The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1891-06-25
Fifteen Days in the Hereafter.

On wednesday, MAY l6, MISS Cora
Mattoon, Of Plymouth, Conn, the daugh-
ter of D. e. NATION, q prominent resi-
dent of the place, was taken i'll with la
grippe. Miss tiattoon is the belle of the
town and one of the teachers in the
Episcopal Sunday school. Shortly after
the young lady became i'll she apparently
fell asleep and so remained for fifteen
days. During this time two of her
warmest friends, Jennie Hawkins and
Tilda Matthews, died. Upon awakening
she told her parents Of having met her
two friends and also an uncle snd aunt
and brother, all Of whom had been
dead for long time, and of having seen
strange and weird sights in the far be-.
yond during her absence from home,
which she supposed occupied two years.
The young woman is prostrated by her
experiences, and it is doubtful if she will
ever again recover from the severe shock
which her nervous system has received.
Miss NATION gives this account of her
long dream, which she does not like to
speak about, for it makes her shudder to
recall the awful experiences:
"My trance or whatever you call.it be.
gan in imagining saw my own death.
I saw father and mother and brothers
and sisters crying around me, and when
I was put in the coffin I did not seem to
care. thought after I died that came
to long, cold vault, where I met Jennie
Hawkins and lots of relatives who have
died. They seemed to think was dead
like them, and they talked to me, but I
can't remember what they told me.
"They took me with them to high
mountain and left me on the top, which
was great rock. The rock kept growing
smaller and smaller, and at last ] had
room for only one foot. I fell off, and for
hours I was falling, falling. I landed in
an enclosed space filled With wild beasts
of all kinds. They did not hurt me, but
when 1 tried to get out they told me I
could not, and they spoke to me just like
human beings. 1 crouched in one cor
ner of the den, and the beasts soon began
to fight, and I tainted away.
"When I recovered was on a rock in
the ocean. The water kept rising to the
TOP and I cried for help, but none came.
Soon the water foated me off the rock
and sank to the bottom. Oh, the horri-
BILE experience I had there-snakes and
queer things of all sorts crawled over me
and | could not open my mouth to call
for help. 1t was not like a dream.
IT seemed to feel the days and weeks
and months go by just as now, and I was
sure two Years had passed since saw my
father and mother. While at the bottom
of the ocean something with long hairy
arms grasped me, and I faintel again.
When l awoke I was in the most splen-
did place you could imagine. All my
dead friends we're with me, and we did
nothing but wander through fields full of
flowers and over brooks and rivers all
day long. We we're happy as we could
be, forgot everything else. It seemed
so real to talk to the people whom I
knew had died before me that I never
imagined that I was truly dead.
"The last part of my Inconsistencies
wac the pleasantest, and I awoke one
morning to find my sister looking at me.
I thought that she, too, had died and
come to me, but, after while, when my
eyes became accustomed to the old famil.
lar sights, knew I had not died, and
that it was all a horrible dream. How
glad was cannot tell you. That is all
I remember, but there were lots of things
that happened in that long time that
have gone altogether out of my mind" p
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin,