"One night my mother woke my father suddenly, saying: 'Oh, Charles! I have had such a terrible dream! I dreamed that John Wilkes Booth shot me! It seemed that he sent me seats for a private box in a theater, and I took some young ladies with me. Between the acts he came to me, and asked me how I liked the play. I exclaimed, "Why, John Booth! I am surprised that you could put such a questionable play upon the stage. I am mortified to think that I have brought young ladies to see it." At that he raised a pistol, and shot me in the back of the neck. It seems as if I felt a pain there now.' After a while my mother fell asleep, and dreamed the same thing a second time. "The next morning came the terrible news which plunged the nation into grief and mourning. Almost at the hour of my mother's dream, President Lincoln was assassinated; shot, in the back of the neck, in a private box at a theater, by John Wilkes Booth." On the other hand, there may be no symbolism or distortion, the dream corresponding so realistically with the event as to make its significance manifest. To give an illustration, Mrs. Morris Griffith, an Englishwoman, reports: "On the night of Saturday, the eleventh of March, I awoke in much alarm, having seen my eldest son, then at St. Paul de Loanda on the southwest coast of Africa, looking dreadfully ill and emaciated, and I heard his voice distinctly calling to me. I was so disturbed I could not sleep again, but every time I closed my eyes the appearance recurred, and his voice sounded distinctly, calling me 'Mamma!' I felt greatly depressed all through the next day, which was Sunday, but I did not mention it to my husband, as he was an invalid, and I feared to disturb him. Strange to say, he also suffered from intense low spirits all day, and we were both unable to take dinner, he rising from the table, saying: 'I don't care what it costs, I must have the boy back,' alluding to his eldest son. "I mentioned my dream and the bad night I had had to two or three friends, but begged that they would say nothing of it to Mr. Griffith. The next day a letter arrived, containing some photos of my son, saying he had had fever, but was better, and hoped immediately to leave for a much more healthy station. We heard no more till the ninth of May, when a letter arrived with the news of our son's death from a fresh attack of fever, on the night of the eleventh of March, and adding that just before his death he kept calling repeatedly for me."[14] [14] "Phantasms of the Living," vol. i, pp. 343-344. It is only a short transition from such a dream as this to a waking hallucination in which--as in the cases of experimental occurrence mentioned above, and those other cases detailed in the preceding chapter--phantom forms are discerned at the moment when the person seen is threatened by some danger or is passing through the supreme crisis of death.