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The Bookies' Nightmare: Gambling on a dream

On the night of Friday , March 8,1946 John Godley, a student at Oxford University, dreamed that he was reading the racing results in Saturday's newspapers and saw the names of two winners: Bindal and Juladin.

The next morning he told a friend about his dream, and together they consulted the sports pages in Saturday's newspapers. The two horses were running in separate races, later that day. Godley backed both horses, as did other friends he had told about his dream. Both horses won. It was the first of many such dreams that Godley was to have in the coming years - and the beginning of the bookies' nightmare.

Just a few weeks later, on April 4, Godley was at his parents' home in Ireland when he had his racing dream again. This time he was looking at a list of winners. When he woke up, he could recall only one of them: Tubermore. He discovered that a horse called Tuberose was running in the Grand National the following day. The similarity of the two names was good enough for Godley and his family. They backed the horse. Tuberose won.

The next dream occurred on July 28, 1946. In it Godley was calling his bookmaker from a pay phone, and his bookmaker was saying that Monumentor had won. Next morning Godley checked the newspapers. There was a horse called Mentores running that day. He backed it and it won.

A year later Godley had his fourth special dream. This time he was at the races and saw that the winning horse carried the distinctive racing colours of the Gaekwar of Baroda, and that the jockey was an Australian, Edgar Britt. Godley also heard the crowd shouting the name of the favorite for the next race: The Bogie. Godley checked the newspapers and found the prince's horse was running that afternoon and that the jockey was Edgar Britt. He also discovered that the favorite in the next race was named The Brogue.

By now Godley took the matter seriously wanted to be able to provide evidence that he could accurately predict the outcome of the races. He deliberately told two close friends about the dreams, wrote down his predictions, had them witnessed and left the statement at the local post office for safe keeping. He backed both horses. They both won.

The news spread around the world. The dreamer became the racing correspondent on the London Daily Mirror. Fortune continued to favour him with strange dreams from time to time - on October 29, 1946; January 16, 1949; and February 11, 1949. And in 1958 he again dreamed correctly about the winner of the Grand National.

But then his very special gift left him.

John Godleys' s astonishing experience raises a number of questions. Since he had only a slight interest in horses, why should he have had such a series of dreams? Was this strange chapter in his life no more than a string of luck, coincidences? If not, how was it that he could acquire information about events that had not yet taken place? Could it be that future is already here, running in tandem with the present, and that some people - like John Godley - have the remarkable ability to cross the barrier between them?