UNFULFILLED PREMONITIONS OF DEATH.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—With reference to the correspondence in your paper under the above heading, may I say a few words ? It seems to me that when so many "premonitions" which were followed by fulfilments are reported, it is only fair that some which proved absolutely mistaken should also be published. (1) On one occasion I was aware that my husband was crossing that night from Holyhead to Kingstown. I had so vivid a dream that I believed I was awake, and saw him standing in the early morning light dripping from head to foot. The steady drop of the water I shall never forget ! I was so alarmed that I ran out of the room, and spent the rest of the night in the room of an intimate lady friend ! Next morning the sound was ex- plained, as I found on returning to my room that the rain had come through the ceiling, and was dropping into a. bath which had cold water already in it. The sound had probably suggested the dream. By a curious coincidence, my husband was next day allowed to leave Dublin by an early train ; but when I arrived at the same station later, I was stopped and told that, owing to a bridge having been swept away in the night at Omagh, no passenger had been allowed to leave Amiens Station that morning whose destination was beyond Omagh. Naturally, I understood that my husband would have been also prevented had he come there. Indeed, the authorities assured me that this was the case. It required several telegrams to elucidate his whereabouts, and for many hours I was under the impres. sion that I had received a "premonition," which happily turned out to be quite a mistake. (2) On another occasion my husband left home to catch an early morning train. I remained in bed, and slept after his departure. I was awakened (as I believed) by hearing him return. I heard his voice in the hall, and his steps running up the stairs, and as the door opened I sat up in bed (and this part is true) and said : " So you missed the train !" I found my- self speaking to an empty room. I frankly confess—the im- pression was so clear—that I should have been uneasy had it not been for the recollection of my previous experience. It must be admitted that if instances of unfulfilled premonitions were collected and published as diligently as those which have coincided with deaths, less importance would be attached to the latter. Twice have large pictures fallen in this house when members of the family have been actually ill, and the servants have gloomily asserted that death must ensue. Each time the sick person recovered,—one of them, the writer, is still alive, twelve years after the event. To offer one more illustration of the unreliability of premonitions, may I intrude a little longer on your space? There is a tradi- tion in this family that in times of death or misfortune a single and sick-looking crow comes to the house. This has undoubtedly coincided on three different occasions with two deaths and a great misfortune. On the first of these three occasions the crow perched on the library window-step (an unusual proceeding for a crow), and the owner of the house said to his son, " That is an omen." That night he (undoubtedly accidentally) drank his liniment instead of his sleeping-draught, and died. On the second occasion the crow perched on a bedroom window-sill about twenty hours before the then owner of the house died. The third time the whole family was interested in what might he called " a family misfortune," and for three days a crow stalked solitarily about quite alone in front of the house, and that in spite of a good deal of traffic in and around the house. Now you, Sir, might naturally think my record of these last incidents is an argument against myself, but as I have also seen a solitary crow solemnly superintending a photographer's efforts to immortalise the family, and as I have, moreover, seen a similar sick crow inspecting the tennis ground and terrace on more than one occasion when none of us were in the least unhappy or specially interested, I may be forgiven for thinking the first three visits recorded as merely coin- cidences, even though reinforced by a long visit from a crow two years ago, when the present owner was extremely ill, and the subsequent daily attendance on him during his long con- valescence in England, in two different places, by two English crows,—or could it have been one only and everlasting crow
all the time am, Sir, &c.,
A BELIEVER IN COINCIDENCES.
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