Observations placeholder

The Future and Beyond – H F Saltmarsh

This case is taken from Proc., V, 322:

Mrs. Schweitzer dreamed that she saw her younger son, F, with a stranger, on some cliffs. Her son suddenly slipped down the side of the cliff. She turned to the stranger and said,

'May I ask who you are and what is your name?'

He replied, ' My name is Henry Irvin‘.

Mrs. Schweitzer then said, 'Do you mean Irving the actor? ' and the stranger replied,

'No, not exactly, but something after that style.'

On waking she was very worried by the dream and told her elder son, begging him to recall his brother, who was away travelling for the firm on business. He ridiculed the matter, saying that F was quite safe as he was in Manchester. About eight days later F was killed on the cliffs at Scarborough, where he had gone for a week's holiday after completing his business in Manchester.

Mrs Schweitzer, on visiting the place, met the man who had accompanied him on the fatal occasion and recognized him as the stranger of her dream. She inquired if his name were Henry and being told that it was, recounted her dream. He then said that he used to recite at concerts, etc., and was always introduced on such occasions as Henry Irvin, Jr. His real name was Deverell.

This case is very interesting, not only as being quite a good precognition covering a considerable amount of detail, viz., the site of the accident, the presence and appearance of the dead man's companion, but also the very curious matter of the companion's name. This seems an odd and irrelevant fact to be included in the dream; granted the possibility of precognition, one can understand, more or less, that knowledge of the approaching death of her son might be transmitted to, or acquired by, his mother, but one can conceive no reason whatsoever why a fancy name of a chance acquaintance [sic – Saltmarsh makes assumptions here] should have been included.

It was knowledge which was, presumably, in the possession of Mr. Deverell alone, out of all the actors in the affair, and we can only assume that it was somehow derived from his mind. Yet at the time of the dream the dead man and Mr. Deverell were not acquainted [how does Saltmarsh know this?].

The strange allusive manner, also, in which the fact is conveyed in the dream is noteworthy. This detail appears to me to be utterly inexplicable unless we adopt the rather unlikely hypothesis that the precognition occurred in the first place to Mr. Deverell and never reached his normal consciousness, but was transmitted telepathically to Mrs. Schweitzer, and that the detail of the name, 'Henry Irvin,' was added as a sort of extra identification.