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A Service of Suffering - Mr. J. G. Westlake

Mrs. Croad has frequently told me that she has had communications from departed friends, and also from others still living, at times when they have been in peculiar peril. She tells me that at the time she was living with her grandparents, while her father was at sea, his life was more than once in jeopardy from shipwreck, but on each occasion, though hundreds of miles away, she saw what was transpiring and informed his father and mother; and that when they next heard from him, they found that what she had described to them was substantially true.

She also says that soon after they were married she and her husband agreed with each other that the one that died first should communicate the fact in some intelligible way to the other; and that at the moment when he fell senseless on the deck of the vessel, he appeared in the most unmistakable manner to her and said "Goodbye, Carrie. I am going."

She was so certain he was dead that she told her friends at Brading what she had seen, and although they did not place much confidence in her statement, they took note of the exact time, and in a few weeks after, when the news came, they found that, marking allowance for the difference of longitude, the time of his death coincided exactly with his appearance to her……

She would frequently, while living with us, ask that her room should be put in order, as she expected visitors to see her shortly, and this, possibly, when she had not had anyone to see her for some days, nor had any apparent reason to expect that anyone was coming; we found her uniformly correct in her impressions. . . . Recently, when she was living at Swindon, Mr. Harris went from Redland to see her; he had not seen her for five weeks, nor had she any intimation of his intended visit. Early in the morning she asked her daughter to put the room straight, as she expected Mr. Harris would call in the course of the day. When he arrived about mid-day, she wrote on her slate "l have been expecting you."