{"id":6062,"date":"2014-08-11T09:52:31","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T13:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/?p=6062"},"modified":"2014-08-11T12:05:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T16:05:57","slug":"william-james-and-the-psychic-dreamer-on-the-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2014\/08\/william-james-and-the-psychic-dreamer-on-the-bridge.html","title":{"rendered":"William James and the psychic dreamer on the bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"-<\/a>Bertha Huse, a teenage mill girl, goes out for a walk in the cool morning mist of a New Hampshire fall. This is her habit, but her family worries when she does not return for breakfast and does not show up for work. A few hours later, a full-scale search is in progress. She likes to walk a Shaker bridge across Lake Mascoma, and it is feared she may have fallen into the water and drowned. The mill owner sends for a diver. There is no sign of Bertha above or below water.<\/p>\n

In another New Hampshire village, five miles away, Nellie Titus has been following reports of the search and grieves for the family. A couple of nights later, she screams in her sleep and her husband shakes her awake. She rebukes him for waking her before she had seen where the missing girl was. She tells him firmly that he must never<\/em> interrupt her sleep, whatever she seems to be doing.<\/p>\n

A reputation for dreaming true runs in Nellie\u2019s family. Her grandmother had the gift. It is not \u00a0clear whether Nellie is dreaming of<\/em> the missing girl or dreaming as<\/em> her. On another night, she makes it her focused intention to solve the mystery. She emerges from the new dream complaining that she is \u201coh so cold.\u201d It seems she has joined the girl in the lake, in the place of her drowned body. Nellie is certain she knows exactly where the body is located.<\/p>\n

She persuades her husband to get out the buggy and drive to the Shaker bridge. She makes him stop half-way across, gets out and to the edge. She points down at the dark water around the bridge supports. \u201cShe is there<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

They go to George Whitney, the manager of the mill where Bertha work, and insist he should get a diver to search again, under the bridge. Whitney is a decent master, but he is also a man of reason and science \u2013 these are the 1890s, after all! But the village has been stricken by Bertha\u2019s disappearance, and he agrees to give it a try. The diver, a wiry, skeptical Irishman named Brian Sullivan, is reluctant to go down. But when Nellie gives an exact account of where the body is located, jammed in the structure of the bridge, with a leg protruding, it is agreed that one <\/em>dive will be made, at the place she points out.<\/p>\n

That is exactly where Bertha\u2019s body is found. It was invisible to the diver, as he groped underwater. Almost certainly, he would have missed it, except that he had received exact directions from a psychic dreamer in contact with the spirit, or at least the situation, of the dead girl.<\/p>\n

The case attracted tremendous public interest, and led William James, the towering pioneer of both psychology and psychic research in the United States, to lead a full investigation. James\u2019 wrote a report, based on extensive interviews, in 1898 for the American Society of Psychical Research, titled \u201cA Case of Clairvoyance\u201d.* Sullivan, the diver, said that he was far less scared of a cadaver in the water than of the psychic \u201cwoman on the bridge\u201d who knew just where the body was to be found. William James used his \u00a0the case of Nellie Titus in his campaign to link science to spirit, and build a body of evidence to crack open the closed minds of those he called “orthodoxers”. He declared that the case of the woman on the bridge was \u201ca decidedly solid document in favor of the admission of a supernormal faculty of seership.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shaker bridge, Enfield N.H., 1908. Public domain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bertha Huse, a teenage mill girl, goes out for a walk in the cool morning mist of a New Hampshire fall. This is her habit, but her family worries when she does not return for breakfast and does not show up for work. A few hours later, a full-scale search is in progress. She likes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,23],"tags":[1771,1769,669,103,1770,1445,1768,859],"class_list":["post-6062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dreams","category-dreams-of-the-dead","tag-american-society-for-psychical-research","tag-bertha-huse","tag-clairsentience","tag-clairvoyance","tag-nellie-titus","tag-psychic-dreams","tag-seership","tag-william-james"],"yoast_head":"\nWilliam James and the psychic dreamer on the bridge - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2014\/08\/william-james-and-the-psychic-dreamer-on-the-bridge.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"William James and the psychic dreamer on the bridge - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bertha Huse, a teenage mill girl, goes out for a walk in the cool morning mist of a New Hampshire fall. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6062"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6066,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6062\/revisions\/6066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}