Observations placeholder

as quoted in Tyrrell, G N M - The Personality of Man

Mrs. P. is highly trained in science and her published work has been utilised by the Government. She wrote the following account of her experience a fortnight after it occurred, in a letter to me dated May 16th, 1944.

"About a fortnight ago R. [her husband] called me as usual about 8.15 a.m. and I went to sleep again and dreamed a very vivid dream. It is rare nowadays for me to remember dreams clearly on waking. In the dream I was sitting with some other people on the North Downs just above the house where I lived as a girl. The view is very familiar to me. It was clear and the various points on the South Downs were clearly distinguishable.

What we thought were bombs began to fall not far from us. Then we noticed flashes on the South Downs and decided that we were being shelled by distant guns, and decided it was gunnery practice and not enemy action. I rushed down the hill to 'phone to get the gunfire stopped but was told a civilian was not allowed to communicate with army officials direct. I remembered in the dream that our old house is now in use as an officers' mess and went there for assistance. , But there were no officers, only a number of polite, uniformed women with Ambulances, who tried to be very helpful but also were not allowed to put through a 'phone call to get the gunfire stopped.

I felt frantic because I thought the shells were likely to hit a bungalow in which was a young niece and her children.

Then I woke up and dressed and at breakfast time still felt in a furious state of frustration because civilians could not communicate with those responsible for dangerous gunnery practice and get it stopped."

Mrs. P. told her husband she was late that morning because she had had a very thrilling dream; but she gave, way to that unfortunate feeling (from the evidential point of view) which makes people disinclined to make a fuss about a dream, and she said no more. In the same letter Mrs. P. said:

“The position on the South Downs where I saw the gun-flashes in my dream was between Shoreham Gap and Chanctonbury Ring, that is, above Steyning."

On the 14th May, 1944, shells which overshot their targets on a range on the South Downs fell in and around the village of Steyning, killing two persons and injuring others. The Times of 15th May, reporting the incident, said:

"As soon as the first shell fell, efforts were made by the civil defence authorities to notify the authorities, but they were unable to get into touch with the units concerned."

As a result, the shelling continued for an hour and a half before it could be stopped…………………..

….. In reality the niece lived some twelve miles from the spot chosen in the dream, to which locality her house was displaced. Thus, the whole dream was a dramatic construction into which foreknowledge entered as only one factor. We should not, I think, look upon instances of foreknowledge as solely attempts to peep into the future, which fail in so far as they are wrong. We should realise that, as presented to consciousness, they are dramatic constructions and the constructor takes full advantage of artist's licence.