A member of the Society for Psychical Research narrates that on 7th
October 1900 he woke abruptly in the small hours of the morning with a
painful conviction upon him that his wife, who was that night sleeping
in another part of the house, had burst a varicose vein in the calf of
her leg, and that he could feel the swelled place three inches long:
"I wondered whether I ought to get up and go down to her room
on the first floor, and considered whether she would be able to
come up to me; but I was only partly awake, though in acute
distress. My mind had been suddenly roused, but my body was
still under the lethargy of sleep. I argued with myself that
there was sure to be nothing in it, that I should only disturb
her, and so shortly went off to sleep again.
"On going to her room this morning I said I had had a horrid
dream, which had woke me up, to the effect that she had burst a
varicose vein, of which just now care has to be taken. 'Why,'
she replied, 'I had just the same experience. I woke up at
2.15, feeling sure the calf of my leg was bleeding, and my
hand seemed to feel it when I put it there. I turned on the
light in alarm, noticing the time, and wondered if I should be
able to get up to thee, or whether I should have to wake the
housekeeper. Thou wast in the dream out of which I woke,
examining the place.'
"Though I did not note the hour, two o'clock is about the time
I should have guessed it to be; and the impression on my mind
was vivid and terrible, knowing how dangerous such an accident
would be."
The foregoing is thus corroborated by the lady:
"I felt twinges of pain in my leg off and on in my sleep
without being entirely roused till about 2.15 A.M. Then, or
just before, I dreamt or had a vivid impression that a vein had
burst, and that my husband, who was sleeping in another room up
another flight of stairs, was there and called my attention to
it. I thought it felt wet, and trickling down the leg as if
bleeding, passed my hand down, and at first thought it seemed
wet; but on gaining fuller consciousness found it all right,
and that it was not more painful than often when I got out and
stood on it. Thought over the contingency of its actually
bursting, and whether I could so bandage it in that case as to
make it safe to go up to my husband's room, and thought I could
do so.
"Looking at my watch, found it about 2.20."
As to dreams in which a death occurs there is a vast mass of testimony.
The late Dr Hodgson, on 19th July 1897, received the following letter:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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