On Thursday, the 27th of December last, I returned from Gainesville (12 miles from here) to my orange grove, near Micanopy. I have only a small plank house of three rooms at my grove, where I spend most of my time when the grove is being cultivated. There was no one in the house but myself at the time, and being somewhat fatigued with my ride, I retired to my bed very early, probably 6 o'clock; and, as I am frequently in the habit of doing, I lit my lamp on a stand by the bed for the purpose of reading. After reading a short time, I began to feel a little drowsy, put out the light, and soon fell asleep.

Quite early in the night I was awakened. I could not have been asleep very long, I am sure. I felt as if I had been aroused intentionally, and at first thought someone was breaking into the house. I looked from where I lay into the other two rooms (the doors of both being open) and at once recognised where I was, and that there was no ground for the burglar theory; there being nothing in the house to make it worth a burglar's time to come after.

I then turned on my side to go to sleep again, and immediately felt a consciousness of a presence in the room, and singular to state, it was not the consciousness of a live person, but of a spiritual presence. This may provoke a smile, but I can only tell you the facts as they occurred to me. I do not know how to better describe my sensations than by simply stating that I felt a consciousness of a spiritual presence.

This may have been part of the dream, for I felt as if I were dozing off again to sleep; but it was unlike any dream I ever had. I felt also at the same time a strong feeling of superstitious dread, as if something strange and fearful were about to happen. I was soon asleep again or unconscious, at any rate, to my surroundings.

Then I saw two men engaged in a slight scuffle; one fell fatally wounded--the other immediately disappeared. I did not see the gash in the wounded man's throat, but knew that his throat was cut. I did not recognise him, either, as my brother-in-law. I saw him lying with his hands under him, his head turned slightly to the left, his feet close together. I could not, from the position in which I stood, see but a small portion of his face; his coat, collar, hair or something partly obscured it. I looked at him the second time a little closer to see if I could make out who it was. I was aware it was someone I knew, but still could not recognise him.

I turned, and then saw my wife sitting not far from him. She told me she could not leave until he was attended to. (I had got a letter a few days previously from my wife, telling me she would leave in a day or two, and was expecting every day a letter or telegram, telling me when to meet her at the depot).

My attention was struck by the surroundings of the dead man. He appeared to be lying on an elevated platform of some kind, surrounded by chairs, benches, and desks, reminding me somewhat of a school-room. Outside of the room in which he was lying was a crowd of people, mostly females some of whom I thought I knew.

It was not until a week or 10 days after this that I got a letter from my wife, giving me an account of her brother's death. Her letter, which was written the day after his death, was mis-sent. The account she gave me of his death tallies most remarkably with my dream. Her brother was with a wedding party at the depot at Markham station, Fauquier County, Va. He went into a store near by to see a young man who kept a bar-room near the depot, with whom he had some words. He turned and left the man, and walked out of the store. The bar-room keeper followed him out, and without further words deliberately cut his throat. It was a most brutal and unprovoked murder. My brother-in-law had on his overcoat, with the collar turned up. The knife went through the collar and clear to the bone. He was carried into the store and laid on the counter, near a desk and show case. He swooned from loss of blood soon after being cut. The cutting occurred early Thursday night, December 27th. He did not die, however, until almost daylight, Saturday morning...

EDITOR'S NOTE

Dr. Bruce appended a briefer account from the victim's sister, a Mrs Stubbing, who also dreamt of a throat-cutting the night of his death, though she too was unsure it was her brother at first.

Montague Ullman comments "over half of the 149 cases of dream telepathy described in the book [Phantasms of the Living] dwelled on the same macabre theme, death." No surprise! In most pre-1900 collections of psychic phenomena, death predominates. Yet in more modern collections the minority of dreams on other matters grows until death is just one topic of many; quite a shift.

My first unmistakable psychic dream, The Murders, was horrific--about real axe murders nearby that night. Yet over the last half-century, few of the 1500 psychic dreams I've logged involve death; those few clustered around actual deaths in my family. Perhaps the historic shift is just that people live longer and see less death now.

Or is it some maturation process? Biology has a saying: "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", that is, as a fetus grows it re-enacts the evolutionary history of the species, from single-cell organism to gilled sea creature to tailed beast, and on to modernity. Is something similar of individual dreamworkers? The newbie only gets the rare primal warning--life or death!--while an experienced shaman can get all sorts.

--Chris Wayan