Dreams From Another Dimension?

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The Case of “Amanda“ (2015) — A Unique Partnership:

Examining Information in Dreams about Deceased Veterans

Stanley Krippner, PhD

Amanda Fischer (a pseudonym) is an events planner for the U.S. Army, coordinating events for “relationship enrichment programs” such as retreats for both married and unmarried soldiers. In addition, she works with Army chaplains; her father was an ordained minister and she attended Protestant worship services (most of them non-denominational) in her youth. As a child, she recalled several dreams that were related to religious themes, as well as dreams that appeared to forecast future events, and lucid dreams in which she realized she was dreaming. In addition Amanda had a few dreams about deceased family members. In one of them, her grandmother (of Native American descent) told her that she understood why Amanda could not be present when she passed.

In the course of her work with the U.S. Army, she met Wink, who had been a chaplain’s assistant for several years. About six months after assisting Army chaplains, Amanda began having unusual dreams and started telling them to Wink. She did not tell Wink all of her dreams – only those involving what she calls a “definite compulsion” to share them with her co-worker. These dreams

contained specific names and other information that could be verified.

Amanda contacted me early in 2015 and has given me written permission to use her dream reports in my ongoing research concerning anomalous dreams. Our correspondence has been by email, and all the names in this report are fictitious. Several other measures have been taken to preserve anonymity. I conducted a Skype interview with Wink early in 2016, which verified the information given me by Amanda.

Amanda wrote me that her first anomalous dream in the series occurred about

six months after she met Wink, a Native American from Arizona. His clan has an unusual language, very different from the Navajo language spoken by his father. Wink, who, as he put it, was “raised as a warrior,” was told by his elders that he had been given “the gift of discernment.” Recently, he held a conversation with tribal elders in which he told them about Amanda’s dreams. They replied that her ability was the complementary gift to his. Wink had just begun to tell her about

his military career and his overseas service when she had her first dream of the series:

Case One

I am walking across the road to see a friend’s new house. Before I can return to my house, I have to go through a building. I am in an American Legion building, where I start playing bridge with two ladies. One lady is in her late 50s, and the other is her mother, about 80. I tell them I am from Kentucky, and then the daughter remarks that her mother collects business cards from the record stores she visits in Louisville. She hands me a stack of cards and in the middle is a lanyard with the name “Sanchez” on it. I recall that all of the Special Operations personnel have to wear identification lanyards while they are in their compound. I call Wink so that he can see what is in my hand. He says, “I’ll be right there.” I look on the other side of the lanyard and there is a picture of a rattlesnake with a knife through its tail. Wink then comes into the building, hugs the two ladies, and walks off with them. Then I wake up.

The next morning I called Wink on his way to work and told him a little about my dream. He came right over to my house. He told me that one of his friends, Jeremy Sanchez, was killed in 2004. The only surviving members of his immediate family were his mother and grandmother.

Before Jeremy was killed, he was auditioning for a spot in a Special Operations unit. The symbol of the unit he wanted to be in was a rattlesnake with a sword in its tail.

Case Two

In this dream, I am arguing with Wink about the location of a venue for a special event. Then I go walking down a hallway in a property where I’ve coordinated events in the past. I go into a large suite where a couple of sleeping rooms share a common parlor area. As I walk into the parlor, a man is sitting

on a sofa. I sit down and start talking to him about the nature of his work. I also want to share with him my connection with the Special Operations aviation world and with Wink. He hands me a manila folder and I see a name on the side. It is “Bandrews.”

When I told Wink about this dream, he told me that a pilot friend of his had died on a mission. It was the first time that a manifest had been done in a way that would add the first two letters of the first name onto the soldier’s last name. Britt Andrews was the pilot on that mission, but, due to the manifest change, he was listed as “Bandrews.” The manifest should have read “Brandrews,” but someone had made a mistake.

Case Three

This dream included several people. I hear a missile siren and dive into a nearby building. It is like an old college dormitory filled with young men. I realize it is a fraternity. I look in one room, and a bunch of guys are together playing video games and talking. I ask for someone, and they tell me his room is next door. I

knock on his door, and his roommate says that he is in the gymnasium. I walk into the gym and see a group of guys standing at a desk at one end of the open gym. I ask if I can toss the football around with them, and we make small talk. One guy says his name is “Larry,” another introduces himself as “Adam,” and then I say I am looking for “Patrick.” They say, “He’s over there,” and I see a guy sitting with a girl in his lap. I say “Hello,” but tell them that he is not the “Patrick” I am looking for.

When I told Wink about the dream, I mentioned that I had a “Larry,” an “Adam,” and two “Patricks” in it. Wink was disconcerted. He told me that all of these names were the same as members of a group of Rangers he knew. “Larry” and “Adam” were both killed in IED attacks.

Wink had to bring “Larry” to the hospital in two pieces. The two “Patricks” grew up in theRanger Regiment together. The first “Patrick” went into battle and was shot. The second“Patrick” ran in to save him and was carrying him out when he was fatally shot. The first“Patrick” died of blood loss. Wink said that the first “Patrick” was his roommate in Rangerschool, and that “Patrick” had pictures of him and his fiancée around his bed. Wink rememberedthat, in every picture, “Patrick’s” fiancée was sitting on his lap.

Case Four

Wink and I are upstairs, standing in my bedroom. We are having a conversation about a new end table. He keeps trying to open the blinds, but I tell him not to, because I do not like people being able to see into my room. But then he looks down and sees someone whom he starts helping up the wall and into the window. Wink looks at me, puzzled, because he’s surprised that he is seeing a man he knows is deceased. But they start talking about random things, and the man sits on the floor of my bedroom. A woman comes in and sits down and two kids start climbing on him. He says that it’s time for him to go. Wink looks at him and asks me in an aside if I see the scars on his face. I hadn’t until he mentioned them. Then I see scars on the right side of his face, a big one by his eye and smaller ones on his mouth and cheek. We then start walking down the stairs with him. He starts complaining that his right hip is hurting, and I give him support as we’re walking and reassurance that he will be home soon. I sit him in an old chair at what would be the front door of my house. As he sits down, I take Wink by the hand and tell him that we need to leave him.

When I spoke to Wink about the details of this dream, he said that it sounded like Evan Greene, a Navy SEAL he was very close to. The SEAL, in fact, did have two children. His right eye was a glass eye, and there were scars on the right side of his face from catching shrapnel. The fight he ultimately died in was in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, when he climbed up a wall and sat as a decoy so that the rest of his team could take over the building. He was shot 17 times. As for the front door of our house, Wink and I had blessed that door with sage so it would be the only

entrance through which spirits are supposed to enter.

These dreams are usually about deceased persons whom Wink knew, most of them soldiers with whom he had served. He himself was actually in almost all the battles in which they died. I never see anything bloody or violent, though. The dreams take place in a casual setting. I’ve learned that the dreams with specific names and details that I remember after waking are the ones I should relay to Wink.

Despite the brutal and violent ways in which these soldiers died, they always appear perfectly healthy in my dreams and in good spirits. I feel that they are trying to reach out to Wink to tell him that they are fine and not in the condition in which he last saw them. Perhaps his guilt and overwhelming feelings cloud his abilities to have these dreams himself, and so they come through me.

Explanations other than after-death communication would include fraud, faulty memory, and coincidence. To rule out fraud, one would need to interview Wink to be sure that the dreams as reported by Amanda were identical to the dreams related to Wink. Even so, if there had been collusion, one could not easily determine if Amanda and Wink had concocted the dreams to fit the circumstances of the demise of Wink’s buddies. The fraud hypothesis needs to be considered. However, the scenario is extremely convoluted. It would have been simpler for Amanda to make up the dreams without bringing in another person, one who – upon questioning – might admit complicity. One must also question the motivation. Dreaming about deceased persons is not the easiest way to garner attention in the contemporary United States. Furthermore, Amanda has made no attempt to use these dreams for commercial gain or publicity purposes. Finally, if Wink is engaging in fraud, there would be serious repercussions to his military career should his integrity be questioned.

Another alternative explanation would be faulty memory. People’s dream reports never capture a dream in its entirety. Could Amanda have started to tell Wink the dream, only to have him intervene and ask, “Could this have been my buddy Hal?” Amanda could then have replied, “Yes, I believe his name was Hal or Howard.” Over time, the conversation might have been forgotten and the dream report that was shared with me could have left out its evolution.

Although this scenario is possible, it seems highly unlikely that this pattern would have repeated itself several times without either Amanda or Wink becoming aware of it.

The third possibility is telepathy or some other form of “super-psi.” Amanda could have obtained information about the deceased soldiers through some type of “remote perception” and attributed this information to her connection with Wink. The argument against this suggestion rests on the specific details in Amanda’s dreams only four of which have been included in this presentation. All things considered, the alternative explanations lack clear explanatory value.

In any event, we are left with a remarkable story. If the details as presented are

accurate, Amanda’s collection of dream reports provides useful information relevant to what researchers call “the survival hypothesis.” The deceased persons who appear in Amanda’s dreams seem motivated to contact the living for benevolent purposes. The deceased soldiers cannot do this directly, because their surviving comrade, Wink, is not a suitable conduit. However, Wink’s friend Amanda is an excellent conduit, who allows them to convey their positive message quite well. Amanda’s decision to share these dreams with a professional researcher rather than a reporter fora tabloid attests to her sincerity and integrity.

References

Krippner, S., Faith, L., & Suzuki, Y. (2000). National and gender differences in reports of exoticdreams. Dream Network, 19(1), 40-42.

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Rock, A. J. (Ed.). (2013). The survival hypothesis: Essays on mediumship. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Schouten, S. A. (1994). An overview of quantitatively evaluated studies with mediums and psychics. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 88, 221-254.

Stemman, R. (2005). Spirit communication: A comprehensive guide to the extraordinary world of mediums, psychics and the afterlife. London, UK: Piatkus Books.

Thalbourne, M., Crawley, S. E., & Houran, J. (2008). Temporal lobe lability in the highly transliminal mind. Personality and Individual Differences, 1, 180-185.

Stanley KRIPPNER, Ph.D is the co-author of Extraordinary Dreams and How to Use Them and Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in Veterans, and co-editor of Varieties of Anomalous Experience:

Examining the Scientific Evidence. A full copy of this report will appear in a future issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies (JNDS).