five things i don't admit i've seen

Niece's books arrived. SGA S3 arrived (stolen by Child almost before box was opened). Had long, surreal discussion with coworker about precognition, dream interpretation, and waking sleep.

This is always a problem for me personally, because I tend to live anecdotally--this is why you will rarely hear me talk about aliens, ghosts, predicting the future, or weird coincidence outside fic. It's hideously uncomfortable because it's unquantifiable. I don't mind my religion being unquantifiable or unprovable--that's kind of the point--but when dragging out how one's baby sister apparently had a discussion with Grandpa a couple of hours after he died is one of those things that I feel requires some amount of alcohol, a very late night, and someone having lost deeply at poker.

I miss big holidays with my family when it was extended. Those were good times. And if you were very small and hid outside the dining room, you would learn far more about Uncle Bob after his demise than you ever wanted to know.



Like I said, hideously uncomfortable.

1.) Alien ship. Three, actually, but two I can't be sure of due to age, so I tend to only claim one.

It was late, and we lived in the country, and it was night, which already proves I'm totally right because X-Files taught us all that if you are going ot be kidnapped and you are not Scully, these are the requirements.

It was late one night, as nights do, and I was at my bedroom window. from there I could see the road that intersected with my street about an eighth of a mile to teh west. I was a sulky teenager and having that thing where I stared at the window at odd hours and hated everything. I'm fairly sure I had Bon Jovi playing in teh background.

Anyway, I watched a pair of whitish headlights come down the road. Nothing new. In fact, if I'd stood up at any time before the last moment, I never would have known anything had been odd. What made it odd was about--hmm, one hundred feet from the intersection, the lights took flight.

I have never claimed to be quick on the uptake. I watched the dark line of the road and went through every possibilty, up to and including the very real possibility I was asleep. Except I wasn't, and my stereo played on and nothing changed in the five seconds that lapsed between the moment I saw what I'd seen and the now except for everything.

Except nothing did.

I also never, ever discuss this after nine at night. And never when I'm in the country. Or when I'm sober. I am blaming the Wendy's breakfast food. It was intoxicating.

2.) Ghosts - I've never seen one in whole, and I'm not sure that's even the word for what I see. I don't even claim I can be sure they're ghosts--from nine at night until around seven in the morning, they *arent'*, because I live in my head and my head and I don't want to deal with that. But sometimes, there's a flicker on the edge of vision, like watching a pond ripple when a fish touches the surface. It's so ignorable, and so easy to pretend it's anything else. My vision's bad, it's been a long night, I'm tired, I'm moody, it's the wind, it's the air conditioning, it's a million thing but this one thing that I always know when I see it, recognize when I feel it. It's not cold and it's not dark, and I don't think it even knows I'm there, or if it does, it doesn't matter. And it doesn't scare me until after, when I turn on all my lights and worry I'll see it again.

I don't know why that scares me, except for the fact it doesn't scare me at all.

3.) Precogntion and Deja Vu - my coworker and I were discussing theories of de ja vu and my most weirdly frequent dream-theme, which is repeating the same action over and over until I get a differnet response. No, seriously. I don't always remember what they are--I rarely do, but I remember stopping during the dream and saying, no. Not this way.

It's an insane dream, always, with like dragons and vampires and people with improbable eighties hairstyles--but I'll stop halfway through and say, no, do it again. And I'll start from Point A, trying this time to see if I can change it, what I can alter to make the outcome what I want. It's been hours of dream-time or sometimes years that I'll walk the same path and try every fork, going as far as I can before I turn back because I know that I have to find another way, this one, this one's wrong, and sometimes, I don't know why it's wrong. I don't even know what the outcome is supposed to be. And most of the time, I'll wake up exhausted and grumpy and wondering what happened, just knowing that I must have found it, whatever it was.

I'd say it has a lot to do with my deep seated desire to control everything coupled with laziness that tends to make me seek out people who will do it for me while I prod.

Except for this.

I'll read a book. Start a conversation. Step onto a plane. Walk into a room, a building, a park. And there's a second of vertigo and something like euphoria, and I think, now. I've done this, said this, and I don't know if it ever shows on my face or in my voice, but I know you'll say this, I know that if I do this, this happens. I know and I think I've been waiting for it, and then five seconds, five minutes, it's over and I have no idea what just happened. And sometimes, I won't even believe it did. I don't even remember why I cared, if I smiled and said hi. Nothing ever comes of it--I didn't meet my soulmate, gain a fortune, save the world, helped an angel get its wings. I kind of think once I actually sprained a toe during my Great Moment of Have Done This, and I have no tolerance for pain, so really.

But I never stop feeling something did.

And it's deja vu, of course it is, except....I wonder if I've done it before, in a dream, dress rehearsaled my life, this moment that I never knew was signficant, worked it over and over until the outcome matched, until the events lead to this insignificant moment that was so hugely important that my own mind made me go through it a hundred times to get it right, ground it into me so thoroughly that I lived five second or five minutes by roat and reflex becuase it was so important I couldn't be trusted to do it right otherwise.

Or conversely, after, I blink and wonder if the point was this was my last chance to change it.

4.) I used to talk to myself a lot. I still do, but most of teh conversations I'd carry on in my head, because one looks a lot less insane that way. But there's this point in my life where I think I used to have someone talking back to me.

I can't even prove that one, not even in my memories. Like my claustrophobia, my fear of heights, it's this feeling that I missed something, something big enough to fingerprint me and never feel it.

5.) Coincidence is random serendipity, I know this. In a chaotic universe, it happens. It's never huge and magical and strange and it's always ordinary and I never wonder until I do.

I don't have examples, because it's commonplace and it never matters until one day, it does. Sometimes its coffee and cookies and sometimes its class and sometimes, someone calls and asks me a question that I just read, wants a book I have. Sometimes, we're at my grandmother's and need a left handed woman's golf club that she picked up at a garage sale last wek in a box of books that include three Anne McCaffrey I hadn't read before.

I don't even know what to say about that one.

6.) BONUS ROUND: this isn't even supernatural, but it's odd.

Every once in a while, when I'm reading, when I'm writing, when I'm crocheting, talking, laughing, I'm cold sober and suddenly I'm euphoric. It's more intense than any drug I've ever taken, and this is up to and including the magnificent stuff they gave me at the hospital during that thing where they stuck the camera down my throat and I fell deeply in love with the universe.

Sometimes it lasts for minutes or hours--when I'm writing, I can keep it going for nearly a day if I don't eat and keep the caffeine. I know it's physiological in some way, my body doing something new and hormonally strange and I have no objections, because it's rare and it's good and I have never objected to such gifts.

Euphoria. I've done it on vicadin and ephedrine, I can induce it with ritalin but don't because I need it for it's *purpose* and I won't screw that up; I can do it with alcohol and I did it a few times with pot and once with LSD before that thing with paranoia and tasting colors hit me so hard that to this day, I do think i'd probably try to jump off something very high rather than live one hour that way again. But it's nothing like that at all. It's soft and warm and bright and I'm absolutely certain, sure, there's no doubt that everything is okay, that it will be, and I---I don't want to just feel it. I want to share it. I wnat to do things, like clean a house or write a novel or crochet a blanket, talk to a friend and tell them what I am absolutely certain that all this time they have needed to hear, buy gifts and go running, make sure that this second isn't wasted.

There are others, but they delve far into the things-that-have-happened-when-I'm-not-really-sure-they-happened-or-I-did-imagine-them.



It's still so--I keep reading back and thinking about how I feel as if I should be reporting to Area 51 clubs.

So. Wanna share?

Comments

[amireal.livejournal.com]

Deja vu traced back to dreams. *shrug* Just a few incidents, but some of them were weirdly specific.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*taps foot in encouragement*

[bethcarielle.livejournal.com]

Fairly certain I saw a ghost as a child. Wasn't anyone I recognized but he was clear as day and I'm almost 100% certain I was awake. I clearly remember sitting up in bed staring at this figure standing next to my bed. He was young, dark hair, sort of pensive looking. No idea why he was there. Never saw him again.

I rarely remember my dreams and when I do it's because something strikes me with such fierce deja vu that I realized I dreamed whatever is happening the night before. Sometimes I remember my dreams upon waking and wait for the events to happen. They usually do. They're usually unremarkable and insignificant events.

I have premonitions. I've avoided two potentially serious car accidents because I "saw" what was going to happen before it did giving me more time to react. These particular two premonitions I remember quite clearly and happened 10-15 minutes before the event. I have little premonitions all the time. Almost always visual. I see something in my head and then the event happens. Could be some sort of hyper-aware observation or paranormal. Not sure.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I rarely remember my dreams and when I do it's because something strikes me with such fierce deja vu that I realized I dreamed whatever is happening the night before. Sometimes I remember my dreams upon waking and wait for the events to happen. They usually do. They're usually unremarkable and insignificant events.

Exactly. It's never something magical or huge--it's so humdrum it's almost like--why?

I have premonitions. I've avoided two potentially serious car accidents because I "saw" what was going to happen before it did giving me more time to react. These particular two premonitions I remember quite clearly and happened 10-15 minutes before the event. I have little premonitions all the time. Almost always visual. I see something in my head and then the event happens. Could be some sort of hyper-aware observation or paranormal. Not sure.

That is perhaps the coolest thing I have heard today.

[fleurrochard]

I've had deja vus as well, but mostly for really short moments, nothing longer.

I remember being about three years old - there was a calendar on the wall of my room with dolls on it - and one day the current doll looked out of the calendar and talked to me. (But well, I was about three, so yeah. *shrugs*)

My mother told me that one day she was driving through England with my father (we're from Germany) and they were driving through a small town they had never been to - and suddenly she could tell what was behind the curve of the road. Every curve of the road - as if she had been to this town before.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I remember being about three years old - there was a calendar on the wall of my room with dolls on it - and one day the current doll looked out of the calendar and talked to me. (But well, I was about three, so yeah. *shrugs*)

*blinks* Wow. that would have given me a terror of dolls for *life*.

My mother told me that one day she was driving through England with my father (we're from Germany) and they were driving through a small town they had never been to - and suddenly she could tell what was behind the curve of the road. Every curve of the road - as if she had been to this town before.

*intrigued* That is--wow.

[beeej.livejournal.com]

UFO's: seen twice, both when I was growing up in small town Ohio. On the one occasion, the entire family and a neighbor were witness.

Ghosts: the family house back in Ohio, where we all grew up and Mom still lives, is haunted. Little old lady who died there when Mom was a kid (she remembers the family who lived there then) is still hanging around. Everyone in the family has experienced/seen/heard strange goings-on for as far back as I can remember. She's not scary, she's just *there*. I feel her presence strongly whenever I'm there.

Odd stuff: When I was a kid, I had a recurring nightmare. I'd actually run screaming through the house and try to get out the back door before Mom & Dad would catch me. I was asleep the whole time. I remember the dream vividly, even after all these years, most the oddest thing is the feeling it gave me. Like my body was detached from everything around me. Even the bed that was right under me...it was like I was feeling it from a long distance above it. And some times I still get this feeling. Usually when I'm in bed, on one side or other of sleep, but once in a while it happens when I'm wide awake and sitting at my desk, or on the sofa, or anywhere. I can almost make it happen at will if I concentrate on it. And I have no idea what that's all about, or what good it is. *shrugs*

[seperis.livejournal.com]

You know, that sounds vaguely related to out of body--I've read very very casually about that and wondered sometimes what it was supposed to do. Maybe access something more cerebral that the body interferes with or something?

*mulls*

Every once in a while, and I mean a *while*, I get an extreme feeling of detachment, but usually it's in relation to my environment, where I feel I'm in teh completely wrong place at the wrong time--almost as if I'm not supposed to be there. Actually, funnily, i was telling Madelyn about it the ohter night because it happened while i was in Florida with her for the cruise and had mildly freaked me out.

*mulls more* Food for thought. thank you for this.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I predicted an earthquake a couple of years back - we were driving through NorCal, and suddenly I just said, "There's going to be an earthquake here. Next six months. Big one."

Four months later, there was.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*blink* Okay, that is *awesome*.

[libitina]

I don't take it seriously, but weird weather happens when I travel, usually weirdly good.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing* that is made of win. So *much*.

*still giggling*

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I dream things that come true. More often when I was a child, and sometimes it's weeks or months later when I look around and see the exact circumstances I dreamed, and they're happening. Never anything major - walking down a particular street with a particular person. A movie preview, oddly enough, in the days before the internets made them ubiquitous. Always something that's out of the ordinary enough to be distinct from my normal routine. I keep wishing that I'd dream winning lottery numbers, but so far it hasn't happened.

My mom knows when bad things are happening to her family or friends. She won't have talked to them for weeks and then thinks that she should phone them. Only to find out about a medical crisis or accident or any number of bad things that just happened that day.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Never anything major - walking down a particular street with a particular person. A movie preview, oddly enough, in the days before the internets made them ubiquitous. Always something that's out of the ordinary enough to be distinct from my normal routine. I keep wishing that I'd dream winning lottery numbers, but so far it hasn't happened.

*sighs* You and me both.

I wonder about that, the ordinariness thing. There must be something about it that makes it different, you know?

[wrenlet.livejournal.com]

Deja vu. Constantly during certain periods of my life, certain years of high school and a couple stretches through college, sporadic the rest of the time. And it is the STUPIDEST, MOST MUNDANE CRAP EVER, the polar opposite of a life-changing moment, like knowing that the person across from me is about to sneeze and then a green Saturn with a busted tail-light will drive by and then a bird will crap on the table two over from us. Like that. The longest I've ever had it last was about a ten minute stretch of conversation where I knew exactly what each of four people in the room was about to say... like I could have done the movie-thing and recited it to them? And I sort of wanted to and I was sort of terrified something horrible would happen if I did, which manifested as a weird, bubbly panic feeling in the back of my throat.

My best friend in high school would hear me call her name when I need to talk to her even when I was clear across the school, and vice versa.

And whenever I get a strong, subrational urge to do or not do something, I follow it: the night I insisted on pulling over to wash my windshield, we missed being in the middle of a nasty three-lanes-of-road-shut wreck. We skip the weekly trip to our favorite dance club, and someone gets shot on the sidewalk outside. That sort of thing.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Deja vu. Constantly during certain periods of my life, certain years of high school and a couple stretches through college, sporadic the rest of the time. And it is the STUPIDEST, MOST MUNDANE CRAP EVER, the polar opposite of a life-changing moment, like knowing that the person across from me is about to sneeze and then a green Saturn with a busted tail-light will drive by and then a bird will crap on the table two over from us. Like that.

Okay, now I'm just completely entranced. That's three or *four* of us with mundane deja vu--and at least with me, that weird feeling of not wanting to variate the script (or maybe not sure how? Or just kind of wanting to see how far it will go?)

[torakowalski.livejournal.com]

I used to see ghosts when I was younger, but now not so much. I've seen my grandfather behind me in a mirror in his old home; my cat walking down the hall towards me about a month after she died; and an old lady who I didn't know at my grandmother's nursing home.

I tend to know who's on the other end of the phone before I pick it up (and without the aid of caller ID!).

And finally: we were on holiday in Italy and my great aunt died and I *knew* that she died, the moment that she died, even though nobody could reach us to tell us for another four days.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Oh *wow*. That's--well, since it doesn't scare you, that's very cool.

[raiining.livejournal.com]

Huh, neat post and a lot of people have had really interesting things to add.

I definately do the "no, that didn't work, lets try this" in my dreams often. I often remember my dreams, sometimes two or three distinct dreams in a night, and know I shouldn't be able to remember one REM cycle to the other, but it feels like I do. But lots of my dreams are recurring, and sometimes I'll think "last time this didn't go so well, so lets try this" or I'll think "that really didn't work - the next time I dream this I'm going to do that".

Its helpful in nightmare, because I can usually get away. The most freaky thing is that I'm very often not myself in dreams - I'll play characters and live out whole stories from different POVs. Then again something'll go not right and I'll go back and change it, or become a different character and do it differently.

I've seen a UFO once, and the next day went to the Science Centre to see if it could possibly have been a satellite, and was told there hadn't been any in that area of space. But its far from definite, and I'm much less sure of it now than I used to be.

I don't have a ton of deja vu, but I when I have its been pretty specific. Oral sex was one - I was thinking, 'I wonder what this is like' and then a moment later it was 'oh yes, of course, how could I have forgotten?'

:)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Oral sex was one - I was thinking, 'I wonder what this is like' and then a moment later it was 'oh yes, of course, how could I have forgotten?'

*hysteria*

That is killing me right there. Awesome.

Its helpful in nightmare, because I can usually get away. The most freaky thing is that I'm very often not myself in dreams - I'll play characters and live out whole stories from different POVs. Then again something'll go not right and I'll go back and change it, or become a different character and do it differently.

*mulls* I've changed characters before a few times, but it's always been--required by the pov of the story. *blank* I don't know another way to put that.

Not much, but...

[frog4.livejournal.com]

I was staying at my Grandma E's, sleeping in her guest room, when I heard her footsteps in the hallway, and then the door opened up just a crack, letting in some light, and she said, “(frog), honey, it’s time to get up”. Which made sense, because I knew there was something I needed to get up for. Then I woke up fully, and remembered that the reason I needed to get up and get ready that morning was that we were going to Grandma E's funeral- she’d died a few days earlier, on my 24th birthday.
I don't know if I'd class this as a "ghost" per se, maybe just a really strong lingering spirit?

Also, I've had a few weird dream experiences, some of which I think can be atributed to a condition known as Sleep Paralysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis). The first time I was really aware that it happened, I had no idea what was going on. I knew that I was awake; I could see the ceiling above me; I knew my mother and sister were sleeping in the bunk below (we were traveling in Malaysia- long story); I could hear my heartbeat; but I could not move. At all. It was absolutely terrifying. And then, after what seemed like an eternity, I snapped out of it somehow. It wasn’t until I did some searching on the intarwebs a few weeks later that I figured out what had happened. At the time it happened, I was thinking heart attack or alien abduction. Those literally seemed like the most rational options.

[fan-this.livejournal.com]

I have dream deva ju all the time, but since I tend to lucid dream, it's possible that I'm just working stuff out in my dreams. I also have a few dreams that reoccur (sometimes with different people) that tend to mean certain things will happen to those people.

I still talk to myself a lot, especially while alone in the car. I act out fantasies that I'm a movie star or I'm hanging out with David Hewlett or other random stuff or I'll make up stories. It's really weird. I did it as a kid too and I remember talking to animals too. My mom has video of me talking to our old dog and waiting for her answers before I replied. I was such a weird kid.

My biggest wacky thing is tarot cards. I've been reading for about six years now and after I get a sense of a person, it can be pretty accurate. The funny thing is, I don't necessarily believe they tell the future, just illuminate natural human patterns and stereotypes. And of course, by telling someone something, you ultimately can change the future (as I don't believe in predestination). But when I reading the cards, I get into this kind of head space that's different that meditation or the reading zone or anything else. It's just this sort of gut feeling that lets me know if I'm on track or the interpretation of that card isn't quite right or maybe they aren't telling me enough about the situation to get all the nuance of a card. It's not like getting images in my head, it's that same sort of "something is not right feeling" you get when you feel watched in the dark but no one is there. I don't know, it's weird because I'm skeptical of it, even now, but at the same time, I know that it's more akin to the religious experiences I've had than flipping cards over to play solitaire.

[wrenlet.livejournal.com]

I still talk to myself a lot, especially while alone in the car. I act out fantasies that I'm a movie star or I'm hanging out with David Hewlett or other random stuff or I'll make up stories. It's really weird. I did it as a kid too and I remember talking to animals too. My mom has video of me talking to our old dog and waiting for her answers before I replied. I was such a weird kid.

... do you live in fear of getting "caught" on grocery store security cams doing this? 'Cause I totally do. *facepalm*

[vickita.livejournal.com]

When I was an undergrad, I was living with my mom while I was going to school, and occasionally we had a problem with an obscene phone caller. (This was back before CID.) And somehow, the guy always called when I was home alone. Once he even mentioned *knowing* that I was alone, which weirded me out a bit. Eventually it stopped, and my mom always claimed it was the guy who lived next door, whose wife had, somewhere along the line, kicked him out on his ass. It happened, and then it stopped, and it was no big deal, and I pretty much entirely forgot about it.

MANY YEARS LATER, after I had moved out to the west coast, and then back to Texas, during which time the subject of those phone calls had never arisen or even particularly entered my mind, I was driving home from Austin to OKC for Christmas. Driving for several hours, alone in the car, my mind tends to wander, and I found myself thinking about those calls and wondering, specifically, why The Mom had always been so convinced that the neighbor guy had been the caller. Did she know something she never told me? But then as I got up into OK, a winter storm came swooping in, and I was fighting a snowstorm for the last 70 or 80 miles of the trip, and I got distracted and didn't think about it again.

Next day, sitting at the kitchen table, having breakfast with The Mom, suddenly, from out of nowhere, me TOTALLY NOT THINKING ABOUT IT, she said to me, "Do you know why I always thought [Mr. H] was the one who made those obscene calls?"

::hair stands up on back of neck::

"Um, no, Ma, why?"

And she told me why. (Long story.)

And only then did I tell her how I had been thinking about that very question on my trip north, and she was completely unsurprised. Apparently it had happened before, she and I being on the same wavelength for no explainable reason, and I had never noticed it, and she had never said anything.

No way that was a coincidence, man.

[dine.livejournal.com]

I saw a ghost as a child - it was another little kid, standing on the landing outside my bedroom door in a long gown/nightgown. it said my name a couple times, then kinda vanished slowly. I don't remember ever seeing it again, but the house was old and some odd stuff happened occasionally, so I always assumed it was haunted

I also had a series of weird episodes in the middle of the night as a slightly older kid - I'd be asleep then suddenly not, but was frozen in bed with a very odd harsh staticky noise all over. years later I theorized that it was the TV downstairs in the living room, left running after programming ended for the night (back in the dark ages when everything shut down around 12:30) - though that doesn't explain why I couldn't move

[slrcosmos.livejournal.com]

I have dream related deja vu. I dream about things that then happen a few months later. When I was 10 I dreamed about being in my classroom, with all the chairs against the wall and some other details. A few months later it happened and I remember it being odd because we had never done it before.

I had night terrors as a child and I vaguely remember them. I just remember having to get away from something and according to my mom, all I said during my night terrors was " I didn't do it". Freaked both of my parents out.

All my weird stuff is related to my dreams. I have highly vivid dreams, fantastical movie kind of dreams. I remember a dream where I was a talking bull who had to take lessons on goring matadors.

I've never seen space ships or ghosts but ghosts freak me out, so I guess that's a good thing.

[randommagic.livejournal.com]

Interesting post!

I've had the deja vu thing, and I buy the explanation for it that it's some kind of short circuit in the brain, but only when it's a few seconds. When it gets to the stage of an entire conversation, I don't think that fits anymore. And it's like you said, completely innocuous, random things that seem to mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

When I was about three years old I was playing with a toy by the side of a chair. I remember the room being full of people, and I remember the toy suddenly moving from the floor to behind the chair, as if someone had grabbed it and thrown it. I still get goosebumps when I think about it.

My stepdad is really weird. Loads of things have happened to him, but the freakiest one is that whenever a watch or clock stops around him, it means that someone he knows has died. Every single time.

[mahaliem.livejournal.com]

Ghosts - I thought I felt/saw something when I was pregnant with my son. I attribute it to hormones.


Weird - I once felt an echo of an ache, a memory of the pain from when I was hit in the upper mouth so hard it cracked a tooth - except I then realized that I had never been hit in the upper mouth and had a tooth crack. It makes me wonder if I had a vivid dream that involved that somehow so that it stuck in my memory even though it never happened.


Dreams - A couple of times, when I haven't been able to find something, I've dreamed where it was located. I figured it was just my subconcious. But then my daughter couldn't find something when we were on a trip and that night I dreamed that one of her friends told me not to worry, it was in her suitcase. When I told my daughter that, she said it wasn't. She'd looked. Days later, when we were home and she was unpacking, she found it in her suitcase.

When my daughter was a baby, I dreamed I was holding her in my arms and rocking her (as I often did). Then, in the dream, she stopped breathing. This freaked me out so much that I woke up and ran into her room across the hall to check on her. Somehow a blanket had become wrapped around her head. Not just over her head, but around it. I still don't know how that happened and I'm still not sure if it would've hurt her, but I'm very grateful for that dream.


Angels - In college, I went out with a friend. For some reason, I couldn't buckle my seat belt. I tried and tried (maybe 7? 8? times). My friend, who was driving, couldn't understand my problem and showed me how easy it was by buckling hers. At last, I gave up.

We were in a car accident. Another car hit the passenger side, right where I was sitting. I walked away with some tiny cuts from broken glass. Days later, my friend went to see her totaled car and wondered how I'd survived since there wasn't any passenger side left. If I'd been buckled in, I probably would've been badly hurt, if I'd lived.


Scary - I've woken up twice and didn't know who I was. The second time lasted for long enough for me to start panicking (still much less than a minute, though). Then I remembered that I was my kids' mother. All other memories flowed from that. This is scary because it makes me wonder if my mind and memories are more tenuously connected than they should be.

And it's the season.

[schtroumph-c.livejournal.com]

I can, not often, see things like an imprint on my eyes, you know, like when you looked the sun and when you close your eyes, you see something inside the lid?

Once, I was playing with my sister, she looked some cards and I tried to guess what it is. I didn't even do it seriously, but for one of them, I saw the jack of diamond 'imprinted' on the back of the card she was holding. It was the only card I guessed right.

When I was little, I went to the sea with my cousins and my father. I have the memories of me and my cousin playing on he sand, and me and another cousin in my father's arms later. I fell, or a wave came up or something, but for a moment, I was underwater. I even remember, even today, how the sky and my dad looked from under the water. When I said years later that I still remembered that, I was told that I never went to the water, always stayed on the sand. It's my sister who fell under the water.

Once, I was playing with a friend, but I kept getting up because something was bothering me in my thigh, like something poking it, but we couldn't see what. After some hours, she get up, and find that she was sitting on a nail.

I like walking the nights, it's safe enough to do it. But one night, I had some difficulty to breath, and thought to go home when it stopped. My brother told me the morning after that when I was out, he had one of his anxiety crisis, difficulty to breath, and it stopped soon after.

I only hope that when my sister will give birth, she'll keep the pain, thank you.

A few days ago, I was cleaning, and my daydream (do you watch Scrubs? I sometimes do the same thing than JD) were interrupted by a MSN windows opening up, still in my thoughts, with my sister's handle. I stopped everything and go see the laptop, and she was trying to contact me on MSN.

My grandmother had an operation and was on a wheelchair. But she was supposed to walk, or at least leave the chair since a while but she didn't even try. A few days before a birthday, I told my mother I dreamed of the party, and my grandmother was walking in it. The day of the event, she was on a this thing to help walking/staying upright. English is not my first language, and I don't even know the word in French.

One funny was when I was walking from sport in school (this lessons happened at 20 minutes of walk from the school, if we were good, we could lose 30 minutes to go there) and I could smell a dish I really liked and I really wanted to eat that. I come home and surprise! It was the meal I wanted.

I know I took it from my mother. One of the example, she dreamed that my dad would leave her for a blonde. She fell ill years later, cancer, and when she bought a wig, we had to point her that she took a blonde wig.

In a not cool way, I don't know if she knew exactly what it meant, but her last stay in the hospital, she called me, asked to use a pendulum, to know when she'll be leaving the hospital. I found between 10 and 15 days. I didn't see it before a month. I thought I was wrong and in denial until I count the days between the call and the end. She died 13 days after the phone call.

I dreamed of fire balls falling from the sky and burning everything around two weeks before the worst drought France ever knew.

I still can't manage to guess the numbers of the lotto when they show the balls with them on TV. Years I play that, and I'm lucky if I can have one of them good.

Re: And it's the season.

[schtroumph-c.livejournal.com]

And I must not forget Casper. Sometimes, things disappear in the house. We always joked about the little peoples from this cartoon, with the turtle, they lived inside the walls or Casper the ghost. We said it was them. But once, something fell from the window, I go out to look for it, and nothing. I thought, maybe it wasn't near the window, misplaced it somewhere else, and I only thought it fell. I searched, found nothing and I say out loud, jokingly, 'come on Casper, give it back!'. The sound of something falling, and the object was just in plain sight outside. Sometimes it still work, asking something to Casper.

My mother had money like that. She didn't have coins anymore for the fair, asked for help, one 'ding' and a coin was on the ground. Useful.

[swordage]

Deja vu for brief flashes - never something said, never an action, just an image for a fraction of a moment.

A poltergeist. I strongly believe poltergeists are caused by traumatized children, particularly as they hit puberty, and it - yeah. No one ever believes me, and it wasn't especially dramatic, but that part of the house never did warm up until that poor boy got away from his stepfather.

I used to hear people calling my name, when I was very terribly depressed. And for a while I would have conversations with god knows what as I fell asleep. We once figured out how vampires could be feasible from a biological standpoint - they were wonderful conversationalists, and I miss them sometimes.

I've stolen other people's, well, whatever - I don't believe in psychic stuff, I really don't, but my sister has premonitions and I stole that for a while, and I knew someone who was really painfully empathic and got that for a while, and now I'm in a neutral zone and have nothing. Which is nice, but a little sad too.

Peculiarly, I seriously don't believe in this stuff, and yet I accept it as a normal part of life. Machines have personalities, people do some strange things, stuff happens that doesn't have a logical explanations. But I refuse to believe in it unless I see proof.

[elucreh.livejournal.com]

The deja vu from dreams happens to me a lot...something completely ordinary--a friend says something while wearing a certain outfit in certain tones of voice and I know I've experienced it before.

I rarely have controllable dreams, but I do have one vivid one that restarts until I do it right. I have to defeat a villain. *G* Eventually I get to the point where I'm all, wait, this is a dream, and I've dreamed it before, and it's that one. (I always end by coming up on people who all LOOK like the villain...but most of them are completely innocent and if I kill them it starts the dream over again. It's always the furthest to the left. I don't know why.) The villain changes, and who I'm trying to "solve the mystery" with changes (sometimes in the dream, I turn around and instead of seeing, say, Shaggy and Velma, I see Mary Ann, Kristy and Claudia from the BSC, but apparently it's perfectly normal for my companions to wander off and be replaced by different companions in my dream-head) but I'm always trying to defeat someone, and that's always their last attempt at beating me.

[montanaharper]

I've done the "I'm creeped out and I don't know why" thing a half dozen times in my life, only to find out later that someone died violently on that spot or something similar. Like when I went to help my aunt move into her new condo and I couldn't stand to be inside it for more than a couple of minutes at a time because it made my skin crawl. Did some research, and it turns out the people who'd lived there previously had been arrested for brutally abusing (sexually and otherwise) their kids and foster kids. *shudder*

[sleepwalkerfish.livejournal.com]

Very interesting post. It makes me feel a little nostalgic for all those things - it seems that I've had a lot more vivid perception and I was much more perceptive as a teenager and in my early twenties - I used to experience sleep paralysis many times, for example, or a dream-like state where I felt like I was floating under the ceiling and seeing the room from above. Even my dreams were a lot more vivid then.
I don't feel or experience anything like that since my mother died ten years ago. It's like something closed in me that I can't open ever since then and... that's the thing that makes me feel most uncomfortable.
But I talk to myself all the time. I don't even find that weird. Sometimes in English, which isn't my mother language.

The six things I don't usually admit to either:

[windbringer1.livejournal.com]

1. I used to talk to myself a lot. I still do, but most of teh conversations I'd carry on in my head, because one looks a lot less insane that way. But there's this point in my life where I think I used to have someone talking back to me.

Yes. I have this, sometimes. Often it is coupled with a weird somatic disconnect-thing. Like I'll be walking down the stairs, having a little talk with myself in my head and suddenly whoosh, strange feeling of where-am-i-what-am-i-doing-what-is-this-about-isthismybody-isthisreal? It's not *exactly* like being outside myself, because I can't see myself, and yet I'll end up feeling *removed*. Also strangely, this rarely frightens me.

2. I also have had the deja vu thing as you describe it (although not the dreams), and yes you're right somehow it's always perfectly innocuous. I remember one time sitting in my parent's car, talking with my dad, and knowing EXACTLY what he would say for the next five minutes.

3. In college, a friend and I were meditating together, and it really jived. For the rest of the day afterwards, he and I were on the exact same wavelength and I always knew where he was. I got him the exact correct drink without him having to ask; I knew when he was visiting across the hall without being told etc. The phenomenon had not occurred before and could no be duplicated since.

4. This is going to sound hokey probably (but I'm Pagan, so maybe I have license? Anyway). Once in college, freshman year, I was going through a tough time. I was coming out, and I actually struggled with that for a while because I grew up in a conservative area and well, long story. Suffice to say, teenage existenstial angst. I was walking home from the library around midnight, thinking, and I stopped to look up at the sky. I was wondering whether my life could get anymore confusing and what this whole lesbian thing was all about and what it made me and what I should do. I stopped to breathe, I looked up, and all of a sudden I just got this incredible wave of...*love*. The you-are-worth-it, you-are-part-and-parcel-of-the-universe and I *love* you, you're my child, thing.

I knew if the Lady felt like I was that OK, then I must be going to make it somehow; I felt tons better. Since then, whenever I *really* need it, an echo of that feeling will come back.
4.5. I have clear, absolutely crystal memories from being about one or two or three years old. You know, from before you're supposed to be able to have them.

5. It's soft and warm and bright and I'm absolutely certain, sure, there's no doubt that everything is okay, that it will be, and I---I don't want to just feel it. I want to share it. I wnat to do things, like clean a house or write a novel or crochet a blanket, talk to a friend and tell them what I am absolutely certain that all this time they have needed to hear, buy gifts and go running, make sure that this second isn't wasted.
That's how I felt the time I smoked pot. I wanted to like proclaim the awesomeness of the world and write poetry.

6. Dream: I had a dream once, I was a soldier in some sort of bronze-age type outfit. We were behind enemy lines, losing badly. The only other person with me was a soldier-woman whom I felt like I knew, knew like a sister or a lover. I have no clear conception of my own gender in this dream (which is weird for me), but she and I were tied somehow. In the dream I came up with a plan for us to get back to safety. We were running, we were going to make it out. And she got shot. I caught her, she was bleeding out everywhere, *dying*. In the dream, I *lost it*. In the real world, I woke up sitting upright, crying and shaking, wailing about how it was all my fault and how I was so sorry myfaultmyfaultmyfault godno. Freaked my roomate right out.

A friend of mine maintains that this is a past life thing, which I'm not sure I buy. And yet I feel like a part of me is *looking* for that woman, all the time, behind the eyes of the people I meet. I'm kind of simultaneously excited and *fucking terrified* that one day I will meet someone and *recognize the spirit looking back*.

Re: The six things I don't usually admit to either:

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

My first memory is of going to visit my father in the hospital. My mother was carrying me, and we went into his room - I can visualize it clearly even now, especially the florescent light, because that was unusual. I described it to my mother once, and she said it was when he was getting treated for Hodgkin's Disease. I was 18 months old.

I also remember my Uncle Joe's funeral from when I was two. Yellow walls, the casket, the rows of chairs at the funeral home, my relatives.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Huh. Yours truly is one of the people who *nothing* happens to - the creaking is just the wind, shadows flicker and I'm fascinated by the way the trees and moonlight and distant streetlights are combining to make that particular effect. (I have very good hearing and ridiculously good night vision - my pupils don't close down so in most photos I look vacant or stoned, and overly bright indoor lights make me wince)

On the other hand, I do have that *fun* condition known as sleep paralysis, which is what's reckoned to be the source of alien abduction experiences and succubi tales. I got it mostly as a child, but combine it with often being on the edge of waking meant that all the noises from downstairs filtering in meant it was bloody scary. Was a bloody relief when I saw a program on it in my mid-teens and went 'that symptom... that symptom... yup...' and then got vaguely peeved that my imagination thought I was just having a bad dream.

[tex.livejournal.com]

Its funny that you mentioned vertigo and euphoria when you have a moment of deja vu - that happens to me, too. It feels fucking fantastic, for a few seconds.

I very definitely talk to myself. Or rather, I have conversations with people who aren't there. How else am I going to talk to Joe Flanigan??

Okay, I'll shut up now. *g*