I recently attended the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) Study Day in London (for which a full write up will be appearing in a future SPR Magazine), where the days focus was on sleep and dreams. This brilliant and informative day provided us with a brief history of research into dreams and extra-sensory abilities; and for me it provided an excellent reminder of how vast this field of psychical research can be and how fascinating these particular areas can be.

As ever the SPR has provided me with yet another rabbit hole to drop into and research, especially as there were some really interesting points made during the day that caught my attention. So, for this blog I thought I would look into a few of those areas brought up during the SPR Study Day.

Also, I think perhaps maybe many of us may not have recognised that there has been an enduring fascination with dreams; not just within the realms of psychical research, but it is often found as an important element in many if not all cultures. What I often find interesting is that these dreams may not be able to prove anything specific, but they are often one of the most persistent ways in which people may report experiences that seem to blur the boundaries of time, self, and perception.

Obviously this post will not have enough room to go into the detail needed to explore dreams and sleep related anomalies, but hopefully I can provide you with a taster of this fascinating area. After all the paranormal is not only about ghosts and haunted places, although some may argue that these dreams and sleep related oddities could potentially explain some of the things that get reported away.

Dreams have been of interest to psychical research for many years now, perhaps because the dream state takes us from what we know into new worlds where the usual rules no longer apply. I am sure that many of us have all had a dream where we felt we were falling only to be woken with jolt that felt like we hit the bed. It’s a remarkable feeling which almost feels like the dream world and normal world collide as we wake. Many of us may also have had what can be classed as nightmares where the content of your dream was so vivid and terrifying that fear can wake you up.

Personally I have had some really strange dreams over the years, which I partly attribute to being epileptic, but one that stands out more so than all others still baffles me to this day. Probably due to its vividness more so than anything else, but also because I remember it so clearly. In this dream I was walking around a cottage, which I knew because of low ceilings which had beams. However, each room I entered I would find toilet rolls stacked floor to ceiling, single rolls too. It was weird and clearly memorable. Final part of the dream before I woke up had something to do with my teeth, which is the least clear part. I cannot clearly remember if my teeth were wobbly, falling out, or both. Either way it felt traumatic and I woke up. And you hear many people share odd stories such as these throughout the paranormal.

What is more fascinating and something we have seen at the SPR is when people provide information on future events because they have dreamt it. This alone catches my attention, not because they are providing the contents of their dream, but because they know it to be telling of future events somehow. When you’re in a dream state and the environment seems oddly understood, how then do you perceive the events in your dream as future ones? It totally boggles my brain. Still some are said to be extremely accurate, some not so much and others way off the mark.

These dreams of future events, which for the record are not always traumatic negative events, are referred to as precognitive dreams. Dreams which provide visions of events in the past are referred to as being retrocognition and in many cases the individual describes events that occurred in the past that are later discovered to be true, but they may not have known about them. Although surely its not easy to prove that someone did not know about some historic event?

The precognitive dreams can often be seen as cold warnings of future disasters, perhaps a war or a plane crash has been seen. Such visions of the future may often be captured after the event, but there are rare cases where its been gathered prior and its these that are truly compelling as evidence.

On Friday, the 21st of October 1966, in Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, Wales; a colliery spoil tip collapsed and swept down the hillside onto a part of the village including Pantglas Junior School. This terrible disaster took the lives of 144 people, of which 116 were children. This was one of the most devastating tragedies in modern Welsh history.

A psychiatrist most associated with the case, John Barker, would later write reports in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research on dreams, forebodings, and related experiences that indicated a certain amount of precognitive understanding of the events that occurred in Aberfan. Barker’s interest in the events at Aberfan had triggered him to appeal for people to submit their experiences of dreams of these events and he had received 76 replies. The only downside about Barker’s work was that they were retrospectively reported testimony and not dreams recorded prior to the event itself. This matters from a psychical research point of view because whilst the reports were compelling due to their emotional force, they were captured after the event occurred and its impact had been felt nationally, meaning it could have influenced the memory recall of these dreams. Still its an interesting case worth looking into if you want to understand a little more about dreams of future events.

Now one thing or two you may have heard about more and more over the years in relation to paranormal experiences and especially sightings of apparitions at night, is hypnagogia and hypnopompia. These are effectively the transition states as you fall asleep, hypnagogia; and as you’re waking up, hypnopompia. In these liminal states it is said that we as humans are most likely to experience something odd. It is often in these states when people experience a presence in the room or even see an apparition. However, it could be these states that are responsible, providing us with well timed hallucinations that play with our senses. Which means that strange experiences may not only occur when we are sleeping, but on those thresholds before and after too. These fascinating states can provide a wealth of information for us to explore, but perhaps something for another time.

However, thinking along the same lines, we must also mention how those states of performing repetitive or low-attention tasks may also trigger hallucinations, as they are similar to the transitional states of consciousness. This can often be overlooked, as many feel they are in control and it may be impossible for them to have a simple hallucination whilst performing simple tasks, but it does happen. Sometimes it really is just our minds messing with us.

Next up is one of my favourite aspects of this subject, time! Dreams have an uncanny ability to completely disrupt the natural order of time as we know it. Perhaps stranger still, they can mess around with our relationship with time too; making events of the past return in a moment, provide vivid insights into the future and give us elements of the present which can completely upset the normality we know and love. Whilst this is all likely to be the sleeping mind weaving moments together, sometimes in the wrong order, it can often provide a strange sequence of events that when relived in different orders within our dreams can provide new understanding. I think that time within dreams can often provide a really interesting aspect to explore and thats perhaps why psychical research has had a keen interest in these areas, especially when we can log the content of a dream that lays out future events and then compare them when that time comes. A fascinating area that certainly pushes the boggle factor, but provides us with so many possibilities that we could apply the research to.

Finally, I want to touch on Lucid dreaming, something that allows us to consider how consciousness becoming reflective within a dream state can be a game changer. Personally I do not recall managing to achieve a lucid dream state myself, but I have heard others discuss it and it has been an interesting subject. One example that was shared with me discussed how someone enabled themselves to fly within their dream; literally thinking they wanted to fly and would simply lift off and fly around the sky in their dream. I have also heard of people learning new things within their dreams like something simple such as throwing a ball against a wall and catching it. And I have heard it can even help improve a skill in that way. I guess without delving deeper into the area of lucid dreaming, we have to understand its an area that is massive and still needs a great deal of exploration.

Dreams certainly reflect imagination, memory, trauma, pattern-finding, and coincidence. However, they also remain such an intriguing area in which human experience appears to challenge ordinary assumptions about time. Certainly dreams may not resolve the mysteries of psychical research, but they continue to mark one of its more provocative frontiers.

Have you ever had a strange or odd dream? Maybe you dreamt the future and was surprised when it came true, if so please share? Perhaps you have managed to lucid dream, if so what did you get up to?

I would love to hear your experiences, as it is those that help our research move forward.