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AIBU?

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Original poster

Or do other people have weird “psychic” thoughts?

84 replies

Crazycatlady10 · 28/06/2019 06:54

Does anyone else get weird flashes of “foresight”? I don’t really know how to describe it, I wouldn’t say psychic but more and more often lately I find myself thinking about someone or something very suddenly. Later that day, something relating to that person will happen with no warning. It could be someone I don’t really know/haven’t seen for years. Not bad things obviously, just something about them.

My latest one was that last night I went to sleep and I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about an actor and told my boyfriend half asleep “he’s about to announce a play”. This morning I wake up to find that he has. I know he’s an actor and it’s not like he’s announced going to the moon or anything but it’s made me feel a bit woo..

Does anyone else do this? Or is it just hindsight making the thoughts look more specific than they are?

OP posts:
Lifecraft · 28/06/2019 13:51

My latest one was that last night I went to sleep and I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about an actor and told my boyfriend half asleep “he’s about to announce a play”. This morning I wake up to find that he has.

You actually heard about this news before you went to sleep, on the radio or the news. You weren't paying much attention, and you didn't really notice, but subconsciously you picked it up and stored it. Then, when it came to you, when you heard the news again the next day (for the second time, although you thought it was the first time), you thought you were psychic.

This is very common. You might see someone you haven't thought about for ages, out of the corner of your eye, in the street, because they are back in the area for a while, and it not register. Then you'll think about them suddenly, triggered by having seen them, but not knowing you've seen them. Then you'll see them again a few days later and think it's odd that you saw them just after you thought about them. But it's the other way around, you thought about them because you saw them.

Original poster
Crazycatlady10 · 28/06/2019 14:10

Nope, I didn’t hear about it. Didn’t have the radio on, only a pre recorded podcast from ten years ago and it was announced just before I woke up at about 6 this morning. Also if I had seen it/heard it even half asleep I would have been super excited so it wouldn’t have been subconscious. I know it’s just a coincidence that I thought about it but that wasn’t how I found out about it.

OP posts:
Original poster
Crazycatlady10 · 28/06/2019 14:11

Also I said “in the middle of the night” in my OP - it was actually about midnight, I just go to bed really early haha

OP posts:
AndNoneForGretchenWieners · 28/06/2019 14:15

Yes, I do. I have tried to explain it but I just sound like a nutter.

When I was 18 I knew my boyfriend at the time was going to propose to me. We hadn't discussed it and i don't know how i knew, but i was in the bath washing my hair and suddenly I knew he was going to propose that night. He did.

When I was 9, I knew my mum was pregnant before she told me. Again no discussion or pregnancy tests spotted etc, I just said to my friend "I think my mum is having a baby". A few days later she told me I was going to be a big sister.

There are other examples but these ones I remember exactly what was said and where I was when I first "knew". My dad dreams about plane crashes the night before they happen too.

balonzz · 28/06/2019 14:23

It has happened to me quite a lot too over the years, but I don't generally tell anyone. I don't think that I have any special abilities, I don't give it much thought really.

PissOffPeppa · 28/06/2019 16:41

This is very common. You might see someone you haven't thought about for ages, out of the corner of your eye, in the street, because they are back in the area for a while, and it not register. Then you'll think about them suddenly, triggered by having seen them, but not knowing you've seen them. Then you'll see them again a few days later and think it's odd that you saw them just after you thought about them. But it's the other way around, you thought about them because you saw them

I can’t remember exactly what it was now but Derren Brown set up an experiment (is that what I’d call it?) along these lines. For a period of time, the participant was exposed to a particular song without realising. So it was playing in the gym reception, later somebody walked past him whistling it, that kind of thing. Of course later he thought he’d picked this song at random, but he’d actually been listening to it all day completely unawares.

EscapeTheCastle · 28/06/2019 17:24

I was given concert tickets for Xmas. I was thrilled, then a knowledge rather than a thought entered my head "I'm not going to this concert", 6 months later all sorts of unexpected illness and an operation was scheduled two days before the concert. We sold the tickets. I'm Ok though, nothing serious!

Getting ready to go to the Salon, another knowledge entered my head that the stylist was going to tell me he was leaving to go travelling. I was able to tell him - in detail, his plans - what he was going to tell me before he could tell me. So he thought I was psychic. (This one though I think I was picking up on the clues over a series of previous appointments)

I only wish I could use my weak powers for something a bit more profitable. I have a few more examples.

Lifecraft · 28/06/2019 17:35

My dad dreams about plane crashes the night before they happen too.

I bet he's had hundreds more dreams about plane crashes when they didn't crash. But because no plane crash was on the news, he didn't even remember the dream.

TooManyPaws · 28/06/2019 17:45

My father had a connection to me. We lived abroad and I had to fly to the UK for secondary boarding school. In the middle of the night, they put me on the aeroplane and went home to bed. A couple of hours later, he woke up and said that something was wrong with the plane and phoned the airline; we had had to land in a normally overflow country because of problems with the engines.

Another time when I was at university, my parents had visited me at my university flat and then went to have supper with my aunt. I was later rushed into hospital and gobsmacked when my parents turned up as no one had notified them yet. My father had got a sudden feeling that he had to get to me and insisted that they cut their visit short and go back to my flat where they were told where I had been taken to.

user1471453601 · 28/06/2019 17:47

I had an overwhelming urge to call my Mum. We never ever called each other at work. I just felt I had to. Turned out that Mums sister had died that morning.

Who knows if it's "woo". Maybe being tuned into your nearest just lets you know when they need you.

The most obvious explanation, to me, is conformation bias. So I may have felt the need contact Mum a number of times, but I only recall that one time.

Seems logical to me

RagamuffinCat · 28/06/2019 17:50

I get this too, but it doesn't always happen in the way I expect it to. For example, I was in the car with my mum once, and she was driving and I had an overwhelming urge that someone was going to pull out of a side road as we went round the bend and hit us. I said to my mum to drive slowly around the bend because I felt like something was going to hit us, but nothing happened. The next day, a car pulled out of a different turning, as we went round a different bend, and wrote the car off. I have had a lot of similar experiences.

Chartreuser · 28/06/2019 17:54

Aged 8 I 'knew' my step mum was pregnant before she did

Aged 12 I rang my best friend in the US who had moved there two years previously, phone her end didn't ring and she said my name as she had picked up the phone to ring me

I have 'known' straight after DTD each time I was pregnant (7 times in all, knew first one would be early- born 36 weeks)
Many many other things over the years

I have never known winning lottery numbers, which ticket at the tombola was winning etc

So, although I 'know' things it's jeffing useless things Wink

AintNobodyHereButUsChickens · 28/06/2019 17:55

It's been happening my whole life! As a child I would announce 'Aunty X is coming!' Or 'Y is here!' And 5 minutes later there would be a knock on the door and it was Aunty X or Y. Only twice in my life the post has arrived and I've suddenly thought "That's not everything" and the postie has come back a second later with a letter they missed for us. It happens to me so often now that I barely even acknowledge it.

HarrysOwl · 28/06/2019 17:58

I have 'known' straight after DTD each time I was pregnant

Hmm
Cailleach · 28/06/2019 18:01

This happens to me very frequently. When it does, the details are always minutely and bizarrely specific - and it just so happens that it last happened only yesterday morning.

On Wednesday night I was in the shower when a thought randomly popped into my head. I wasn't working the the following day and was planning to go to my allotment. I knew suddenly that I would find a pair of scissors on the path in the woods that leads to the allotment.

I could see them in minute detail - they would be brand new, silver, with oddly tiny blades. They would be on the left hand side of the path, before the last turn. I would pick them up and think "look how tiny the tips are.... What on earth are these for?"

As I got to that part of the path, I was looking for them, and sure enough - there they were.

This sort of "pre-think", as I call it, happens to me all.the.time.

Corrina89 · 28/06/2019 18:06

I had this had a dream about my nan ..
the dream was she was really ill and she had passed away.. I told my partner the next day and said I had a horrible weird dream my Nan had passed he thought I was just being silly but to me it was serious ..
The Monday I get a call that my nan had passed away ..
She only went in for a routine check up at the hospital and never made it out ..
fit as a fiddle she would outrun me and she was old lol ..
my partner was speechless

AravisQueenOfArchenland · 28/06/2019 18:12

I get this too sometimes, eg I'll randomly glance at my phone (usually in power save mode/on silent when I'm not using it), for the first time in hours, and see that it's ringing.

My dad was once driving to hospital, when I suddenly had this realisation we were going the wrong way, and said as much. He'd just assumed my mum who we were visiting was in the local, but she was in one way on the other side of the city. The weird thing is, I thought she was in the local too, and he was going the right way for that, which I also knew Confused It was the strangest feeling.

I get deja vu a lot too. And when I was younger, I used to dream about things that would then happen. Someone would say something specific and I'd go "I dreamed about this months ago!" and would then usually get "yeah I'm sure you did Hmm" type responses, which was frustrating. It doesn't happen so much these days, but still does the odd time (like I dreamt I slept with a guy a work who was happily married, a few months later she'd left him, and we ended up dating for a while).

Birdrib · 28/06/2019 18:15

How is it confirmation bias to say an actor will announce a play hours before he announces it? Confused

HarrysOwl · 28/06/2019 18:21

It's confirmation bias because OP is simply recalling information (received subconsciously) and believing the memory as confirmation of premonition.

Like all the other examples. Death of a loved one is actually a common one. We often think of our family members, thousands of thoughts running through our minds mix subconsciously with worries quite often.

Something happens that we may have worried about (death of loved one) and we remember the 'premonition' and award it higher meaning. "Oh I just knew."

No, you thought. Along with millions of other thoughts that weren't realised. We attribute the meaning and explain it as psychic.

BalloonSlayer · 28/06/2019 18:29

I remember once being with my ex and, as we were driving past a certain road, saying "have you heard from X lately?" X being someone we had been friends with but hadn't seen for a while.

Ex was incredulous as he had just been thinking of X! How amazing!!!

I pointed out that the last time we had seen X we had given her a lift home and she had pointed to the road we had just passed and said she used to live down there.

So we had both thought of her for the same reason - me consciously, him subconsciously.

I should let him think I was psychic . . . that way he would have been unable to tell me I was mad when I knew he had someone else ,the lying cheating bastard. Grin

AravisQueenOfArchenland · 28/06/2019 18:32

I got that urge to speak to my grandad, before he died. I hadn't seen him for months, and suddenly just knew I had to, so I randomly called in one night and stayed for hours. He didn't seem right when I left, and when I went back the next morning to check up on him, my dad was already there, and dithering about calling an ambulance or not. He had pneumonia and died a week later in hospital.

I also argued and argued with my dad the day my grandad the day he went in, until my grandads dog (and all her stuff) was left in my house with my then dp. I just knew he wouldn't be back, but didn't want to be negative, so framed it as being worried that they'd want to keep him in for observation or tests. But I knew Sad

codemonkey · 28/06/2019 18:32

It's not 'psychic' anything. It's pattern seeking and confirmation bias.

AravisQueenOfArchenland · 28/06/2019 18:34

*I also argued and argued with my dad, the day my grandad the day he went in,

lyralalala · 28/06/2019 18:44

Only once. I had repeatedly had the same dream that a close relative was dying and I was trying to write his eulogy. I didn’t think anything of it as he was living in our house and I have vivid dreams a lot. We even joked that I subconsciously wanted him out of the house (my dreams can be very random so my family always ask).

This went on for a month then he got a kidney infection. Again we all laughed, him included about how my premonition was coming true. We all thought it was hilarious.

Then a month later he had a scan because they couldn’t shift the infection. They thought perhaps he had a kidney stone, which he did, and they discovered a tumour on his other kidney that had already spread and diagnosed terminal cancer.

It was very strange and I can only assume there must have been something that I was noticing subconsciously, but even the doctor treating him was stunned by the discovery so I don’t know how.

SunshineCake · 28/06/2019 18:50

I sometimes think someone will ring me and within two minutes they do. Last week I was walking the dog and I just had a feeling something was wrong with the school bus. Yep, got home to a message saying it hadn't come. I've dreamt something and then months later found out it was true. Wish I'd believed that one Sad.