Precognitive dreams are a special case of ESP. As the name suggests, in precognitive dreams the dreamer experiences an event, in whole or in part, before it occurs. It has been suggested that at least some experiences of déjà vu—the uncanny sense that a completely unknown place is familiar, as if one had been there before, or that a new situation has been experienced before—can be explained by precognitive dreams.
Precognitive dreams are sometimes equated with prophetic dreams and with dream divination. There are, however, some significant differences. Prophetic dreams predict the future, but the events predicted relate to important areas of life. As with the Hebrew prophets, there is also some sense that a prophetic dream gives one a chance to actually change the future, as if the dreamed events do not have to happen or can be modified in some way. A precognitive dream, by way of contrast, usually involves rather trivial events over which one does not seem to have much control.
Traditional divinatory dreams, while related to both precognitive and prophetic dreams, tend to be more symbolic in content. One might, for instance, dream about falling off an office building and the next week be fired from one’s job. Someone who takes the psychic significance of dreams seriously might say that the falling dream actually predicted the loss of employment. This kind of symbolic interpretation is integral to traditional divination, and sets divinatory dreams apart from most precognitive dreams.