that's what would happen, despite my insistence on interpreting it another way.

I now believe this dream and a couple others that I won't waste time writing up were just my subconscious mind saying, "Hey, lady - denial ain't just a river in Egypt!"

No doubt you'll say this is not like the football game or the card game. And I don't know enough to say with any confidence that it is. But I do think our dreams can teach us a lot about ourselves, if we pay enough of the right kind of attention to them.

[Random_Australian]

11. I hate to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but would not one think

that if one were experiencing something in sleep that was painful or distressful, like something that would cause a bruise, one would dream of something distressing?

[Solon]

19. The only problem with that is where the bruise was located...

As I said, it was on the front of the neck. I mean, if I woke up with a sore, bruised, hand or ankle, that can EASILY be explained, they are extremities, and its certainly possible to be able to thrash about while asleep enough to injure those. However, the neck is slightly different, the only way I could see creating the bruise in my sleep is if someone came into my room, and jabbed me with a stick right in the neck. Even if I let's say, turned around in my sleep, and jammed my thumb into my neck, I don't see this bruise being formed, it was rather small.

[Evoman]

20. Was the bruise perfectly circular?

Because most gunshots are not....there is usually tearing, etc, especially when bullet come at an angle.

On edit: How long did the bruise last?

[Solon]

22. Actually, it was, how to say it, kinda like a teardrop shape?

I guess that's the best way to describe it, irregular, no doubt, but not the size of my thumb, more like the size of a pinky finger.

[Evoman]

23. Any exit wounds?

[greyl]

33. Yes, it's a very difficult area to bruise, other than from sucking on it.

;)

What part of the country has local news on at 3:30 AM that knows about the death of a cop 15 mins later? They usually alert the family first.

[neebob]

30. Yes!

I would think that. And because I don't mind sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, here's my old fuddy-duddy theory about dreams:

Dreams are the subconscious mind's way of working on problems, and it presents them in representational ways that the conscious mind is prepared to accept and deal with - i.e., one thing representing another. And the thing that wakes you up is the thing you're not ready to deal with.

I find that my dreams all follow this pattern. Even those that could be called pre-cognitive - for example, where I dream that someone doesn't like me or someone is sick and it turns out to be true - involve something I wasn't fully aware of but had probably picked up on a subconscious level.

The subconscious mind is an excellent information collector. And that's about as woo-woo as I get when it comes to dreams.

[Kailassa]

12. We are all one.

Sometimes, as happened to you, and has happened to me with similar dreams and
also when I've been awake, a hole can get torn in the illusion of separateness.

[petgoat]

13. The universe is far more mysterious than we can comprehend.

Beware. You may spontaneously combust while sitting on the toilet.
On the other hand, chances are, you won't.

Have a nice day. :hi:

[Branjor]

14. Wow....

it would have been interesting to know if the cop was shot between the windpipe and the jugular on the right side of his neck.

Did you go to school that day?

[Branjor]

15. Throughout the 80s....

I had a recurring dream - my grandmother was in a bedroom dying (in reality, both my grandmothers were already dead) - the dreams were always in black and white, with a heavy, oppressive atmosphere. I would be standing outside in the hallway, wishing that I could take some of her pain on myself, to make it that much less for her. Finally, in Jan. 1993, I had the same dream again, except that it wasn't my grandmother dying, it was someone so close to me that I thought it could possibly *be* me, and the atmosphere was more heavy and oppressive even than in the previous dreams. Then, in Feb. 1993, my mother died unexpectedly. I have not had another one of those dreams since.

[hpot]

16. It can be explained

Unfortunately, conventional science cannot help you in this area because your story lacks the criteria of physical proof and duplication. Maybe someday we will have the complete energy spectrum to further analyze this phenomenon.

In astral projection and remote viewing, attraction to certain places, objects, events and even people are common. In your dream it seems there was an attraction to a traumatic event while allowing you to perceive through the eyes of another.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=66758250520111543&q=proof+positive&hl=en

As for the bruise, it was probably formed by your mind under psychosomatic conditions.

Reference:

"In 1917, Hadfield33 studied a sailor who was undergoing hypnotherapy for treatment of shell shock. During the procedure an observer placed a finger on his arm while the patient was told he had been touched with a red-hot iron rod. The arm was withdrawn immediately in evident pain. Under hypnosis it was suggested that a blister would form. Half an hour later (after the subject had been awakened) he returned with a blister and asked what happened to him. These experiments were repeated many times under strict experimental conditions with reproducible results."

http://www.humanehealthcare.com/Article.asp?art_id=582

I'm sorry for the negative experience but congratulations on breaking the boundaries of your physical senses.

[Zhade]

26. Some questions...

In astral projection and remote viewing, attraction to certain places, objects, events and even people are common. In your dream it seems there was an attraction to a traumatic event while allowing you to perceive through the eyes of another.

If science (there is no such things as non-conventional science; science follows a convention by its very nature, or it's not science) cannot determine the veracity of the above, what leads to these conclusions?

"In 1917, Hadfield33 studied a sailor who was undergoing hypnotherapy for treatment of shell shock. During the procedure an observer placed a finger on his arm while the patient was told he had been touched with a red-hot iron rod. The arm was withdrawn immediately in evident pain. Under hypnosis it was suggested that a blister would form. Half an hour later (after the subject had been awakened) he returned with a blister and asked what happened to him. These experiments were repeated many times under strict experimental conditions with reproducible results."

Is there anything more recent than this 1917 study?

I'm sorry for the negative experience but congratulations on breaking the boundaries of your physical senses.

Agreed on having the bad dream (no fun). Without malice, I ask: what leads you to conclude that the OP broke the boundaries (who defines these boundaries?) of his/her physical senses?

I'm not attacking, I'm just asking, because from what the OP gave us there's no evidence to support that conclusion.

[hpot]

36. Personal Opinion - 2 cents

;)

cannot determine the veracity of the above, what leads to these conclusions?

what leads you to conclude that the OP broke the boundaries

It is just personal opinion based on life experience and observations. I have also researched many reports on similar claims involving deep sleep, lucid dreaming, OOBE, astral projection and remote viewing.

anything more recent than this 1917 study?

Finding more information online is difficult. I remember the technique was televised a few years ago by a hypnotist. Any psychology professional should be able to verify independently.

[Random_Australian]

27. "complete energy spectrum" eh?

We already have it. Electromagnetic propogation with energy proportional to frequency.

Entire range found. Detected. Done.

[hpot]

37. Something is missing

Either it is our understanding of the spectrum or a section itself that is missing. I've seen plenty of consistent ESP examples in my life to not disregard it as fantasy.

[Evoman]

18. A couple of questions and points

1)Were you dressed like a cop in the dream?

2)Did you get hit in the exact same spot in the dream as the cop?

3)Why the 15 minutes discrepancy....it obviously wasn't happening at the same time in your dream as in real life.

4)Did you go to the street the cop was shot on, to see if it was the same one?

5)Was the cop alone, like you were, or was there backup? Did you know you were a cop in the dream?

6)Had you watched anything about cops, or guns, the day before?

7)How many people, during any night, do you think have a dream about being chased or chasing someone, with a gun? How many people do you think woke up with nightmares at 3:00 to 3:30 AM that day?


Here's are the coincedences between your dream and the real-life occurence

1) You dreamt you got shot in the neck (or did you? Do you remember actually being shot? Most gunshot wounds don't kill instantaneously, why would you wake up right away?). Someone else got shot in the neck.

2) You woke up 15 minutes AFTER the shooting took place.

Thats it? Thats the big deal?

This isn't weird at all. You had a dream. Someone else coincidentaly got shot. I can't believe the people here who immedetiatly jump to these absurd conclusions.

On edit: I am sure that somewhere else in the world, someone else got shot in the throat on that exact same day. Maybe a gang fight in mexico. Or a shooting in Russia. Maybe you astrally projected to one of those situations. Or maybe you astral projected throught time to some other person who may have been shot in the throat over the past 100 years. I mean...15 minutes, 15 hours, 15 years...its all the same in our constant universe where astral projector experts can travel through time using quantum fluctuations in the Einstein space-time miasma.

Second edit: I once had a dream that I was fucking Britney Spears. Nine months later, I found out she had a baby. Could I have been in the body of Kevin Federline..it sure smelled like it, if I recall...

[hpot]

38. lol

With all the teenage boys out there dreaming of Britney, I'm surprised she isn't pregnant 24/7 365.

[boolean]

21. Assuming you're not full of shit...

...and that this is a true story. I have the answer for you.

It was a coincidence.

The end.

[Zhade]

25. I don't think there's any reason to assume the OP is lying.

We have no more evidence for that than believers have for gods (though lying is known to exist, of course).

I found your response kind of harsh, even if it's accurate.

[sakabatou]

28. That is not even close to scary

The nightmares which I had last year to two, were much worse.

[neebob]

29. When I was 18

I awoke, looked up, and saw a giant black spider building a web over my bed. I literally flew, screaming, out of bed and into the hallway. To this day, I could swear I felt the web tearing and sticking to me as I fled.

I now know it was either a hypnopompic or hypnogogic hallucination, depending on whether I was dozing off or waking up. I don't remember. At the time, I was pretty sure there was a huge black spider above my bed.

My parents, also awakened by the racket, met me in the hallway, wanting to know what was wrong. When I told them, my dad groaned, turned and waved me off in disgust, and went back to bed as if it hadn't been at least 15 years since I'd awakened him in this manner. In fact I don't remember ever causing such a commotion. But my mom came back to my room with me and got me all settled down and ready to try nite-nite again. Here's me, 18 years old, and my mom's sitting on my bed, pointing up at the ceiling, going, "See? There's no spider in here."

Moms are cool that way.

Yours, it sounds like, helped you build a story around a nightmare that happened to coincide with this cop getting shot.

Are you sure he was shot in the neck? And even if he was, is it not possible that you were sleeping with a hand, an arm, or some other object positioned in such a way that it bruised you?

So what if you'd only ever held a .22 rifle. It was a dream, the guy you were chasing represented something, the gun represented something, it was important to you for some reason, you noticed the weight and the feel. You were capable of imagining that.

I hate guns. My dad was a gun nut, so I've held quite a few of them, but - coincidence - have only ever shot a .22 rifle. I've had dreams where I'm chasing and shooting people, too, all the while thinking, "What am I doing with this gun? I hate guns."

I'm not one to chase people, either. In real life, I'm much more likely to be the one being chased - which is exactly why I'm doing the chasing in my dreams.

The type of dream you had is ever so common. Even if it was the first time for you, it's unlikely that you were the only one having that dream that night, or even that moment.

And since we're talking about cops, you know what they say about the reliability of eyewitness testimony - the witnesses were emotional, they don't remember, they fill in holes, their stories change over time. All the same stuff is operating here.

I'm not trying to poke holes in your story, but just saying it's possible that you and your mom made the experience into much more than it was, because you wanted to.

Did you talk about what else was going on in your life at the time that might have provided the basis for this dream? Or were you all focused on this painful neck bruise until the news came on? Do you remember?

You seem to believe your dream was connected to the cop shooting. So, you must have a theory. What is it? Tell us what you think happened.

[neebob]

31. In the interest of not being a total stick in the mud

I've been sitting here trying to think of weird experiences I've had that can't be explained. Unfortunately, I've only had weird experiences that can be explained. I'll share a couple, anyway, just because they're weird.

The first one isn't exactly my experience, but an experience my dad claimed to have that I was involved in. My dad was a hunting/fishing/camping/let's-see-where-this-dirt-road-goes kind of guy, not to mention a big story teller, and he was especially fond of this one. This happened one night when we were all out on some expedition in the family truckster and my brother and I were asleep in the back. Dadbob was zooming down some long, straight dirt road with Mombob riding shotgun, when a voice - "clear as a bell," in his words, and very emphatic - told him to slow down. So he did, and Mombob asked why, and he said he didn't know.

Moments later, the road teed off at the edge of a cliff. (Repeat after me: Wooooooooooooo.)

Funny how I don't remember hearing this story until some time after my dad dragged us all back to church, and then of course it had to have been an angel who'd prevented us from plunging to our deaths in the wilderness. Couldna been my very own Mo-dad (who apparently also had occasional audible thoughts), realizing he was being reckless and modulating his own behavior.

Weird Experience #2 may be a bit less explainable, but I still believe it's explainable. Toward the end of my senior year, I got sick with a mysterious, super-virulent form of tonsillitis. My tonsils swelled up so big that they blocked off my throat and I could only eat popsicles for weeks. I lost 35 pounds and missed 17 days of school. The doctors tested me for everything - mono, strep, even (gasp) V.D., I later found out.

This was in the seventies, around the time of that public service commercial with the song that went, "V.D. is for everybody." I could have told them I was a virgin, if they'd bothered to ask.

Anyway, after testing for all the known bugs of the time, they still couldn't figure out what it was and didn't want to do a tonsillectomy with my tonsils all swollen like that. Eventually, though, they decided to go ahead and take them out. They told my parents I had a 50-50 chance of surviving, or so I was told after the fact. They thought I might bleed to death or something.

The night before the surgery, my dad invited the church elders over to give me a blessing. I was embarrassed and doubtful, but I sat there like a good little Mormon girl and tried to believe these men laying their hands on my head and praying would have some effect.

Okay, now here's the part where we go wooooooooo:

Instead of the expected abscesses in or behind my tonsils, the surgeon was amazed to find "clear liquid." I hardly bled at all. AND I went home the next day and ate crispy-crust pizza for lunch.

Thus, another of my dad's favorite stories was born. The fact that the dude who said the prayer had blessed the surgeon with "skills beyond his training" became a central element of the story he told publicly. Privately, he said the Lord made me sick to teach me a lesson, that I couldn't just do whatever I wanted - as if I hadn't already learned that from the King Boss Man Storyteller Dadbob. Details like the 50-50 chance and the clear liquid and the surgeon being amazed, which give the story its extra wooey oomph, are all second hand to me.

I'm pretty sure it was just some freaky bug, and my parents believed what they wanted to.

[neebob]

39. And now for a REALLY BIG coincidence

On Monday, around the time I was writing this post with my tonsillitis story, my 17-year-old son was outside mowing the lawn. He came in, and within the space of about two hours, was just about literally flattened by a bug that started with an earache in his left ear.

By Tuesday morning, his tonsils had swollen so big, they blocked off his throat and he could only eat popsicles. So I took him to the doctor that afternoon, and she didn't know what it was. (The rapid strep test was negative.) She gave him some nuclear antibiotic, an anti-inflammatory, and a "pain shot" that fixed him up (and then some), at least temporarily.

When I took him back the next day, she switched to a lesser antibiotic because the big gun seemed to be working and expressed concern that the right tonsil might be developing an abscess.

He's on the mend now, only lost about five pounds and missed three days of school. And the abscess never materialized.

Do you think it was the Lord trying to teach my son a lesson, or the super-powerful psychic vibe I generated while posting my story? Or was it just a coincidence?

[TallahasseeGrannie]

34. I believe there is a connection between us all

and we can't see or measure it, but you at that moment were very connected.

My daughter had a childhood friends named Mary for about 5 years, in middle and high school. Mary got pregnant and moved away after HS. My daughter got married, had her first and recounted to me one morning a very disturbing dream where Mary came back and was fascinated by and eventually tried to kidnap my grandson.

We found out within the week that Mary's toddler was killed by Mary's drunk boyfriend, way up in Canada. He is now in prison.

[Zebedeo]

35. My comments

Thank you for sharing this interesting story.

I notice that the people who have responded thus far seem to fall into two camps:

1. It was just a coincidence; or

2. You astrally projected in your dream to the location of the shooting and into the person of the cop.

One other possibility that could account for what you experienced is that you stayed put, but the cop's soul, having just recently departed his body at 3:15 a.m., found you dreaming and entered your mind for a brief time, and through that process, you experienced what he had just gone through. You then woke up at 3:30 a.m.

Like most people, I have had a number of weird experiences in my life. Some of the most memorable had to do with ghosts and voodoo in New Orleans. I was staying with my wife in an old, antebellum building near the French Quarter, that had been converted into a B&B. We had a number of unexplained weird things occur to us, including:

1. items in the refrigerator moving themselves into the freezer.

2. a lightbulb unscrewing itself.

3. a wardrobe door repeatedly unlocking and opening by itself.

4. image of a ghost seen in a mirror, inside the door of the wardrobe.

5. unexplained gas that put my wife and me both to sleep in the middle of the day.

6. While walking around the French Quarter, I was suddenly immobilized with searing pain in my Achilles tendon and unable to take another step. I had to wait there for 45 minutes or so. Then it went away completely.

7. There was a stack of old newspapers in our room. Some were decades old. One morning, I got up early and was reading through the stack of newspapers. Neither of us had opened the door to our room yet that morning. I flipped through the newspapers and was shocked to find, in the middle of the stack, a newspaper dated THAT DAY - a current newspaper, with the news of that day. How did it get there? Who would have sneaked into our room in the middle of the night with the currently daily paper and stuck it in the middle of a stack of old newspapers? How would they have done this? The door was bolted and chained from the inside. Why would they have done this? I was freaked out.

8. I read a book in our room about a building in New Orleans, in the same neighborhood as our building, in which slaves had been mistreated and even hideously tortured by their masters.

8. On the plane flight leaving New Orleans, there was a big thunderstorm. We landed in Memphis to change planes. There in the Memphis airport, while waiting for our next flight (I swear this is true) my wife and I both saw a very thin, very dark African man dressed in a business suit, carrying a spear - a real one. It was no rubber spear. It was a real African spear with a real sharp spear point. The man turned and stared at us, unsmilingly. He was allowed on the plane, spear and all.

9. On the flight from Memphis, the takeoff was delayed, because a man sitting across the aisle from us and one row ahead of us was found to be dead. EMTs came onboard to remove his body, and they found no identifying information on his person. No wallet, no ticket, no i.d. -- nothing, except that a business card for a funeral home was found in his suit jacket pocket.

There were at least 10 other weird things that happened to us while in N.O. My wife has them written down somewhere. There were over 20 of them. It got so bad that my wife wanted to move to a modern hotel. I didn't want to, because we had prepaid for the B&B. Cheap bastard that I was.

One other detail that probably has nothing to do with any of this - I was born in New Orleans.

[lvx35]

41. "While walking around the French Quarter"...

AT first, reading this I was shocked, then I heard you were in N.O. That pretty much explains it all to me...XXX.

[133724]

40. I had a dream

It was in one of those nether times when you are not quite asleep and not quite awake. I was about 15 years old and it was two years after my father had died.

In the dream I was sitting on a hill overlooking a road. The road gave off a dim light in the darkness. Along the road were several mileposts. One mile post read 24, another 27, another 32 and the last 36. All of a sudden I knew I was not alone and i was asked if I understood the meaning of the road. I said i did not. I was then told that the mile posts represented significant changing points in my life.

Shortly before my wife died I had another dream; only this time I was wide awake. In this dream I was given a choice, I could divorce my wife and avoid the problems that going to happen because of her serious health problems, or I could remain married. I chose to remain married.

When I was 24 I change my career path, from the ministry to another profession. When I was 27 I moved from the small town where I was living to a large city. I was married during my 32nd year and my wife died during my 36th year.

Shortly before my wife died I had another dream; only this time I was wide awake. In this dream I was given a choice, I could divorce my wife and avoid the problems that going to happen because of her serious health problems (she died from congestive heart failure resulting from diabetes) , or I could remain married. I chose to remain married.

That decision has cost me dearly, bankruptcy being among the least of the problems. But I would not hesitate to make the same decision again.

It was the right thing to do.

I have nothing but contempt for those who abandon their vows when their spouse gets sick..

[lvx35]

42. Good for you for sticking with it.

Things like that remind us we are part of a bigger tapestry than just our own desires. :)