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Lord Dufferin - Saved from death by a frightening apparition
Identifier
016709
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Let me suggest an explanation. Our higher spirits help us and because they know to a certain extent what our destiny is, they prepare us in advance. Lord Dufferin's destiny was potentially gong to place him in some dangerous situations. Thus the first vision/hallucination was a grizzly frightening and memorable one using ugliness and the coffin as the cue. The Higher spirit was thus trying to prime Dufferin so that if he saw the same face or vision it might make him stop in his tracks, because f the association of the coffin and death.
Both visions and hallucinations can look extemely real, as such what Dufferin saw is not unusual.
The second time Dufferin saw the face, the higher spirit was aware the lift cable wasn't safe - this was not prophesy, they are spiritually aware of everything and a faulty lift cable is easy meat for them. Thus Lord Dufferin's Higher spirit knew the lift was not safe, so it superimposed the ugly face of the past onto the actual face of the lift attendant.
And it worked. It frightened Dufferin enough to persuade him not to enter the lift.
I suspect the story has been embellished in the retelling - the plunging lift may be a thrilling extra addition, but the use of hallucinations by Higher spirits to warn us of danger is not uncommon and this is a very good example.
A description of the experience
Death and its Mystery, At the Moment of Death; Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dying – Camille Flammarion
Letter 4236 July 18th 1920, source Monsieur R de Maratray.
One night when Lord Dufferin had accepted, in Ireland, the hospitality of a friend, he awakened suddenly, preyed upon by an indefinable restlessness. He got up, went to the window, which was lighted by the moon and saw distinctly in the shadow below him a man bearing a large burden on his shoulder. This man was walking slowly.
When he passed before the house, it became manifest that he bore a coffin; he lifted his head; his face was so repulsive that Lord Dufferin was greatly struck. His gaze followed the apparition as it drew away and he went back to bed, where he had great difficulty in going to sleep once more.
The morning of the next day, he questioned his host, but the latter could give him no enlightenment. He knew no one corresponding to the description of the person carrying the coffin and no burial was awaited in the village.
Some years later, Lord Dufferin was appointed Ambassador to France. Determined faithfully to discharge the duties of his high position, he went one day to a diplomatic reception that was to be held in the Grand Hotel in Paris. His Private Secretary conducted him to a large lift before which there were several state officials standing respectively in line. Lord Dufferin, passing them, bowed and was about to step into the lift when he gave an involuntary start. The employee who operated the cable was ugly, surly looking and had precisely the features of the mysterious apparition of the Irish village!
Moved by an instinctive impulse, the ambassador drew back; he retraced his steps, uttering some words of excuse and on the pretext that he had forgotten something, asked them to take up those who had gone on before, without waiting for him; he then went to the hotel office to make inquiries as to the person who had caused his very natural emotion. But he did not have time.
At that moment a terrible crash was heard, mingled with cries of anguish. The lift, reaching a certain height, had dropped suddenly to the bottom of the shaft.
The accident is historic and its precise date could be easily verified. The mysterious employee was killed with those whom he was taking up. His origin could not be traced. He was, it was said, an extra helper.
Lord Dufferin never knew any more about it and he vainly sought to explain by what sorcery the hand of destiny had saved him from peril by lifting in s mysterious a way, a corner of the veil that is over that part of eternity which we call the future