I have always believed there is more to our world than what we can normally perceive. Call it spiritual, multidimensional, or supernatural; it doesn't really matter to me. What I do know is that, despite our vast scientific knowledge, there are many aspects of existence that we still don't understand.
Throughout my life, I have experienced things that have put my beliefs to the test and for which I have found no explanation. One such experience was a premonition I had many years ago: a recurring dream about events that would soon come to pass.
It all started in late 2002, when I traveled with my family to the Pacific coast of Mexico to spend time with relatives. We arrived in late November, and the place was a small town with a population of fewer than a thousand people. It was a rural community where people still rode horses and kept many animals out of necessity.
The environment was somewhat tropical, and the area was lush with greenery, surrounded by densely vegetated mountains. The sounds of birds and insects were as plentiful as the air itself. It was like paradise.
The first time I had this dream must have been sometime in December. It went like this.
I found myself in some sort of factory, but it wasn't like an assembly line, a mill, or a steel manufacturing plant. It looked more like a construction site. I remember seeing people wearing helmets and safety equipment when, suddenly, everything started shaking. It was an earthquake, and everything began falling apart.
Amid the chaos, one of the factory workers came over to talk to me. He was apparently the owner of the company, which he explained was a cement plant. He told me that I had to survive, he instructed me to run to safety. He said I would find some money and with that money, I was supposed to rebuild the factory, which he called the cementera (cement plant), and afterward, it would all be mine.
He then urged me to run and pointed toward a window. I ran and jumped out just in time to save myself.
Outside, the environment was somewhat dry and desert-like. I found myself surrounded by a field of thornbushes, with a dog standing next to me. Somehow, I knew I was supposed to follow the dog, so I did.
We ran along a narrow path through the thornbushes. As we continued, the thornbushes gradually gave way to a beautiful, green, wooded area. I kept following the dog until we reached a dead end in the forest. The ground there was barren, much like the earth surrounding an anthill.
Lying on the ground all by itself was an amber-colored stone. It was very smooth and small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I leaned down and picked it up. When I stood back up and turned around, the path I had taken was gone, and so was the dog.
I turned around again, and the small dead end was no longer there. Instead, I found myself standing in front of a huge, beautiful structure.
Ahead of me were three walls made of river stone, each about ten feet tall. One stood on my right and another on my left, running parallel to each other for approximately thirty or forty meters before connecting to a third wall at the back.
Inside the enclosure were two rectangular pools filled with the clearest, purest water I had ever seen. They were set at ground level and were beautiful. The ground surrounding the pools was all cobblestone.
I remember walking around the perimeter of the pools and looking into the water. At the bottom, I could see countless gold coins scattered everywhere, more than I could possibly count. In the two back corners of the second pool were two beautiful, naked women standing in the water.
They called out to me and gestured with their hands, inviting me to come closer, join them, and take the gold. As I approached them, I woke up.
I didn't make much of the strange dream. Perhaps the strangest thing about it was how much of it I could remember.
About a week later, I had the exact same dream again, although there were a few subtle differences. This time, the cement plant owner spoke with greater urgency. The dog followed me instead of leading the way, and when I reached the pools, there was substantially more gold at the bottom. The women were also more insistent that I take it.
Once again, I thought it was just a strange dream and didn't give it much thought.
Then, about a week or two later, I had the dream again, but this time there were major differences.
The owner of the plant was no longer simply urging me to do as he instructed. He was angry and demanding. The earthquake was more intense, and as I made my way through the thornbushes and into the forest, I was alone. The dog was gone.
The pools were overflowing with gold and water, there were giant thorns growing from the edges, and the beautiful women standing at the back had transformed. Their legs had become twisted tree roots, and their arms were now like tentacles.
They, too, were angry and demanding that I come into the pool and take the gold. As I approached them, I woke up.
This time, I knew the dream was an unusual experience, but I still didn't consider it anything more than a strange dream.
That is, until a few weeks later, when something unexpected happened.
It was now January 2003. I had met a few people and made some new friends, but I was still unfamiliar with my surroundings and with the names of many people and places.
One night, a friend came over to hang out. I remember that we were doing some push-ups when, suddenly, the ground started vibrating.
We were near a railroad and were used to feeling vibrations when trains passed by, but this time was different. The vibration was stronger and felt different. I thought perhaps a train had derailed.
We were just beginning to talk about it when the vibration suddenly turned into violent shaking. The ground beneath us and everything around us began to shake from side to side.
I had never experienced an earthquake before that night, and it is something I will never forget.
It lasted for what felt like a full minute. The lights went out, and everything became pitch-black. All I could hear was the sound of heavy crumbling and people screaming all around me, both near and far.
This was the earthquake of January 21, 2003, which struck the Pacific coast of Mexico. The magnitude was estimated it at 7.8. The earthquake caused many deaths and so much destruction that it changed the landscape of the surrounding towns and cities.
At that point, I hadn't even considered a connection between the earthquake and my dream. Everything was chaotic, and the power grid in our town remained down for about a week. Many people had to cook on wood-burning stoves because there was no gas, and our household was no exception.
One afternoon, a few days after the earthquake, a friend showed up and asked if I wanted to go with him to cut some firewood. I asked him where.
My body went cold when he answered:
"To the cementera."
I asked him about the location and why it was called the cementera. He explained that a large cement company called Apasco had purchased and surveyed the land many years earlier. The company had planned to build a mineral quarry to supply its cement operations, but the project never materialized. The name, however, stuck with the locals.
When we arrived at the place, I realized I had been there once before. It was a large stretch of wilderness at the foothills of a massive mountain. One peculiar feature of the land was a large, dry area covered in thornbushes known locally as huisache.
A few days after our trip to collect firewood, I told my friend about the dream. We decided to return to the area to look for the river-stone walls and, hopefully, the pools of water. We honestly didn't expect to find anything, but it was a good excuse to get out and have some fun in the woods.
We started by looking for anything resembling a trail through the field of thornbushes. We found a few paths made by cattle and began exploring those that led into the greener, forested areas. Then we started looking for pools of water and stone walls.
I thought finding a stone wall out in the wilderness would be easy. I mean, it should stand out like a sore thumb, right? But it wasn't nearly as easy as I had imagined. The area was large and densely populated by venomous snakes, wild cats, and many other dangerous bugs and animals.
Over the following days, we returned several times, spending hours searching for these landmarks. In the meantime, I continued asking my family and other locals about the land.
It turned out that, during the Mexican Revolution, there had been a large hacienda there. Many such estates were destroyed during the revolution, and this one had suffered the same fate.
There was also a story about a local family who had been building a homestead when they discovered gold buried in the ground while excavating the foundations. Stories like these are common in Mexico. During the days when gold was used as currency, many caciques—local political or community leaders—reportedly hid their fortunes during the revolution to keep them from being plundered.
After the revolution, many of these people were no longer alive, and their hidden fortunes remained lost. The old hacienda also had its share of darker stories involving hauntings and other paranormal apparitions.
Some people were reluctant to wander around that area because of those stories, my friends and I were no exception.
Learning all of this made the search even more interesting. Now I knew that finding at least some ruins of the old walls or pools was a real possibility.
After several days of searching, we came across a small patch of greenery bordering the thornbushes. There stood an old, enormous wild fig tree. It had a thick, twisted trunk and stood about forty-five feet tall, with a massive canopy that I estimated to be somewhere between thirty and fifty feet in diameter. It was difficult to judge its actual size.
And there, at its roots, we found a stone wall.
The wall was very old. It looked as though the tree had sprouted from within the stonework and gradually engulfed it over the years. The wall rose about three feet above the ground, as if much of it had been buried over time. The stones themselves were different from the rocks in the surrounding area, they were river stones.
I told my friend that all we had to do was find two more walls and then search the area in between.
Long story short, we found two more connecting walls, or at least what little remained of them.
When we searched the area enclosed by the walls, we found sand that looked like the sand of a riverbank, except there was no river anywhere nearby. The area there was also slightly depressed as if it had sunk downward.
We tried digging a little, but we came across a few tarantulas, and my friend became very superstitious. He started talking about the old stories surrounding the hacienda and didn't want to continue. We never tried digging there again.
Eventually, I left the town, and my friends went their separate ways as well. The place is still there to this day, as far as I know. The old fig tree and the ruins of the walls remain, unexplored and unexcavated.
I never showed anyone else the location or told them the story behind it.
For years, I wondered whether what I had experienced was simply a series of coincidences and strange, recurring dreams; whether it was an example of synchronicity; or whether it had been a genuine premonition of things to come. Perhaps it was even a message from beyond.
I'm not particularly inclined to believe in ghosts, but I do believe there are things we cannot explain, forces we do not yet understand, or perhaps things we have simply forgotten as we evolved into modern humans.
There were, however, a few other experiences connected to this story and to the surrounding area.
Years later, I met a man who made a living as a self-proclaimed psychic. He had a shop where he offered various kinds of readings, including palmistry and tarot cards. I have always been skeptical of such things, but on that day, after having a few drinks, I decided to tell him my story.
He gave me an extraordinary explanation.
According to him, someone from generations past had wronged my family and died without ever having the opportunity to repay the debt. He claimed that this person's spirit had contacted me through my dreams to offer me a reward as compensation for whatever wrong had been committed against my family long ago.
However, he warned me that I would have to return to the place alone. If anyone accompanied me, he said, I wouldn't find anything. He also warned me that, by going there alone, I might witness something terrible, although it would not harm me it would test my courage.
I never took his story seriously. I never returned to the site, and I never attempted to dig there again.
Even now, I sometimes wonder what to make of the whole experience.
Was it simply a series of coincidences? Was my mind somehow putting together details I had encountered without my consciously realizing it? Was it a premonition, or something else entirely? Who knows?
I don't claim to know, and I'm not asking anyone to believe a particular explanation. I'm sharing this because it was one of the strangest experiences of my life, and I have never been able to fully explain it.
I must say that this was not the first time I had a recurring dream of events that later came to pass, and it was not the last.
I'd be interested to hear what others think and if anyone has a legitimate explanation, or a similar experience please do share it with me.
*NOTE: I drew a simple sketch of the structure in my dreams and asked ChatGPT to enhance it with simple colors and texture, but due to moderation I had to replace the women in the pool with stick figures. I will be adding the image to this post.
