CRIMES SOLVED BY DREAMS

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2328, 23 December 1925, Page 15

CRIMES SOLVED BY DREAMS

STRANGE VISIONS. It is reported from Richmond ginla) that in tbe forthcoming trial of an Italian music teacher for murder, pyideppe will he giverj 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 opt 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 HU* Bnico’s evidence loads to a conviction (writes Lawrence Maron, in the ‘Sunday Chronicle’) it will not he the first time that a dream has »ed to the solution of a murder mystery. In the last century a man napied Kenneth Fraser, who lived in a village near Aberdeen, Imd quite a reputation as a dream-detective. In one case, at least, he supplied the missing Uhk necessary in a Chain of evidence. The Voice. A pedlar had been murdered, and a- schoolmaster named Hugh Mgcleod was suspected, but before he could be arrested it was necessary that the pedlar’s pack should be discovered. The police consulted Kenneth. ‘‘lt was paid to me In n>7 dream,” oaid he, "by a voice like a man's voice,” etc-, and, though this sounded like the language of a charlatan, he led the way to a spot where the pack was found together with five s}|k handkerchiefs lie had said were In it. But there have been au<|ientlcateci cases on all fours with the one reported from Virginia. While at sea in February 1840. a seaman named Edmund Neveil dreamed that his brother, a timber merchant, at Wadebrldge, Cornwall, had been murdered by two men- WTien he got home ho found that on the night when he had his dreams, his brother had been murdered, and that the police were 1 l affled. But Neveil was able to com duct them to the house where the two men lived whom he had soon In his dream. They were so astounded that they confessed. Sister’s Vision. Equally remarkable was the dream of a schoolgirl living in Gyek, HoU land, 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, ip which, she told her mother, she had seen all four of the travellers waylaid in a forest and murdered, She gave the name’s of the murderers. Her'mother was not alarmed, but next morning mentioned the matter casually to the local chief of police. He made Inquiries, four bodios wore found In the forest, partly burnt, and the men designated in the dream were arrested. A few days before the war a new-ly-appolntod French magistrate, M. Berard, staying in a village within his jurisdiction, was apprised of the mysterious disappearance of a from the village Inn. Now, two years pre viously, he had stayed at that inn, and had had an uncomfortable dream in which ho had seen the landlord and the landlady murder a fellow-.j guest and bury his body in the garden. | He told the police of this and they l were put on a line 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.