Lord Brougham's Dream

1917

Lord Brougham was one of the stubborn believers to the "common sense" explanation of ghostly appearances as dreams. At Edinburgh university he and an intimate friend drew up an agreement written with their blood that whichever of them died first should appear to the survivor.

Years passed; the friend was in India, and Brougham had almost forgotten his existence. Arriving late one night at an inn in Sweden, Brougham had a hot bath and was going to get out of it when he looked toward the chair on which he had left his clothes and saw his friend sitting on it. Brougham seems then to have fainted.

On getting home be received a letter announcing that the other had died in India at the very time. Yet this incident, which most people would put down to telepathy at least, was dismissed by Brougham as a mere dream and pure coincidence.

The White Lady — Warning Death Phantom

1907

Warning Death Phantom of the Reigning House of Prussia

On the night before the battle of Saalfield Prince Louis of Prussia and his adjutant, Count Nostitz, were chatting in the Schloss Schwarzburg-Rudolfstadt. The prince was anticipating victory when he suddenly turned pale and rushed from the room, pursuing through the hall a shadowy white robed figure. The sentinel saw it also.

Next day Nostitz and the prince saw the white lady on a hill wringing her hands in despair as the Germans fell back. A few minutes later Louis was killed and Nostitz wounded. Nostitz told the story to his son, and the son to Unser Fritz.

The white lady's first appearance was when she was seen in the palace at Baireuth in 1486. She appeared eight or ten times in the next century. When the French officers were quartered in Baireuth she frightened them, in particular General d'Espagne, who, the day after he had seen her, pointed to a portrait on the wall and cried: "It is she! That means my death!" He was killed soon afterward.

The superstitious Napoleon wouldn't sleep in the castle, but the white lady went to see him elsewhere. She was seen before the death of the beautiful Queen Louise, of Frederick William III., of Frederick William IV., of Unser Fritz himself and of many other members of the reigning house of Prussia.