The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (35 page)

My throat ached with an excruciating pounding. It was my heart! It was so loud that I was sure I would be detected in my third hiding place in the shed. Who was this madman stalking me with a gun? What did he want from me?

Finally, catching my breath, I braved a peek around the corner of my shelter and decided to run for cover in the main house. I dashed through the clearing toward the house, slipped in through a side door, and slid the lock shut as quietly as possible.

I leaned back against the wall and slid down into a heap. Just as my heart began to slow down a bit, I heard a wild screeching of tires in the driveway. I rolled onto my knees and looked out the bottom of the window. Through a tear in the curtain, I could see the maniac in the driver's seat headed straight for the house at full speed.

I leapt to my feet and ran out the back door toward the orchard. In a flash I heard the car behind me. I turned the corner of the house, and the wheels screeched after me. My God, I thought, this was it—I was going to die!

Then I bolted upright in bed, stricken with terror. My heart was thundering in my chest and throat. It took
me several minutes to realize that I was actually home and experiencing a nightmare! The fear lingered. I was so shaken by the experience that I made myself get up and walk around to stay awake. I turned on music and sang out loud to dispel the mood so there would be no chance of reentering what was a very real, frightening place. I knew this was no ordinary dream. It was 2
A.M.
, so I had some tea and, after an hour or so, somehow managed to get back to sleep.

Two days later, I was speaking with my mother, who lived several states away. She related to me a horrifying story about how she and my sister had been chased into hiding by my sister's crazy husband, who had threatened to shoot them. They frantically tried to find a place to hide. They hid in the shed, then in one of the cars, where they slept all night. They were truly terrified for their lives.

The incident had happened at 2
A.M.
on the very night of my own nightmare.

PSYCHIC MADAME

No one can claim that Madame de Ferriem wasn't psychic. In 1896, the German medium had a premonition, which was published in the local papers, of a
disastrous collapse of a coal mine in Dux, Bohemia. The following year, an accident in the exact mine killed hundreds of people.

Both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, who was considered by some to be Shakespeare's literary equivalent, died on the same day: April 23, 1616.

In 1958, a Kansas tornado ripped a woman out of her house and deposited her, unharmed, sixty feet away, next to an LP of the song “Stormy Weather.”

PSYCHIC WIFE

The wife of Ulysses S. Grant woke on April 14, 1865, with the intense sense that she and her husband should get out of Washington, D.C., as soon as possible. They left that day, even though it meant standing up President Abraham Lincoln's invitation to the theater. That's why Grant was not killed by John Wilkes Booth that evening when the actor assassinated the president. Booth's papers later revealed that Grant was on his hit list.

PRESCIENT LITERATURE

• In
  Gulliver's Travels
  , written in 1726, Jonathan Swift describes two moons revolving around Mars, in close proximity to the planet. One hundred and fifty-one years later, astronomers proved that Mars does indeed have two moons, and these moons are not far from the planet's surface.
  
• Author Morgan Robertson wrote his story of a gigantic luxury ship, the
  Titan
  , in 1898. In this fictional tale, the ship, advertised as unsinkable, hits an iceberg and tragically goes down, killing many passengers and crew. In 1912, the real-life ship the
  Titanic
  met its shockingly similar fate.
  
• In 1914, Robertson wrote another novel about a future war involving fantastical weaponry called sunbombs, which were capable of decimating an entire city. In the book, the war starts in December and is brought on by the Japanese, who carry out a sneak attack on Hawaii.
  

LISTEN TO YOUR DREAMS