Musings about Strange Coincidences
Musings about Strange Coincidences
Three very strange coincidences happened to me over the holiday weekend. All three were quite remarkable.
Past experience has taught me to pay attention to such things. Throughout my life, every few months I experience incidents ranging from striking “coincidences” to mild flashes of – well, let’s just call them “flashes” and leave it at that for the moment. Most of these incidents probably do have mundane explanations. But some can’t be explained away so easily. All three of this weekend’s incidents fall into the former category, not the latter, but they’re damned interesting just the same. Here they are:
One
On Friday morning I checked up on the comet ISON, wanting to see if it had survived its passage around the sun. I’m curious about ISON because it plays a role in my post-apocalyptic/zombie novel A Journal of the Crazy Year (a fact I’ve been promoting relentlessly to anyone who’ll listen). So imagine my astonishment to read a headline on CNN proclaiming ISON to be “The Zombie Comet.” What??? As it turns out, it got that unofficial name because scientists had pronounced the comet dead on the previous day – and then a large piece of it emerged from behind the sun anyway, in apparent defiance of that pronouncement. (On Monday it was declared dead again, by the way, after the surviving chunk melted away). So the meaning of the headline really didn’t reflect ISON’s role in the novel. But still – “The Zombie Comet?” REALLY? Yes, really. In my novel, ISON and an entirely fictional comet that comes along after it are suspected (by some) of having a connection to the world-wide pandemic at the heart of the story. So to me, ISON already was the “Zombie Comet” and had been so for many months.
Two
That same day (the Friday after Thanksgiving) I was doing some research on Scottish customs, in preparation for a novel in which one of the key characters will be of Scottish descent. The next to last article I read contained a reference to Glasgow. The last thing I looked up was a discussion about Scottish drinking toasts. That done, with visions of happy Glasgow pub patrons dancing in my head, I left the page and pulled up CNN.com to check the news. Imagine my surprise to find this headline staring at me from the top of the page: “Helicopter crashes into pub. ‘It’s terrible here in Glasgow,’ lawmaker tweets.” For the second time that day, I found myself gaping at a computer screen in astonishment.
Three
I had a dream two nights ago about someone who was once very dear to me, but whom I haven’t seen in many years. The circumstances of the dream made me wonder if that person is OK. I then contacted a mutual acquaintance and learned that the person in question is now recuperating from major surgery.
I’ve learned to pay attention to such coincidences over the years. In particular, I’ve found that dreams often can be very “coincidental.” A few years ago I had a dream about a friend whom I had not seen in about a decade. Because of the dream, I gave my friend a call (with whom I had not spoken in some time) and learned he was going to be in a particular city traveling on business. Incredibly, I was also about to make a trip, and would be in that very same city on the very same day. At the time, the two of us lived hundreds of miles apart, and our homes were hundreds of miles from the city in question. As a result of contacting him (which I did entirely because of the dream) we got to see each other for the first time in years. We rekindled our friendship and have kept in contact since.
I’m tempted to say that remarkable coincidences like these happen to me “all the time.” They don’t. But when they do happen, they can be quite memorable. On occasion they’re more than that. They’re downright chilling.
One day several years ago, I stumbled out of bed and, with my sleepy eyes half open, plodded down the driveway to get the morning paper. My groggy mind was still filled with images of the dream I’d been having just before the alarm had awakened me. The dream involved a helicopter crash. In fact, the last image that appeared in my dream, just before the alarm went off, was the front page of a newspaper with a headline proclaiming the crash, below which was a picture of the downed chopper.
With this image still on my mental computer screen, I bent down and picked up the newspaper. Focusing on it, I saw that across the top was a headline proclaiming a helicopter crash. Below the headline was a picture of the downed chopper. It seems that the night before, a medical helicopter had gone down hard in an emergency landing, and only the quick actions of the pilot had saved everyone from disaster.
But wait. There’s more. About two hours later, shortly after I arrived at work, I got a call from an acquaintance of mine who lived on the opposite coast. She’d heard something about a chopper crash in my city, and wanted to know if I knew anything about it. Boy, did I! The nature of her curiosity? Her former husband was employed as a medical helicopter pilot, and she was worried the crash might have involved his chopper. Guess what? It had. It was his bird that had gone down – and his quick actions that had saved everyone. I assured her he was OK.
But wait. There’s still more. While she had me on the phone, she was curious to know if I was acquainted with a certain person who had just applied for a job at her place of business (I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that at the time, the three of us were working in the same industry, but we lived in different cities). Oh, yes, I knew the person applying for the job at her company. He was a good friend of mine, and had worked with me in the same capacity. I gave him a stellar reference, and he later landed the job. He still works there today (and we remain good friends).
It’s all quite remarkable. But these strange little coincidences and psychic flashes – if that’s what they are – usually are of no practical value. I have found no way to distinguish, in advance, between a thought or a dream that may have precognitive value and one that doesn’t. The only way to tell, at least for me, is after the fact. However, twice in my life such “flashes” have indeed proved useful in advance. On both occasions, I suddenly had a feeling that the vehicle driving in the lane directly to my right was about to have a blowout. On both occasions, I dropped back. And on both occasions, the vehicle in question immediately did experience a blowout, and veered into the spot I had just vacated. On one of the two occasions, the car veered so violently that it continued on across the lane (where my car had been), smacked the guard rail, spun out, and wrecked. I had pulled far enough back to avoid being hit, and subsequently was able to stop and render assistance (the driver was OK).
But, yes, to the skeptics I will admit that there have been at least two other occasions when I pulled back for similar reasons, only to watch the vehicle I was worried about sail serenely onward, with no blowout. This brings me back to my point. If there is such a thing as a “psychic flash,” how do you recognize it as such in time to act on it? How do you distinguish it from all the other random thoughts and images that are always flitting about the brain?
I don’t know. But such things have happened to me often enough that it’s led me to do some research over the years. I’ve learned that many millions of people experience such flashes and such “feelings” about people they know. For a handful of them, it happens quite often. For some, the experiences are far more vivid and dramatic than anything that’s happened to me personally. One of the definitive books on precognitive or extra-sensory communication is called “Phantasms of the Living,” and was written by researcher and psychologist Edmund Gurney all the way back in the 19th century. In fact, such experiences seem to be much more common to the human experience than ghost stories, which get more press. My personal belief? Not all such experiences can be explained away as coincidental or imaginary. Beyond that, I have no answers, but I do have this observation: the human spirit is far more complicated, and far more powerful, than current science acknowledges.
If you’re reading this and have had similar experiences, please drop me a line. I may collect them all into a book someday.
Forrest Carr
Writer and recovering journalist
Forrestcarr.com
forrescarr99@gmail.com
Three very strange coincidences happened to me over the holiday weekend. All three were quite remarkable.
Past experience has taught me to pay attention to such things. Throughout my life, every few months I experience incidents ranging from striking “coincidences” to mild flashes of – well, let’s just call them “flashes” and leave it at that for the moment. Most of these incidents probably do have mundane explanations. But some can’t be explained away so easily. All three of this weekend’s incidents fall into the former category, not the latter, but they’re damned interesting just the same. Here they are:
One
On Friday morning I checked up on the comet ISON, wanting to see if it had survived its passage around the sun. I’m curious about ISON because it plays a role in my post-apocalyptic/zombie novel A Journal of the Crazy Year (a fact I’ve been promoting relentlessly to anyone who’ll listen). So imagine my astonishment to read a headline on CNN proclaiming ISON to be “The Zombie Comet.” What??? As it turns out, it got that unofficial name because scientists had pronounced the comet dead on the previous day – and then a large piece of it emerged from behind the sun anyway, in apparent defiance of that pronouncement. (On Monday it was declared dead again, by the way, after the surviving chunk melted away). So the meaning of the headline really didn’t reflect ISON’s role in the novel. But still – “The Zombie Comet?” REALLY? Yes, really. In my novel, ISON and an entirely fictional comet that comes along after it are suspected (by some) of having a connection to the world-wide pandemic at the heart of the story. So to me, ISON already was the “Zombie Comet” and had been so for many months.
Two
That same day (the Friday after Thanksgiving) I was doing some research on Scottish customs, in preparation for a novel in which one of the key characters will be of Scottish descent. The next to last article I read contained a reference to Glasgow. The last thing I looked up was a discussion about Scottish drinking toasts. That done, with visions of happy Glasgow pub patrons dancing in my head, I left the page and pulled up CNN.com to check the news. Imagine my surprise to find this headline staring at me from the top of the page: “Helicopter crashes into pub. ‘It’s terrible here in Glasgow,’ lawmaker tweets.” For the second time that day, I found myself gaping at a computer screen in astonishment.
Three
I had a dream two nights ago about someone who was once very dear to me, but whom I haven’t seen in many years. The circumstances of the dream made me wonder if that person is OK. I then contacted a mutual acquaintance and learned that the person in question is now recuperating from major surgery.
I’ve learned to pay attention to such coincidences over the years. In particular, I’ve found that dreams often can be very “coincidental.” A few years ago I had a dream about a friend whom I had not seen in about a decade. Because of the dream, I gave my friend a call (with whom I had not spoken in some time) and learned he was going to be in a particular city traveling on business. Incredibly, I was also about to make a trip, and would be in that very same city on the very same day. At the time, the two of us lived hundreds of miles apart, and our homes were hundreds of miles from the city in question. As a result of contacting him (which I did entirely because of the dream) we got to see each other for the first time in years. We rekindled our friendship and have kept in contact since.
I’m tempted to say that remarkable coincidences like these happen to me “all the time.” They don’t. But when they do happen, they can be quite memorable. On occasion they’re more than that. They’re downright chilling.
One day several years ago, I stumbled out of bed and, with my sleepy eyes half open, plodded down the driveway to get the morning paper. My groggy mind was still filled with images of the dream I’d been having just before the alarm had awakened me. The dream involved a helicopter crash. In fact, the last image that appeared in my dream, just before the alarm went off, was the front page of a newspaper with a headline proclaiming the crash, below which was a picture of the downed chopper.
With this image still on my mental computer screen, I bent down and picked up the newspaper. Focusing on it, I saw that across the top was a headline proclaiming a helicopter crash. Below the headline was a picture of the downed chopper. It seems that the night before, a medical helicopter had gone down hard in an emergency landing, and only the quick actions of the pilot had saved everyone from disaster.
But wait. There’s more. About two hours later, shortly after I arrived at work, I got a call from an acquaintance of mine who lived on the opposite coast. She’d heard something about a chopper crash in my city, and wanted to know if I knew anything about it. Boy, did I! The nature of her curiosity? Her former husband was employed as a medical helicopter pilot, and she was worried the crash might have involved his chopper. Guess what? It had. It was his bird that had gone down – and his quick actions that had saved everyone. I assured her he was OK.
But wait. There’s still more. While she had me on the phone, she was curious to know if I was acquainted with a certain person who had just applied for a job at her place of business (I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that at the time, the three of us were working in the same industry, but we lived in different cities). Oh, yes, I knew the person applying for the job at her company. He was a good friend of mine, and had worked with me in the same capacity. I gave him a stellar reference, and he later landed the job. He still works there today (and we remain good friends).
It’s all quite remarkable. But these strange little coincidences and psychic flashes – if that’s what they are – usually are of no practical value. I have found no way to distinguish, in advance, between a thought or a dream that may have precognitive value and one that doesn’t. The only way to tell, at least for me, is after the fact. However, twice in my life such “flashes” have indeed proved useful in advance. On both occasions, I suddenly had a feeling that the vehicle driving in the lane directly to my right was about to have a blowout. On both occasions, I dropped back. And on both occasions, the vehicle in question immediately did experience a blowout, and veered into the spot I had just vacated. On one of the two occasions, the car veered so violently that it continued on across the lane (where my car had been), smacked the guard rail, spun out, and wrecked. I had pulled far enough back to avoid being hit, and subsequently was able to stop and render assistance (the driver was OK).
But, yes, to the skeptics I will admit that there have been at least two other occasions when I pulled back for similar reasons, only to watch the vehicle I was worried about sail serenely onward, with no blowout. This brings me back to my point. If there is such a thing as a “psychic flash,” how do you recognize it as such in time to act on it? How do you distinguish it from all the other random thoughts and images that are always flitting about the brain?
I don’t know. But such things have happened to me often enough that it’s led me to do some research over the years. I’ve learned that many millions of people experience such flashes and such “feelings” about people they know. For a handful of them, it happens quite often. For some, the experiences are far more vivid and dramatic than anything that’s happened to me personally. One of the definitive books on precognitive or extra-sensory communication is called “Phantasms of the Living,” and was written by researcher and psychologist Edmund Gurney all the way back in the 19th century. In fact, such experiences seem to be much more common to the human experience than ghost stories, which get more press. My personal belief? Not all such experiences can be explained away as coincidental or imaginary. Beyond that, I have no answers, but I do have this observation: the human spirit is far more complicated, and far more powerful, than current science acknowledges.
If you’re reading this and have had similar experiences, please drop me a line. I may collect them all into a book someday.
Forrest Carr
Writer and recovering journalist
Forrestcarr.com
forrescarr99@gmail.com
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