Seventeenth Century Witch Trial

From: 
Story type: Past Life Experience
Location: United Kingdom
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Tue Aug 31 08:56:25 2010

Seventeenth Century Witch Trial

My very first past life experience occurred back in the mid seventies and was the most haunting experience I have ever had. I was in my early teens and one night in my sleep my dreams turned into past memories. All of a sudden I was back in the seventeenth century; somewhere out in the English country side, where I witnessed a witch trial. But this was not just a witch trial; the girl that had been arrested was the girl I loved.

It was a memory that had punched its way through time, death and rebirth to make me fall in love all over again with someone who died three hundred years ago. If there was one emotion that could trigger the remembrance of past lives, this was it, love.

The dream or vision was in three parts that came to me on three separate nights. In the first: I remember a Y junction in the middle of some woods, with a clearing in the middle of the two branch roads. That’s where I meet this most beautiful girl called Ann. She sat on a tree stump, wearing a dark puritan dress and hat. She hid her face behind a mask keeping me from seeing her face.

The half face mask was fashionable during the seventeenth century. Ladies would use them to hide their faces while seeing a play where it would be socially inappropriate for a lady to attend. I believe Ann was concealing her face so I had no choice but to fall for her sharp wit and charm, and not just for her looks.

Latter when I started to return to the village I came across a search party hunting a witch. There were a couple of well dressed gentlemen with a group of village farmers. Fearing they were looking for Ann, I followed them back up the road towards the junction. A farm worker called out “There she is”, and my worst fears were realised, they have found Ann. She was still sitting where I left her, and she did not stir as the farmers approached. They manhandled her right away, hitting with a stick across her forehead which drew blood.

Apparently they were witch scratching. This was a superstition that if you drew a witch’s blood it counters her spells or curses.

Ann acted angrily at this, and demanded an explanation. But the crowd’s reaction was only to size her. She caught my eye with hers, and I could tell that she wasn’t evil, and that I loved her. But I was powerless to prevent her arrest. The dream ended here.

The dream haunted me for days to come. But in the end I would have only thought of it as a dream, until days later I had a continuation of the story. This time it was very short, but it was differently a continuation of the witch trial.

I saw a village, and I was arguing with the women of the village as they walked from their cottages and across the village green. I some how knew I was pleading on the behalf of Ann, but without success. I had a feeling that the women were ether to blame for Ann’s trial or was at least partly to blame. I noticed how clean and tidy the village looked, with white washed stones bordering the village green.

Finally I had my third dream of the trial some days later. It was a trial by water. I remember a wide fast flowing river with trees along the banks. Looking like the river seven, but I don’t know for sure. A ferry was used to carry out a trial by water. It looked rather like a raft, with guide ropes and tow ropes to haul it a quarter of the way across the river. On the ferry stood an old lady, and Ann was lying on the deck unconscious. The old lady pulled Ann off the floor and supported her beneath her arm. There was a rope tied round Ann’s waist which may have run back to the shore. I called out franticly for Ann to wake up. The dream ended inconclusively, not knowing if Ann drowned in the water trial or died later. I had no further dreams in this sequence.

I was haunted by the memory of these dreams for several years to come. I had more dreams of later lives, some of which I managed to research. By chance in the Early in the nineteen eighties, I attended a charity hypnosis seminar. This got me interested in self hypnosis and hypnotic regression. The problem I was having was with names, dates, and places. Somehow I was not recalling the fine detail of my dreams.

I was able to hypnotise myself but was unable to regress or at least recall regressing. But my sessions had an unexpected side effect of causing out of body experiences.

Then one night Ann entered my dreams once more. But when she answered a question, I realised this was in real time. I was in fact talking to Ann in the present. She had come to tell me that she was all right. Ann’s visit put my grieving to an end, and to this day Ann visits once in a while.