I recollect very distinctly the particulars of a dream which I had several years since, and which was due to an impression conveyed to the brain through the ear. The dream also illustrates the point previously brought forward, that a definite conception of time does not enter into the phenomena of dreams.

I dreamed that I had taken passage in a steamboat from St. Louis to New Orleans. Among the passengers was a man who had all the appearance of being very ill with consumption. He looked more like a ghost than a human being, and moved noiselessly among the passengers, noticing no one, though attracting the attention of all.

For several days nothing was said between him and any one, till one morning, as we approached Baton Rouge, he came to where I was sitting on the guards and began a conversation by asking me what time it was. I took out my watch, when he instantly took it from my hand and opened it. "I, too, once had a watch," he said; "but see what I am now." With these words he threw aside the large cloak he habitually wore, and I saw that his ribs were entirely bare of skin and flesh. He then took my watch, and, inserting it between his ribs, said it would make a very good heart.

Continuing his conversation he told me that he had resolved to blow up the vessel the next day, but that as I had been the means of supplying him with a heart he would save my life. "When you hear the whistle blow," he said, "jump overboard, for in an instant afterward the boat will be in atoms." I thanked him, and he left me.

All that day and the next I endeavored to acquaint my fellow-passengers with the fate in store for them, but discovered that I had lost the faculty of speech. I tried to write, but found that my hands were paralyzed. In fact I could adopt no means to warn them. While I was making these ineffectual efforts, I heard the whistle of the engine; I rushed to the side of the boat to plunge overboard, and awoke.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Alfred Maury's famous dream Guillotine convinced dream researchers that dreams had to be near-instantaneous. Yet modern sleep labs consistently find dreams happen roughly in real time. So this epic, multiday dream surely began well before the sawmill whistle. But if so, how'd the dream synchronize steamboat and sawmill blasts?

Hammond was at home, so he heard that whistle daily. My internal clock is decent, but I'm pleased if it wakes me within 15 minutes of the right time. Could Hammond's track time to the second?

I have so many predictive dreams I've been forced to accept JW Dunne's theory that the dreaming mind sees time spatially, as a landscape, and builds a dream of elements from past, future and alternate timelines without much distinction. So I can't rule out that his dreaming mind heard the whistle coming, then built and timed the dream to fit. Sounds strange, but really, is it any weirder than quantum entanglement?

I bring up that exotic theory for a reason. My own predictive dreams often have internal hints the dream's about the future; and "Whistle" has more than hints--the whole dream's about foreknowledge. I think Hammond's dreaming mind, knowing he's researching sleep and dreams, tries to show him just what they can do. But his faith in Maury's "instantaneity" theory blinds him, and I think the dream anticipates he won't listen. So the dream forces him to feel the frustration of foreknowledge you can't express--or that your own waking mind ignores. "Whistle" is a dream's-eye view of predictive dreaming--that then proves it's serious by predicting something--even if it's small.

All of which Hammond ignores.

--Chris Wayan--

SOURCE: Sleep and its Derangements by Dr William A. Hammond, 1869; p.130-1.

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