Dead, Alive, Dead
Dreamed well before 1960 by a Minnesota teacher, as reported to the Rhine Institute
[A] dream may never be recalled as such, but besides the feeling of familiarity the person may know something which could scarcely be accounted for, except as an item from a dream.
A girl in Minnesota had in her school days known a boy whose name was Dan Brown. She finished school and was teaching away from home, but went back for a weekend one time. As she was preparing to go to Sunday school, this conversation with her mother took place:
"Who is the Sunday school superintendent now?"(Incidentally, this girl later married Dan Brown.)"Mrs. Brown."
"Oh, is Mr. Brown married again?"
"Again? What do you mean?"
"Why, Dan's mother died a long time ago. I know she did, for I--"
Then Mother said, "No! She did not." And I realized then I had never seen Dan's mother and I did not know the place where I thought she had died. But still I could describe it to my mother and it was like this:
It was a summer night and soft rain was falling. I was in a house in a woods of small pine trees. In an unfinished lean-to kitchen, with window openings but no windows. A fire was burning in a wood cookstove and cloths were being sterilized in an iron kettle, then hung above the stove to partly dry. Dan's sister was ironing dry some, which I carefully picked up and carried through two rooms to a bedroom where a white-haired lady lay very ill, and a nurse took the cloths and handed me soiled ones, which I carried to the kitchen just as Dan came in the door."Well," Mother said, "You must have dreamed it, for Mrs. Brown is very much alive.""I certainly am glad it was a dream, but I must have dreamed it some time ago, for I surely remember it now," I replied.
I went back to my school and promptly forgot all about it. Some time later I met Mrs. Brown and was once in the living room of her home but in no other part of the house, until later, hearing that she was very ill, I went, as was the village custom, to do what I could to help, and was called upon to sterilize cloths and carry them to a nurse.
I had been home only a few hours in the morning when we heard that Mrs. Brown had passed away. After the funeral I remarked to Mother, "I have a strange feeling that all of this has happened before," whereupon she recalled my having told her, "I was there when--."
--Louisa E. Rhine
EDITOR'S NOTE
'Minnesota teacher' displays twin talents: she knows the unknowable and manages to mistake what she knows! I concur with Rhine (and the narrator's mother) that this does sound like a predictive dream not exactly forgotten but misfiled--not under 'dreams' but under 'general knowledge'. So Mrs. Brown is simply dead--until proven alive. And then dead again.
--Chris Wayan
SOURCE: Hidden Channels of the Mind by Louisa E. Rhine, 1961, p. 100-101. Account untitled and dreamer's name witheld; I added title and byline to aid searching and indexing.
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