To give a nod to the Halloween season, I thought I’d share some stories that, while not spooky, have enough of the paranormal to be interesting. The stories involve people having precognition, foreknowledge of a future event before it happens. Several cultures call this having “a vision” and can come in the form of a dream or just come out of nowhere. There is no explanation for precognition, and I’m a stickler on finding an explanation of how and why things work, leaning heavily on science. Nevertheless, the people that shared the following stories with me are totally trustworthy, and so I believe them to be true. Interestingly two of them involve world wars.

Story No. 1: My mom told me this story as told by her mom (Nola Day), who witnessed it. During World War I my grandfather, Sillus Day, worked in the coal mines of Kentucky and lived in a mining town near Mingo Mountain with his young family. Their son Shelby (5 years old) was sitting on the ground playing in the dirt, and had some piece of metal in his hand and hitting rocks with it, saying “boom, boom, the war’s over,” repeating it several times. News traveled slowly back then, but a few days later they learned that the war had indeed ended on the very day Shelby did this, on Nov. 11, 1918.

Story No. 2: This one was also told by my mom, who witnessed the event. During World War II my father (Marshall) served in France and helped liberate it. My mom and her daughter Jean (3 years old) was walking down the road to visit some nearby kin. Out of nowhere Jean said “Mommy, my daddy’s sick.” Mom replied “he’s not sick. We just got a bunch of letters from him.” Jean was undeterred and said “those mean German’s shot him.” A month later mom was notified by letter that dad had been injured while fighting in the hedgerows of France (a tank exploded beside him). The date of the injury was the very day Jean said he was hurt.

Story No. 3: This is a recent incident that involved my granddaughter Eleanor. A good friend of ours, Daniel Chumley, is very involved at church and has worked in the children’s ministry teaching kids to play the ukulele among other things. That’s how he got to know my grandkids, and they love him to death, and he them. Earlier this year Daniel had a dream that was not detailed, but it involved Eleanor being hurt in a wreck because of someone’s recklessness, and he remembers being mad about it in his dream. It was intense enough that he woke up unnerved, and that he told his mom about it. The next day I took the grandkids bicycle riding, and Eleanor had a bad wreck on her bike partly because I let her ride down a steep hill she wasn’t ready for and she failed to brake properly. She went over a bank, rolling several times. And while there were no broken bones, she was scratched up pretty good and had a deep gash disturbingly near her left eye. It could have been much worse, and I still have recurring bouts of guilt, because I was the reckless person.

Having dreams or visions has considerable historic traction, and the Bible documents many prophets and folks having dreams that foretell future events. So while precognition is not spooky, the fact that they can’t be explained is certainly intriguing.

Steve Roark is a retired area forester from Tazewell, Tennessee.