Dreams of Tomorrow, Dreams of the Past
On this All Hallow’s Eve, I would like to share what, for me, has been the spookiest incident of my life. I believe that I had a precognitive dream of 9/11. Now, many people claim they dreamed this the day before, or woke up that morning with a feeling of dread. However, I had this dream a full eighteen years before the event. That’s right… when I was twelve, I had a dream so clear, so detailed, so startling, that I wrote it down, and it stuck with me for decades. However, I did not realize that it was a 9/11 dream until months after the event.
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The dream begins with me starting a new job in a new office. It is the very beginning of my first workday. I am sitting at my desk, setting out a variety of office supplies: blotter, stapler, tape dispenser, putting pens in a pen holder. I am facing a window, and I can look out the window to see a vast cityscape spread out before me.
(Note that at this point in my life, age twelve, I had never been in an office or spent much time in a big city).
Suddenly there is something that seems to be an earthquake. The building jumps around, there is a flash, a crash. The office begins filling with smoke; sparks are shooting out of the ceiling and walls. People are running around the office, screaming. I decide it is time to evacuate, and walk to the exit.
The next scene takes place in the lobby. There is shattered glass all around, and people are running and screaming. I am walking through the lobby towards the exit, when I realize that I have left my briefcase at my desk. I am about to turn around and go back for it, when I see a woman standing in the middle of the lobby, staring at me. In the chaos, she is perfectly calm; a middle-aged blonde woman. She is staring at me intently. Hesitating, I walk up to her. She looks at me as if she knows me, but I do not recognize her.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello,” she says, nodding.
“I was just about to go back to my desk for my briefcase,” I tell her.
“All right,” she says. She sounds sad; a disappointed look comes across her face.
I turn to go, but then a realization strikes me. I turn back to the woman. “If I go back to my desk, I’ll never make it out, will I?”
“That’s right,” she says, nodding.
“Well, all right, then,” I tell her, “in that case, I guess I’ll just leave.”
“All right, then,” she says, smiling now.
“I’ll see you later.”
“Yes,” she says, staring at me intently, “I will see you later.”
I walk past her out the doors of the lobby and out onto the street. I continue walking down the street, away from the building. The point-of-view of the dream switches to third-person
(something that never happened before or since in my dreams) and I see myself walking away from the building, with the building visible behind me. There are flashes of light and smoke coming out of the building. Then, suddenly, there is one tremendous flash, and the building disappears.
I continue walking. Now I realize that it is still dark; I find it odd that it is still dark at eleven AM.
(Only at this point in my dream is time referenced explicitly). Now, suddenly, the sun begins to rise. Within a few minutes it is high in the sky, revealing a painted landscape reminiscent of Arizona or Utah. I look out over a deep valley and think, “Now I can start my new day.”
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For many years, I felt this dream to be largely symbolic. A few months after 9/11, I was going through my old journals and I discovered this; it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was so clearly a 9/11 dream. It was a warning, something to remind me what to do on that day.
However, on the day itself, I was nowhere near New York City. I was 2000 miles away, in California. Perhaps I was destined to be in NYC on that day, but something changed between age 12 and age 30 to put me on a different path. I cannot help but wonder what decision I made that altered my destiny, and whether I was “supposed to” be there.
