Premonitory Warnings.
One of the most curiously detailed premonitory dreams that I have ever
seen is one mentioned in Mr. Kendall's "Strange Footsteps." It is
supplied by the Rev. Mr. Lupton, Primitive Methodist minister, a man of
high standing in his Connection, whose mind is much more that of the
lawyer than that of poet or dreamer:--
"By the District Meeting (Hull District) of 1833, I was restationed for
the Malton Circuit, with the late Rev. T. Batty. I was then
superintendent of the Lincoln Circuit; and, up to a few days before the
change, Mrs. Lupton and myself were full of anticipation of the
pleasures we should enjoy among our old friends on being so much nearer
home. But some time before we got the news of our destination, one
night--I cannot now give the date, but it was during the sittings of the
Conference--I had a dream, and next morning I said to my wife, 'We shall
not go to Malton, as we expect, but to some large town: I do not know
its name, but it is a very large town. The house we shall occupy is up a
flight of stairs, three stories high. We shall have three rooms on one
level: the first--the kitchen--will have a closed bed in the right
corner, a large wooden box in another corner, and the window will look
down upon a small grass plot. The room adjoining will be the best room:
it will have a dark carpet, with six hair-seated mahogany chairs. The
other will be a small bed-room. We shall not worship in a chapel, but in
a large hall, which will be formed like a gallery. There will be a
pulpit in it, and a large circular table before it. The entrance to it
will be by a flight of stairs, like those in a church tower. After we
have ascended so far, the stairs will divide--one way leading up to the
left, to the top of the place. This will be the principal entrance, and
it leads to the top of the gallery, which is entered by a door covered
with green baize fastened with brass nails. The other stairs lead to the
floor of the place; and, between the door and the hall, on the
right-hand side, in a corner, is a little room or vestry: in that vestry
there will be three men accustomed to meet that will cause us much
trouble; but I shall know them as soon as ever I see them, and we shall
ultimately overcome them, and do well.'
"By reason of some mishap or misadventure, the letter from Conference
was delayed, so that only some week or ten days prior to the change I
got a letter that informed me my station was Glasgow. You may judge our
surprise and great disappointment; however, after much pain for mind,
and much fatigue of body and expense (for there were no railways then,
and coaching was coaching in those days), we arrived at No. 6, Rotten
Row, Glasgow, on the Saturday, about half-past three. To our surprise we
found the entrance to our house up a flight of stairs (called in
Scotland _turnpike stairs_) such as I saw in my dream. The house
was three stories high also, and when we entered the kitchen door, lo,
there was the closed bed, and there the box (in Scotland called a
_bunker_). I said to Mrs. Lupton, 'Look out of the window,' and she
said, 'Here is the plot of grass.' I then said, 'Look into the other
rooms,' and she replied, 'Yes, they are as you said.' My colleague, Mr.
J. Johnson, said, 'We preach in the Mechanics' Institution Hall, North
Hanover Street, George Street, and you will have to preach there in the
morning.' Well, morning came; and, accompanied by Mr. Johnson, I found
the place. The entrance was as I had seen in my dream. But we entered
the hall by the right; there was the little room in the corner. We
entered it, and one of the men I had seen in my dream, J. M'M----, was
standing in it. We next entered the hall; there was the pulpit and the
circular table before it. The hall was galleried to the top; and, lo,
the entrance door at the top was covered with green baize and brass
nails. Only one man was seated, J. P----; he was another of the men I
saw in my dream. I did not wait long before J. Y----, the other man,
entered. My dream was thus so far fulfilled. Well, we soon had very
large, overflowing congregations. The three men above named got into
loose, dissipated habits; and, intriguing for some months, caused us
very much trouble, seeking, in conjunction with my colleague, to form a
division and make a party and church for him. But, by God's help, their
schemes were frustrated, and I left the station in a healthy and
prosperous state."
Mrs. Dean, of 44, Oxford Street, writes as follows:--
"Early this summer, in sleep, I saw my mother very ill in agony, and
woke, repeating the words, 'Mother is dying.' I looked anxiously for a
letter in the morning, but no sign of one; and to several at breakfast I
told my dream, and still felt anxious as the day wore on. In the
afternoon, about three o'clock, a telegram came, saying, 'Mother a
little better; wait another wire.' About an hour afterwards came a
letter with a cheque enclosed for my fare, urging me to come home at
once, 'for mother, we fear, is dying.' My mother recovered; but upon
going home a short time after, I saw my mother just as she then was at
that time, and my stepfather used the words just as I received
them--'Mother is dying.' They live in Liverpool, and I am in London."
The following is from the diary of the Rev. Henry Kendall, from which I
have frequently quoted:--
"Mr. Marley related this evening a curious incident that occurred to
himself long ago. When he was a young man at home with his parents,
residing at Aycliffe, he was lying wide awake one morning at early dawn
in the height of summer when his father came into his bedroom dressed
just as he was accustomed to dress--red waistcoat, etc.--but with the
addition of a tasselled nightcap which he sometimes kept on during the
day. His father had been ailing for some time, and said to him,
'Crawford, I want you to make me a promise before I die.' His son
replied, 'I will, father; what is it?' 'That you will take care of your
mother.' 'Father, I promise you.' 'Then,' said the father, 'I can die
happy,' and went out at the window. This struck Mr. M. as an exceedingly
odd thing; he got out of bed and looked about the room and satisfied
himself that he had made no mistake, but that he had really talked with
his father and seen him go out at the window. In the morning, when he
entered his father's room, the first words he heard were, 'Crawford, I
want you to make me a promise before I die.' Mr. M. replied, 'Father, I
will; what is it?' 'That you will take care of your mother.' 'Father, I
promise you.' 'Then I can die happy.' Thus the conversation that took
place during the night under such singular circumstances was repeated
verbatim in the morning; and while it implied that the father had been
previously brooding over the subject of his wife's comfort after he
should be taken away, it also supplied important evidence that the
strange affair of the night was not mere imagination on the part of the
son. The father died soon afterwards."
_A Spectral Postman._
Of a somewhat similar nature, although in this case it was visible and
not audible, is that told me by the Rev. J. A. Dalane, of West
Hartlepool, who, on August 14th, 1886, about three o'clock in the
morning, saw a hand very distinctly, as in daylight, holding a letter
addressed in the handwriting of an eminent Swedish divine. Both the hand
and the letter appeared very distinctly for the space of about two
minutes. Then he saw a similar hand holding a sheet of foolscap paper on
which he saw some writing, which he, however, was not able to read.
After a few minutes this gradually faded and vanished away. This was
repeated three different times. As soon as it had disappeared the third
time he got up, lighted the gas, and wrote down the facts. Six hours
afterwards, at nine o'clock, the post brought a letter which in every
particular corresponded to the spectral letter which had been three
times shown to him in the early morning.
_An Examination Paper Seen in Dream._
The Rev. D. Morris, chaplain of Walton Gaol, near Liverpool, had a
similar, although more useful experience, as follows:--
"In December, 1853, I sat for a schoolmaster's certificate at an
examination held in the Normal College, Cheltenham. The questions in the
various subjects were arranged in sections according to their value, and
printed on the margin of stiff blue-coloured foolscap, to which the
answers were limited. It had been the custom at similar examinations in
previous years for the presiding examiners to announce beforehand the
daily subjects of examinations, but on this occasion the usual notice
was omitted.
"After sitting all day on Monday, my brain was further excited by
anxious guessings of the morrow's subjects, and perusals of my
note-books. That night I had little restful sleep, for I dreamt that I
was busy at work in the examination hall, I had in my dream vividly
before me the Geometry (Euclid) paper. I was so impressed with what I
had seen that I told my intimate friends to get up the bottom question
in each section (that being the bearer of most marks), and, it is
needless to say, I did the same myself. When the geometry paper was
distributed in the hall by the examiners, to my wonder it was really in
every respect, questions and sections, the paper that I had seen in my
dream on the Monday night.
"Nothing similar to it happened to me before or since. The above fact
has never been recorded in any publication."
_Forebodings and Dreams._
An instance in which a dream was useful in preventing an impending
catastrophe is recorded of a daughter of Mrs. Rutherford, the
granddaughter of Sir Walter Scott. This lady dreamed more than once that
her mother had been murdered by a black servant. She was so much upset
by this that she returned home, and to her great astonishment, and not a
little to her dismay, she met on entering the house the very black
servant she had met in her dream. He had been engaged in her absence.
She prevailed upon a gentleman to watch in an adjoining room during the
following night. About three o'clock in the morning the gentleman
hearing footsteps on the stairs, came out and met the servant carrying a
quantity of coals. Being questioned as to where he was going, he
answered confusedly that he was going to mend the mistress's fire, which
at three o'clock in the morning in the middle of summer was evidently
impossible. On further investigation, a strong knife was found hidden in
the coals. The lady escaped, but the man was subsequently hanged for
murder, and before his execution he confessed that he intended to have
assassinated Mrs. Rutherford.
A correspondent in Dalston sends me an account of an experience which
befell him in 1871, when a lady strongly advised him against going from
Liverpool to a place near Wigan, where he had an appointment on a
certain day. As he could not put off the appointment, she implored him
not to go by the first train. In deference to her foreboding, he went by
the third train, and on arriving at his destination found that the first
train had been thrown off the line and had rolled down an embankment
into the fields below. The warning in this case, he thinks, probably
saved his life.
Another correspondent, Mr. A. N. Browne, of 19, Wellington Avenue,
Liverpool, communicates another instance of a premonitory dream, which
unfortunately did not avail to prevent the disaster:
"My sister-in-law was complaining to me on a warm August day, in 1882,
of being out of sorts, upset and altogether depressed. I took her a bit
to task, asked her why she was depressed, and elicited that she was
troubled by dreaming the preceding night that her son Frank, who was
spending his holidays with his uncle near Preston, was drowned. Of
course I ridiculed the idea of a dream troubling any one. But she only
answered that her dreams often proved more than mere sleep-disturbers.
That was told to me at 2 p.m. or about. At 6.30 we dined, and all
thought of the dream had vanished out of my mind and my sister-in-law
seemed to have overcome her depression. We were sitting in the
drawing-room, say 8 p.m., when a telegram arrived. My sister-in-law
received it, turned to her husband and said, 'It is for you, Tom.' He
opened it and cried, 'My God! My God!' and fell into a chair. My
sister-in-law snatched the telegram from her husband, looked at it,
screamed, and fell prostrate. I in turn took the telegram, and read,
'Frank fell in the river here to-day, and was drowned.' It was a
telegram from the youth's uncle, with whom he had been staying."
Dr. H. Grosvenor Shaw, M.R.C.S., medical officer to one of the asylums
under the London County Council, sends me the following brief but
striking story, which bears upon the subject under discussion:--
"Four men were playing whist. The man dealing stopped to drink, and
whilst drinking the man next to him poked him in the side, telling him
to hurry up. Some of the fluid he was drinking entered the larynx, and
before he could recover his breath he fell back, hitting his head
against the door post, and lay on the ground stunned for something under
a minute. When he came to he was naturally dazed, and for the moment
surprised at his surroundings. He said he had been at the bedside of his
friend--mentioning his name--who was dying. The next morning a telegram
came to say the friend was dead, and he died, it was ascertained at the
exact time the accident at the card table took place. I would remark the
dead man had been enjoying perfect health, and no one had received any
information that he was ill, which illness was sudden."
_A Vision of Coming Death._
One familiar and very uncanny form of premonition, or of foreseeing, is
that in which a coffin is seen before the death of some member of the
household. The following narrative is communicated to me by Mrs. Crofts,
of 22, Blurton Road, Clapton. She is quite clear that she actually saw
what she describes:--
"A week prior to the death of my husband, when he and I had retired to
rest, I lay for a long while endeavouring to go to sleep, but failed;
and after tossing about for some time I sat up in bed, and having sat
thus for some time was surprised to see the front door open, I could see
the door plainly from where I was, our bedroom door being always kept
open. I was astonished but not afraid when, immediately after the door
opened, two men entered bearing a coffin which they carried upstairs,
right into the room where I was, and laid it down on the hearth-rug by
the side of the bed, and then went away shutting the front door after
them. I was of course somewhat troubled over the matter, and mentioned
it to my husband when having breakfast the following morning. He
insisted that I had been dreaming, and I did not again let the matter
trouble my mind. A week that day my husband died very suddenly. I was
engaged in one of the rooms upstairs the evening afterwards, when a
knock came to the door, which was answered by my mother, and I did not
take any notice until I heard the footsteps of those coming up the
stairs, when I looked out, and lo! I beheld the two men whom I had seen
but a week previously carry and put the coffin in exactly the same place
that they had done on their previous visit. I cannot describe to you my
feelings, but from that time until the present I am convinced that, call
them what you like--apparitions, ghosts, or forewarnings--they are a
reality."
_Profitable Premonitions._
There are, however, cases in which a premonition has been useful to
those who have received timely warning of disaster. The ill-fated
_Pegasus_, that went down carrying with it the well-known Rev. J.
Morell Mackenzie, an uncle of the well-known physician, who preserves a
portrait of the distinguished divine among his heirlooms, is associated
with a premonition which saved the life of a lady and her cousin, the
wives of two Church of England ministers. They had intended to sail in
the _Pegasus_ on Wednesday, but a mysterious and unaccountable
impression compelled one of the ladies to insist that they should leave
on the Saturday. They had just time to get on board, and so escaped
going by the _Pegasus_ which sailed on the following Wednesday and
was wrecked, only two on board being saved.
Like to this story, in so far as it records her avoidance of an accident
by the warning of a dream, but fortunately not resembling it in its more
ghostly detail, is the story told in Mrs. Sidgwick's paper on the
Evidence for Premonitions, on the authority of Mrs. Raey, of 99, Holland
Road, Kensington. She dreamed that she was driving from Mortlake to
Roehampton. She was upset in her carriage close to her sister's house.
She forgot about her dream, and drove in her carriage from Mortlake to
her sister's house. But just as they were driving up the lane the horse
became very restive. Three times the groom had to get down to see what
was the matter, but the third time the dream suddenly occurred to her
memory. She got out and insisted on walking to the house. He drove off
by himself, the horse became unmanageable, and in a few moments she came
upon carriage, horse, and groom, all in a confused mass, just as she had
seen the night before, but not in the same spot. But for the dream she
would certainly not have alighted from the carriage.
_The Visions of an Engine-Driver._
In the same paper there is an account of a remarkable series of dreams
which occurred to Mr. J. W. Skelton, an American engine-driver, which
were first published in Chicago in 1886. Six times his locomotive had
been upset at high speed, and each time he had dreamed of it two nights
before, and each time he had seen exactly the place and the side on
which the engine turned over. The odd thing in his reminiscences is that
on one occasion he dreamed that after he had been thrown off the line a
person in white came down from the sky with a span of white horses and a
black chariot, who picked him off the engine and drove him up to the sky
in a south-easterly direction. In telling the story he says that every
point was fulfilled excepting that--and he seems to regard it quite as a
grievance--the chariot of his vision never arrived. On one occasion only
his dream was not fulfilled, and in that case he believed the accident
was averted solely through the extra precaution that he used in
consequence of his vision.
_Wanted a Dream Diary._
Of premonitions, especially of premonitions in dreams, it is easy to
have too much. The best antidote for an excessive surfeit of such things
is to note them down when they occur. When you have noted down 100
dreams, and find that one has come true, you may effectively destroy the
superstitious dread that is apt to be engendered by stories such as the
foregoing. It would be one excellent result of the publication of this
volume if all those who are scared about dreams and forebodings would
take the trouble to keep a dream diary, noting the dream and the
fulfilment or falsification following. By these means they can not only
confound sceptics, who accuse them of prophesying after the event, but
what is much more important, they can most speedily rid themselves of
the preposterous delusion that all dreams alike, whether they issue from
the ivory gate or the gate of horn, are equally to be held in reverence.
A quantitative estimate of the value of dreams is one of those things
for which psychical science still sighs in vain.