Dreams And Thoughts That Seem To Come True

First of all, I do not know much about psychics and do not either believe or disbelieve in the paranormal, but have an open mind and am willing to listen to both sides. I used to be very skeptical about psychics and the supernatural, but recent experiences have made me become more open minded, although I do not understand scientifically how these experiences could be possible.

I have noticed in the past few years that topics of many of my dreams and/or thoughts seem to be associated with events that are either happening somewhere else at the time, or happen later. This is not the case all of the time, but only sometimes. The reason that I am posting today is that last night I had a very strange dream.

My brother bought his girlfriend a pet cat about two years ago. I have never seen this cat in person, but have seen pictures of him before on my brothers cell phone. This cat is not something that I think about or even hear about often, and I have certainly never had a dream about him until last night. It is weird that he would even cross my mind at all. My brother and his girlfriend live half way across the country from me and I rarely talk to them.

Last night I had a very vivid dream about my brothers girlfriends cat, and it took place in two parts. Almost like two separate dreams. The first dream seemed to be very long. In the dream I had developed a computer algorithm to recognize my brothers girlfriends cat in a photograph. In the dream, we took many pictures of the cat doing different poses and my algorithm identified the cat in the pictures.

I know this sounds like a very strange dream. I know where the algorithm part of the dream came from. A couple days ago I was discussing one of my dissertation chapters with one of my friends. My dissertation chapter deals with developing a type of recognition algorithm, so that part is not strange to me. The cat part is

The second dream I had last night took place in my grandparents home. In this dream I was visiting my grandparents (who own a dog), but in the dream they had adopted my brother's girlfriend's cat. Later in the dream, someone had broken into my grandparents house, and the cat was missing when we looked for him. (The dog was still there though). We thought that he was stolen and that we wouldn't see him again. All that was left was his bed and we set some food out for him in case he came back. I was sad about it in the dream. (I visited my grandparents about a month ago, so their part in my dream makes since to me.)

I woke up this morning and didn't think too much about the dream except that it was vivid. Earlier this afternoon, my brother sent me a long text message of how his girlfriends cat had gotten very sick because of something he had swallowed that had cut up his intestines and that the surgery was going to cost thousands of dollars. The vets thought that he was not going to make it without the surgery, so it was quite a scare for them.

All of this (them going to the vet) happened yesterday late afternoon/evening, and they found out this morning/afternoon that he was going to be okay.

This is one of the weirder dreams that I have had. I have had many others that seem to happen later, but they have not been as dramatic as the dream last night, although a lot of times I do forget my dreams.

Another strange thing that happened to me (about a month ago now), was that while on a trip, I was thinking about how my friend had told me about a severe car crash that she had witnessed when she was younger. She told me about this story about 5 years ago. As I was thinking it, I thought it was weird that I had remembered it all of a sudden.

I was riding in the car with my parents at the time. We were driving home from a camping trip. About an hour after thinking this, we were driving on the interstate at about 75 miles per hour (it was night time). A car entered the interstate extremely fast relative to us. My guess is that he was going ~90 miles per hour. He changed lanes a few times (there were 5 lanes total including the HOV lane) trying to get around other cars, he lost control of his car, nearly hit the front of our truck as well as a couple other cars in front of us, and slammed into the concrete median on the other side of the HOV lane. I am not sure if he (or she) died or not, but the car was in very bad shape and the impact looked deadly.

Afterwards, I was completely freaked out about dwelling on the topic in my mind and then witnessing a likely fatal crash about an hour later.

I think it is possible that all of this is a huge coincidence, although these kinds of thoughts and dreams happen to me so often. Like I said, most of the dreams I have that I have noticed to actually happen are things that are not at all significant. The cat, and the car crash are my two most dramatic experiences.

I did not tell anyone I know about these experiences. My family and friends are engineers and scientists (which is my field as well) and do not consider these types of things to be real. I am afraid that I will not be believed, and I would feel embarrassed telling them about it. Also, I have been very skeptical of the paranormal in the past, although since I started noticing these 'coincidences' between my dreams and reality, I have developed more of an open mind. If this type of thing could be real, I do not understand how it is possible.

I have thought about writing down a list of things in my dreams every night in a journal, and then marking down which ones happen later in real life and which ones do not in order to see what percentage of my dreams actually come true.

I am interested in hearing if other people have had similar experiences, and am wondering what people think this means, how can it happen, and why would it happen to me?

Is it possible that there a psychological explanation? Like maybe I am more observant than I realize and somehow predict these things to happen based on real observations? Again, I have a hard time understanding how that explanation could be possible either.