aw a small man, dressed in
a blue coat and white waistcoat, enter the lobby of the House of Commons;
whereupon another man, dressed in a snuff-colored coat, stepped forward,
and, drawing a pistol from an inside pocket fired at and shot the small
man, the bullet lodging in the left breast. In the vision, Williams turned
and asked some bystander the name of the victim; the bystander replied
that the stricken man was Mr. Spencer Perceval, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The valuable feature of the case, from a scientific standpoint,
lies in the fact that Williams was very much impressed by his
thrice-repeated vision, and was greatly disturbed thereby. His anxiety
was so great that he spoke of the matter to several friends, and asked
them whether it would not be well for him to go to London for the purpose
of warning Mr. Perceval. His friends ridiculed the whole matter, and
persuaded him to give up the idea of visiting London for the purpose
named. Those who had a knowledge of the vision were greatly startled and
shocked when several days afterward the assassination occurred, agreeing
in perfect detail with the vision of the Cornishman. The case, vouched for
as it was by a number of reliable persons who had been consulted by
Williams, attracted much attention at the time, and has since passed into
the history of remarkable instances of prevision.
In some cases, however, the prevision seems to come as a warning, and in
many cases the heeding of the warning has prevented the unpleasant
features from materializing as seen in the vision. Up to the point of the
action upon the warning the occurrence agree perfectly with the
vision--but the moment the warned person acts so as to prevent the
occurrence, the whole train of circumstances is broken. There is an occult
explanation of this, but it is too technical to mention at this place.
What is known to psychic researchers as "the Hannah Green case" is of this
character. This story, briefly, is that Hannah Green, a housekeeper of
Oxfordshire, dreamt that she, having been left alone in the house of a
Sunday evening, heard a knock at the door. Opening the door she found a
tramp who tried to force his way into the house. She struggled to prevent
his entrance, but he struck her with a bludgeon and rendered her
insensible, whereupon he entered the house and robbed it. She related the
vision to her friends, but, as nothing happened for some time, the matter
almost passed from her mind.
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