SLEEPING VISIONS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 139, 9 December 1929, Page 18

SLEEPING VISIONS

WHEN DREAMS ARE TRUE

USEFUL PEEMONITIONS

SOME STRANGE CASES

(Copyright.)

r : Readers of the daily papers will recall the fact that on 25th September 'last a ten-year-old murder was revealed to a friend of the murdered man in a dream. The murdered man was a .farmer, and his friend a wheelwright iin the same village, who declared that ; on three different occasions the farmer 'appeared to- him, and indicated that his body was buried at a certain spot ion his farm. There the police dug and idiscovered his skeleton, with tlie result that one of the farmer's sons broke :down and confessed he killed his father ■in defending his mother Wlsen she was attacked by him, and her life was in danger. After the murder ho and his :Oiother buried the body.

A few days later a lady wrote to .the London "Horning Post" that While at sea she dreamed that her mother had died, and ou arriving at Tilbury she found a telegram confirming the dream awaiting her. While such coincidences are, naturally, not common, they creep up from time to time, and the history of them goes back for over two centuries. Thus, in 1698, the account of a dream of the Eev. Mr. Smythies, curate of St. Giles, Gnpplegate, was published, •and led to the discovery of the murder of a parishioner and the punishment :of the criminals.

Another of these dream visions of murder occurred more than twenty years ago, when a man" named Edward Hayward was murdered in the wilds of Saskatchewan. His brother lived in a village in Sussex, and about the time when the murder must have taken 'place he had a vivid dream, in which the saw his brother shot. Two 3ays later he received a cable from the Canadian police informing him of his brother's death, and requesting his presence as a witness at the trial of the man arrested for the murder. This case was reported in the Longend papers at the time. ■

v. Some years ago an officer in the "Royal Irish Constabulary in County Clare shot himself, and his remains were taken by his brother to his native parish and interred in the churchyard. Later on his old mother, who lived some distance away, dreamed that her son had met with foul play. This so impressed her arid her surviving son and daughter that nothing would satisfy them but that they should have the coffin raised and opened. This was done in the presence of two physicians, who found a bullet wound in the dead man's head. The proceedings are said to have satisfied the relations as to the identity of the body, but did not remove their misgivings as to the method of his death. ROMANCE THROUGH A DREAM. These dreams fulfilled do not, however, always have a relation to crime. Sometimes, indeed, they are premonitory, and are fulfilled later.

One of these with, an element of romance concerned a gentleman who lived in Manchester, and had previously, when living in Paris, married a young Eumanian lady. They, however, soon separated, and the separation was later changed by the Rumanian courts to divorce.

For nearly a quarter of a century they did not see each other, and neither knew whether the other was alive. Then, one night, the man, who had never married, dreamed that his former wife was in great distress. So impressed was he that he immediately began to institute inquiries. By a curious coincidence, the lady, who had returned to Eumania and also had remained single, at the same time wrote to England to inquire what had become of her former husband. The result of the mutual inquiries revealed them to each other, and after corre: spending for some time, the man went to Rumania, met his former wife, proposed to her, was accepted, and they were once again married. So that the dream brought in the traditional ending of the love story, with the sound of wedding bells. Periodically, the public 'hear of people who have dreamed of horses winning. One of the most striking of these was related at,the time of the death of a famous amateur rider who under the name of Mr. Thomas, won the Grand National in 1860, 1871, and 1870, after having ridden in. that race seventeen times. On-his death there was published a letter written by Lord Poulett from the Army and Navy Club to the rider. .-.■■''

'My dear Tommy, let me'know for certain if you can-ride for me at Liverpool on the Lamb. I dreamed last night I saw the race run. In the first dream he was last, and finished among the carriages; in the second dream he won by four lengths and you rode him. and I stood above the winning post at the turn. I saw the cerise and blue sleeves and you as plain as I write this. Now let me know as soon as you can and say nothing to anyone. Poulett." Mr. Thomas rode the Lamb and won. Some years ago the London papers recorded a daring robbery in Brixton. it occurred in the morning when the wife of the proprietor was alone in the shop and a well-dressed coloured man entered and asked permission to use the telephone. This was granted and the man went towards the telephone box which adjoined the shop parJour; instead of ging into the call box, however, ho went into the parlour grabbed the lady by the throat, threw her on the floor, and then proceeded to search for money. He grabbed at the cash box and made off with a tray which contained about £16, although he failed to notice about as much which was laying on the table. _ The curious circumstances in connestion with the affair was that the lady had a dream some time before in which she saw herself sitting at a table counting money .when a black man approached her and,.withqut assaulting her, took up the cash box and walked off with it. An additional odd circumstance in this case is .that the lady was said by her husband to have had other visions of the nigfit which had come true. Another dream not unconnected with money, but in a more pleasant manner, was related by a writer in the "Spectator." A lady dreamed she was in church when all the worshippers went into the churchyard to look for a magic bird that was sure to bring the finder great luck. Joining in the search the dreamer soon discovered a thrush, and directly she picked it up it dropped a sovereign in her hand.

■Next morning she told her sister of the dream, and when she went into the garden shortly after breakfast she found a- thrush which had just been killed by a cat. When the post arrived it brought a letter from her brother containing a cheque for £1, and later m the day she received another cheque.

A USEFUL PREMONITION.

An example of an exceedingly useful premonition dream waisione of a foreman on'a railway in 'Georgia, TX.S.A. who dreamed that a!'trestle on the Sonthern Kailroad had been washed away. Although he was ill, the dream was so realistic that the man arose from his bed and walked six miles before dawn to discover that his dream was & reality. • '

He found that the stream, swollen by

heavy rains, had carried away a trestle spanning a sixty-five foot chasm. He knew that a passenger train going from Atlanta to Coloinbus was soon due to arrive on the opposite side of the river He had no means of reaching that point to warn the engine-driver of the danger, for the river is a quarter of a mile wide- at that place. Standing on the bank, the man cupped his hands around his mouth and started hallo-ing. For half an hour he had to keep on shouting with no result. But at length he heard an answering shout and called to the man on the other side who had heard him. That man rushed off and flagged the train as it thundered towards the river, where its passengers would undoubtedly have met their death but for the sick man regarding his dream as a call to action.

Occasionally dreams serve a decidedly useful purpose. Among them was the dream of a diseiplo of St. Augustine who, having to lecture on Cicero's rhetorical books, was baffled by a certain passage. Tired out, ho went to bed, aud in a dream his mother, who was far away aud ignorant of what was happening, appeared to him and expounded the passage. Thirty years ago Professor j-tilprcchr, Professor of Neology in the University of Pennsylvania, was worried over two small inscribed fragments of agate, of which he had received drawings, found at Babylon. In a dream a tall, thin Assyrian priest told him that they "belonged together" and that they were portions of an inscribed votive cylinder which'had been cut up to make earrings for the statue of a god. The professor found next day that the fragments did fit and made a continuous inscription.

Authors occasionally dream plots which become notable books.