Dreams of Death

When people talk about “dreams that come true” they usually have in mind beneficial situations that they have dreamt about and which they wish can become reality. However, there have also been instances of people dreaming about their own demises, and which have indeed come true.

Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln was in a sombre mood at the White House on 11th April 1865. He told his guests at an evening function that he had had a vivid dream a few nights before in which he had walked into the East Room of the White House and found a corpse lying on a catafalque, surrounded by mourners. He was told that the body was that of the President, who had been killed by an assassin.

Three days later Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth during a performance at Ford’s Theatre. He died the following morning.

Thomas, Lord Lyttleton

Lord Lyttelton was 35 years old in 1779. He told his friends that he had had a disturbing dream on the night of 24th November, at around midnight. He said that a woman dressed in white pointed at him and said that he would be dead within three days.

Lyttleton was clearly troubled by this prediction and left town for his country estate in Surrey in the hope that the three days would pass uneventfully. On 27th November he went to his room at about 11 o’clock, clearly convinced that he was now safe. His servant helped him to undress and left the room for a few minutes. When he returned the young man was having a fit from which he failed to recover. He was dead before midnight.

Robert Morris

Robert Morris was a tobacco planter in pre-Revolution America. He was invited to inspect a warship but turned down the invitation on the grounds that he had had a dream in which he was killed when one of the cannons was fired. The ship’s captain was disappointed by this refusal and told Morris that no guns would be fired in salute until he was safely back on shore, and this was enough to persuade Morris to change his mind.

The visit proceeded as planned and the boat taking the visiting party back from the ship was on its way when a fly landed on the captain’s nose. He waved his hand to brush it away and the sailor in charge of the salute gun took this as his signal to fire. Robert Morris was killed by shrapnel from the shot, just as in his dream.

Spooky or what?

The thing about dreams is that they are created by the subconscious from elements that are already present somewhere in the brain. Abraham Lincoln was convinced that dreams were sent by angels and were therefore messages from God, but he must also have been aware that he was an object of hatred for many Americans in the defeated South. A dream of his demise was therefore a high possibility. The timing of dream and fulfilment was what made the event “spooky”.

The death of Thomas Lord Lyttleton was also not to be wondered at. Given that he took the dream seriously, it is entirely possibly that his brain could not cope with the pressure and brought on a fit. Had his servant had some medical or first aid knowledge it is possible that he might have survived the fit, but that is mere speculation. The “fit” might have been a stroke or brain haemorrhage that was more likely to be fatal.

The story of Robert Morris comes closer to “spooky” than the other two. Morris was clearly worried about being close to a discharging gun, and the prospect of having to attend a function where this would happen was presumably what inspired the dream. The tragic outcome, caused by a fly and a misunderstanding, must be put down to coincidence.

There must also be plenty of cases in which dreams of death have not come true, and even more in which nobody has known about such dreams because the dreamer chose not to relate it to someone else.