Hair Grayed by the Impression of a DreamThe Petit Journal of May 14th, 1866 reads:
“Mr. Émile Gaboriau, commenting the fact attributed to the husband that had murdered his wife while dreaming, tells in the Pays, this dramatic episode that we are going to read:
But low and behold, it is stronger, and I must say that I believe in the fact, whose authenticity was attested to me by the hero himself. The hero, my college mate, is an engineer in his thirties, a man of wit and talent, of methodical character and cold temperament. While traveling in Brittany, two years ago, he had to spend the night in an isolated hostel, a few hundred yards form a mine that he intended to visit the next day.
He was worn out. He went to bed early and soon fell asleep. Soon he was dreaming. He had just been put in chart of the exploration of that neighboring mine. He was watching the workers when the owner arrived.
That brutal and ill-educated man criticized him for staying out, arms crossed, when he should be inside, busy making the plan.
-It is okay, I will go down, responded the young engineer.
He, in fact, went down, walked the galleries, and sketched a plan. When the task was over, he jumped on a basket that should bring him back up. The basket was suspended by a huge cable. The mine was extraordinarily deep, and the engineer assessed that the ascent would take well a quarter of an hour. He then made himself as comfortable as possible. He climbed for two or three minutes when, raising his eyes serendipitously, he thought he had seen that the cable that held his life was cut a few feet above his head, too high for him to reach it. At first his fear was such that he almost fainted. He then tried to recover, reassuring himself. Could he be mistaken, had he not seen badly? He had to appeal to all his courage to dare look again. No, he was not wrong. The cable had been damaged by the friction of the rock and slowly, but visibly, it was unraveling. At that point it was not thicker than one inch in diameter. The unfortunate one felt lost. A mortal cold froze him up to the marrow. He wanted to scream; impossible. Besides, what for? He was then halfway through. At the bottom, at a vertiginous depth, he noticed the lights of the workers, less shiny than glowworms in the grass. Above he saw the opening of the well, so tight that it seemed less narrow than the diameter of a bottleneck. He was always going up, and one by one the hemp threads were cracking. And there was no way to avoid the horrible fall, for, he saw it, he felt it, the cable would break well before the basked reached the top.
His anguish was such that he thought of ending the ordeal by jumping. He hesitated when the basket reached the surface. He was saved. He jumped to the ground with a formidable scream. The scream woke him up. The horrible adventure was only a dream. But he was in terrible state, bathed in sweat, hardly breathing, incapable of the slightest movement. He finally rang the bell and they came for his aid. But the persons in the hostel almost refused to recognize him. His black hair had turned grey. On the foot of the bed was, sketched by him, the plan of the mine that he did not know. The plan was of a marvelous accuracy.”
We have no other guarantee of authenticity of this fact than the report above. Without prejudging anything about it, we say that everything that is reported is possible. The plan of the mine, sketched by the engineer during his sleep, is no different that the works carried out by the somnambulists. To do it accurately he had to see it. Since he could not see with the eyes of the body, he saw it with the eyes of the soul. His Spirit explored the mine during the sleep; the plan is the material proof. As for the danger, it is evident that there was nothing real about it; it was just a nightmare. What is remarkable is the fact that under the impression of an imaginary danger, his hair turned gray.
This phenomenon is explained by the fluidic links that the impressions of the soul transmit to the body, when the former is away from the latter. The soul was not aware of such separation; the perispirit took the place of the material body, as it many times happens after death, with certain Spirits that still believe to be alive, imagining themselves still occupied with their regular businesses. The Spirit of the engineer, although alive, was on an analogous situation; it was all so real in his mind, as if he were in his body of flesh and blood. Hence the horror that he experimented by feeling close to be thrown in the abyss.
Where has such a fantastic image come from? He created it himself, through his thoughts, a fluidic image in which he was the actor, exactly like Mrs. Cantianille and Sister Elmérich that we mentioned in our preceding number. The difference is in their usual occupations. The engineer naturally thought of the mines, whereas Mrs. Cantianille in her nunnery thought of hell. She undoubtedly believed to be in a state of mortal sin, for some breach of the rule, carried out by the instigation of the demons; by exaggerating its consequences she already saw herself dominated by them. The words: “I only got to deserve very well their trust” demonstrates that her conscience was not appeased. Moreover, the image that she makes of hell is somewhat seducing to certain persons, for those that admit to say blasphemy against God and praise the devil, and that have the courage to challenge the flames, are rewarded by entirely mundane pleasures. In this image it was possible to notice a reflex of the Masonic tests, that had been shown to her as the hall of hell. As for Sister Elmérich, her concerns are milder. She is satisfied with the beatitude and veneration of holy things; her visions, therefore, are their reproductions.
In the vision of the engineer, there are two distinct parts: the first real and positive, attested by the accuracy of the mine plan; the second purely fantastic: that danger that he run. This may perhaps be the effect of a real accident of that kind in which he had been the victim in his preceding life. It might have been provoked as a warning for him to take the necessary precautions. Overseeing the direction of the mine, after such a warning, would not neglect the cautionary measures. That is an example of the impression that one may preserve from sensations experienced in another existence.
We do not know if we have already cited it elsewhere; without time to dig it up, we bring it back with the risk of repeating it, in support of what we want to say.
A lady of our acquaintance had been educated in a boarding school in Rouen. When the students went out to the church or at leisure, at a certain point of the road she was taken by an extraordinary idea and apprehension: she felt like she was going to fall into an abyss, and that repeated every time she passed that place, during the whole time she was in the boarding school. She had left the Rouen for more than twenty years and having returned a few years ago she had the curiosity of going to see again the house where she had lived. When passing by the same street she experienced the same sensation. Later, having become a Spiritist, and having this fact come back to her memory, she requested an explanation and she was told that in the past, in that same place, there were gullies with deep wells full of water; that she was part of a group of ladies that joined efforts to defend the town against the English and that they had been thrown in those wells, where they had perished. This event is reported in the history of Rouen.
Thus, many centuries later, the terrible impression of that catastrophe had not yet faded away from her Spirit. If she no longer had the same material body, she had the same fluidic body or perispirit that had received the first impression, and that reacted in her present body. A dream, therefore, could trace the image back to her and produce an emotion like that of the engineer.
How many things the principle of the perpetuity of the Spirit and the bond that links the Spirit to matter teach us! The newspapers may have never, perhaps, in denying Spiritism, reported so many facts in support of the truths that it proclaims.
