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A different type of time travel
experience happened in 1938, near the end of the Great Depression, when
Marguerite Vassar was walking toward the pump outside her farmhouse near Milton,
California. The farm had once been well kept, but it was rundown now that the
depression had made it difficult for the Vassars to make ends meet.
That day in late spring, Marguerite was alone. Her
husband had gone to work, her children were in school. Since there was no indoor
plumbing, she had gone outside, heading for the pump. She had just turned the
corner of the house when she suddenly felt different. Later, she said that she
had been "caught up in time."
As she stood there, aware of some
time change, a woman burst out of the farmhouse door, a terrified look on her
face. She must have been baking, because Marguerite noticed that her hands were
covered with flour. Then Marguerite detected the smell of fresh bread and cut
strawberries wafting from the kitchen. Like most other people who see an
unexpected and unusual scene from the past, Marguerite didn't question what was
happening. She didn't wonder how the woman had gotten into her house, or where
the odor of bread had materialized from. She simply observed as the scene
unfolded, as if she were watching a play.
Marguerite heard footsteps
running up the path that connected the farmhouse to a nearby pond. She turned
and saw two young boys rush toward the woman. When they reached her, they buried
themselves in her skirt. Further behind were three men.
One was carrying pitchforks, but the two others carried the lifeless body of a
teenage girl. She had long blond hair, but it, like the rest of her, was soaking
wet.
One of the boys ran to open the
farmhouse door. The woman ran in, followed by the men. As the story goes,
Marguerite supposedly stepped in behind them before the door closed.
What she saw was a kitchen, but
not the one she had become used to. A pot of stew was bubbling on the stove. A
red-checked cloth covered the table. In the center were fresh strawberries in a
blue bowl. Fresh bread was cooling on the counter. But no one was there.
She noticed a trail of water on
the floor and followed it through the kitchen and living room to a bedroom. As
Marguerite reached the door, she watched the woman pulling the top covers from
bed. Then men laid the girl's body down. boys looked scared, the adults were
crying.
At that moment, Marguerite's
vision of the past faded. Only she wasn't in the house, she was where she
had been standing at the corner of the house. She
ran inside, but found no trace of the stew or bread or strawberries--or of the
drowned girl.
She told her husband
about her experience that night, but
he had no explanation for it and thought nothing about it. That is, until a few
weeks later when he brought a homeless man to the house for dinner and a place
to spend the night. The man's name was Vencil and over dinner he told Marguerite
and her husband that he had once lived on the farm, when it belonged to his
brother.
His sister-in-law was a
deeply religious woman who did not believe in working on Sunday. Her husband
always respected her beliefs' until one Sunday during the summer of 1904 or 1905
when the hay crop had to be harvested before it spoiled. Although she asked her
husband not to harvest the rest of the hay until Monday, he convinced her that
he had no choice. Rather than let her husband work alone, she decided to
complete a number of chores. She sent her boys strawberry-picking and her
daughter swimming in the pond.
Marguerite was not
surprised to hear that the daughter had drowned that afternoon. Her body was
recovered from the pond with pitchforks and carried into the house.
The following Sunday,
according to Vencil, no one worked. The mother hitched the buggy and took her
boys and her year-old baby to church. But as they drove down the dusty road and
up a hill overlooking the pond, the horses became spooked and reared. The buggy
turned over, injuring one of her sons and killing the baby. From then on, Vencil
said, tragedy followed the family. Eventually, they sold the farm and moved
away.
Had Marguerite Vassar had
a vision of a tragedy in a past time? Author Gracia Fay Ellwood wanted to know.
She attempted to contact Mrs. Vassar, but was unable to do so. She then wrote to
cemeteries in the Milton area to see
if anyone named Vencil had been buried there, especially two children in 1904 or
1905. Old cemetery records, however, are often incomplete and Mrs. Ellwood was
unsuccessful. Still, she did find a family plot for a "Vanciel"
family, which contained three graves. None were for children, but it is possible
that Marguerite Vassar was uncertain how to spell the family's name, especially
if she only heard it spoken and hadn't seen it in print.
Again, the problem of
proving that a retrocognitive experience really happened is one that will never
go away. Mrs. Vassar had an unusual retrocognitive experience--if she is to be
believed. What do you think?
SOURCES
Ellwood, Gracia Fay. Psychic
Visits to the Past. New York: Signet, 1971.
ŠJames M. Deem.
Originally published in Chapter 8 in How to Travel
Through Time (Avon Books, 1993). All rights reserved.
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