To see Time’s full face, it is sometimes necessary to look through keyholes, the veteran having a trick of smiling peace to you on one cheek, and grimacing confusion on toe other, behind the curtain. Precognition is simply the Latin equivalent of foreknowledge. However, this has come to have a more specialized meaning as a semitechnical term for one of the phenomena or putative phenomena of parapsychology (psychical research). This articles touches on the wider issues of foreknowledge only insofar as they appear in a rather special form in the narrower context of parapsychology. Precognition is one of a group of terms that also includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and—more peripherally—psychokinesis (PK). Telepathy is thought of, initially at any rate, as consisting in the acquisition of information by one person from another without the use of any of the senses normally indispensable to communication. Clairvoyance, at the same initial stage, is conceived of as being generically identical with telepathy; the specific difference is that in the case of clairvoyance the information is supposed to be obtained not from another person but from an object. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8

Telepathy would be termed precognitive if the information so acquired was not doing to become available to the other person until later. Clairvoyance would be termed precognitive if the information so acquired was not, until later, even going to become available in things, as opposed to minds. It is thus possible to consider precognitive telepathy and precognitive clairvoyance as being two species of the genus precognition. Straight telepathy, straight clairvoyance, and both sorts of precognition are all supposed to be nonsensory and noninferential. Suppose someone has an intuition or a dream or a waking vision that is found to correspond to some actual later happening. Suppose that is seems out of the question either (1) to account for the correspondence as the result of successful inference, conscious or unconscious, from materials available to the subject at the time, or (2) to trace it back to some causal ancestor common to both the anticipation and the fulfillment, or (3) to say that the fulfillment was somehow the result of the anticipation, or (4) even to refuse to account for the correspondence in any way on the grounds that it was just a coincidence. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8

(The counterargument in this last case would be that some intuitions, dreams, visions, and so forth, are bound to prove veridical and that presumably this was just one of those striking cases that is—as the catch phrase has it “by the law of averages” bound to occur occasionally.) If such an intuition, or what have you, were to occur we would—provided that all four conditions seemed to be met—have at least a prima facie case of precognition. Psychokinesis means movement by the mind. The idea is that perhaps some people sometimes may be able, whether consciously or unconsciously, to move or otherwise affect things without pushing or pulling them, and indeed, with out in any way touching either the things in question or any other things involved in the process. The Vineyard House in El Dorado County, California was built by Robert and Louise Chalmers in 1878 and it is a seven-bed-room Victorian. Robert, who was an accomplished man and had once held a seat in the state legislature, began to go mad not long after. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8

Eventually Robert Chalmers’s mental deterioration became so severe that he would carry on whispered conversation with himself and lie in freshly dug graves to see if they would fit his body. It was at this point that Louise locked Robert in the cellar of their enormous house. People passing by the Chalmers’s house often reporting hearing terrible moans and screams emanating from the structures basement. Rumors suggested that Louise completely abandoned her husband, except to deliver his meals. Others claimed she treated him as humanely as she could under the circumstances, and she had a bad reputation with men, as her first husband committed suicide. Whichever the case might have been, Robert himself decided that is wife was trying to poison him. He stopped eating the food she brought him and starved himself to death. Thus meant that, just as her first husband had done, Louise Chalmers’s second husband took his own life. #RyanPhillippe 4 of  8

Although there is no concrete proof to support the conjecture, the events of the next few years make a decent case for Robert’s spirit having come back to haunt Louise. The vineyards stopped producing, depriving Louise of what had once been a substantial income. It soon because necessary for her to rent out some of the rooms in her palatial house. When that ploy did not bring in sufficient funds, Louise’s creditors began to assume control of her shrinking holdings. The cellar where Louise had held her suffering husband prisoner became a temporary jail for those about to be hanged. When the criminal’s time was up, a gallows was constructed on Louise’s front lawn. By the time she died in the early 1900s, Louise was financially and emotionally destitute. Her once beautiful house was run down—and badly haunted. For nearly 50 years, the property fell to a succession of owners. No one stayed too long. Usually, the sounds of Robert’s spirit rattling the chains in which Louise had him bound—or footfalls shuffling up and down the basement stairs—were enough to chase prospective innkeepers to another business venture. For a while, the house stood empty. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8

In 1956, the old place was reclaimed and converted to a restaurant and inn. The cellar that once held the tee-totaling Robert Chalmers became a bar. Revelers were often treated to sounds on invisible taffeta skirts rustling and labored breathing emanating from invisible sources. A bartender once watched in awe as wine glasses gently—and quite impossibly—slid across the bar. In 1975, a family named Herrera bought the Vineyard House in partnership with their friend David Van Buskirk. The new owners were confident that their experience in the hospitality industry would serve them well. The foursome put countless hours of work into the place. Gary Herrera spoke of painstakingly choosing colors and fabrics, ordering vibrant shades only to have his shipment arrive completely different shades than he had chosen. Puzzled and annoyed by the turn of events, Herrera had the shock of his life while leafing through a scrapbook that he had found in the house. It was from the Vineyard House’s early days and revealed that the colors and fabrics that has been mistakenly delivered matched the original décor. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8

The man, who had been a skeptic on the subject of the supernatural, immediately developed a new respect for force that he could not see of fully understand. Perhaps he or somebody else had consciously or unconsciously influenced psychokinetically the décor in order to increase the degree of correspondence between the guest. One consequence which has often been thought to follow from the existence of precognition is that, sensationally, the future must somehow be already here—or at any rate there. This is usually derived from a conceptions of precognition as a mode of perception of extrasensory perception. The Chalmers’s ghosts were not content to remain so subtle, however. When a young couple checked into the hotel, the man decided to turn out the lights in their room so he could play a trick on his partner. He then sat down on the bed and waited for her to come out of the bathroom. When he felt someone sit on the bed, he presumed that it was his partner and that his ruse had been effective. He turned on the bedside lamp. Unfortunately for the man’s nervous system, it was not his girlfriend who had joined him but a stern-looking, bearded man! The image soon faded, but the guest recognized the face from a photograph he has seen while checking in—Robert Chalmers’s apparition had clearly not approved of the young man’s attempt to tease the lady in his life. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8

Others were disturbed in the middle of the night by what they thought were partiers finally arriving back to their rooms. The guests were understandably annoyed at the inconsiderate behavior and opened their bedroom door to let the noisemakers know that after-hours revelry was not appreciated. Much to the guests’ surprise, three men dressed in Victorian styles stood near the top of the staircase. For a moment, the couple stared at the images in complete shock. As they did, the images stared back at the couple in equal, if not greater, astonishment before dissolving. Now that the house is once again a private residence, only time will tell whether the ghostly energy that permeated the building has dissipated for good. We habitually observe events before they occur. By valid inference from this misdescription it is concluded that the future must therefore really be present. Precognition—foreseeing arbitrary events in the future that could not by any stretch of the imagination be inferred from the present—that is something which is almost impossible for our minds to grasp. How can anyone see things which do not yet exists? Maybe time is not linear and sometimes bleeds together, maybe people from the past can see into the future and people in the present see into the past. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8