SOLVED BY DREAMS

Evening Star, Issue 19127, 19 December 1925, Page 14

SOLVED BY DREAMS

STRANGE VISIONS It is reported from Richmond (Virginia) that in the forthcoming trial of an Italian music teacher for murder, evidence will be given by Mrs Janet Bruce, a close friend of the dead woman, that she saw the murder committed in a dream. From among a number of daggers shown her Mrs Bruce picked out the one she had seen being used in her dream, and it was the one which had been found by the dead woman's body. If Mrs Bruce’s evidence loads to a conviction (writes Lawrence Moron, in the 1 Sunday Chronicle ’) it will not bo the first time that a dream has led to the solution of a mnrdor mystery. In the last century a man named Kenneth Fraser. who lived in a village near Aberdeen, had quite a reputation as a droam-detoc-tive. In one case, at least, ho supplied the missing link necessary in a chain of evidence. THE VOICE. A pedlar had been murdered, and a schoolmaster ■ named Hugh Maclood was suspected, but before lie could bo arrested it was necessary that the pedlar's pack should be discovered. The police consulted Kenneth. “It was said to me in my dream,” said he, “ by a voice like a man’s voice,” etc., and, though this sounded like the language of a charlatan, ho led tbo way to a spot where the pack was found, together with five silk handkerchiefs he had said were in it. But there have been authenticated cases on all fours with the one reported from Virginia. While at sea in February, 1840, a seaman named Edmund Novell dreamed that his brother, a timber merchant at Wadebridgo, Cornwall, had been murdered by two men. When lie got home lie found that on the night when ho had his dreams, his brother had been murdered, and that the police were baffled. But Novell was able to conduct them to the house whore the two men lived whom lie had seen in his dream. They were- so astounded that they confessed. SISTER’S VISION. Equally remarkable was the dream of a schoolgirl living in Gyck, Holland, following on the departure of her two brothers with their two little daughters for a village some distance away. She awakened as the result of a nightmare, in which, she told her mother, she had seen all four of the travellers waylaid in a forest and murdered. She gave the names ot the murderers. Her mother was net alarmed, but next morning mentioned the matter casually to the local chief of police. He made inquiries, four bodies were found in the forest, partly burnt, and the men designated in the dream wore arrested. A few days before the war a newly-ap-pointed French magistrate, M. Bcrard, staying in a village within his jurisdiction, was apprised of the mysterious disappearance of a guest from the milage inn. Now, two years previously, ho had stayed at that inn, and had had an uncomfortable dream in which ho had seen the landlord and the landlady murder a fellowguest and bury his body in the garden. Ho told the police of this and they were put on a lino of inquiry they had never thought of. The landlord and the landlady were brought before the magistrate. ' They concluded that Providence had intervened against them, and acknowledged their guilt.