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Dunne, J. W. - An Experiment with Time – Dreams of a future train crash
Identifier
025886
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
AN EXPERIMENT WITH TIME BY J. W. DUNNE [SECOND EDITION]
The dream occurred in the autumn of 1913. The scene I saw was a high railway embankment. I knew in that dream — knew without questioning, as anyone acquainted with the locality would have known — that the place was just north of the Firth of Forth Bridge, in Scotland. The terrain below the embankment was open grassland, with people walking in small groups thereon.
The scene came and went several times, but the last time I saw that a train going north had just fallen over the embankment. I saw several carriages lying towards the bottom of the slope, and I saw large blocks of stone rolling and sliding down. Realizing that this was probably one of those odd dreams of mine, I tried to ascertain if I could "get" the date of the real occurrence. All I could gather was that this date was somewhere in the following spring.
My own recollection is that I pitched finally upon the middle of April, but my sister thinks I mentioned March when I told her the dream next morning. We agreed, jokingly, that we must warn our friends against travelling north in Scotland at any time in the succeeding spring.
On April the 14th of that spring the "Flying Scotsman," one of the most famous mail trains of the period, jumped the parapet near Burntisland Station, about fifteen miles north of the Forth Bridge, and fell on to the golf links twenty feet below.