I know a person whose parachute didn't open and lived.
And I dreamed about it a few days before it happened, even though I had no idea she was going skydiving.
And I dreamed about it a few days before it happened, even though I had no idea she was going skydiving.
Okay, so here's the story. This was a person who I spoke with professionally on the phone. I barely knew her.
One day I had this dream where all I knew was that she fell from a great height. Like a fatally great height. I woke with the strange feeling like I should tell her. Next time we talked, I did, though I framed it like "hey, that was random, right?"
About two week later I call her office. They say "She's not in?" I ask if I can leave a message. They say "Um ... haven't you heard?" I said, "Heard what?" For some reason (maybe they assume I'm family) they give me a telephone number to reach her.
I call. It's a hospital. They put me through. She's looney tunes on painkiller. First thing she says: "I fell out of an airplane!"
She tells me the story: she was on vacation and decided, on spur of the moment, to go skydiving for the first time ever. It's a tandem jump, where you share a parachute with an instructor.
The chute gets tangled - it's called "trailing a garbage bag". It slows you down, but not enough. She lands on top of the instructor. He dies, but cushions the impact. She lives, but breaks every bone in her body.
When she finishes, I say "Do you remember my dream?" She says, "Oh wow, yeah". Then they cart her off back to her next surgery. I'm so disconcerted I literally go and throw up. It's the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me.
I don't have an explanation.
We lost touch after that. For all I know, she follows me on Twitter. Say hello if you do.
Spooky stuff, man. Spooky stuff.
Okay, I'll share one more story, about a dream I had in 2000. You can make of it what you will. It was very short, lasting only a few seconds, but made a lasting, if obscure, impression on me.
I'm in a wide body airplane. On the left side. There's been some sort of scuffle. A successful one, I sense.
Out the window there is a vertical surface of steel and glass approaching. There is nothing that can be done. A sense of resignation settles on me.
The world dissolves into fire. There is no feeling of impact. After a few seconds, I realize that though I am disembodied, my consciousness remains, unaltered. A feeling of relief and wonder washes over me.
The End.
The End.
I've never told a single person about that dream. Now I've told everyone.
