I'd love to see that diary entry.
A sceptic would argue thus:
* Everyone dreams.
*Most people dream something every night.
*We forget most of our dreams, only remembering those that strike us as significant in some way.
*Disasters and tragedies are staple subject matter for dreams.
*By the law of averages every now and then somebody somewhere will dream about something that later takes place.
*Those are the dreams which will be remembered. The countless others we have will be forgotten.
Thus Arthur Chudsforth from Crapton-on-Tweed has a dream one night about Noel Edmonds on a carousel, wearing lederhosen and singing `99 Red Balloons` while eating marshmallows. He forgets this dream. The following night Mr Chudsforth dreams that there is an explosion in a chocolate factory and some people drown in chocolate but
Gerry Halliwell manages to save some people. A few days later he reads in the Daily Globe that there has been an explosion at a chocolate factory in Madagascar with some fatalities. He then remembers his last dream (forgetting the bit about Halliwell). He thinks: `Blimey I'm psychic! Wait till Doreen hears this`.
My own `premonitory dream `(I think everyone has at least one) involved seeing John Major signing his autobiography in a shopping mall in Leicester. This confused me (in the dream) because he was the Prime Minister at the time. Then a few days later the shock news appeared that he had resigned as leader in order that others could challenge him for the leadership (circa 1993).
Thanks Zeke.
I was 23 years old. It was 18 days before the Challenger disaster occurred, (on 28th January 1986). Here's what I wrote, (make of it what you will...):
I am in the sky. All around me is the brilliant bright blue atmosphere. I can't see the ground, but it never occurs to me that it isn't there, somewhere below. I am not flying along in an aircraft, but rather floating, or almost still, in mid air. I'm not aware of my body at all, but I can see and move at will in all directions. Around me is just the vast expanse of blue and distant clouds are visible in the depth of a haze.
Suddenly, a great missile passes by me, going upward at a slight angle. It has a huge streaming white exhaust trail and actually resembles a cluster of a few missiles fixed together. A bit like one big fat rocket with slimmer boosters around its body.
My instant first reaction is one of enormous dread, with the thought that this is a nuclear weapon that has been fired, shortly to be detonated. I am about to see an atomic explosion!
But in another moment, I was aware that this is not anything like that. A thought, or a voice may have spoken to me, saying:
this is the space shuttle. I relaxed again and kept watching as it climbed.
Then: without warning a massive explosion ripped the craft apart. A huge cloud of fire erupted from the largest part of the ensemble. Two of the slimmer rockets fell away from the mass at wide angles, streaming trails of white into the sky. With burning debris raining down, the cloudy trail formed into an enormous y-shape, like a bent-over horned thing, which hung in the air for a while.
I observed all this, aware of the tragic implications. The crew have certainly perished.