PROPHETIC DREAMS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2601, 8 September 1909, Page 7

PROPHETIC DREAMS.

— SOME REMARKABLE . COINCIDENCES. Perhaps the strangest things in life are those inexplicable dramas that we see enacted before ns 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 uay’s Bay, (6ays the ‘‘Citizen”) dreamed of the spot m which the body of the missing woman, Mrs Penney, would be found, and was so impressed by his dream that he set out with two companions, and found the body on the exact spot of his dream, in among the scrub on a-steep hill-tc- and in almost the exact position. Of course, it is notoriouslv easy for people to deceive themselves as to the verification of their dreams, 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 ivife, 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 prevision are those in which the death of a near relative or friend is dreamed of at the time it actually oocurs—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 iather and three sons, who were all away from home, each dreamed of Mrs. Swithinbank s death on the night on which it ocThen there is the much-quoted experience of Mr. Williams, of Scorner House, near Redruth, in Cornwall, who on May 11, 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 his dream next day, to a neighbor, and the description of the victim m the dream was declared by a friend to be exactly that of Mr. Perceval. A day or two later the post brought the hill 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 Bude Kirk in the north of Scotland twentyfour hours before it took place. This report was never* traced to its source, but that it was in circulation before , the time of the murder was established is beyond all doubt. In the number of dreams that befall humanity a certain percentage can hardly fail to fit in with some set of 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 to make incidents fit in with - actual occurrences. Still, coincidence seems altogether insufficient explanation of the number of remarkable oases that are on record. Of course it sometimes happens, for instance, that a number of persons will dream the same dream, as aid the Swithinbank family, hut without its ever being realised. There is -the base of Mrs. Ggilvie, 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 Duchess of Hamilton, in 1882, had a strangely fulfilled dream. The name of a certain earl being mentioned bv the Duke before Mr. Alfred Cooper, a. medical man, the Duchess related how she had been dozing and in a sort of dav dream, she had seen the earl lying in a fit of some kind with a redbearded man standing over him, and near by a lamp with a red shade and a bath. Thirteen days later the earl died, and Mr. Cooper, who 1 was attending him, saw the whole scene enacted before his eves just as the Duchess had described 'it. The Duchess knew the earl by sight only and had never spoken to him. . Trifling, but equally curious, .as tQp dream that befel Mrs. Attlay, wife of a former Bishop of Hereford, who had a vision of a nig in l the dining-room of the episcopal palace, and on recollecting the circumstance next morning entered the 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 vam. 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 seen the cheque lari from his and then have remembered it in hie sleep. . ... One of the most interesting of this class of dream on record is that which befel Professor H. V. Hilpreoht, 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 finger rings, sent home from Assyria by a scientific expedition despatched by the University. During the following night the professor had a vivid dream. A tail, thin-faoed Assyrian priest of the temple of Bel appeared to him. took him into a room where was a chest filled with fragments of agate, and explained' how 'Ring Kurigalzu once sent to the temple, in 1300 8.0., a votive cylinder of agate! The priests, shortly .afterwards, were much distressed by instructions to make agate ear-rings for the statue or the god Nibib in the temple, _ and, not “having any other agate available, cut the votive cylinder into three parts. /Two of these 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 his studyfitted the two pieces together, read an inscription jhat tallied exactly with what the priest of the dream had told him, and solved his problem without difficulty. . Professor Romaine Newbold explains this dream on the assumption that Professor Hilprecht had unconsciously proceeded to reason out his facts, dunug sleep, the mind presenting the result to “him in dramatic form. . Among the people who have received ' lasting inspiration from their dreams John Runyan must not be forgotten. Coleridge, it is said, to have dreamed the whole of liis Kubla Khan, which, however, seems to have been indirectly inspired by Purchas s Pilgriin. 'Stevenson, who describes himself as having been an uncomfortable dreamer from his youth, with the night hag continually plucking him /fry the throat,; confesses to have dream-•, edf the central incidents of his blood-

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 exolain. Everybody will probably have his own reminiscences of unaccountable dream coincidences to add to the list.