Over several years the slag heap had built up to a height of around eighty feet and covered a vast area of around ten acres and was toppling on the hillside right above a primary school. In October 1966, several days of torrential rain had poured down on the normally-wet valleys in Wales. Then on coal tip number seven up in the mountain where at the time the sun was shining, around 0910am the slag heap began to slide.

The coal workers who witnessed the movement of the slag were unable to telephone down to the villagers below who were still shrouded in fog because someone had stolen the telephone line. Even had they called to warn those in the village below, they would only have had around 45 seconds to get the hell out of there as once the water-saturated debris began to move, it gained momentum at such a speed there would not have been time to get clear of the danger.

The heap of coal and debris fell onto the village covering twenty terraced homes and a primary school. In total 144 people died that morning – 117 of them were primary school children aged between seven and ten. The day after the disaster the village was overwhelmed with embalmers, police, ambulance staff, rescuers, volunteers, media and amongst them all was a psychiatrist called John Barker.

He asked several people if anybody had dreamed the disaster in a precognitive kind of way. In total over sixty people had a premonition of the disaster including the parents of one child who perished in the disaster itself. They had dreamed that there was no school there as something black had covered it. Another dreamed of a rectangular room with children trying to climb over some wooden desks.

Critics would argue that as eighty per cent of our dreams focus on the negative side of events just dreaming of something black and someone trapped may well be a common dream we all have at one time or another whether a disaster looms or not.

Dreams speak to us in the language of images and symbols.  The psyche dreams in picture language because pictures tell stories that, if put into narrative form, would fill volumes.  Dreams can be interpreted on three different levels:

The Personal Unconscious

Dreams pick up the literal content of your day.  We dream about incidents from the past or current problems, usually about incidents that caused some tension.  Wish- fulfillment dreams fall into this category.

The Collective Unconscious

There are patterns of behavior and experience that have been recounted in fairy tales and folklore throughout the ages.  These universal patterns of human experience can be found in common dream themes that turn up throughout human history.

World Unconscious

This level includes a sense of connectedness to everything in the world.

Recurring dreams signal that the psyche is trying to get a message across.  Like someone tugging, on a shirtsleeve, a recurring dream tries to get our attention by presenting us with the same theme over and over.  If a dream repeats, there’s bound to be something of tremendous value in it. 

Dreams speak indirectly in poetic metaphors and symbols.  You need to think symbolically to figure out what the images mean.  No expert knows better than you what your dreams mean.  However, don’t be too literal about the translation.

How do you know you’ve made the right interpretation?  You get a tingle, a sense of perfect fit.

Source:  Psychotherapist Stephen Aizenstat, PhD, president of the Pacifica Graduate Institute in CA

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This experience happened nearly fifteen years ago. However, I remember it like it was yesterday. The situation began when my live-in boyfriend presented me with a beautiful 3 carat Marquise diamond ring with an assortment of ten side stones. Somehow after only a few months of casual wear, I lost the main diamond.

I was frantic and spent the next ten days and nights searching my entire split level loft apartment looking for this lost stone. Desperate, I looked and looked. You name it, I looked there. I ignored everything else even forgetting to feed my cats in the chaos. It became something of an obsession or a challenge akin to the proverbial needle in a haystack. I was determined to locate this missing main stone even if it took my sanity.

Alas, I could never locate it. On top of which, I had irritated my boyfriend to the point that he wished he had never given me the gift. What was I to do? I couldn’t stop searching; I knew it had to be there somewhere. After ten days of this hell bent searching, I decided to forget it. The place was in disarray and I was extremely irritated based on my failure in the finding process.

Finally, I admitted that recovering my lost diamond was not worth losing my sanity so I grudgingly pulled out my vacuum cleaner and thoroughly vacuumed the entire living space both upstairs and down. I went so far as to get on my hands and knees making certain to vacuum those hard to reach areas under major appliances such as the refrigerator and stove. I did it to prevent myself from ever again entertaining that urge to search. I was over it.

That night I went to sleep and had the most bizarre dream. In my dream I awoke from having a dream. Weird, I agree. In my dream based on the other dream, I ran downstairs and looked under the refrigerator finding nothing, Immediately following the looking, I began vacuuming. Now this dream was somewhat of a replay. I ran downstairs into the kitchen got on my hands and knees and looked underneath the refrigerator. Guess what I saw. Of course, it was my diamond I had spent more than a week looking for. Now, sometimes dreams don’t make a lot of sense and this is the part that fits the description. For some strange reason, after finding my diamond I got up and cut open my vacuum cleaner bag and began sifting threw the dirt. Next, I had a variety of strange problematic dream episodes before drifting off into a deep sleep. Somehow, while sleeping I told myself to remember the dream when I awoke so I could go and check the downstairs in a conscious state.

As soon as I woke up, I recalled the mental memo I had made to myself. Told my boyfriend about the dream hitting only the highlights. He suggested I go downstairs and look. After all he reminded me I had spent 10 days looking what is another five minutes? I declined the invitation and told him I had vacuumed everywhere to prevent the urge to search and wasn’t going to look. Finally, curiosity got the better of me and I ran downstairs got on my hands and knees and looked underneath the refrigerator. What did I find? My diamond just like in the dream of a dream but this time it was reality. I had found my diamond! What the hell? To this day, I can’t imagine how I had a dream of a dream and then had the same event actually come true. Amazing! I still have the ring to this day along with the diamond main stone although the boyfriend is many times removed. I guess diamonds are forever! But boyfriends are not.