Observations placeholder
Vaughan, Dr Alan – A prophetic dream of the death of Eileen Garrett
Identifier
025070
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Patterns of Prophecy – Alan Vaughan
The most famous psychic I had known was Eileen Garrett, to whom I felt indebted for starting me in parapsychology. I often dreamed of her, though a dream of August 22, 1970, seemed ominous:
"I and another person were in the back of a private airplane piloted by Eileen Garrett. She was giving us a lift from some place. The door between the passengers and her cockpit was open, and then we landed for a few minutes. She went out for a while. When she came back (which I didn't see), a young man with a beard took over as pilot. The other passenger and I knew that she was too ill to continue as pilot. The door to the cockpit was now closed."
I commented that the dream
"seems very symbolic, and suggestive of Eileen Garrett's 'piloting' of the Parapsychology Foundation, which 'gave me a lift' once, i.e., a grant. This might also be suggestive of her death, or her becoming even more seriously ill than she is now. The closing of the cockpit door suggests death. I'm not sure who the young man with the beard might be. I mentioned Eileen Garrett last night in my lecture, which may be the trigger for the dream."
That afternoon I fell asleep and recorded another dream fragment:
"I heard C's voice on the telephone telling me, 'Irene died yesterday from a heart attack.'"
I commented in my dream diary:
"This morning I thought of Irene for a moment. I had also, of course, been thinking about Eileen's death as predicted in the earlier dream. . . . It may be though that Irene is a substitution for someone else. Eileen, perhaps?"
That same afternoon, at 3:35 P M, as reported the next day in The New York Times, a pilot flying a Boeing 707 had a heart attack while making his approach to land at Kennedy Airport. His co-pilot took the controls and brought the plane safely in. I wonder now if the co-pilot had a beard.
Less than a month later, on September 15, 1970, Eileen Garrett died of a heart attack in the South of France. She had been seriously ill but had courageously staved off death until the completion of her international conference. I first heard the news when C telephoned me.