Adventurings in the Psychical

by H. Addington Bruce

“On going up-stairs, the room and windows corresponded with what I had seen in my dream, and the same little shrubs in their pots were standing on the landing. The window in which I had seen the colored glass was hidden by the blind being down, but I learned on inquiry that it was really there.”

In this case the dream, though devoid of any dramatic feature, served a useful purpose, as did a much more spectacular dream occurring to Doctor A. K. Young, an Irish magistrate and land-owner.[17] In his dream he suddenly found himself standing at the gate of a friend’s park, many miles from home. Near by were a group of persons, one a woman with a basket on her arm, the rest men, four of whom were tenants of his own, while the others were unknown to him. Some of the strangers seemed to be making a murderous attack on one of his tenants, and he ran to his rescue.

“I struck violently at the man on my left,” he says, “and then with greater violence at the man to my right. Finding to my surprise that I did not knock either of them down, I struck again and again, with all the violence of a man frenzied at the sight of my poor friend’s murder. To my great amazement, I saw that my arms, although visible to my eye, were without substance; and the bodies of the men I struck at and my own came close together after each blow through the shadowy arms I struck with. My blows were delivered with more extreme violence than I think I ever exerted; but I became painfully convinced of my incompetency. I have no consciousness of what happened, after this feeling of unsubstantiality came upon me.”

Next morning Doctor Young awoke feeling stiff and sore, and his wife informed him that he had greatly alarmed her during the night by striking out “as if fighting for his life.” He then told her of his curious dream, and asked her to remember the names of the actors in it recognized by him. The following day he received a letter from his land agent stating that the tenant whom he had dreamed he saw attacked had been found unconscious, and apparently dying, at the very spot where Doctor Young had in his dream tried to defend him; and that there was no clue to his assailants.

That night Doctor Young started for the scene of the tragedy, and immediately upon his arrival applied to the local magistrate for warrants for the arrest of the three men whom, besides the injured tenant, he had recognized in the vision. All three, when arrested and questioned separately, told the same story, confirming the details of the dream, even to the incident of the presence of the woman with the basket. They had said nothing about the affair because they were afraid it would make trouble for them, but they denied any complicity in it, asserting that while walking home with them between eleven and twelve at night, the tenant—who, by the way, ultimately recovered—had been attacked by a couple of strangers, whose companions had prevented them from interfering to protect him.

According to Mrs. Young, it was between eleven and twelve o’clock on the night of the fight that her sleeping husband had frightened her by his violent actions.

Here the telepathic impulse causing the clairvoyant dream may have come either from the injured tenant himself or from one of the three spectators known to Doctor Young. The difficulty is to conceive an adequate reason for any of them thinking of him, even subconsciously. But, granting for argument’s sake the possibility of independent clairvoyance, the still more thorny question at once arises why his “astral body” should have chosen to journey to that precise spot at that precise moment.

The obstacles in the way of such a conception as independent clairvoyance are too serious to be overcome. Nor is it necessary to resort to it, in view of the fact that in the vast majority of clairvoyant cases it is possible to establish definitely the telepathic association.

Here, by way of illustration, is a typical case, fully as impressive as Doctor Young’s, but leaving no doubt as to its origin. It was reported to the Society for Psychical Research by Mrs. Hilda West, daughter of Sir John Crowe, who was at the time British consul general for Norway.

“My father and brother,” runs Mrs. West’s narrative, “were on a journey during the winter. I was expecting them home, without knowing the exact day of their return. I had gone to bed at the usual time, about eleven P. M. Some time in the night I had a vivid dream, which made a great impression on me.