There are many tales of prophetic dreams and the dangers of ignoring them. This is among the most gruesome.
The positive results which can follow taking notice of a striking dream were touched upon in the previous article which originally appeared in the mow defunct ‘More Uncanny’ section, and has now been settled in ‘Witchcraft & Magic’ for want of a more suitable section. The following story is an example of the flipside, what may result should such an uncanny warning go unheeded.
I take the tale from ‘Glimpses in the Twilight’ by George Frederick Lee, an uncommon old book published in 1885. I bought the only copy I have seen for sale and, although battered and faded by age, I still delight in its creepily Gothic cover, as well as the eerie incidents contained within it. Lee heard the story first-hand from ‘a member of the old Buckinghamshire family of Hickman, some members of which lived at Aylesbury and Great Marlow’. He reproduces the ghastly account verbatim, and so do I:
‘My grandfather had a favourite daughter. She was his youngest child, had been born about ten years after the birth of his youngest son, and to her he was devotedly attached. The loss of his wife when his youngest daughter was about sixteen years of age, seemed to deepen and strengthen the affectionate attachment in question.
‘The daughter in question, going with others to an outdoor party in one of the most beautiful parts of Buckinghamshire, not far from Wendover, rambling far from headquarters, was with several others overtaken by a storm, caught a severe cold, went home, took to her bed, and in less than ten days was buried in the village churchyard. The young girl in question was very fair in form and features; and her friends who cam to see her in her coffin said that she had never in all her life looked more beautiful. She was interred in the family vault amid the tears of her relations, and to the intense grief of her sorrowing parent.
‘The night after the funeral [her father] is said to have had a most vivid dream. He dreamt that his daughter was confined in a cold and narrow underground cell, and that two resolute jailers were slowly filling her mouth with small pieces of cotton wool in order to forcibly suffocate her; but that in the greatest trouble and agony she continued to resist, and would not be suffocated. The dream disturbed him considerably; but on waking and thinking over it, he acknowledged that his recent loss had no doubt served to disorganise his stomach, to confuse his brain, and to give rise to such fantastic fancies of the night.
‘However, a similar dream was had on the following night, and a third to his great astonishment on the night succeeding. His mental anguish and distress became so great that, at sunrise on the third day he rose from his bed, and went off to the clergyman of the parish to narrate what had happened, and to ask his counsel.
The clergyman … listened to the curious and affecting narrative, and at once advised the immediate opening of the vault. This was done at once, and the coffin examined. Under further advice – that of a doctor from the county town, who was going his rounds to visit his patients – the coffin was opened, when, to the horror of all who witnessed what was then and there discovered, it seemed perfectly clear that the girl had been buried alive. It was obvious that she had been put into the coffin in a state of suspended animation or trance, and that since the burial (for the body was turned and twisted, the hands compressed, the nails being dug deep into their palms, and the face fearfully contorted), the poor creature had died of suffocation.
‘An inquiry which was held resulted in nothing that could give either consolation to the living or benefit to the dead. The bare and melancholy facts as here recorded were both undoubted and unquestioned. The father of the girl soon afterwards died of grief, wasted away from sorrowing; and, as some said, died of a broken heart.’
To which tragic story we at Uncanny UK can add nothing, except – ulp!
