Joe Brandt was in a hospital in 1937, recovering from a fall from a horse, when he had several dreams about a huge earthquake in southern California. Here is a shortened version of it:

The dream/vision took place in perfect continuity, night after night, for many nights, always picking up exactly where it left off. This is super-normal.

I seemed to be in another world. Whether it was the future, or whether it was some ancient land, I could not say. Then slowly, like the silver screen of the “talkies”, but with color and smell and sound, I seemed to find myself in Los Angeles. It was Los Angeles; it was bigger, much bigger, and busses and odd shaped cars crowded the city streets. I thought about Hollywood Blvd., and I found myself there on Hollywood Blvd. Whether this is true, I don’t know, but there were a lot of guys about my age with beards and wearing, some of them, earrings. All the girls wore real short skirts… and they slouched along, moving like a dance. . . .

I noticed there was a quietness about the air, a kind of stillness. Something else was missing, something that should be there. There were no birds. I listened. . . . wondered what had happened to them. . . . Then, I knew something was going to happen. . . .

Those crazy kids. Why are they dressed like that? Maybe it is some big Halloween doings, but it don’t seem like Halloween. More like early spring. . . . Something is going to happen. Something is happening now! . . .

There was a funny smell. I don’t like it. A smell like sulphur, sulphuric acid, a smell like death. For a minute, I thought I was back in chem [chemistry class]. . . . It was five minutes to four o’clock on a sunny afternoon. I thought I would stand there looking at that clock forever waiting for the something to come. . . .

I felt as if the ground wasn’t solid under me. I knew I was dreaming and yet I wasn’t dreaming. There was that smell again coming like from the ocean. I was getting to the 5 and 10 [a store] and I saw the look on the kids’ faces. Two of them were right in front of me, coming my way. Both with beards. One with earrings. One said: “let’s get out of this place. Let’s go back East.” He seemed scared. It was as if the sidewalks were trembling – but you couldn’t seem to see them [tremble].

It was clearly too late for those two people to leave L.A. and go back east to escape the mega-earthquake, but this is telling us that people should leave. It continues:

. . . I started to run. I ran and ran, and the ground kept trembling. But I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t feel it. But I knew it was trembling. Everybody looked scared. They looked terrible. One young lady just sat down on the sidewalk all doubled up. She kept saying “earthquake, it’s THE earthquake,” over and over. But I couldn’t see that anything was different.

Then, when it came. How it came. Like nothing in God’s world. Like nothing. It was the scream of a siren, long and low, or the scream of a woman I heard having a baby when I was a kid. It was awful. It was as if something, some monster, was pushing up the sidewalks. . . . I looked out at the cars. They were honking but not scared. They just kept moving. . . .

I said that it was a dream and I would wake up. But I didn’t wake up. The shaking had started again, but this time different. It was a nice shaking, like a cradle being rocked for a minute, and then I saw the middle of the Blvd. seemed to be breaking in two. The concrete looked as if it were being pushed straight up by some giant shovel. It was breaking in two. . . . They were lifted up. . . And the waters kept oozing, oozing. The cries. . . . I woke up. I never want to have that dream again.

It came again. Like the first time which was a preview and all I could remember was that it was the end of the world. I was right back there– all that crying. Right in the middle of it. My eardrums felt as if they were going to burst. Noise everywhere. People falling down, some of them bad hurt. Pieces of buildings, chips flying in the air. One hit me hard on the side of the face, but I didn’t seem to feel it.

I wanted only to wake up, to get away from this place. . . . It was then that I felt myself lifted up [high into the air]. Maybe I had died. I don’t know. But I was over the city. It was tilting toward the ocean, like tilting a picnic table. The buildings were holding, better than you could believe. They were holding. They were holding. The people saw they were holding and they tried to cling to them or get inside. It was fantastic. Like a building had a will of its own. . . .

You knew they were going to hold, even if the waters kept coming up. Only they didn’t. . . . I couldn’t look anymore at the people. I kept wanting to get higher. I kept willing myself to go higher.

Then I seemed to be out of it all, but I could see. I seemed to be up on Big Bear near San Bernardino, but the funny thing is that I could see everywhere. I knew what was happening. The earth seemed to start to tremble again. I could feel it even though I was up high. . . . But then I saw the streets of Los Angeles, and everything between the San Bernardino mountains and L.A. It was all tilting toward the ocean, houses everything that was left. I could see the big lanes, dozens of big lanes still loaded with cars, five lanes in one place, and all the cars sliding the same way.

. . . I wondered how long it was, and I could see the clock, even though I wasn’t there on the Blvd. It was 4:29. It had been half an hour. I was glad I couldn’t hear the crying any more. But I could see everything. . . . Then, like looking at a huge map of the world, I could see what was happening on the land and with people. San Francisco was feeling it, but she was not in any way like Hollywood or Los Angeles. . . . I could see all those mountains coming together, the Sierra Nevada, and the San Andreas and Garlock.

I knew what was going to happen to San Francisco, it was going to turn over, because of Garlock [fault]. It would turn upside down. It went quickly, because of the twisting, I guess. It seemed much faster than Hollywood . . . .

I saw [the] Grand Canyon, that great big gap was closing in, and Boulder Dam was being pushed from underneath. And then, Nevada, and on up to Reno. Way down south, way down Baja, California, Mexico too. It looked like some volcano down there was erupting, along with everything else.

I saw the map of South America, especially Colombia. Another volcano eruption, shaking violently. Venezuela seemed to be having some kind of volcanic activity. Away off in the distance, I could see Japan . . . Japan started to go into the sea. I couldn’t tell time, then, and the people looked like dolls, far away. I couldn’t hear the screaming, but I could see the surprised look on their faces. They looked so surprised. They were all like dolls. . . . In a minute or two it seemed over. Everybody was gone. There was nobody left.

. . . . I [could see] way around the globe. More flooding. Is the world going to be drenched? Constantinople. Black Sea rising. Suez Canal, for some reason seemed to be drying up. Sicily, she doesn’t hold. I could see a map. Mt Etna is shacking. A lot of this area seemed to go . . . I wasn’t sure of time, now.

England, huge floods, but no tidal waves. Water, water everywhere, but no one going into the sea. People were frightened and crying. Some places they fell in the streets on their knees and started to pray for the world. I didn’t know the English were emotional. Ireland, Scotland, all kinds of churches were crowded, it seemed night and day. People were carrying candles and everybody was crying for California, Nevada, parts of Colorado, maybe all of it, even Utah.

Everybody was crying, most of them didn’t even know anybody in California, Nevada, Utah, but they were crying as if they were blood kin. Like one family. Like it happened to them. New York was coming into view, she was still there, nothing had happened, yet water level was way up. Here, things were different. People were running in the streets yelling, “end of world”! Kids ran into restaurants and ate everything in sight. I saw a shoe store with all the shoes gone in about five minutes. Fifth Avenue, everybody running. . . . They ran like they were scared to death. But nothing was happening in New York. I saw an old lady with garbage cans, filling them with water. Everybody seemed scared to death. Some people looked dazed. The streets seemed filled with loud speakers. It wasn’t daylight. It was night. I saw, like the next day, and everything was topsy turvy. Loud speakers again [talked to the people] about fuel tanks broken in areas, shortage of oil. People seemed to be looting markets.

The loud speakers were likely informing the public what was happening around the world, because the electric power grid was likely down in that area, so the only form of communication will be shortwave radios. Then the news broadcast over loud speakers.

I saw a lot of places that seemed safe, and people were not scared. Especially the rural areas. Here everything was almost as if nothing had happened. People seemed headed to these places some on foot, some in cars (that still had fuel). I heard, or somehow I knew, that somewhere in the Atlantic land had come up [from the bottom of the ocean]. A lot of land. . . .

I could hear now. I could hear, someplace, a radio station blasting out, telling people not to panic. They were dying in the streets. There were picture stations with movies [must be television which did not exist in 1937], some right in Hollywood, these were carrying on [reporting on], with all the shaking. One fellow [on TV] . . . kept shouting and reading instructions. . . .

Things were happening in the atmosphere. The waves were rushing up now. Waves. Such waves. Nightmare waves. . . . Grand Canyon was pushing together, and Boulder Dam was breaking apart. It was still daylight. All these radio stations went off at the same time Boulder Dam had broken. I wondered how everybody would know about it, people back East. That was when I saw the ham radio operators. . . . They kept sounding the alarm. One kept saying: “This is California. We are going into the sea. This is California. We are going into the sea. Get to the high places. Get to the mountains. All states west– this is California. . . .”

. . . . I woke up. . . . For a minute or two, I thought it had happened. . . . It was just a dream. It was nothing more. Nobody [no men] in the future on Hollywood Blvd. is going to be wearing earrings, and those beards. Nothing like that is ever going to happen. . . .

The other thing-those ham operators-hanging on like that-over and over-saying the same thing: “This is California. We are going into the sea. . . .” I guess I’ll hear that for days.

(Previously published in California Super quake 1975-1977? by Paul James. Also published in When the Comet Runs by Tom Kay, Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 1997. Also on websites and being read aloud on YouTube.)

What should we make of this dream? There was the smell of sulfur, which means this earthquake could be caused an asteroid impact somewhere in the world; unless the earth splits open and exposes the lava. But it did not show any darkness or fire; only the earthquake, a few volcano eruptions, and high water. However, most dreams and visions do not show the complete picture.

Did you notice how the men had earrings, which some do today? This trend started in California. And some were dressed so strangely that it was like Halloween? In 1970, an annual convention first began called Comic-Con, which is held in San Diego, in which everyone dresses up as their favorite comic book character. It does not happen at the same time every year, so you cannot put a date on this quake.

This dream might be the source of the often-made statement that California will go into the ocean, though there have been other such prophecies.