Content warning: This post contains mentions of death and suicide. Please proceed with caution.
Every month, I ask BuzzFeed readers to share their creepiest experiences as well as "unsolved mysteries" they've experienced in their own lives. I started noticing that people were consistently sharing stories in which they unknowingly predicted the future, and they never fail to blow my mind. So without further ado, here are stories from 17 people who knew what was going to happen before it actually did, either through dreams, premonitions, or extrasensory perception:
1. "When I was about 7, my family relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. We were staying at a hotel while my parents looked for a house in the area. Every night we were there, I had very intense dreams about a girl but could never remember the details. I just knew that she was bad news and had something to do with Charlotte. Her face was clear; I can still see it in my head. Anyway, I spent the next few weeks trying to dissuade my family from moving to Charlotte in order to avoid the girl. Thankfully, we ended up moving to a small town outside of the city, which was a relief, because that meant that I only had to worry about her if we took a trip into town. A couple of days after we moved in, the lady from across the street came to introduce herself. Her daughter was with her, and she was the girl from the dreams. Her name was Charlotte."
—Anonymous
2. "I had many experiences like this as a kid and young adult, from déjà vus where I could call the next event before it happened to straight-up unexplainable phenomenon. One time when I was about 13 or 14, I was in my childhood room and had misplaced an old notebook. I checked in my backpack, but it wasn’t there. As I stood up to continue looking for it, things got weird. It’s tough to describe, but my vision went into slow motion, so I stopped moving and stood still. But...while standing still, as if it were a movie, I watched myself continue to walk around my room and look in three separate places for my notebook."
"In my vision, it wasn’t in the first two places, but I found it in the third place, under some papers in a drawer. When I saw myself find the notebook, the slow motion stopped, and I was back in real time in my physical body, almost as if I had woken up or come to. So I decided to skip the first two places I looked in my vision, and walked right to the third place. And boop — there it was, just as I had seen it in my vision. It really freaked me out, but I felt as if I had superpowers! That was the first and last time it ever happened. I’ve never had another sensation that has even come close to that."
—Anonymous
3. "I’m a nurse who regularly works night shifts. I’ve witnessed a lot of deaths over the years — some very peaceful, and some very painful. I’m one of those nurses who experience a lot of paranormal activity, too. One night, as I was punching in a key code to enter a locked unit, I heard someone behind me shout my name. I turned around, but no one was there. Another night, I heard someone shout 'Nurse!' very loudly. Like normal, I went from room to room to check on my patients, but everyone was sleeping soundly. Eventually, I became so tuned in to the paranormal activity of that building that I could predict when a death would occur within one or two days."
"If I saw a shadow figure or orb lights on the units, I knew someone was about to die. As a nurse, you become hyperaware of the stages of death. But these shadows would appear to me right before a patient was going to die. Sometimes shadows would appear around a patient who didn't seem particularly low or ill that day, and an unexpected death would occur. In the two years I worked there, I was never wrong."
—Anonymous
4. "I used to have a recurring vision of a car crash in which I was in the passenger seat and a boy in my grade was driving. In the vision, we were driving at night and a drunk driver was coming headfirst at us, so the boy swerved the car, not knowing that there was a ditch right there, and the car rolled over. I could envision it vividly, right down to the side road it happened in front of. Fast-forward a couple of years — I'd had this vision a few times already. I dreamed about it sometimes, but other times it just popped into my head. Well, one night I got invited to hang out with a few of my friends, but I didn’t have a ride, so the boy from my vision offered to drive me."
"On our way there, I saw a driver swerving toward us, just like in the vision. Sure enough, the boy swerved, and we rolled over, right in front of the road I had seen. Both of us recovered from our injuries, but the fact that I knew exactly what was going to happen creeped me the fuck out.
"After a few weeks in the hospital, I told the boy about my visions. He didn’t believe me at first. That was the case until I told him details about the crash I couldn’t possibly have known because I blacked out right after we rolled over. He had been awake the whole time, so he knew that the details I was saying were true. It was wild."
—Anonymous
5. "My grandmother was dying of cancer. I couldn’t visit as much as I wanted because my mother, whom she was staying with, told me visits were too strenuous for my grandmother. One night, I dreamed that my grandmother was at the foot of my bed. She was smiling. She told me she came to say goodbye and not to worry about her, because she was better and could dance again. She started twirling around and I abruptly woke up. It was 3 a.m., too early to call anyone. I waited as long as I possibly could, then drove the 45 minutes to my mother's house."
"I knocked on the door at 7 a.m., and my mom answered. She looked bewildered to see me and asked how I got there so fast, since they had just found that my grandmother had passed in her sleep less than an hour ago. I told her Grandma came to see me, but she wouldn’t believe me and swore someone must have called me. Mom barely talked to me through the funeral. Years later, she asked me once again how I got there so fast, but cut off my explanation and never would discuss it again. I was very close to my grandmother, and I truly believe she came to say goodbye."
—Anonymous
6. "My friend — let's call her Carol — told me this story about 30 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. Carol’s husband died unexpectedly several years before, and then a few years later, her 20-year-old niece was killed in a car accident. Carol had a very good, longtime family friend who was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer before Carol's niece was killed. At the time of her niece’s passing, her friend was very ill and didn’t have much time left herself. Because of this, Carol’s family decided not to tell the friend about the niece's passing, as it would have only caused upset and they didn’t see the point."
"A day or two later, Carol went to visit her friend. As sick as she was, she immediately told Carol that she had the strangest dream. She had been walking down the street when a bus stopped in front of her, and she was told to get on. The bus driver was Carol’s deceased husband. But that wasn’t the strangest part. Carol's niece was also on the bus, telling her to get on! She told Carol that she just couldn’t figure out why it was Carol’s husband and niece together, it was just so random! Of course, Carol knew it wasn’t random at all but kept that to herself. Her friend passed away within hours of her relaying her dream."
—Anonymous
7. "On Sept. 10, 2001, my father was in the hospital for a chronic illness. Part of the treatment for this illness required pain management, which would periodically, in my opinion, be too much. My dad would sometimes hallucinate or act 'crazy.' So when he called me from the hospital that day, he was frantic, but I wasn’t alarmed. 'TURN ON THE TV,' he said to me. My parents' anniversary was the following day, and my mother was out of town on a business trip. Normally my father would call my mother to share an anecdote, but I listened on patiently. After a minute of nothing but boring local news, I said, 'Dad, what am I watching for?' He said, 'Just keep watching.' Again, after another minute, I said, 'Dad, I think I missed what you wanted me to see. What did I miss?' He said very clearly and with a lucid tone, 'President Bush said there were terrorists who hijacked a plane, but we’re all going to be okay.'"
"I told my dad that I would call him later but I needed to go to class. I shrugged it off as another one of his pain medication–induced hallucinations. The next day was Sept. 11 — my parents' anniversary and the most horrific day in recent American memory. I was so focused on the actual events and shock that I completely forgot what my father had told me the previous day until about a week later. When I realized it, my family believed me, but my dad didn’t remember saying it at all."
—Anonymous
8. "I was about 14 or 15 and I was staying after school to study in the library. After a while, I fell asleep at a desk and had a really strange dream. I dreamed that the librarian — who was a scary older woman — was shaking me while screaming, ‘Save me, help me! I don’t want to go, save me!’ over and over. I woke up very confused, only to see the librarian having a heart attack. I rushed over and started doing CPR on her. A teacher passing by noticed and called an ambulance. On the way to the hospital, one of the paramedics told me if I hadn’t saved her, she would've been dead."
"After the incident, the librarian and I stayed good friends. She passed only a week ago, and I recently went to pay my respects at her funeral, thinking how bemused she’d be to know that her legacy was being commemorated in a BuzzFeed post!"
—Anonymous
9. "When we were little, my family used to travel around a lot because of my dad’s job. My grandma would always tell us what fun things we could do in the place we were going to visit next. We were about to move to a very rural country. My grandma excitedly said we were going to love running around with horses and donkeys. A few days after we arrived, we were supposed to go to the countryside with some of my dad’s friends. As we were leaving, my grandma called and I answered the landline. She was a little frantic and made me promise her that we were going to stay by my parents' sides at all times on the trip."
"I promised, and then she talked to my mom. My mom was uneasy, but we went anyway. On the way there, I fell asleep and dreamed about a big field with a small red shack in the middle of the tall grass. A little girl was calling me and my siblings to go play with her. When we finally arrived, it looked just like the place in my dream. I asked my mom if we could go out and play, and she said absolutely not. This was very strange. The friends we were visiting told us that it was better for us to stay near, because a little girl had drowned a few months back. My mom then got very flustered and told them that my grandma had called and told her that she'd had a very vivid dream that my sister and I were going to drown in an open well next to a red shack. When we were leaving, we saw a picture of the dead little girl. She was the girl in my dream."
—Anonymous
10. My mom was a nonbeliever of anything paranormal or 'odd,' but she used to tell a story all the time about her older sister. After their mother passed away, her older sister started having a dream of their mom coming back, sitting at the foot of her bed, and talking to her. Her mom would then say, 'Sweetie, you need to get to the doctor right away! There is something wrong.' My aunt would wake up the next morning, writing it off as a dream. This happened about four or five more times. Toward the end of the year, my aunt had a similar dream, only this time her mom said, 'It's too late, sweetie, I'm sorry.'"
"A few months later, my aunt was feeling sick and went to the doctor. She was soon diagnosed with a very progressive cancer. I can't remember the exact name, as I was young at the time. The doctors pretty much said it was the type of cancer that had a nearly 99% survival rate if they'd caught it soon enough, but at this point it was too late. She died a couple of months after."
11. "This happened to my mother. She had a very serious boyfriend, Ted, before she met my father. Everyone assumed she’d marry him. Then she met my dad and lost interest in Ted, but he still cared for her. Years later, my mom ran into Tom's mother and she said, 'You're the woman who ruined my son's life.'''
"My parents had an excellent marriage, and my mom forgot all about Ted. But one night, maybe 25 years later, she had a dream about Ted. In the dream, they were in a convertible, parked in a lovers' lane. Ted kept telling her he had to go, and she’d respond, 'Go where, Ted, where are you going?' He’d say, 'I can’t tell you, Jane, I just have to go.' She woke up crying and very disturbed about the dream.
"Two days later, she was talking with her own mother, who told her that Ted had died by suicide. Turns out it was on the same night and around the same time as her dream."
—Anonymous
12. "I used to have precognitive dreams all the time. They were little moments that would end up happening the way I experienced them in the dream. One time, I had the most vivid dream about a car accident. So vivid I thought I must have seen it on TV while I was falling asleep, but I realized that wasn't possible because I had gone from seeing the accident from the outside of the truck to suddenly being inside, viewing from what would have been the backseat if the car had one. I saw the truck flip over and both passengers hit their heads on the windshield, killing them."
"It really bothered me because it seemed more real than other dreams. I couldn't shake it; I talked about it to a few people and carried on wondering what prompted it in the first place. Several weeks later, I arrived at the scene of an identical accident — same little white truck flipped over in the exact same spot as my dream: half in the left lane of the highway and half on the grassy median. Every detail was exactly the same, and it horrified me."
13. "My dad is the oldest of four brothers. One day, my grandma — who had very bad dementia at the time — looked directly at my dad and asked him, 'Are you the one who's dying?' Two days later, his brother died unexpectedly of a heart attack. A few years before this, she had rightly predicted that I would fly across the country to surprise my dad for his birthday. I was on the phone with him that day while he was at her house, and she just kept asking me if I was on my way there yet. I was literally in an Uber on the way to the airport. She had no way of knowing I was going, as only my mom knew, and she swears she never told her."
—Anonymous
14. "I was around 18 years old when I woke up from a dream that felt too real. I told my mom that I was dreaming about a very big woman who'd passed away, and they couldn’t find a coffin for her because of her size. This was back in Cuba in the '90s. My mom said it was just a silly, bad dream and to shake it off. The next day, my mom received a phone call from her family letting her know that her sister passed away unexpectedly. Guess what? She was a big woman, and they did not have a coffin that could fit her. They had to make one for her size. Ever since then, my mom doesn’t want to know about my vivid dreams."
—Anonymous
15. "Years ago, I worked for a company that inspected hospitals and nursing homes to ensure they would pass any state surveys or Joint Commission inspections. My office was in a nursing home, and I traveled around to like four hospitals and six or seven nursing homes. One night, I had a dream about one of the residents of the nursing home that my office was in. She was just standing and smiling, looking around as if she was taking in the sights of somewhere she might never see again. I woke up and promptly forgot about it and went on with my day. I got to my office, and shortly thereafter, one of my staff members came to tell me that she’d passed away the night before. I instantly remembered my dream, and I was just dumbfounded. This exact thing happened to me three more times over the next year and a half."
"The last time it happened, I went to work and went straight to the patient's room. He was gone, and some members of his family were there. One of his relatives saw me and said, 'Sir? How do you know my grandfather?' I explained my job and (this is giving me chills just thinking about it) she said, 'Sir, last night I had a dream that you were playing chess with my grandfather. Did you ever play chess with him?' I replied, 'A few times, but not in a very long time because he’s been too ill.' The dream I’d had of him the night before was just like all the others I’d had of residents before they passed, but in this one, he’d thanked me for the chess games."
—Anonymous
16. "I’ve had a lot of strange experiences growing up. The strangest was when I was in high school and my grandpa was in hospice with cancer. At the time, I didn’t know he was even in hospice because I was in a theater competition, and my parents didn’t want me to worry while we were traveling for state finals. The day we went north for regionals, I was super sad for no explainable reason, and I kept having 'visions' of my family crying all day. I chalked it up to performance anxiety and went on with my day. I was planning on going to a movie when we got home with my friends, but on the bus ride back, my mom called and said I had to come home immediately. It turns out that my grandpa was taking his final breaths, and we had to drive down to be with my grandma so we could help plan the funeral. In that moment, I felt like a fortune teller."
17. And finally, "I think I can predict the future in my dreams. This has probably happened countless times with small events, but here's one major instance I'll never forget. I was 14 at the time. One day, I found my old journal hidden in a drawer I never used, so I decided to read it. I came across this entry from when I was 13, and at the time of the entry, I had a girlfriend. In it, I was writing about a dream I had. I was in an all-white room with someone, and it was clear that I was romantically involved with them. At first I was confused about why it wasn’t my girlfriend, because I had never seen this person before. I described their appearance to the very last detail, and that’s when I realized it was my current boyfriend, whom I hadn't met yet. I told him about it the following day, but he didn’t believe me."
—Anonymous
Now it's your turn! Have you ever had a dream or unusual premonition that something was going to happen, and then it did? If so, in the comments below or via this anonymous form, tell us about the time you unknowingly predicted the future.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.