425. And here I feel bound to introduce some samples of a certain class of dreams, - more interesting, perhaps, and certainly more perplexing than any others; - but belonging to a category of phenomena which at present I can make no attempt to explain. I mean precognitive dreams; - pictures or visions in which future events are foretold or depicted, generally with more or less of symbolism, - and generally also in a mode so remote from the previsions of our earthly sagacity that we shall find ourselves driven, in a later discussion, to speak in vague terms of glimpses into a cosmic picture-gallery; - or of scenic representations composed and offered to us by intelligences higher and more distant than any spirit whom we have known. I give in the text a thoroughly characteristic example; - characteristic alike in its definiteness, its purposelessness, its isolated unintelligibility; - and others are quoted in Appendices.

(From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xi. p. 505).

From Mr. Alfred Cooper, of 9 Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square, W.

[This account was orally confirmed by him to Mr. E. Gurney, June 6th, 1888. It is written by Mr. Cooper, but attested also by the Duchess of Hamilton].

A fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L-----, in 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see him professionally. After I had finished seeing him we went into the drawing-room, where the Duchess was, and the Duke said to me, " Oh, Cooper; how is the Earl ? "

The Duchess said, " What Earl ? " and on my answering " Lord L-----," she replied, " That is very odd. I have had a most extraordinary vision. I went to bed, but after being in bed a short time, I was not exactly asleep, but thought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were Lord L-----, in a chair, as if in a fit, with a man standing over him with a red beard.

He was by the side of a bath, over which bath a red lamp was distinctly shown".

I then said, " I am attending Lord L------at present; there is very little the matter with him; he is not going to die; he will be all right very soon".

Well, he got better for a week and was nearly well, but at the end of six or seven days after this I was called to see him suddenly. He had inflammation of both lungs.

I called in Sir William Jenner, but in six days he was a dead man. There were two male nurses attending on him; one had been taken ill. But when I saw the other the dream of the Duchess was exactly represented. He was standing near a bath over the Earl and, strange to say, his beard was red. There was the bath with the red lamp over it. It is rather rare to find a bath with a red lamp over it, and this brought the story to my mind.

The vision seen by the Duchess was told two weeks before the death of Lord L------. It is a most remarkable thing.

This account, written in 1888, has been revised by the [late] Duke of Manchester, father of the Duchess of Hamilton, who heard the vision from his daughter on the morning after she had seen it.

(Signed) Mary Hamilton. Alfred Cooper.

Her Grace had been reading and had just blown out the candle. Her Grace has had many dreams which have come true years after.

Alfred Cooper.

[The Duchess only knew Lord L-----by sight, and had not heard that he was ill. She knew she was not asleep, for she opened her eyes to get rid of the vision and, shutting them, saw the same thing again].

An independent and concordant account has been given to me (F. W. H. M.) orally by a gentleman to whom the Duchess related the dream on the morning after its occurrence.

426. Dr. Bruce's narrative, which I next give in 426 A, written by an intelligent man, while the facts were yet fresh, seems to me of high importance. If we accept the rest of his story, we must, I think, suppose that the sense of spiritual presence with which the incident began was more than a mere subjective fancy. Shall we refer it to the murdered man's sister; - with whom the dreamer seemed afterwards to be in telepathic relation? Or shall we interpret it as a kind of summons from the dying man, drawing on, as it were, his friend's spirit to witness the actual murder and the subsequent scene? The fact that another friend, in another locality apparently, had a vision of similar nature, tells somewhat in favour of the supposition that the decedent's spirit was operative in both cases; since we very seldom - if ever - find an agent producing an impression in two separate places at once - or nearly so - except at or just after the moment of death.

In this view, the incident resembles a scene passing in a spiritual world. The dying man summons his brother-in-law; the brother-in-law visits the scene of murder, and there spiritually communicates with his wife, the sister, who is corporeally in that scene, and then sees further details of the scene, which he does not understand, and which are not explained to him.

Fantastic though this explanation seems, it is not easy to hit on a simpler one which will cover the facts as stated. Could we accept it, we should have a kind of transition between two groups of cases, which although apparently so different may form parts of a continuous series. I mean the cases where the dreamer visits a distant scene, and the cases where another spirit visits the dreamer.