"In the early morning of December 16th, 1897, I dreamt that I
saw the late Mr Terriss lying in a state of delirium or
unconsciousness on the stairs leading to the dressing-rooms in
the Adelphi Theatre. He was surrounded by people engaged at the
theatre, amongst whom were Miss Millward and one of the footmen
who attend the curtain, both of whom I actually saw a few hours
later at the death scene. His chest was bare and clothes torn
aside. Everybody who was around him was trying to do something
for his good. This dream was in the shape of a picture. I saw
it like a tableau on which the curtain would rise and fall. I
immediately after dreamt that we did not open at the Adelphi
Theatre that evening. I was in my dressing-room in the dream,
but this latter part was somewhat incoherent. The next morning,
on going down to the theatre for rehearsal, the first member of
the company I met was Miss H----, to whom I mentioned this
dream. On arriving at the theatre I also mentioned it to
several other members of the company including Messrs Creagh
Henry, Buxton, Carter Bligh, etc. This dream, though it made
such an impression upon me as to cause me to relate it to my
fellow-artists, did not give me the idea of any coming
disaster. I may state that I have dreamt formerly of deaths of
relatives and other matters which have impressed me, but the
dreams have never impressed me sufficiently to make me repeat
them the following morning, and have never been verified. My
dream of the present occasion was the most vivid I have ever
experienced; in fact, lifelike, and exactly represented the
scene as I saw it at night."
Three members of the company--Mr Carter Bligh, Mr Creagh Henry, and Miss
H---- --made statements that Mr Lane related his dream in their presence
on the morning of 16th December. Mr Lane was in the vicinity of the
Adelphi Theatre when the murderer, named Prince or Archer, who had been
employed as a super at the theatre, stabbed Terriss at the stage
entrance to the theatre. The actor was taken to the Charing Cross
Hospital, where he died almost immediately. It is interesting to note
that it was Lane himself who ran to the hospital for the doctor, and on
his return looked in at the stage entrance and saw Terriss lying on the
stairs just as he had seen him in the dream.
While I am fully alive to the possibilities of coincidence, there
certainly does not seem to be much besides levity in the theory that "it
happened to be Jones's hour to see a hallucination of Thompson when it
happened to be Thompson's hour to die," especially when, as frequently
happens, the hallucination occurs more than once to the same percipient.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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