The Dunne experiment

In 1964, Vladimir Nabokov began keeping a sleep diary. Every morning, immediately upon waking, he would write down whatever he could recall of the picture shows that his mind spun by night, and then, for the next couple of days, he would be on active lookout for any real-life experiences that seemed to echo the remembered dream. Nabokov was testing a theory which suggested that dreams might be prophetic; that rather than rehashing memories or reshaping personal trauma, our dreams might offer a proleptic vision of what is to come. What if we were all clairvoyant?

Nabokov was swept up in the maverick thinking of John W. Dunne, an eccentric British aeronautical engineer, who, in the early