One thing is that people are keen on interpreting and finding patterns in the world around them. Let's say that before you toss a dice, you think "it's going to be a 6" and when you roll, it turns out you were right. That doesn't mean it wasn't a coincidence, but for a lot of people, the idea that the connection between the guess and result is because of some sixth sense is highly appealing.
Sorry Vanilla, but I thought I'd use your dream about your grandpa as another example and hope you are not offended (I have no grandparents left and remember the sadness of losing them). You dreamt your grandfather would die and a little later, it happened. Maybe you've dreamt several times that your grandpa and/or people in your family are ill and die. One day it really happens and you interpret your dream as an ability to see into the future. It's not such a strange thing to dream about and death happens to us all, especially the elderly. I've heard, but I'll try and find a source if you like, that catastrophy dreams about death and accidents are very common. So, when an accident happens, depending on the nature of the situation, there could be a fair chance you've dreamed about it.
For me, I remember dreaming f.ex that I've been in a car accident. Because I wasn't in a car accident within a "short" time space after that dream, I haven't interpreted it as a premonition .. but if I had been in a car accident short after, maybe I would. The point is that if you would dream of such things regardless of what the future looks like, then these dreams are not really premonitions. They just look like it when they coincidentally pair up with real life circumstance.
I also believe people also tend to mentally "shave off" the parts of their premonitions that don't fit reality. Let's say you dreamed that your grandpa was lost at sea, but then he died of cancer. You could still interpret your dream as a premonition by stripping it down to what matters - a death - although the circumstances around his death in the dream versus real life were completely different.
|