REPETITIONARY AND PECULIARLY VIVID DREAMS

I believe there are people who dream the same dreams repeatedly, even down to the most minor details. One of the dreams I am continually dreaming is as follows: I am walking along the sea-front of some popular watering-place, which, judging by the style of houses and appearance of the people, I should say was abroad. The sun is shining, the sea exquisitely blue; whilst, to enhance the beauty of nature, a band is playing, and playing remarkably well, some gay operatic music. What I see, what I feel, what I think, has about it nothing of the unmistakeable idiosyncrasy of a dream, but all is rigorously self -consistent. I am enjoying myself to the utmost, when, on turning round, I perceive behind me a tramp a man with a shock head of red hair, and features that are ineffaceably stamped on my memory. He is a blight, a sore, a gangrene in this place of beauty, cleanliness and elegance; and as I am wondering at the strange incongruity of it, he solicits me for alms. I refuse. He asks again. I threaten him with the police. He is at once silent. Turning my back on him, I continue my promenade. Someone in the street utters a cry of horror. I swing round, and as I do so, the tramp stabs me in the back. I catch a look of hellish vindictiveness in his eyes, and then, seized with an instantaneous and dreadful sickness, I stagger, reel and fall, struggle, gasp and die!I think this dream must be intended as a warning, and I never visit a fresh seaside place particularly abroad without considerable anxiety as to the appearance of the front. So far, I have found no place to correspond quite with that in my dream.In other dreams I continually visit the same places, sometimes a waterfall, sometimes a river flowing through a dense wood, sometimes a farm-house; and on each occasion the incidents are strictly repeated. Close beside the waterfall I fish, and am always in the act of landing a huge trout, when my tackle gets entangled in some hyper-extraordinary fashion, and I awake. I wander along a shady road by the side of the river, and always at a certain opening an old man, staggering beneath a load of sticks, crosses my path and enters the wicket-gate leading to a tiny, white- washed and neatly thatched cottage. The man has a black patch over one eye, very thick white hair, and is clean-shaven. He wears a white jacket with bone buttons, corduroy trousers, and shoes, one of which is fastened with common or garden string. I have certainly never visited such a spot nor seen such a person, except in my dreams, and can only conclude that it must either be a forecast of what is to happen to me some day, or that projection takes place during sleep and I visit the actual spot in my immaterial body. This unconscious projection, as may be proved by many authentic cases, is by no means an uncommon occurrence, and I am of the opinion that many vivid scenic dreams may thus be explained. One of the best-known stories, illustrating the theory of projection during sleep, is to this effect. A Miss G, who dreamed so frequently of an old country house that she got to know every nook and cranny of it by heart, went on a visit to some friends with whom she had never stayed before. The moment she caught sight of their house she recognised it; and her identification was startlingly corroborated by the servants, who, unable to restrain their excitement on seeing her, simultaneously exclaimed, ” The ghost! The ghost!” It then transpired that, for some time past, the house had been haunted by the phantasm of a lady corresponding in every detail to Miss G; and as Miss G was found to be as familiar with every room and passage of the house as if she had lived there all her life, it could only be deducted that she had constantly visited the place in her immaterial body, and that it was her immaterial body (projection) that had been seen by various inmates of the house and taken for a ghost.T. Charley, in his News from the Invisible Worlds quotes the following curious example of a murder prevented by a thrice -fold dream: “Monday, April 2, 1781, I was informed by a person in an eminent station of a very uncommon incident. He had occasion to correct with a few stripes a lad that lived with him at Rochester; and the lad, resenting the punishment, left. But sometime after, on the youth appearing to repent of his behaviour and humbling himself accordingly, he was received into the house again, when he behaved in a most becoming manner and was doubly diligent in his service.”One night his mistress dreamed that this lad” was going to cut her throat; and, as if the dream was not of sufficient significance in itself, she shortly afterwards had a letter from a sister stating that she, too, had dreamed the very same thing. The lady at once took the letter to her father, who lived not very far off, and was surprised to hear that he, likewise, on the same night, had a dream to the same effect. The youth was then closely watched, and on being observed to come up, about noon one day, to the door of his mistress’s apartment with a case-knife in his hand, he was stopped, and an explanation of his conduct was demanded. In reply, he said he intended going into the adjoining room i.e. the room leading out of his mistress’s to scrape the dirt off his master’s embroidered shirt.”The answer not being deemed at all satisfactory, he was taken aside and put to a searching examination, when he ended by confessing that he had” always remembered with indignation his master’s severity to him, and had fully resolved on revenge,” but in what manner he would not say. He was, of course, instantly discharged; and the lady and her husband congratulated themselves on their esc. From a horrible death an escape which they confessed was entirely owing to the dreams.”