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B J Laubscher – Where Mystery dwells

Let us look at the following dramatic presentation of retrocognition by Mrs. Cadel of Johannesburg who is a trained nurse and who writes with a positive sincerity. I shall quote portions from her letter.

"I was living in a small country town. I was sleeping alone in a room and it was a lovely moonlight night. I dropped off to sleep.

To this day I cannot say whether what followed was a vision or a dream. I appeared to be looking into the room which I was then occupying, but it was furnished differently. An old iron-and-brass bedstead occupied the middle of the room, an old cane-bottomed chair stood near the bed and an old wash-stand with jug and basin stood near the wall.

But what seemed to be claiming my attention was a slight man of medium height and of sallow complexion dressed in a police-man's uniform who was standing against the window with one foot up on another old cane-bottomed chair. In his left hand he held a revolver which was levelled at the window. At his side with a terrified look on her face was a slightly-built woman with red hair and brown eyes.

There was a horrible feeling of tense expectancy. Then I heard the gate opening. It squeaked as it always did when I opened it. There were footsteps and then three knocks at the window. The voice said in Afrikaans : 'Anna open the door. I want to come in.' Three times he knocked and whispered the same urgent request for her to open the door.

Then the man holding the revolver fired, the woman's shrill scream seemed almost to blast my eardrums. There was the sound of shattered glass-a thud and a groan. The man turned and walked through the other door down the passage, through the kitchen door, down the steps and around the house to where the other man must have been lying.

I wish I could convey to you the lucidity with which my mind followed his every movement. The steps retreated back up the passage through the other bedroom (where my two children were sleeping) into the room where I was. He looked at the red-haired woman, who was now moaning and crying and said with a sneer, again in Afrikaans : 'Now you bad woman, your lover is dead. You hear, dead' and then he opened the front door leading from the bedroom to the verandah and went out.

"I found myself sitting up in bed, shaking with fright and my heart almost choking me. It was my room again, the moon-light streaming through the window which was intact.

Mrs. Cadel's investigations revealed that the man and woman had lived there and that a man was found shot for which the wife claimed the responsibility. She said she did it in self-defence.

From Mrs. Cadel's letter it appears that this phenomenon never repeated itself while she lived in that house.