My mother predicted September 11th, but she didn’t realize it until after it happened.

My mother dreamed about September 11th a few days, (maybe a week, give or take) before it happened. She said she had a dream, and in her dream, she was watching 2 really tall buildings burn, she said that she could see and hear people screaming for help, she said it felt so real, that she could feel the heat from the fires. She said that she saw both buildings collapse, she saw all those people being buried under the debris.

She told us this because she wanted my sisters to not go into the office. My two sisters, both attorneys, worked at the Daley Center back then in downtown Chicago, and my mother assumed it was a premonition about my sisters. They took the day off, and when nothing happened that day, they went back to work the next day, and we all forgot about my mom’s dream.

A few days later, September 11th happened.

My grandmother had premonitions too. She dreamed that her oldest son, my uncle, would be shot, and she told him to go straight to school that day, don’t stop for anything, and come straight home.

He didn’t listen. He stopped at a friends house, who had just gotten into his dad’s gun cabinet. His friend started playing with a shotgun he assumed was empty, and it went off, and blew my uncles left leg almost completely off. He had to get 9 pins in his leg and knee to reattach it. To this day, he still can’t bend his leg. He walks like he’s got a Pirate’s peg leg.

As far as I know, nobody else in my family has this ability. Or if they do, they’ve never shared any stories.