Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/187

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PRESENTIMENTS, VISIONS, AND APPARITIONS
173

are most frequently, though not always, perceived in the night between waking and sleeping.

The persistence of dreams after one is fully awake is also a suggestive occasional experience. After the appearance of an article on "Dreams, Nightmare, and Somnambulism," in "The Century," the editor of that magazine received a letter written by a gentleman of the city of New York describing a dream which he had had a few weeks before, in which he dreamed that he was lying on his back in his own room and saw a frightful black hobgoblin, well defined in shape, which stood by the side of his bed and acted as if about to attack him. In the midst of the horror produced by the specter, he awoke, found himself lying on his back just as he had dreamed, looked around the room, and recognized the furniture and other things in the room, but continued to see the hobgoblin as plainly as he saw anything else, heard him growl, and distinctly saw him going on with his hostile demonstrations. Reasoning upon what he should do, he struggled to move, was unable to stir hand or foot for some time, but finally did move, and that instant the uncanny specter vanished. He says: "I had my eyes on the hobgoblin at the moment when I made the movement, and at once tried to see whether there was any object in the room which I could have mistaken for it, but could find none."

Books of marvels contain narratives which sometimes afford the evidence of their explanation, but frequently omit details which a person not disposed to the marvelous would be sure to examine if he had the opportunity. In Stilling's "Pneumatology," translated from the German and edited by Dr. George Hush, there are many of these. Stilling endeavors to show that people who see themselves are generally likely to die soon afterward. He says: "When