Skip Granger
Britannica Dictionary definition of PSYCHIC: “A person who has strange mental powers and abilities (such as the ability to predict the future, to know what other people are thinking, or to receive messages from dead people); a person who has psychic powers.”
My Duffield ancestors had a family psychic phenomena that dates back to the 1800’s in Kentucky when one of our family members used to pray out by the wood pile and resolve problems for many people. One story that I’ve often heard involved a lady who lost her wedding ring. It had evidently dropped through a crack in the floor by the ice box. After praying with old Mr. Duffield, she was told to go home and check. She found it there!
Many strange experiences in my life suggest that the Duffield psychic abilities continue in me.
When I first began dating my wife in 1972, I parked my MGA Roadster in the narrow space between two garage driveways above her San Francisco home on Russian Hill. I suddenly had a premonition that something was awry. I ran up the hill, but thank goodness, my car had not been towed. The next morning I went to my home in Marin Country to find that it had been ransacked and many of my valuables stolen. I can often anticipate a problem, but sometimes cannot pinpoint the time or place it will occur.
For example, when Mary Ann and I were coming home from Guatemala many years ago, I had a vision during the night that our home had burned down. I asked Mary Ann if she would drive home, and thus I enjoyed many cocktails on the plane in First Class. When approaching our home, I told her of my vision. When we arrived, however, our home was fine. The next day, I went to my law office and got a shocking call. My neighbor and friend, Dick Smith, also on Woodside Lane in Mill Valley, called and said, ”Skip, I hate to tell you this, but your house burned down Saturday night.” The Mill Valley Fire Department had enjoyed their Christmas party a bit too much that evening, and they had trouble hitting the flames. Dick was referring to a rental house that we owned, which was gone as well as that of Carlos Santana, our next door neighbor. I just had the wrong house!
Another example – during my 50 years in venture capital in Silicon Valley, no one could believe that I only had one default in my first seven years. Maybe psychic powers were part of my selection of ventures.
Strange things also happened in my younger days. When I lived on the ranch at Clifton Acres near Lawrence, I was dating a lovely art major. Peggy often studied with me during the many winter cold and snowy days, and I helped her devise a rather difficult wrapping paper pattern as an art project. Unbeknownst to me, she sold it to Hallmark in Kansas City. Later, when I was living in Hawaii, I received a Christmas gift from my parents, which was wrapped in that SAME paper design. Some years on, Peggy moved to San Francisco, where I was also living, and we discussed the matter. We were both amazed.
You get to know someone pretty well after being together for several years, the case with another woman I dated. I had last contacted Sandy Eddy by message a few years ago [2016] on a premonition from a bad dream I had. Sandy told me that, ”One minute I was standing in my kitchen, laughing with my girlfriend, the next thing I registered was sitting on my sofa with three EMTs in my face. The doctor called it a deadfall. I wasn’t dizzy, no alcohol, but I went down like a tree. Gave myself a concussion, and hurt ribs. The doctor says heart, but all tests are negative. So, life goes on.” She was fine for the next five years. More recently, I had a premonition about Sandy again and called her. No answer, and the mailbox was full. So this evening I went researching and did not like what I found. RIP, Sandy” https://www.com/…/name/sandra-eddy-obituary…
I am not certain whether to consider these strange occurrences a blessing or a curse, but they are something unique that I have come to enjoy. I just wonder if Trey, Amanda or our granddaughters have inherited the Duffield psychic trait!
Skip, I know what you are talking about as several members of my family have similar events. These visions pop up and are very much a reality, but others around you do not see them or notice them. I always “see” them like there is tv image floating above other people I am with. I have “seen” things happen to friends, students, relatives and strangers. It was an overwhelming status to me and I worked very hard to keep it out of my head and am now living without it most of the time. In my old age I have not been able to define “it” but am very relieved to have it mostly gone.
My cousin married late in life to an astronaut, and she was assigned to go on the next Apollo Mission. But the President wanted a teacher to go; so a friend told Kathleen that she should ask Christa to take her gold necklace with her so that she would at least have something that had been in space, Kathleen told her ”It would melt in the explosion!” That should make a believer out of you!
https://hazlitt.net/feature/failure-launch-watching-history-erupt-real-time