This is the first instance of a precognitive dream which I could directly correlate to an event which came to pass. But what makes this a more interesting story is the grandiose stage and dramatic fashion in which the scene unfolded.

The dream occurred in December of 1990, while I was sleeping on the floor of the Gutierrez Garrido home in Madrid, Spain. The first semester of my junior year abroad, with Syracuse University’s Division of International Programs Abroad, had just ended. In two days time I was to be traveling by train around Europe with AC, a childhood friend, who was studying in Rome, Italy. Her mother had only agreed that she might undertake such a trip if I was there as her travel companion. It is not as if I was a hardened traveler. In many ways I was a naive babe in the woods, in spite of the various (mis)adventures that I had survived up to that point.

The dream unfolded as such:

I was standing on a balcony, within the atrium of a large, white marble building. The atmosphere inside the space was murky and gray, cast with an eerie haze. Next I noticed a few shady looking suspects milling about on the floor below. Somehow I knew that they were plotting their moves against me. When I began to descend a wide staircase, I saw that the three characters were climbing up an opposing staircase, all the while glaring at me. This was when I could see that they were two girls and a boy. All three were short and had dark features. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I immediately began to ascend another staircase. Simultaneously, my stalkers were mirroring my movements, always staying the same distance away. The ascending and descending happened three or four times. Somehow I just couldn’t shake them, and it distressed me.

I awoke, spooked.

My journey to Rome was an eventful trip. Some of the memorable elements included three changes of trains, meeting a Colombian woman in the process of setting up an Emerald smuggling ring, an afternoon in Nice, and meeting Ben, with whom I would spend a remarkable day visiting the Vatican. Thirty-five hours after leaving Madrid, I arrived to the Termini Station in Rome, where AC quickly found me.

She led us to Bus 64, which travels the length of the main thoroughfare through the heart of Rome, the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. So tired and restless from the journey, I was anxious for a shower and soft bed. The bus became increasingly crowded as we neared our destination. AC and I were standing in the middle of the bus, shifting with the incoming and outgoing passengers. At the time it didn’t occur to me that I was offering an open invitation to pickpockets. With all the naivety of a first time traveler, my cash, passport, and train pass were stored within my exposed hip pack. As we neared our destination, we shifted closer to the exit. It was then that I noticed the three gypsy children surrounding me. They had nervous looks on their faces as they tried to re-establish their proximity to me. When the doors opened at our destination, they slipped hastily out of the bus and disappeared into the masses.

The moment my foot hit pavement, I was overcome by a surge of fear. Looking down at my hip pack, I saw the zipper was more than halfway open. It was clear to me that merciful fate was on my side when I confirmed that those sneaky little thieves got NOTHING!!!

Walking to the hotel, I recalled the dream from a few days before. When I explained it to AC, she really didn’t know what to believe, other than that I was very lucky on my first day in the Eternal City.

Apart from serving to heighten my general situational awareness, experiencing the direct correlation between my dream and the actual event was a profound realization. This was a critical moment in my history of extraordinary experiences. At that point, I had no basis upon which to determine that this might be a vision of my future. The images were not exact to the eventual event, but the emotions in the dream, which are they key to self-interpretation of dreams , were the key to understanding that this was a precognitive dream.