PROPHETIC DREAMS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 193, 18 September 1909, Page 4

PROPHETIC DREAMS.

SOME REMARKABLE COINCIDENCES. Perhaps the strangest things in lifeare those inexplicable dramas that we see enacted before us during the hours of sleep though, after all, life and everything connected with it, when you begin to dig into it, is so strange that it seems almost idle to pick out one mystery as being greater than another. In Wellington, the other day, we all ! heard how Mr. Downes, of Day's Bay > (says the Citizen), dreamed of the spot in which the body of the missing t woman, Mrs. Penny, would be found, | and was so impressed by his dream that jhe set out with two companions, ami found the body on the exact spot of his dream, in among the scrub on a steep hilltbp, "and in almost the exact position. Of course, it is notoriously easy for people to deceive themselves as to the verification of their dre mis, but in this case it seems that Mr. Downes, before starting on his search, described his dream in detail to his wife. On his : return he took his two companions to his house and asked his wife, not knowing that the body was found', to repeat what he had told her, and this, it is stated, fitted in exactly with the facts. The most common dreams of provision are those in which the death of a near relative o r friend is dreamed of at the time it actually occurs—in some cases the actual form of the person appearing to be present during waking hours. A remarkable and fully authenticated case of a dream of this class is that of the Swithinbank family, in which, during the Peninsula War, the father and three sons, who were all away from home, each dreamed of Mrs. Swithinbank's death on the night on which it occurred. Then there is the much-quoted experience of Mr. Williams, of Seorrier House, near Redruth, in Cornwall, who on 11th May, 1812, dreamed in detail of the murder of Mr. Perceval, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the Lobby of the House of Commons, exactly as it that night occurred. Mr. Redruth described hi* dream next day to a neighbor, and the description of the victim in the dream was declared by a friend to hi exactly that of Mr. Perceval. A day or two later the post brought the full account of the tragedy, and Mr. Williams put on record the details of his remarkable vision, which was stated by an eye - witness to be extraordinarily correct even in the smallest details. Another inexplicable incident in connection with Mr. Perceval's murder was that a report of it was current in Dude Kirk in the north of Scotland twenty-four hours before it took place. This report was never traced to its source, but that it, was in circulation before the time of ilie murder was established beyond aii doubt. In the number of dreams that befall humanity a certain percentage can hardly fail to fit in with some set cf facts, and a further percentage come somewhere near doing so. The memory of dreams is often faint and blurred, and it is easy, in describing them, unconsciously make incidents fit in with actual occurrences. Still, coincidence seems altogether insufficient explanation of the number of remarkable cases that are On record. Of course, it sometimes happens, for instance, that a number of persons will dream the same dream, a? did the Swithinbank family, but without its ever being realised. There is the case of Mrs. Ogilvie, of Drumquaigh, who, with her three daughters, dreamed one night that her pet dog Fanti went mad. Nothing of the sort ever happened to the dog, which lived to a natural death at a ripe old age.

The Dnchess of Hamilton in 1882 had a strangely fulfilled dream. The name of a certain earl being mentioned by the Duke before Mr. Alfred Cooper, a medical man, tie Duchess related how she had been dozing, and in a, sort of day dream she had seen the earl lying in a fit of some kind 'with a red-beaf3cd man standing over him, and near by a Wmp with a red shade and a bath. Thirteen days later the earl died, and Mr. Cooper, who was attending him, saw the whole scene enacted before his eye just as the Duchess had described it. ThCj Duchess knew the earl by sight only, ami had never spoken to him. Trifling, but equally curious, is the dream that befel Mrs. Attlay, wife of a former Bishop of Hereford, who had a vision of a pig in the dining-room of the episcopal palace, and on recollecting the circumstance next morning entered tne room, and sure enough found the pig under the table. Somewhat similar to Mr. Downes' dream was that of an English solicitor who went out to a pillar box to post some letters one night, and later on found that he had lost a cheque, for which he proceeded to search in vain. During the night he dreamed that the missing cheque was curled round some area railings along the street, and on rising early next morning found it there. His theory was that he must have unconsciously 6een the cheque fall from his pocket and then have remembered it in his sleep.

I One of the most interesting of this class of dream on record is that which befel Professor H, V. HilpreCht, Professor of Assyriology in the University of Pennsylvania, in March, 1893. The professor had busied himself in vain to understand the inscriptions on some fragments of agate, supposed to be frnger-ring3, 6ent home from Assyria by a scientific expedition despatched by (he University. During the following night the professor had a vivid dream. A tall, thin-faced Assyrian priest of the temple of Bel appeared to him, took him into a room where was a chest filled wiMi fragments of agate, and explained how King Kurigalzu once sent to the temple, in 1300 8.C., a votive cylinder of agate. The priests shortly afterwards were much distressed by instructions to make agate ear-rings for the statue of the go.l Nibib in the temple, and, not having any other agate available, cut the votive cylinder into three parts. Two of tneso the professor had in his possession, and the third, the priest declared, would never be found. Next morning, the impression of his dream being still vivid in his mind, the professor hurried to hi* study, fitted the two pieces together, read an inscription that tallied exactly with what the priest of the dream Had told him, and solved his problem without difficulty. Professor Homaine Ncwbold explains this dream on the assumption that Pre fessor Hilprecht had unconsciously proceeded to reason out his facts during sleep, the mind presenting the result to him in dramatic form.

Amongst the people who have received lasting inspiration from their dreams John Bunyan must not he forgotten. Coleridge is said to have dreamed the I whole of his Kubla Khan, which, however, seems to have been indirectly inspired by Purchos's Pilgrim. Stevenson, who describes Qiimself as having been an uncomfortable dreamer from his youth, with the night hag continually plucking him by the throat, confessed to have dreamed the central incidents of his blood-curdling story "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and his story "Olalla." His dreams, he says, gave him better tales than he could have constructed in his waking hours. This strange dream world is a place of whose inner workings we know little, and most of the explanations so far put forward do not explain. Everybody will probably have his own reminiscences of unaccountable dream coincidences to add to the list.