Timothy Schultz, who won £23 million on a 40p Powerball ticket in 1999, says the lottery winners he has interviewed as a journalist shared one thing in common before their wins: an internal experience such as a dream, hunch, or visualisation that they would win.
Schultz, a former gas station worker, now runs a podcast and YouTube channel where he speaks to fellow winners. In his latest video, he highlighted previous winners who said they knew they would win before it happened.
Winners who 'knew' they would win
Schultz explained: "I have interviewed quite a few lottery winners who say they knew it was going to happen before they won. What did they have in common? That's what this video is all about."
He related this to his own experience, saying: "Before I won the Powerball in 1999, I had a very vivid dream about it. About three months before I won, I had this dream that I had already won the lottery. It was so real that it convinced me that it was going to happen."
He added: "I started telling people it was going to happen and then it did. So when it did happen, it was very surreal. But I was surprised when I started this podcast to meet and interview so many other people who had similar stories."
Neil Trotter's certainty
His first example was Neil Trotter, a car mechanic from south London who won £107.9 million on the EuroMillions. The then 41-year-old was so sure he would win that he told staff at his dad's office that he would be retiring because he was about to become a multi-millionaire.
Trotter told Schultz: "My dad and I used to have chats all the time, and I'd tell my dad what I'd have and stuff I'd buy and stuff I wanted to do. He used to say to me, 'It's nice to dream, son.' And I used to say, 'It's not a dream, dad, you just watch, it's going to happen.'"
He added: "On the Friday, I told the girls that I was retiring and I wouldn't be in on the Monday because I was going to win the lottery tonight."
Dreams and visualisation
Schultz also interviewed Kelle Grace Gaddis, who dreamt about winning the lottery before making it a reality. She went on to win 286 jackpots totalling nearly $800,000 (approx. £600,000).
Schultz described her story as one of the "most specific lottery dream stories" he had ever heard. In the interview, Gaddis explained a dream about being in a supermarket near her home, seeing a woman behind the counter with a nametag reading Eileen and a clock showing 2pm, and buying a ticket.
She said: "I went at that time and there was Eileen right behind the counter wearing her name tag, the time said two. I decided to purchase the Lucky for Life, which was the same ticket I purchased in the dream, even though I had never heard of it before. I never played the lottery, so I had never heard of any of the games. But I had dreamt the words Lucky for Life in the dream. So that's the one I picked and I won."
Schultz said some people, like Gaddis, had a dream come to them spontaneously, while others intentionally created the scene in their head over and over again.
Daniel Howard's vision
He highlighted British man Daniel Howard, who dreamt about winning the EuroMillions before it happened. Howard also took other steps, telling Schultz: "I got my chequebook out and I wrote myself a cheque for £1 million. And I actually have the cheque which I dreamed of."
Howard wrote 'National Lottery' on the back of the cheque and told himself he would win a million before turning 35. He ended up winning that amount on his 34th birthday.
He described visualising the win: "I actually drove in my car up to the National Lottery, the Camelot Headquarters, and I parked my car outside and I looked at the building and it had the big white letter Camelot along the top of the building and I saw the office windows and I looked up and I closed my eyes and I imagined myself walking in and I envisaged them saying to me, 'Congratulations, Mr Howard, you've won a million pounds. Here's your cheque for one million pounds. Congratulations.' And then six months later, I was actually there doing it for real."
The common theme
Schultz said Howard was far from the only winner he has interviewed who pictured it in their mind before it happened, naming seven lottery winners in the video with similar stories.
He explained the common theme: "And one thing I've noticed with many of these winners is that there's something going on internally before the win, before it shows up in the external world. Whether that's an intuitive hunch, whether that's visualising or believing, whether that is having a dream about it. They then take an action step and then something happens externally. So this can be applied way outside of the lottery."
He added: "But when it comes to the lottery, another thing I've noticed is the certainty of winning that some winners have doesn't necessarily mean that they know every single detail like the when and the how."
Schultz related to this final point, noting that after a vivid dream, he bought a ticket the next day, but it wasn't a winner. He continued this for three months until he finally won, concluding: "But every time that I lost when I played and didn't win, of course I was disappointed, but I never suddenly thought, 'Well, this just isn't going to happen.' I believed that it was going to happen."
