Reader Colleen sent me a link to this story about an Alabama man just arrested for the 1998 murder of his wife. The story was interesting because in 2000, another man, Rod Spraggins, claimed the murdered woman appeared to him in a dream saying her husband had committed the crime:
In 2000, Spraggins, a bail bondsman, stunned a crowd of 100 when he accused Waites of killing his wife and dared the man to sue him for slander if he was wrong.
Waites was not at the forum, never responded publicly to the accusation and never sued.
In an otherwordly turn to the saga Friday, Spraggins disclosed that he never had any evidence to make the accusation and that it was based entirely on Mrs. Waites' appearing to him in a series of dreams.
"She started appearing to me within the first weeks of her death," said Spraggins
The implication, reported without any skepticism, is that Sparaggins had a psychic experience. Of course, you don’t need to be psychic to know that the husband is always going to be a prime suspect in his wife’s murder. Actually I think this tells us more about Spraggins and his fantasies about Waites’ wife than it does about any supposed psychic experience. Spaggings may well have dreamed it. So what? It was on his mind; he was suspicious of the husband – why wouldn’t he dream something like that? The only remarkable thing about this story is that anyone would think it worthy of reporting.
Waites was investigated by the police after the murder – an investigation that turned up some other wrongdoing:
Waites was sentenced to six months in jail in 2002 after he pleaded guilty in an ethics case that was uncovered during the investigation into his wife's killing.
He was given a five-year split sentence, with six months to be served in the Chambers County Jail and the remainder on probation.
Psychic forces were not reported to be involved in that arrest though. And psychic forces were not at work in the murder arrest either, just routine police work:
Police Chief Ron Docimo would not comment on exactly what led to the arrest, saying only that it was a "culmination of years of following up on leads and tips."
So far there are no reports of Spraggins predicting the verdict in the upcoming trial. I have one prediction though – Spraggins won’t be called upon to testify.
Scroggins knew the man and wife? I suspect that Scroggins had seen something in their behaviour, or knew them well enough, that he subconsciously figured out what happened.
Think of it in programming terms; Scroggins' background processing had come to a conclusion about the crime, he was not consciously aware of his conclusion.
Dreaming is like polling a device for events. The conscious mind goes to sleep and sends out a poll for any events (conclusions) that the background processing needs to send to the conscious part of the mind. Voila, the dreams.
The other day I suddenly came to a stop before an intersection, and then a car sped across the intersection against the light. My son says "how'd you do that?? You're psychic!"
I couldn't have seen the oncoming car due to the buildings near the corner. I told him that I must have seen a reflection, or heard the car, there had to have been some information taken in by my senses, but that my aware brain hadn't noticed, and that the rest of my brain had just sent a message to stop NOW. There's no magic, son.
People have an intuitive sense that there is something else, something more powerful than what they are aware of. They call it god or magic or psychic phenomena. It's just the brain.
Posted by: Zod | February 17, 2006 at 11:57 AM
Occasionally, I'll get an insight from a dream. Usually, it's something so obvious that I didn't think about it.
Posted by: BronzeDog | February 17, 2006 at 12:16 PM
Of course he could just be making it up or embelishing the dream. Dreams, like personal anecdotes, are notorious for having more and more detail the more we tell people about them.
Posted by: clarkbar2019 | February 17, 2006 at 01:17 PM
It was reported uncritically because it was reported by the general news media. There is no way to tell whether the event actually happened as recounted, or what other factors entered into it. The news media love a story like that. My personal view on journalists: they are the worst educated of all professionals. I speak from experience, since I was a newspaper reporter before I went back to school and changed professions.
Posted by: | February 20, 2006 at 10:59 AM
Dr. Hibbert: "Well, you'll still have your education. What's your major?"
Severly Injured Football Player: "Communications."
Dr. Hibbert: "Oh. My. [Ed]."
Football Player: "I know. Is joke major."
Posted by: BronzeDog | February 20, 2006 at 11:13 AM