ESP, Dreams, and the Unexplained

The easiest scientific explanation for why one person wins the lottery while others don't is random chance. But past winners have credited paranormal factors for their big-ticket wins.

ESP

There are those who believe that extrasensory perception (ESP) is not the exclusive property of seers. The believers say that everyone probably has it -- to some degree. For instance, the phone rings, and you know who's calling before you even pick it up -- and you don't have Caller ID.

Telepathy is the purported ability to send or receive thoughts from others without using any of the five senses. It's commonly called mind-reading. Even if you did have telepathic power, it wouldn't be likely to win you a jackpot. Why? Because no one would know what those numbers would be before the drawing; therefore, there would be no information to be sent or to receive.

Clairvoyance is the ability to perceive objects or events in the past, present, or future without using any of the five senses. It's commonly called "seeing the future." If someone did possess clairvoyance, it obvioiusly would help him or her win the lottery.

There are those who believe that certain unique individuals' extrasensory powers operate more or less at a high level throughout their lifetimes. These people are known as sensitives, mentalists, seers or psychics. Most of us, however, are limited to an occasional flash of intuition -- if even that. Still, if you ever have a hunch that you should play a certain number or series of numbers, it can't hurt to just do it.

For example, Richard Jacobs of Mirimar, Florida, had played the Lotto only once before, but he "had a hunch" that he should play again. He ended up with over $4 million.

Dreaming

Of course, you can't control the things you dream about, but if you do happen to dream about a specific number, there's no harm in playing it. If you dream about a certain number of people or objects, you can play that number also. Your subconscious often gives you clues in riddles, so become adept at interpreting hints from your dreams. For instance, if you dream of buying eggs at the convenience store, play the number 12 (a dozen). Or instead, play numbers with the same value as the one you dreamed of. For example, if you dream of the number 6, play the numbers 15, 24, 33, 42, or 51.

A Texas woman dreamed about dancing feet on three consecutive nights. Later she bought an instant Texas Two-Step ticket that depicted a pair of cowboy boots dancing. She won over $1,000.

Even though you may not be able to control your dreams, you can keep track of them. Sleep researchers recommend this method to help you remember your dreams: Keep paper and pencil within reach of your bed. Before you fall asleep, tell yourself that you will remember your dreams. When you wake up in the morning, try to recall the night's dreams while they're still fresh in your mind. Think about your dreams, and then write down as much as you can remember before you forget. And definitely jot down any numbers you see in your dreams.

The Unexplained

Carl Jung had an interest in numbers. He also made a lifetime study of coincidence. Jung attributed these occurrences to unknown forces seeking to bring order to a chaotic world. He wrote that coincidences happen more frequently than probability theories would predict. He called the phenomenon synchronicity -- when seemingly unrelated events occur in some unexpected association with each other. Certainly, when it comes to lottery games, some very strange things indeed have occurred. As to whether they are random occurrences or synchronicity, pure chance or fate, only you can decide.

Fred Thompson of North Haven, Connecticut, had played 111 in the Pick 3 Game for days with no luck. But when he went to the store, he bought a Lotto ticket on a whim and forgot his usual Pick 3. That night he watched in dismay as the winning Pick 3 numbers -- 111 -- were announced. He wasn't disappointed for long, though. Shortly afterward, he found his Lotto ticket had won him $3.2 million.

Remember Bernie Bobowicz, who won the New York Lotto? Several years before he found the six winning numbers in the Bible, he had won more than $3 million using his old army dog-tag numbers. And on the day he won using the Bible, he also picked five of six on another ticket.

In July 2000, Lotto Texas changed its field of numbers from 50 to 54. On the very first night, the six numbers drawn were 9, 28, 35, 51, 53, and 54. In a seemingly incredible coincidence, three of the four new numbers were drawn. Some people were skeptical, believing the drawing results were too coincidental. At the time, an assistant professor of statistics at Rice University, Keith Baggerly, said, "It's rare, but not that rare." He said the odds were 1 in 330 that three of the new balls would be drawn.

If Jung's theory appeals to you, then your challenge is this: Assimilate what you read in this article about numerology, astrology, dreams, charms and so forth. Then use all those ideas creatively in connection with people and things that are personally significant to you, such as your family members, house, job, and hobbies. Who's to say that the people who used a toy spinner to win $14 million weren't actually making use of the ancient art of divination?

Lucky Charms, Superstition, and Prayer

Sometimes all the numbers and astrological charts in the world won't give you any more peace of mind when it comes to playing the lottery. Sometimes, you might want to have a little faith.

Lucky Charms and More

Charms, amulets, and talismans are believed by some to have magical powers. Traditionally, they are carried on one's person, or around one's neck, or the object is touched in some way in order for it to work. This touching of the lucky object is a belief in many cultures. In Mexico and other Latin American countries, you must touch a person or item that you verbally admire or risk invoking El Ojo, the Evil Eye. For instance, don't tell a woman in a grocery store that her baby is cute unless you give the child a small pat or tweak his toe.

American Indian lore is filled with charmed objects, such as the Navajo mandalas--which are amulets composed of feathers, leather, and fur -- and the shamanic or totem animals.

Traditional folklore includes some common charms you've probably seen or used before, such as an old copper penny, a silver coin, a four-leaf clover, a rabbit's foot, or a horseshoe. Even another person can be a lucky charm. Virginia resident Andy Bownnleur rubbed the shoulders of a friend who'd already won the Lotto and then became a $2 million winner himself.

A car turned out to be a lucky charm for Johnny and Becky Taylor. They bought a GMC van that had been previously owned by a Florida Lotto winner. Now they themselves are $7.9 million Lotto winners, and they give credit to the car for their good fortune.

Divination

Divination is the art of foretelling the future by means of auguries, signs, and omens. In ancient times, soothsayers inspected animal bones and entrails to make predictions. This was called haruspication. Ancient Greeks threw wine into a basin and then observed the splash pattern. This was called kottabos. Polynesians would spin a coconut or niu to determine one's fate. And ancient Romans used knucklebones or astragali, which are similar to our dice.

What are some methods you might try (in case you dislike wasting good wine or are fresh out of entrails)? Create your own divination techniques. You could toss a coin, throw dice, pick cards from a deck of playing cards, or try bibliomancy. This is the system of using a favorite book or the Bible to pick your numbers. You open it to any page and then use numbers found on that page. Bernie Bobowicz of Clifton, New Jersey was going through his mother's old Bible and saw some numbers. Then he got a funny feeling -- a voice inside telling him to play those numbers. He won $7 million in the New York Lotto.

Superstitions

Many people today consider superstitions quaint. Some had their beginnings in ancient religions or the occult arts. Others were based on logic, according to what was then believed as fact. For instance, your reflection was considered part of your soul; thus breaking a mirror would be a disaster. Other beliefs originate in the folklore of different lands. The origins of still others have become lost in the dim past. Here are some common and not-so-common superstitions you might use when picking numbers:
Knock on wood as you select those numbers. The Druids believed that spirits dwelt inside of trees, so they knocked on wood to summon the spirits.

Cross your fingers for luck. This was most likely derived from the Christian cross.

Wear red clothing when you buy your ticket. In Chinese folklore, the color red (along with loud noises) frightens evil spirits away.

Never play all odd numbers on one play. Chinese custom says the world is ruled by two principles, Yin and Yang. Odd numbers are Yang and belong to the gods, while even numbers are Yin and belong to humans. If you select all odd numbers, you would anger the gods.
Shawnda Kilpatrick, a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., was temporarily working in her hometown of Houston. She was one of the eight lucky winners of the Win for Life instant game that pays $1,000 a week for life. She says her mother had made her and her brothers put black-eyed peas in their pockets on New Year's Day.

Here are some more superstitious ways to pick numbers:
When you fill your car with gas, check out the numbers -- price and gallons -- on the pump. Use those digits on the ticket you buy at the gas station.

While filling out the play slip, look at the clock and play the current time.

If you take your temperature or take your blood pressure, play those numbers.

Try the jersey numbers of your favorite athletes.

If there's a blue moon (a second full moon in a month), buy an extra ticket.

Play the address of the lottery retailer.

Brides are considered lucky. If you attend a wedding, ask the bride to pick some numbers for you.

Use a Chinese version of Quick Picks -- play fortune cookie numbers.

Try your license plate or vehicle ID numbers.

If you become stuck in a traffic jam, play the numbers on the license plate of the vehicle ahead of you.

If you're the parent or grandparent of twins, play numbers with the value of two.

Horse racing fan? Use your favorite horse's race number, prerace odds, starting position number, or finish position. If he wins, places, or shows, play the payoff amount.

Wear your birthstone while picking numbers and buying lottery tickets. Rub the gem for luck. This is an especially lucky thing to do on your birthday.
Praying

Not everyone would think it appropriate to appeal to a deity for something as mercenary as winning the lottery. Then again, maybe you feel you have a special use for the money. When it comes to the long odds of beating the lottery, you can certainly use a little help from high places.

While these methods might seem a little extreme to you, wait till you see our next section. Read on to learn about ESP, dreams and other unexplained mysteries.

Telepathy of the Dead

Death doesn't sever the connection between loved ones, say people who've experienced so-called crisis apparitions.

By John Blake / Source: CNN

Nina De Santo was about to close her New Jersey hair salon one winter's night when she saw him standing outside the shop's glass front door.

It was Michael. He was a soft-spoken customer who'd been going through a brutal patch in his life. His wife had divorced him after having an affair with his stepbrother, and he had lost custody of his boy and girl in the ensuing battle.

He was emotionally shattered, but De Santo had tried to help. She'd listened to his problems, given him pep talks, taken him out for drinks.

When De Santo opened the door that Saturday night, Michael was smiling.

"Nina, I can't stay long," he said, pausing in the doorway. "I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for everything."

They chatted a bit more before Michael left and De Santo went home. On Sunday she received a strange call from a salon employee. Michael's body had been found the previous morning -- at least nine hours before she talked to him at her shop. He had committed suicide.

If Michael was dead, who, or what, did she talk to that night?
"It was very bizarre," she said of the 2001 encounter. "I went through a period of disbelief. How can you tell someone that you saw this man, solid as ever, walk in and talk to you, but he's dead?"

Today, De Santo has a name for what happened that night: "crisis apparition." She stumbled onto the term while reading about paranormal activities after the incident. According to paranormal investigators, a crisis apparition is the spirit of a recently deceased person who visits someone they had a close emotional connection with, usually to say goodbye.

Reports of these eerie encounters are materializing in online discussion groups, books such as "Messages" -- which features stories of people making contact with loved ones lost on September 11 -- and local ghost hunting groups that have sprung up across the country amid a surge of interest in the paranormal.

Although such encounters are chilling, they can also be comforting, witnesses and paranormal investigators say. These encounters suggest the bond that exists between loved ones is not erased by death.

"We don't know what to do with these stories. Some people say that they are proof that there's life after death," said Steve Volk, author of "Fringe-ology," a book on paranormal experiences such as telepathy, psychics and house hauntings.

Scientific research on crisis apparitions is scant, but theories abound.

One theory: A person in crisis -- someone who is critically ill or dying -- telepathically transmits an image of themselves to someone they have a close relationship with, but they're usually unaware they're sending a message.

Others suggest crisis apparitions are guardian angels sent to comfort the grieving. Another theory says it's all a trick of the brain -- that people in mourning unconsciously produce apparitions to console themselves after losing a loved one.

A telepathic link between loved ones

Whatever the source for these apparitions, they often leave people shaken.
Nor are apparitions limited to visions. The spirit of a dead person can communicate with a loved one through something as subtle as the sudden whiff of a favorite perfume, Volk says.

"Sometimes you just sense the presence of someone close to you, and it seemingly comes out of nowhere," Volk said. "And afterward, you find out that person was in some kind of crisis at the time of the vision."

Many people who don't even believe in ghosts still experience a mini-version of a crisis-apparition encounter, paranormal investigators say.

Did you ever hear a story of a mother who somehow knows before anyone told her that something awful has happened to her child? Have you ever met a set of twins who seem to be able to read each other's minds?

People who are extremely close develop a virtual telepathic link that exists in, and beyond, this world, said Jeff Belanger, a journalist who collected ghost stories for his book, "Our Haunted Lives: True Life Ghost Encounters."

"People have these experiences all the time," Belanger said. "There's an interconnectedness between people. Do you know how you're close to someone, and you just know they're sick or something is wrong?"

An eerie phone call at night

Simma Lieberman said she's experienced that ominous feeling and has never forgotten it -- though it took place more than 40 years ago.

Today, Lieberman is a workplace diversity consultant based in Albany, California. In the late 1960s though, she was a young woman in love.

Her boyfriend, Johnny, was a mellow hippie "who loved everybody," a guy so nice that friends called him a pushover, she said. She loved Johnny, and they purchased an apartment together and decided to marry.

Then one night, while Lieberman was at her mother's home in the Bronx, the phone rang and she answered. Johnny was on the line, sounding rushed and far away. Static crackled.

"I just want you to know that I love you, and I'll never be mean to anybody again," he said.

There was more static, and then the line went dead. Lieberman was left with just a dial tone.

She tried to call him back to no avail. When she awoke the next morning, an unsettled feeling came over her. She said it's hard to put into words, but she could no longer feel Johnny's presence.

Nina De Santo says one of her friends stopped by her salon to thank her -- a day after his death.

Then she found out why.

"Several hours later, I got a call from his mother that he had been murdered the night before," she said.

Johnny was shot in the head as he sat in a car that night. Lieberman thinks Johnny somehow contacted her after his death -- a crisis apparition reaching out not through a vision or a whiff of perfume, but across telephone lines.

She's sorted through the alternatives over the years. Could he have called before or during his murder? Lieberman doesn't think so.

This was the era before cell phones. She said the murderer wasn't likely to let him use a pay phone, and he couldn't have called after he was shot because he died instantly.

Only years later, when she read an article about other static-filled calls people claimed to have received from beyond the grave, did it make sense, she said.
Johnny was calling to say goodbye.

"The whole thing was so bizarre," she said. "I could never understand it."

Josh Harris' experience baffled him as well. It involved his grandfather, Raymond Harris.

Josh was Raymond's first grandchild. They spent countless hours together fishing and doing yardwork in their hometown of Hackleburg, Alabama. You saw one, you saw the other.

Those days came to an end in 1997 when Raymond Harris was diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctors gave him weeks to live. Josh, 12 at the time, visited his grandfather's house one night to keep vigil as his "pa-pa" weakened, but his family ordered him to return home, about two miles away.

Josh said he was asleep on the couch in his home around 2 a.m. when he snapped awake. He looked up. His grandfather was standing over him.

"At first, it kind of took me by surprise," said Harris, a maintenance worker with a gravelly Southern accent. "I wondered why he was standing in the hallway and not in his house with everyone else."

His grandfather then spoke, Harris said.

"He just looked at me, smiled and said, 'Everything will be OK.' "

His grandfather then turned around and started walking toward the kitchen. Harris rose to follow but spun around when the phone rang. An aunt who was in another room answered.

"When I turned back around to look, he was gone," Harris said.

As if on cue, his aunt came out of the room crying, "Josh, your pa-pa is gone."

"No, he was just here," Harris told his aunt, insisting that his grandfather had just stopped by to say everything was OK. He said it took him a day to accept that his grandfather had died.

"Honestly, before that, I never believed in the paranormal," he said. "I thought it was all fake and made up. But I just woke up and I saw him. It couldn't be my mind playing a trick. He looked solid."

Fourteen years after his grandfather's death, there's another detail from that night that's still lodged in Harris' memory.

As he watched his grandfather walk to the kitchen, he said he noticed something unusual.

"It looked like there was a whitish glow around him."

'Can you come out and play?'

Childhood is supposed to be a time of innocence, a time when thoughts of death are far away. But crisis apparition stories aren't confined to adults and teens.
Donna Stewart was 6 years old and growing up in Coos Bay, Oregon. One of her best friends was Danny. One day, Danny had to go to the hospital to have his tonsils removed. Stewart played with him on the morning of the surgery before saying goodbye.

She said she was in her bedroom the next day when she looked up and saw Danny standing there. He wanted to know if she wanted to go out and play.
Stewart trotted to her mother's bedroom to ask her if she could play with Danny. Her mother froze.

"She went white," Stewart said. "She told me that wasn't possible."

Her mother broke the news. Danny had an allergic reaction during surgery and died, Stewart said.

"When I went back to my room, he was gone," she said.

Stewart, now an Oregon homemaker and a member of PSI of Oregon, a paranormal investigative team, said the encounter changed the way she looked at death.

"These experiences have made me believe that those we love are really not that far away at all and know when we are not doing as well as we could," she said. "Just as they did in life, they offer comfort during crisis.''

Still, Stewart often replays the encounter in her mind. She asks the same questions others who've had such encounters ask: Did my mind play tricks on me? Could he have been alive? Did it all really happen after he died?

Josh Harris says his grandfather, Raymond, pictured with his wife, Barbara, appeared to him in an apparition.

De Santo, the former New Jersey hair salon owner, has taken the same self-inventory. The experience affected her so much she later joined the Eastern Pennsylvania Paranormal Society, which investigates the paranormal.

She said she checked with Michael's relatives and poured through a coroner's report to confirm the time of his death, which was put at Friday night -- almost 24 hours before she saw him at her salon on Saturday night.

She said Michael's body had been discovered by his cousin around 11 Saturday morning. Michael was slumped over his kitchen table, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

De Santo was baffled at first, but now she has a theory.

Michael started off as a customer, but she became his confidant. Once, after one of her pep talks, Michael told her, "You make me feel as if I can conquer the world."

Maybe Michael had to settle affairs in this world before he could move on to the next, De Santo said.

"A lot of times when a person dies tragically, there's a certain amount of guilt or turmoil," she said. "I don't think they leave this Earth. They stay here. I think he kind of felt he had unfinished business. He needed to say goodbye."

And so he did, she said. This is how she described their last conversation:
As they chatted face to face in the doorway of her shop, De Santo said they never touched, never even shook hands. But she didn't remember anything unusual about him -- no disembodied voice, no translucent body, no "I see dead people" vibe as in the movie "The Sixth Sense."

"I'm in a really good place now," she recalled him saying.

There were, however, two odd details she noticed at the time but couldn't put together until later, she said.

When she first opened the door to greet Michael, she said she felt an unsettling chill. Then she noticed his face -- it was grayish and pale.

And when she held the door open for him, he refused to come in. He just chatted before finally saying, "Thanks again, Nina."

Michael then smiled at her, turned and walked away into the winter's night.

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