parade. "O William, I have had a queer dream," said Mr. Swithinbank's
father. "So have I," replied the brother, when, to the astonishment
of both, the other brother, John, said, "I have had a queer dream as
well. I dreamt that mother was dead." "So did I," said each of the
other brothers. And the mother had died on the night of this
dreaming. Mrs. Hudson, daughter of one of the brothers, heard the
story from all three. {5a}

The distribution of the fulfilled is less than that of the unfulfilled
dream by three to five. It has the extra coincidence of the death.
But as it is very common to dream of deaths, some such dreams must
occasionally hit the target.

Other examples might be given of shared dreams: {5b} they are only
mentioned here to prove that all the _waking_ experiences of things
ghostly, such as visions of the absent and of the dead, and of the
non-existent, are familiar, and may even be common simultaneously to
several persons, in _sleep_. That men may sleep without being aware
of it, even while walking abroad; that we may drift, while we think
ourselves awake, into a semi-somnolent state for a period of time
perhaps almost imperceptible is certain enough. Now, the peculiarity
of sleep is to expand or contract time, as we may choose to put the
case. Alfred Maury, the well-known writer on Greek religion, dreamed
a long, vivid dream of the Reign of Terror, of his own trial before a
Revolutionary Tribunal, and of his execution, in the moment of time
during which he was awakened by the accidental fall of a rod in the
canopy of his bed, which touched him on the neck. Thus even a
prolonged interview with a ghost may _conceivably_ be, in real time, a
less than momentary dream occupying an imperceptible tenth of a second
of somnolence, the sleeper not realising that he has been asleep.