Grift of The Day: Woman Who Was Struck By Lightning in 1988 Claims to Have Dreams of Disastrous Events Before They Happen

I first heard the story of this clairvoyant woman brought up on Mostly Sports earlier this week. This morning I watched her recent interview. Personally, I think she's a liar.

The story goes, in 1988, Elizabeth Krohn was taking her children to synagogue during a storm. She got out of her vehicle. Whipped out her umbrella. Then boom. A bolt of lightning struck the ever living shit out of her. Elizabeth dies (briefly). She had an out of body experience. She saw her dead body lying ground. Then her conscious followed a glowing light that led her to a beautiful garden where she met her dead grandpa. They had the whole "Should I stay here? Is it my time to die yet?" conversation, as you do when you're halfway dead. It was the traditional died-and-came-back-to-life experience like you read about.

But this bitch... apparently she's special. On top of getting to experience heaven and re-connecting with a dead relative, she got to see the future. For some reason Elizabeth's grandfather blessed her with knowledge of two particular upcoming events.

Event #1: George H.W. Bush being elected president in November of 1988

Alex Trautwig. Getty Images.

Event #2: The San Francisco 49ers winning the Super Bowl in 1989

Rick Stewart. Getty Images.

Sure, Elizabeth. I'll bite. Her grandfather blessed her with knowledge of the future. I won't hold it against her that she didn't use this knowledge to place a hefty wager on the 49ers. She doesn't strike me as a woman who's plugged into the sports gambling scene. Plus she'd have no way of knowing if her dead grandfather had really fed her correct information. He did nail George Bush winning the election. But that was a coin flip at that point. Did he actually know that 49ers would win? Or did just really like the way Bill Walsh had his offense humming that season and wanted to give his granddaughter a hot tip?

So maybe that happened. But then she started having nightmares of disastrous events. Events that turned out to be true. She claims to have dreamt of a plane crash (TWA flight 800) in 1996 that killed 230 people. 

Mark Wilson. Getty Images.

She claims to have known details all the way down to the flight number and number of people killed. In another plane crash dream she learned specific names of people who ended up on the manifest. She would even have dreams of earthquakes and tsunamis where she would see specific photos that would eventually wind up on the news. 

Part of me thinks we should throw her in jail for not going public with these dreams. She has thousands of bodies on her hands at this point. But in her video she makes a decent point. If she calls up American Airlines and tells them flight 800 is going down, A) they won't believe her, and B) once it does she'll be suspect #1. Then that opens up a whole new can of worms. So fine. I guess that makes sense. Instead of going public, she opted to sit on this information and send herself the details of her dreams in emails as "proof". 

The dreams keep happening and she continues sending herself emails. Then naturally, 27 years later, Elizabeth Krohn decides to reveal her dreams in a for-profit manner. She wrote multiple books. She now travels the country speaking to people about her incredible dreams. And believe it or not, since she's come forward with her story, the dreams have stopped. Conveniently, Elizabeth no longer has these wildly accurate future predicting nightmares. Funny how that works.

Elizabeth is what I would call a liar. I'll give her credit, she's got a pretty nice grift going. She's a great story teller. It's a captivating story. Most importantly, she's preaching a message that people want to hear, which is that consciousness lives on after death. She's essentially proving the existence of heaven. That's a comforting thing for a lot of people. People want to believe her. The thought of dying and the lights just turning out on you forever is pretty scary. But Elizabeth is offering proof of the type of afterlife people want to believe is waiting for them. She may even be right about that. I'm not going to pretend to have any clue what happens when we die. But if you're going to sell his this story, you have to give us some proof, Liz.

Where is the proof of these emails you were sending yourself? That's all I need. Just show us one email. And don't say that you don't have them anymore. Even if you deleted them, there are people out there who can dig them up. If the emails were ever sent, you would be shoving that proof in the face of everyone you met. But if you're not showing proof of these emails, you're 1000% full of shit. Case closed.

Also, during the time she was having these dreams, her husband moved out. I'm skeptical of that as well. She says it's because her future predicting abilities were too overwhelming for him. I agree that having to wake up and listen to your wife go on for 30 minutes about her dream every morning is a nightmare in itself. But if the dreams are coming true? I'm sticking around for that. I'm also going to be there backing up her story. But the man is nowhere to be found.

I'm sorry Elizabeth, but when I see a grifter, I'm gonna call her out. Especially when I need a blog to write. And if you somehow are for real about this, please just give us the tiniest morsel of proof. Anything other than yourself talking into a camera, or writing your own words in a book. Anybody can do that. Shit, maybe I should be doing that. Come to think of it, I just remembered that when was 6-years old I dreamed of 9/11 down to the smallest detail. I saw Mohamed Atta and the boys getting on American Airlines Flight 11 that very morning. I only didn't tell anyone because I was too young and thought people wouldn't believe me. I should write a book about that too.