September 11 (Part 1) by Rose Smith

On the night in question, I went to bed early which is unusual for me. Normally I stay up until midnight, but this particular night I felt tired and somehow a bit off, so off I went. As I crawled under the welcoming covers, my husband, Tony was already asleep and lay quietly next to me. I could hear his slow rhythmic breathing as I drifted slowly off to the peacefulness of sleep. Little did I know what then awaited me in the darkest of nights.

During the course of my dreaming, I began to feel agitated and anxious. I was dreaming about the end of the world, there were tidal waves and earthquakes and many people were being killed as buildings fell. I’ve had these end of world dreams many times before over the past 30 years. One such example is a reoccurring dream I have, of a huge tidal wave coming through the Heads of Sydney Harbour and this is a regular disaster theme many other people have also experienced. During my lucid dreaming state, I was aware of many possible meanings of symbolic disaster dreams, consequently I wasn’t overly concerned at first. I was also aware I was an observer and felt completely safe, thinking it was just another ending with a new beginning around the corner. Even though I was dreaming, I thought a new project, perhaps something exciting, was about to enter my life. I had been bored of late and was looking for something new to embark upon.

I couldn’t remember how this dream started, where I was or what I was doing. I do remember the feeling of complete and utter helplessness accompanied by being unable to move as I watched floors in buildings concertina down like paper fluttering in the breeze, crushing people between them. I then realised that this particular dream had taken on a different flavour to my usual symbolic disaster dreams. There was far more detail, I could hear the people screaming and the effect was overwhelming. I felt no longer safe as the observer. Although I was somehow suspended in the sky watching all of this, I felt inexplicably part of the scene, being drawn in further and further into a vortex of horror. Somehow all of this became extremely relevant. Instantly the agitation modified itself into full blown fear and terror. I then remember as clear as day, I was back in my bed and a vision appeared of three uniformed firefighters standing there in my bedroom. They had the most terrified looks upon their faces, which were contorted in agony. As I looked upwards from their dirt splattered uniforms, I followed the terrified lines of their faces and I then saw what appeared to be steel staunchons stuck right through the middle of their shiny helmets. I screamed in terror and woke myself and my husband.

"What’s wrong" Tony demanded in shock. I replied "There’s 3 firemen with steel staunchons right through their heads standing here". After sometime, my husband managed to calm me down and kept saying "it’s only a dream, go to sleep". I couldn’t sleep and was very restless, tossing and turning as I kept seeing the vision over and over again. In order to get the firemen to leave my bedroom, I tried talking to them, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were incoherent and yelling and there was indescribable background noise. I couldn’t make out exactly what was going on. It was chaotic and I think even the firemen didn’t know what had actually happened. Eventually I calmed myself by telling the firemen to leave and return to infinite beingness. I fell asleep sometime after 4am.

At 8am, my phone rang blaringly, shocking me back into wakefulness. It was Tony. He had gone to work early without waking me, seeing I had such a rough night. He blurted out "thousands of people have been killed, the World Trade Centre has collapsed. A lot of firemen have died".

Of course, I already knew they had died, I just didn’t realise at the time it was in physical reality. This was not just symbolically true as I had originally thought. As I have had premonitions before and am a practicing psychic, I also thought this experience could be a premonition of an event to come such as an earthquake which could strike somewhere in the next couple of months. I hadn’t come to terms with the full blown reality of the terrorist attack.

Tony’s phone call came as a shock. The next night would prove even more shocking. As the day unfolded, I was filled with a sense of dread, not knowing what would happen next and somehow suspecting I would be more involved that I already was. Next month’s edition of Insight will have Part 2 of these terrible events.