William Stofer believes he can predict the future.
Not all of it, or even most of it. But the 62-year-old Wichita artist says he has visions that occasionally come to pass.
And because New Year’s Eve is a popular time to look ahead, set goals and make predictions for the new year, we decided to sit down with Stofer, a self-proclaimed oracle, to see what might be in store for 2022.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
PEREZ: How did this start?
STOFER: It was kind of a fluke and came on real suddenly. I was involved in a car wreck about 1975, and we shouldn't have walked away from it, but we did. It was about a year after that, I started having these, what we call “second sight.” . . . They started as dreams, and so I thought it was just stress.
As these dreams progressed, I could tell that something was different because all my life I dreamed in black and white. . . . And when I have these second-sight dreams, they are in color and the faces are 100% (clear), including my own.
For years I couldn't really figure it out. I knew something was happening. And then when I would hear something on the radio, maybe six months later — one was a plane crash — and I was thinking, ‘Oh, now this is getting weird.’ So I started really paying attention to these things. And I learned how to interpret them a little bit more.
And, of course, the (question) remains to me this day: Do you warn somebody? Do you tell them? Is it the butterfly effect? Will that happen? You know, because this doesn't come with instructions. It just happens.
You’re saying you had a premonition of a plane crash?
Yeah. And when I saw it on TV, parts of it after the destruction were exact … It was around 1983 or 1984, a horrible plane crash. That was probably the largest disaster that I've ever seen. Others have been, I could look at people and it's almost as if somebody's talking to me and saying, “This will be the last time you'll see this person.” And then two days, three days later, they're dead.
That sounds horrifying. How do you deal with that?
It's a conundrum that I don't ever really know how to handle it. When I see and could reveal certain things, I don't see a positive angle on that because some people call these just “time slips” . . . We actually lived it, but we slip back a little bit, like we’re replaying the tape, so to speak.
It's powers of observation and the feeling you get, and you have to practice that. So that's what got me into meditation. And so I try to do something positive with this.
So what does one of your readings entail?
In 1999, I woke up in the middle of the night and started jotting down 24 things. . . . The next day I looked at them, and they were 24 exact fortunes. So I created this thing to kind of break the ice before I do an oracle reading. It’s called ‘Fate of Eight.’ It’s three eight-sided dice. . . . So you roll these dice, and then we add them up and we go down the chart and we see what that fortune is. . .
I think we've reached a precipice in society where we’re saying, “Let’s examine the old ways, and let's see.”
Is there any sort of overall vision or sense that you have for 2022, for Wichita or this area?
Unfortunately we will see more COVID-related issues, more variations. We will see tighter mandates and controls. . . . And then there is a surprise. I thought about this. I was gonna be specific, but I won't be; I'm gonna be vague on this one. But we'll see something related to COVID that will be a shocker for everybody.
Wow, I don’t know if we can take anymore COVID shockers. I hope it’s positive.
I would say it would be. I think that's a good way to look at it. I'm looking at it as positive, but it's gonna surprise a lot of people.
Any other insights? Guidance?
I’ve always had that conundrum of how much to reveal and how much to conceal. And so thoroughly believe this: That everything in life is a fork in the road. And you may see one outcome here and you may see another here, but you have the ability to change that. . . .
So I want to stay positive. I think that what would be the point of constantly being negative? You know, I believe we're here on the earth as observers, anyway. At some point we have to call it quits.
So in the meantime, let's be positive, loving to one another, caring, helping the least fortunate in our world. And then I think we could be happy with whatever happens.
