Runaway Horse
Dreamed 1904 by J.W. Dunne
In 1904, a few months after the fire dream, I was staying at the Hotel Scholastika, on the borders of the Aachensee, in Austria.
I dreamed one night that I was walking down a sort of pathway between two fields, separated from the latter by high iron railings, eight or nine feet high, on each side of the path. My attention was suddenly attracted to a horse in the field on my left. It had apparently gone mad, and was tearing about, kicking and plunging in a most frenzied fashion. I cast a hasty glance backwards and forwards along the railings to see if there were any openings by which the animal could get out.Next day, I went fishing with my brother down the little river which runs out of the Aachensee. It was wet-fly work, and I was industriously flogging the water when my brother called out: "Look at that horse!" Glancing across the river, I saw the scene of my dream. But, though right in essentials, it was absolutely unlike in minor details. The two fields with the fenced-off pathway running between them were there. The horse was there, behaving just as it had done in the dream. The wooden steps at the end of the pathway were there (they led up to a bridge crossing the river). But the fences were wooden and small--not more than four or five feet high--and the fields were ordinary small fields, whereas those in the dream had been park like expanses. Moreover, the horse was a small beast, and not the rampaging great monster of the dream--though its behaviour was equally alarming. Finally, it was in the wrong field, the field which would have been on my right, had I been walking, as in the dream, down the path towards the bridge.Satisfied that there was none, I continued on my way. A few moments later I heard hoofs thundering behind me. Glancing back I saw, to my dismay, that the brute had somehow got out after all, and was coming full tilt after me down the pathway. It was a full-fledged nightmare--and I ran like a hare. Ahead of me the path ended at the foot of a flight of wooden steps rising upward. I was striving frantically to reach these when I awoke.
I began to tell my brother about the dream, but broke off because the beast was behaving so very oddly that I wanted to make sure that it could not escape. As in the dream, I ran my eye critically along the railings. As in the dream, I could see no gap, or even gate, in them anywhere. Satisfied, I said, "At any rate, this horse cannot get out", and recommenced fishing. But my brother interrupted me by calling, 'Look out!' Glancing up again, I saw that there was no dodging fate. The beast had, inexplicably, just as in the dream, got out (probably it had jumped the fence), and, just as in the dream, it was thundering down the path towards the wooden steps. It swerved past these and plunged into the river, coming straight towards us. We both picked up stones, ran thirty yards or so back from the bank, and faced about.
The end was tame, for, on emerging from the water on our side, the animal merely looked at us, snorted, and galloped off down a road.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Dunne thinks "psychic" dreams are nothing special--like all dreams, they're crazy quilts of incongruous elements pulled from your daily life--all recent experience, both past and future, indiscriminately. The waking mind rarely remembers dreams, and overlooks most predictive elements, and tries hard to ignore the few that it does notice. But now and then the future-horse busts out... and the linear mind panics.
--Chris Wayan
SOURCE: J.W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time (1927; 2001 reprint; pp.25-6)
World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites