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Phantasms of the Living Volume I – Edmund Gurney

From Canon W Warburton

Somewhere about the year 1848 I went up from Oxford to stay a day or two with my brother, Acton Warburton.  When I got to his chambers I found a note on the table apologising for his absence, and saying that he had gone to a dance somewhere in the West End, and intended to be home soon after 1 o’clock.  Instead of going to bed, I dozed in an armchair, but started up wide awake exactly at 1, ejaculating ‘By Jove! He’s down!!’ 

And seeing him coming out of a drawing room into a brightly illuminated landing, catching his foot in the edge of the top stair, and falling headlong, just saving himself by his elbows and hands.  The house was one which I had never seen, nor did I know where it was.

Thinking very little of the matter, I fell a-doze again for half an hour, and was awakened by my brother suddenly coming in and saying,

‘Oh there you are! I have just had as narrow an escape of breaking my neck as I ever had in my life.  Coming out of the ballroom, I caught my foot and tumbled full length down the stairs’

That is all.  It may have been ‘only a dream’ but I always thought it must have been something more.