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When a professional psychic tunes in on future events in your life – or when you experience a precognition about something in your future – is that future set in stone?

Throughout history, there have been numerous instances of people who experienced precognitions about their own deaths and avoided the circumstances and situations they’d glimpsed and lived to talk about them. Take any manmade or natural disaster – and there have been an abundance of both since the twenty-first century started – and you’ll find these kinds of stories. Some are documented and many are anecdotal, but they suggest that the future isn’t fixed and can be changed.

“For those pondering the puzzle of precognition, the Pribram-Bohn holographic mind theory seems to offer the greatest hope yet for progress toward the sought-for solution,” writes David Loye in The Sphinx and the Rainbow.

He contends that the sticky problem of how information can be transmitted psychically is eliminated with the holographic theory. In a hologram, each part contains the information of the whole, so “…if we are each parts of a larger whole…if our minds and bodies are, in effect, holograms within the larger hologram of the universe, then there is no transmission problem, because the information is already within us!”

Loye believes there are many different holograms drifting around within the primal waters of what Bohm calls the implicate or enfolded order. When we experience a precognition or a psychic tunes in on a future event in our lives and we then act to change the outcome, what we’ve actually done is moved from one hologram to another.

This idea is similar to the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, which says that we live within a web of infinite timelines. If an action you take has more than one possible outcome, then when you act or choose not to act, the universe splits off. The 1998 movie, Sliding Doors, plays with this idea. Gwyneth Paltrow is a young woman in London whose love life and career – and everything else – depends on whether or not she catches a train. We see the ramifications of both possibilities.

Frequency, a 2000 movie with Dennis Quaid, also plays with the Many Worlds idea. An anomalous radio signal links a father and son across thirty years and enables the son to save his father’s life. This interference creates a new timeline with unforeseen consequences.

So if a professional psychic sees you on a road trip where you’re stranded on a dark road in the pouring rain because of a flat tire or with steam pouring out from under the hood of your car, you can change that outcome. You take your car to a mechanic and have it checked out thoroughly. You buy new tires. You make sure that on your road trip, you drive only during the daylight hours.

The action you’ve taken causes reality to split off. In one reality, you may still get stranded on a dark road, but in another you arrive safely at your destination. Perhaps in a third reality, you get stranded during the day because you run out of gas or your vehicle develops some other problem. At some point, it all begins to sound like an episode from The Twilight Zone. But suppose it’s an accurate depiction of the nature of reality?

In 2011, an indie production company released a movie called Another Earth. It’s about the discovery of a second Earth that proves to be identical to this one, right down to the seven billion souls who inhabit it. It focuses on the story of a brilliant young woman whose passion is astronomy. On the day she learns she has been admitted to MIT, she celebrates with one drink too many and on the way home, hears about the discovery of Earth 2 on the radio. She inadvertently crashes into another car at the intersection and kills the driver’s wife and son and puts him in a coma.

The story follows her through prison and a release four years later. By now, scientists have communicated with their counterparts on Earth 2. They have learned that until Earth and its twin became aware of each other, everything between the two was identical. But now, certain small details have begun to deviate. And there is it, that moment, reality splitting off. Alternate worlds, alternate futures.

“…are the vagaries of life truly random or do we play a role in literally sculpting our own destiny?” asks author Michael Talbot.

Hollywood does a great job of depicting these ideas in visual stories. But they really hit home when they happen to you.

Christmas Eve or Christma Day, they’re the same for me. A time of fun, magic, surprises, love.

In my childhood, it meant a tree would go up in our living room, bright with lights and decorations, against a backdrop of the spectacular Mount Avila that dominated the Caracas skyline. It meant that my sister and I would often sneak out into the living room after our parents had gone to bed and peek at our presents and giggle and oh and ah about how beautifully our presents were wrapped. Our dog, a Dachshund named Cindy, usually came to inspect the gifts, too, because there were usually treats wrapped up for her.

For me, Christmas has never been a traditionally religious day, not even when my sister and I were dragged off to mass on Christmas Eve of Day. I liked the mass in Latin, such a mysterious and archaic language that no one but priests spoke. But I really resented being forced to sit there in an uncomfortable pew, listening to a sermon about sin and redemption. I rebelled early.

Even in the years before I met Rob, I always had a real tree wherever I lived, one that emitted that sweet scent of pine. I would experiment with lights and decorations and usually had a spot set for myself under the tree where I could read. Over the years, I started collecting special decorations – frogs, ornaments that had been in my family since my sister and I were kids, and then later, various types of ornaments collected in our travels.

When my first editor, Chris Cox, died, his sister sent me Chris’s special ornaments – a flute player from Colombia, a ceramic doll from Peru, and other ornaments that had been special to him. So every Christmas when I decorate our tree, I am reminded of Chris, my parents, my early childhood. There’s a silly snowman ornament on our tree which, I swear, must be 50 years old.Our newest special ornament is one that Megan painted of our Golden Retriever, Noah.

So for me, Christmas isn’t about religion or dogma,  sin and redemption and guilt. It’s not not about angry gods or Adam and Eve and how anyone was born to save us from ourselves. It’s about how we’re shaped by our experiences, our stories, and how those stories change over time. And it’s about love and gratitude that we feel for the people who are closest to us, that we feel for ourselves and for those who have gone before us and those who will come after us. It’s about loving life in all its glorious permutations.

So from our household to yours, may your Christmas and new year be joyful, prosperous, and abundant!

One of the most frequent questions Rob and I are asked is, Where do you get your ideas?

I like writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s answer to this. In her most recent book, Big Magic, she talks about her belief that ideas look for receptive writers. If you agree to explore the idea that finds you, then it’s a commitment. If you break the commitment, the idea goes looking for another writer who might be able to bring it to life. She provides several stunning examples from her own life that are convincing. Rather than reiterating what she has written (buy the book!), here’s a similar example of an idea that found me.

Back around the time of the new moon in Scorpio in November, my friend Nancy Pickard suggested that I try writing short stories for Ellery Queen Magazine or some of the other fiction magazines that still exist. The first thing I ever sold was a short story to Young Miss, a teen magazine with fiction geared toward women in high school. I was thrilled when I received my first check ever for writing anything – $350. Not long afterward, my first novel sold. I also wrote one other short story for a Dean Koontz collection. That one took place in the Amazon. Short stories are a much different form than novels, but I decided to try Nancy’s suggestion.

I ran over to Barnes & Noble and bought several short story magazines. I read three or four stories in each magazine, to get a sense of what they published. I decided to try Ellery Queen first. Nancy had told me they don’t publish much paranormal fiction, so I wrote a straight suspense fiction/mystery story and felt my mother peering over my shoulder as I went to work

It takes place in an Alzheimer’s unit, where my mother spent the last several years of her life. I used some of the characters I met in that twilight place. Alzheimer’s/dementia enabled me to play around with the nature of consciousness without calling it paranormal. I wrote the story in two days, in a kind of possessed state, then gave it to Rob. He made some great suggestions, particularly about the ending. I integrated them into the story and sent it off to Nancy.

Nancy is a versatile writer who’s a master at short fiction. She read it and loved it and introduced me to the editor. I submitted it a few days after the new moon in November. On December 9, two days before December’s new moon, the editor wrote and said she wanted to buy it. I was thrilled.

In between, I had a particularly vivid dream about my former fiction editor, Kate Duffy,  who died in 2009. In the years since her death, this is the first time I’ve dreamed about her. In the dream, we were talking and laughing about life and politics and books, just as we used to do when she was alive, and she referred to my short story. I don’t know if she used the title, but the implication was that I should write a novel based on the short story.

I had this dream the night before Megan and I left Atlanta, where we’d been visiting my sister. During the long drive back to Orlando, spurred on by nothing more than the vivid intensity of this dream, I figured out the plot, characters, the book. When I got home, I started making notes, then wrote a couple of sample chapters. I realized my short story was the basis of the present life where the dementia/Alzheimer’s patient –Rose  (my mother’s name) – is tuning in on a life in a vastly changed future. In this future life, the geography of the planet has been altered by climate change and people like Rose’s future self – Ellie – have developed psychic skills and abilities to deal with it.

So far, it feels good to me, something I can pick up between other projects and run with wherever it takes me.

Thanks, Kate! And thanks to Nancy Pickard and to Janet Hutchings, the editor of Ellery Queen. And yes, thanks to my mother, who is still peering over my shoulder, whispering, Do this. Do that. No, that’s not right. Yes, go there.

Her 99th birthday would have been December 23.

A graphic and humorous depiction of precognition.

On a more serious note,conscious or unconscious precognitions could’ve also played a role in why so many passengers cancelled or didn’t show up to take the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

According to American Airlines records, one hundred and sixty-four reservations were made for flight 11 departing from Boston on September 11, 2001. Sixty-five people canceled their reservations prior to departure, and an additional seventeen persons were no shows. Similarly, one hundred and sixteen reservations were made on flight 77 that left from Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. that same day. Fifty-four people cancelled their reservations, and three more were no shows. In other words, people were not scrambling board those planes that day.

When we lived in Venezuela, the school most of the American kids attended was called Campo Alegre and it was known as the  American School. That’s how it looked back in the day. It had been created by the oil companies that hired and brought in American employees and their families. Most of our teachers were imported from the U.S.

But the school only went up to ninth grade and after that, the choices were somewhat limited. So my dad’s company, Creole, a subsidiary of Exxon, offered an attractive option – they would pay for your kids to attend boarding school. So for 10^th and 11^th grade, I attended a girls’ boarding school in Massachusetts. This was real culture shock. I met very wealthy kids – heiresses, and kids whose parents were in the diplomatic corps in places like Pakistan, and then just your plain ole’ variety of rich kids whose fathers were the CEOs of major New York corporations. This is how Northampton looks today:

I lived in one of the houses on campus, with a girl from Darien, Connecticut whose mother had been a former model, and an exotic looking girl, an American whose father was a diplomat in Pakistan. Phyllis and Randall. Next door lived a rebel and rogue, a rich girl named Portia. She was from New Rochelle, New York and became my closest friend. From her, I learned that rules could and should be broken.

If lights out was at 9, then at 9:02 p.m. you should sneak down to Holly’s room on the second floor and have a party. If and when the housemother heard the ruckus and came to investigate, you should hide under beds and inside of closets. She called me Swartz, a takeoff from my maiden name, and I called her Porsh.

On the weekends, when we were allowed to sign out of the campus and explore the town, Porsh and I often jotted down some bogus destination in town – a dress shop, for instance, or Friendly’s Ice Cream store. Then we headed wherever we wanted, which was usually to the Smith College campus. I don’t remember what we did on the campus other than walk around and study people. But to me, these excursions were delicious precisely because they were forbidden.

When my parents move to the U.S. in my junior year, I knew that would be my final year at boarding school. Sure enough, I spent my senior year in high school in South Florida, and hated most of it. At one point in that year, I received a call from Pinkerton Detective Agency and then from the FBI, asking if I knew Portia______. She apparently had run away from boarding school and someone had told the feds I might know where she was. I didn’t. But I was sure that wherever she’d gone, it was an adventure and I was sorry I’d missed it.

Turned out that Porsh had run away and gotten married.

We reconnected several times some years back, when she was living in northern California, happily married to her third husband, the proud mother of a son from her first marriage. Porsh and I and our husbands sat on a wide balcony of a restaurant that overlooked the Pacific coast and talked and talked.

We’re friends on Facebook, a fact I’d forgotten until just tonight when she popped into my mind. If our lives from birth to death are a moving, breathing depiction of who we are in this second, then Porsh is one of those not so subtle influences in my life, the rebellious blond who was smarter and more daring and adventurous than the rest of us. She’s what Carl Jung would call an archetype, wild and unpredictable and always living according to her own rules, her own code.

And time and again, those traits have worked their way into the women in my novels. Thanks, Porsh! Everyone should know a rogue, a rebel!

We’ve written many posts about synchronicities that occur during transitional periods in our lives – birth and death, marriage and divorce, a move, career change, financial ups and downs. This synchro was connected to a death and was sent to us by a friend whom we’ll call Tom because he wishes to remain anonymous.

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Yesterday I came across what I thought would be classified as a synchronicity, with its basis in an unfortunate situation.  My mother-in-law passed away yesterday, but it was expected as she’d been diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in May (never smoked a day in her life, but was around some secondhand smoke).

She passed away yesterday exactly at noon.  However, the nurse had to call the doctor to report the passing, then he would give the official time based on when he received the call.  She passed away in her home as they felt it best she stay there.  The nurse was heading to her car at the time, so it took her a few minutes to go back inside, then call the doctor.  He declared it official at 12:10:43, ten minutes and forty-three seconds after noon.

Her birth date was December 10, 1943.

Would that be considered a synchro?

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Definitely! We’ve heard stories about clocks stopping at the moment that the loved one dies, a photo of the person falling off the wall at the moment of death, loud, booming sounds without any apparent cause that resound when the person dies. Bernard Beitman, a psychiatrist and visiting professor at the University of Virginia, started choking one night just as his father was choking to death on the other side of the country. It seems there are infinite ways that synchronicity manifests itself at these pivotal transitional points.

Our daughter is presently house-hunting in Orlando for a new place to live. Last week, she found what she thought was the perfect place, ideal neighborhood, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, pet friendly, with a fenced backyard where her dog can run and play.

The woman told Megan she selects renters based on who has the highest credit rating. Since Megan hasn’t found a roommate yet, we agreed to co-sign on the lease and submitted our applications for a credit and background check. We felt she had a good shot at this and she was supposed to find out around the time we were going to Orlando help her out with her second Wine Walk.

This event happens ever second Thursday in Orlando. Artists come from all over Central Florida and exhibit their wares. People who attend – anywhere from 300-700- buy a $10 ticket to the wine walk. It entitles them to free drinks along the wine walk route, where all these artists have their exhibits. This time, Megan was invited to set up on the front porch of a dog bakery, where she has painted pet portraits for the owners. It’s an ideal spot with a built in audience.

The day before, though, we’d found out that Megan had come in second in the credit rating so she hadn’t gotten the house. It struck us as odd that an owner would judge a tenant worthy based only on a credit rating. What about how you feel about the prospective tenant? What kind of impression did the person make on you? Megan and the owner had gotten along so well that she ended up commissioning two pet Christmas ornaments from her. At any rate, during the day leading up to the wine walk that evening, we spent most of our time house-hunting on Zillow and other sites.

The wine walk went great and we were hopeful:

This morning before we left, Megan said she’d gotten an email from the owner of another house that interested her and was going to see the place that afternoon. The location was better, the rent – with a roommate – would be what she’s paying now, and even though it had only one bathroom, there were three bedrooms and a large yard

Now, here’s the synchro. This house had become available just today. Back in November, the woman rented the place to a fireman and a paramedic. Even though she really liked the two young women who had seen the place before the two men, the guys had the highest credit scores of the prospective tenants. They were supposed to move into the house in January, but the paramedic changed his mind and the deal fell through the very day she emailed Megan.

The woman laughed when Megan told her what had happened with the first house. “I should’ve selected the two women, but instead I went with the highest credit rating. Then the deal falls through. I’ll never again go strictly on credit rating.

As Megan was leaving, someone pulled up in front of the house to inquire about it. The owner told them she was pretty sure she’d just found the right tenant. I take this as a confirmation synchro that the house is the right one for her. Now we’ll wait and see what unfolds.

These are great anagrams. I noticed this list on a FB synchronicity site a few hours after I’d stumbled on what I call a counter-anagram. That would be when the re-arranged word reflects opposite characteristics, rather than similar ones.

I was working on a chapter of Sensing the Future, our upcoming book, when I noticed that two names of paranormal researchers were anagrams. However, one of them is a strong advocate and defender of the reality of psi phenomenon and the other is a skeptic-debunker. They are Dean Radin and James Randi:  Radin/Randi. I’m not sure they would accept that one in the Anagram Society, but I have to chuckle over the magician Randi realizing that his name, with a minor shuffle, becomes Radin and visa versa.

On the night after Thanksgiving, Megan had some of her friends over, all twentysomethings. They love card and board games, and this evening they were playing something called Word Whimsy, 2 the game of outrageous answers.

Rob had fallen asleep and I was working in my office when Megan suddenly rushed in, excited. “Mom, you’ve got to see this synchro.”

“See it where?”

“These cards that came up.”

Synchro is the magic word around this house, so of course I got up and hurried after her into the dining room. “Here was the question/issue.” Megan points at the top card, a red card with a message that reads: If we were all children, this would frighten us.

Megan’s friends are snickering and giggling as she gestures at the 4 cards beneath the main card. And yes, this is somewhat ribald, folks, so if you’re easily offended, don’t look any farther. But if you want a good laugh, here are the words:

Boner

Cock

Balls

Weiner

And here’s the pic to prove it:

This sure has the trickster’s handprints all over it!

That’s the name of a song by Elvis Costello. I hadn’t heard it in many years. In fact, I don’t think I’d heard any Elvis Costello songs for a very long time. But a couple of days after the Paris terrorist attacks, I heard ‘What’s so Funny…’ on the radio and realized it fit well as an answer to terrorism.

Later, as I headed to the gym, I decided to create ‘Elvis Costello Radio’ on Pandora on my iPhone. I did so and plugged in my earbuds. Oddly enough, in the hour I was at the gym, I only heard one Elvis C song before the Pandora program switched to other songs that supposedly fit well in style and ‘era’ to Elvis C. The song I did hear was  ‘Allison – My Aim is True.’

But that wouldn’t be the end of Elvis Costello for the day. That evening, Trish and I decided to watch an episode of the television series, Minority Report, which is based on the Stephen Spielberg movie of the same name. We’d been looking forward to this new series this fall because we’re working on a book about precognition and that’s what Minority Report is about – specifically three ‘precogs’ who detect crimes before they happen. In the TV series, however, the program has been shut down. I guess solving murders before they happened raised some irritating civil rights issues. So ten years have passed and one of the male precogs starts working freelance with a female police detective.

Unfortunately, we haven’t found the series too interesting. I guess we’re not in the proper demographic since the detective and her female buddy are both in their 20s and seem – to us – way too young for the roles they’re playing. But maybe in 2065 the detectives are young and hot. We watched the third episode that night, hoping it would get better, but basically watching it because it deals with precognition.

So in this episode the suspected killer at the climax is about to kill a young woman named Allison and as he aims his gun at her forehead, we hear – yes – Elvis Costello singing ‘Allison – My Aim is True.’ Fortunately for Allison, the would-be killer is interrupted before he fires. You don’t need to know anything more about that episode…or any of the others, for that matter.

For me, the sequence of events were an Elvis Costello synchronicity and a precognition – an unconscious one. So I experienced a precognition that involved a television series about precognition, which we were watching because of our book in the works is on precognition.

I don’t think we’re going to use this story in the book, though, probably because it’s one of those stories that’s really only of interest to the person who experienced it. That’s what I realized after read what I wrote here. But now I’ve already written it…so here it is.