Two amazing cases where people in peril of their lives were saved thanks to their rescuers’ dreams
The twin worlds of dreams and reality can sometimes overlap – with extraordinary results.
Trawling through the pages of a 19th century provincial journal, I found two reports of dreams saving lives. Both examples took place in Wales.
One year in the 18th century, a Mr Boardman had been preaching one night in Mold, Flintshire, and was making his way back to England across the Dee estuary. In those days, this was a common route taken by travellers, for it brought them out on Wirral, a short journey thence to Liverpool. But it was dangerous to make the journey alone, because the tides could be unpredictable, and with each tide the sands shifted, causing treacherous patches of quicksand.
Mr Boardman did make the journey alone and the tide came in quicker than he had anticipated. To make matters worse, it was growing dark. He found himself in a very perilous position. The water had soon risen up to his knees, his horse had begun to swim under him and he gave himself up as lost. But then he perceived two men running down a hill and – to his joy – he saw them get into a boat. He was rescued! In the boat, his horse swimming by their side, Mr Boardman learnt the amazing facts of his deliverance.
One of his rescuers told him: ‘I dreamed I must get to the top of such a hill; when I awoke the dream made such an impression on me I could not rest. I went and called my friend, and desired him to accompany me. When we came to the place we saw nothing more than usual. However, I begged him to go with me to another hill, at a small distance, and there we saw your distressing situation.’
This remarkable story is not unique. The other example, reported in the journal ‘Bye-gones’, was previously published in the ‘Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research’.
Miss Phillips of Church Street, Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, kept a deaf and dumb maid of whom she was fond. In about the year 1871 the girl fell ill and it was decided she needed a change of air. Miss Phillips proposed to send her to her brother for three weeks but the girl, no doubt very shy of strange people and strange places, proved unwilling to go. On the appointed morning for her departure, a Tuesday, she was nowhere to be seen. The house was searched from the attic to the cellar, but she had vanished. Miss Phillips was very distressed.
On the morning of the following Friday (or possibly the Wednesday, accounts are confused) the superintendent of the police called and begged to be allowed to make a search of the house himself. Miss Phillips consented and Inspector Strefford, who had never been in the house before, walked straight to the door to the cellar stairs, and went down. In the cellar they found the girl in an open flue directly beneath the fireplace in the room above. The opening from the flue to the cellar was not above 18 inches high, and the girl had drawn some carpeting after her so as to conceal her legs. She was stuck fast and they had to get bricklayers’ tools and dig out some bricks before they could get her out.
The unfortunate maid’s deliverance from a horrible fate was also down to a dream. Inspector Strefford had awoken in the middle of the night and had told his wife: ‘I know where that poor girl is. She is up a chimney in a cellar belonging to the house in which she lives.’
Afterwards, he felt compelled to go the house to test the truth of his dream – with what happy results, I have just described.
