360-Haggard's Dream
Futility Closet
Greg Ross
4.8 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1904, adventure novelist H. Rider Haggard awoke from a dream with the conviction that his daughter's dog was dying. He dismissed the impression as a nightmare, but the events that followed seemed to give it a grim significance. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe Haggard's strange experience, which briefly made headlines around the world.
We'll also consider Alexa's expectations and puzzle over a college's name change.
Intro:
Marshall Bean got himself drafted by reversing his name.
An air traveler may jump into tomorrow without passing midnight.
"Bob, although he belonged to my daughter, who bought him three years ago, was a great friend of mine, but I cannot say that my soul was bound up in him," Haggard wrote. "He was a very intelligent animal, and generally accompanied me in my walks about the farm, and almost invariably came to say good morning to me."
Sources for our feature on Haggard's nightmare and its sequel:
H. Rider Haggard, The Days of My Life, 1923.
Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, "Phantasms of the Living," Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 86:33 (October 1922), 23-429.
H. Rider Haggard, Delphi Complete Works of H. Rider Haggard, 2013.
Peter Berresford Ellis, H. Rider Haggard: A Voice From the Infinite, 1978.
C.L. Graves and E.V. Lucas, "Telepathy Day by Day," Bill Peschel, et al., The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes, 2014.
Harold Orel, "Hardy, Kipling, and Haggard," English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 25:4 (1982), 232-248.
"Spiritualism Among Animals" Public Opinion 39:18 (Oct. 28, 1905), 566.
"Character Sketch: Commissioner H. Rider Haggard," Review of Reviews 32:187 (July 1905), 20-27.
"Rider Haggard on Telepathy," Muswellbrook [N.S.W.] Chronicle, Oct. 8, 1904.
"Case," Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 11:212 (October 1904), 278-290.
"Mr. Rider Haggard's Dream," [Rockhampton, Qld.] Morning Bulletin, Sept. 24, 1904.
"Has a Dog a Soul?" [Adelaide] Evening Journal, Sept. 21, 1904.
"Spirit of the Dog," The World's News [Sydney], Sept. 10, 1904.
"Thought-Telepathy: H. Rider Haggard's Dog," [Sydney] Daily Telegraph, Aug. 31, 1904.
"Dog's Spirit Talks," The World's News [Sydney], Aug. 27, 1904.
"Telepathy (?) Between a Human Being and a Dog," [Sydney] Daily Telegraph, Aug. 25, 1904.
"Mr. Rider Haggard's Ghost Dog," Kansas City Star, Aug. 22, 1904.
"The Nightmare of a Novelist," Fresno Morning Republican, Aug. 21, 1904.
"Psychological Mystery," Hawaiian Star, Aug. 20, 1904.
H.S., "Superstition and Psychology," Medical Press and Circular 129:7 (Aug. 17, 1904), 183-184.
"Canine Telepathy," [Montreal] Gazette, Aug. 10, 1904.
"Telepathy (?) Between a Human Being and a Dog," Times, Aug. 9, 1904.
"Haggard and His Dog," Washington Post, Aug. 7, 1904.
"Mr. Haggard's Strange Dream," New York Times, July 31, 1904.
"Country Notes," Country Life 16:395 (July 30, 1904), 147-149.
"Mr. Rider Haggard's Dream," Light 24:1229 (July 30, 1904), 364.
"Telepathy Between Human Beings and Dogs," English Mechanic and World of Science 79:2053 (July 29, 1904), 567.
John Senior, Spirituality in the Fiction of Henry Rider Haggard, dissertation, Rhodes University, 2003.
Wallace Bursey, Rider Haggard: A Study in Popular Fiction, dissertation, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1972.
Morton N. Cohen, "Haggard, Sir (Henry) Rider," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept. 23, 2004.
Listener mail:
"How to pronounce Akira Kurosawa," Forvo (accessed Oct. 1, 2021).
Sarah Sicard, "How the Heck Do You Pronounce 'Norfolk'?" Military Times, July 30, 2020.
William S. Forrest, Historical and Descriptive Sketches of Norfolk and Vicinity, 1853.
"Dubois, Wyoming," Wikipedia (accessed Oct. 1, 2021).
"Our History," Destination Dubois (accessed Oct. 2, 2021).
This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Tony Filanowski. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle).
You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss.
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Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.
If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. |
| 0:15.3 | Visit us online to sample more than 12,000 quirky curiosities from a backward draftee to a missing midnight. |
| 0:22.9 | This is episode 360. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1904, adventure novelist |
| 0:29.8 | H. Ryder Haggard awoke from a dream with the conviction that his daughter's dog was dying. |
| 0:35.6 | He dismissed the impression as a nightmare, |
| 0:40.6 | but the events that followed seemed to give it a grim significance. |
| 0:44.4 | In today's show, we'll describe Haggard Strange Experience, |
| 0:47.2 | which briefly made headlines around the world. We'll also consider Alexa's expectations |
| 0:50.3 | and puzzle over a college's name change. |
| 1:05.0 | And we just wanted to give a warning that today's show involves the death of an animal. |
| 1:14.7 | On the night of Saturday, July 9th, 1904, Mariana Louisa Haggard was awakened about 2 a.m. |
| 1:20.4 | by what she called most distressing sounds proceeding from my husband, resembling the moans of an animal, no distinct words. He was lying in his own bed on the other side of the room. She debated |
| 1:26.1 | for a few moments, and then called to him. |
| 1:28.8 | He awoke to tell her that he'd had a long and vivid nightmare. He wrote later, |
| 1:33.2 | All I could remember of it was a sense of awful oppression and of desperate and terrified |
| 1:38.1 | struggling for life, such as the act of drowning would probably involve. But between the time that |
| 1:43.9 | I heard my wife's |
| 1:44.8 | voice and the time that my consciousness answered to it, or so it seemed to me, I had another dream. |
| 1:51.0 | I dreamed that a black retriever dog, a most amiable and intelligent beast named Bob, |
| 1:56.2 | which was the property of my eldest daughter, was lying on its side among brushwood or rough growth of some |
| 2:02.6 | sort by water. My own personality in some mysterious way seemed to me to be arising from the body |
| 2:09.0 | of the dog, which I knew quite surely to be Bob and no other, so much so that my head was against |
... |
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