THE SIDE VIEW MIRROR
  Vision without action is merely a dream. But what about dreams that you have at night where you visualize the future and prompts you to act in a particular manner? There are dreams which have helped resolve murder cases, discover hidden objects or even make scientific inventions. These dreams commonly known as clairvoyance are visions of the future which a person is supposedly able to see. Though the authenticity of these incidents are often in doubt, mass evidence points out that such cases do happen taking into account our mental abilities.

The Red Barn murder case was solved in the same way. Way back in 1827, Maria Martin ran away with William Corder from her village in Suffolk, England. But later months later, William got into another affair. It was then that he decided to murder Maria and buried her under the floor of a barn. He then wrote to inform her parents that she was fine and keeping well. However, a year later, Maria’s mother had a bad dream in which she visualized the murder and the secret burial of her daughter so vividly. They then launched investigations only to discover the decomposed body of their beloved daughter stuffed in a sack under the floor of the barn. William Corder was arrestedand sentenced to death.

Another case of clairvoyance helped find the body of Bertha Huse. Having left home on October 31, 1898, she was found drowned in a lake near her home. Here. It was Mrs. Titus who resided a distance of four miles away who had the ability of clairvoyance. Even after the diver had abandoned the search for Huse’s body, Mrs. Titus still kept calling the diver and even suggested a particular spot where she said he would find her body ‘head down in the mud, one foot sticking up and a new rubber on it’. The diver on retrieving the body confessed that he was not at all afraid of the corpse but of the lady who as standing on the bridge and giving him instructions on what should be done.

When the renowned English poet Dante died, his friends and family members searched for the last part of his most famous work, The Divine Comedy. As their pursuits continued to yield no results, they thought that he might not have completed the work and his sons decided to complete the same. But one night, one of Dante’s son’s, Jacopo had a dream. In that dream, his father took him by the hand, led him to the house, touched one of the walls in a room and told him that the 13 cantos of the Divine Commedia were there. When they searched, they found a mat on the wall indicated by the apparition in the dream. Lifting the mat, they found a window above where all the missing cantos of the Divine Comedy lay in the damp.

Clairvoyance like telepathy and Out of Body Experiences does not have much scientific proof to establish their identity in this bizarre world. But psychologists do not rule out their existence. This is for the simple reason that the cases which have been experienced by other people have influenced a great number of people. The power of unconsciousness, which still eludes psychologists, might just be able toexplain these mysterious events

    Aswathy .C.
2nd BA (Journalism)