My dreams tell the future
Monday 26th October 2009
What's the first thing you do when you wake up? Hit the snooze on your alarm?
I look at the notebook on my bedside table, to see what happened last night. Or, more importantly, to learn what will happen. Because I dream the future.
I know what you're thinking. 'Yeah right!'
I'd have thought exactly the same thing once, but then when I was 21, I'd dreamed I was holding a teenage girl in my arms as she died.
I'd thought it was just a nightmare until the next day when I'd heard tyres screech outside. I'd run out and seen the very same girl lying on the road in a pool of blood. She'd died in my arms.
I hadn't told a soul. And when I'd had more dreams that came true — rail crashes, police catching drug dealers — I'd just passed them off as weird coincidences.
Thirteen years passed and I got married, had kids and got divorced without a clue I was having premonitions
Until one night in 1985 when my eyes had shot open in the early hours and I'd seen my friend, Alan Whitney, sitting on my bed. He'd drowned a year earlier, so I'd let out a deafening yell.
'Look after the kids for me,' he'd said.
'Of–of course,' I'd stuttered, terrified.
Then he was gone.
After that, the visions had happened more and more. In 1987, I'd married Bessie, 40, and she was in the room when her grandma had appeared to me. That's when, I'd started my
dream diary.
When I told my friends there were raised eyebrows. But all that stopped when the things
I said came true.
By the time I was 37, I was helping the police to solve crimes. I can't discuss the ins and outs, but there are lots of people behind bars thanks to me. Even so, many people were still sceptical.
So, in 2001, I contacted Professor Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona, an expert in claims of psychic ability. He said he'd put me through a series of brain tests.
Would I finally find out why my brain does this?
The tests were being filmed for research purposes, so I stood in front of the camera as 32 electrodes and wires were attached to my head. Dr Schwartz had arranged to take me somewhere the next day and I had to try to dream of it.
Despite the electrodes, I slept like a baby and the next morning I woke up to see I'd written: Holes, holes, lots of holes.
'The place we'd chosen was the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum,' Dr Schwartz gasped. 'It has lots of caves, or holes.'
'So I got it right?' I said.
'It seems so,' he replied. 'Your brain wave tests showed activity similar to when an epileptic has a seizure.'
Apparently that's what they'd expected.
A month on, I was glued to the telly as the twin towers in New York crumbled in the terrorist attack. I'd dreamed about it for years, but never been able to do anything to stop it.
Then last December, I dreamed about the spirit of a little girl. 'Be careful, you're going to fall,' she said. 'Don't go to hospital.'
Four days on I had to get some boxes out of the loft. I climbed up the ladder and passed them down to my children, Danielle, 13, and Gerry, 9.
'I dreamed I was going to fall,' I said. 'Move the boxes away from the ladder, just in case.'
Crack! Everything went black and when I opened my eyes, Bessie and the kids were crouched round.
'We've got to get you to hospital,' Bessie said.
'No,' I insisted. 'Remember my dream.'
My head throbbed, but I had this overwhelming feeling that if I went to hospital I'd never come out again. I was right.
The following week I found out someone had died there from MRSA.
'That could've been you,' Bessie gasped.
'My dream saved my life,' I said, shivering.
I don't know why I dream the future, but I doubt if I'm the only one.
So the next time you have a vivid dream, write it down. It might just predict the future.
Premonition Man is on Sky Real Lives, channel 243 and in HD on channel 278, Friday 16 October at 11pm