Coincidence or Precognition?

The boy had been drifting out into the current alone and unnoticed.  He attracted the attention of two fishermen by loudly calling out “Mommy!” 

He had not remained in the boat as his mother prayed he would, he probably would have been drowned of rescued. 

In another authenticated case, an astronomy teacher was taking a nap when he dreamed he saw his father dressed in tan shirt and tan trousers with brown suspenders.  The dream was so real that he even observed the detail of a pen and pencil projecting from a shirt pocket. 

The sound of the doorbell woke him up.  A messenger was at the door with a telegram informing him that his father died of a heart attack from another city. 

When he attended the funeral, the teacher asked his mother to describe the clothes that his father had worn when he died.  They were identical to those seen in the dream. 

Not all premonitions are prescient.  Some are identified with events which took place perhaps years before.  One which was repeated to the ASPR is particularly noteworthy because it was accepted as evidence in a court of law. 

A man named Chaflin, father of four boys, was killed in an accident.  He left a will bequeathing his estate to one of his sons.  The other three did not contest the will and it was probated in court. 

More than four years later, James P Chaflin, one of the three sons who had been disinherited, had a dream in which their father told him that he had made a later will which would be found in his overcoat pocket. 

James was at first inclined to dismiss the dream as of no significance.  When the premonition persisted, he rummaged through the attic and found an old overcoat that had belonged to his father. 

There was no will in the coat, but in the lining of a torn pocket was a short note in his father’s handwriting: “Read 27th chapter Genesis in my daddy’s Bible.” 

James summoned several friends for witnesses before he took the old family Bible from the bookshelf.  In the 27th chapter of Genesis he found the later will in which the estate was divided equally among the four sons.  The will was taken to court, accepted as genuine and the Chaflin estate was apportioned accordingly. 

Sincere students and investigators point out that one major obstacle to solving the mystery of precognition is to convince science that it is a genuine phenomenon meriting more than skepticism.  In this, at least, they are making some progress.  In the words of psychologist Arthur Bachrach of Arizona State University, “Though there’s not full acceptance, there is more of a willingness to wait and see.”