Observations placeholder
Madame de Ferriem - Prophesying a terrible mine disaster
Identifier
004650
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The sitting took place in 1896. Dr. Bormann read Godefroy's report of it in print in September, 1899. The terrible disaster of Dux (near Brux) occurred in the latter part of September 1900, four years after the prophecy, and a full year after it appeared in print. Madame de Ferriem’s one error was about Christmas. The disaster happened in September, but by the end of October, when the cold is already quite wintry in Czecho-Slovakia, bodies were still being brought forth from the mine, which had taken hundreds of lives.
There is no account that provides confirmation that the ‘events’ she witnessed in detail took place. There is the real possibility that like all prophets she was being given a warning of a disaster waiting to happen and her composer provided a set of scenes sufficiently vivid, authentic and frightening that people might take note. And, sadly, like many prophecies they didn’t take note and the disaster happened
A description of the experience
"First picture: The lady closes her eyes and, laying her hand on her forehead, she begins to speak:
"Frightful! All these people here at the mine entrance! How white they are! Like corpses!-Ah! That is what they are, all, corpses! Yes, they are coming out-all being now carried out. The whole region is so black, nothing but small huts all about. The people that I see speak a different language-various languages-all mixed up. How deathly pale they all are!-Now they are bringing out one wearing a belt with a shining buckle on it. It will soon be Christmas - it is so cold! There is one who has a lamp with a little wire grating about it. Ah, this is a coal-mine. Everything so black and so bleak. I see only old huts. How barren is the whole region!
Now I understand what one of them is saying. He says, 'The doctors are all coming from Brux.'-Oh! it is a Bohemian place. Don't you see it? (I don't see it-Godefroy.) What! You see nothing!" (The last remark she cries out as though frightened and opens her eyes.)
"Second picture or vision: (On the day following the preceding sitting.) How sad it looks here! All those people, oh, so many.-So many women there-how they weep! The men are dead; not many are left alive. They have all been brought up. Oh, heavens! How sorry I am for those poor people! Look at all those children! And the appearance of the men! All blackened by smoke – all doubtless suffocated underground.-They are Bohemians (Czechs). The women and children all wear kerchiefs. Yes, they are Bohemians.
Oh, those poor people!-and right now, at Christmas time.
How terrible! I have traveled on such a train as is just now arriving. It is stopping close by; it must have come by way of Eger. Yes, it is Bohemia.-There they all lie! Are those physicians, applying friction? Fine men. Many of them have bands with crosses on their arms.-But what is it those women and children have in their hands? A chain-why the chain? Now they are all crossing themselves. Oh, that is a rosary. Ah, they are all praying and all crying.-On the train I see printed the Austrian eagle, the double eagle. Oh, that must be the conductor standing there. I can hear what he is saying. ‘In the coal mines of Dux,’ he's saying. But what I read is Brux. Why, I see it on his arm-band.-Oh, they are from the health department. But they can do nothing for those poor people