It's fair for Professor Richard Wiseman to propose psychological explanations for the mystery of prophetic dreams (Can dreams predict the future?, G2, 22 February). However, for all its fantastical nature, many parapsychologists argue that precognition is a real phenomenon – along with telepathy, clairvoyance and some other paranormal phenomena.
Wiseman elaborates on the "coincidence" theory that has been used to explain away precognitive dreams. We dream much more than we think, he points out, thus generating a jumble of different images. These are mostly forgotten, but one may be triggered by something we experience in the following days, leading us to suppose it "magically predicted the future". In reality it is just the laws of probability at work.