and was going on for another visit to Lytham, in Lancashire, on the 18th of September, 1895. I had wished Mr. and Mrs. Udny and the friends in the house good-bye when I went to bed, knowing I should have to make a very early start in the morning. So I had the curtains drawn and the shutters shut to make the room dark and to get a good night's sleep.
But I woke up with the feeling of being gently wakened; I was swayed, or rather rocked backwards and forwards, till I felt the bed to see if that were moving, and then I was gently and quietly raised up. The air fluttered over my head, a shimmering light came, and I felt some one was detained, lingering and hovering over me. To myself, I said: "Some one is dying; some one I know is leaving this world and blessing me"; and then the hovering and the fluttering were greater. Then, aloud, as if some one were willing me (for I never speak aloud to myself), I said: "If dear Med were here she would tell me at once who it is." As if in answer came a rap by the head of my bed, a rap I have never heard before, and was certainly not made by human hands. I jumped out of bed, and said, "Who am I to see?" I lit my candle, and looked at my watch, and it was seven minutes past three. I put the candle out, and was getting into bed, when I thought, "How can I rest while a soul I know is passing from this world?" and I knelt down and said a prayer for the soul. I never thought it was my dear nurse, Mrs. Medley, whom I always called "Med," but I thought of a friend I knew in Warwickshire.
After I got into bed and put the candle out, there was a light I cannot describe all round my bed. It was a silvery radiance, and as it passed away flashes of gold and gold stars fell. About five I went to sleep for half an hour, but woke up with my hand on my neck trying to take off a flat black insect. . . . One seemed on my forehead, one on my neck, and I said again aloud: "This is dear Med's Death Dream; how interested she will be to hear it. Who could have died this morning?" Mrs. Medley had always told me that dreaming of insects on the head and neck was a certain sign