Timepieces stopped mysteriously when someone dies is a
surprisingly common phenomenon. A number of parapsychologists
believe that a dying person releases some psychic energy or force
that makes a clock stop.
On 4 December 1887 George Fry of Oil City, Pennsylvania, USA, had
just written a letter to his brother Gideon, whom he knew to be
seriously ill some 560km away in Big Rapids, Michigan. He glanced
up at the clock, which belonged to his brother, and noticed it
wasn't working. Checking his pocket-watch, he saw that the clock
had stopped only minutes before, at 9.45pm. As he moved to adjust
it, a strange light seemed to flood the face of the clock. A
telegram next morning announced Gideon's death. A letter later
confirmed that he had died at precisely 9.45pm the previous
evening.
A similarly strange experience befell a Washington judge, Jerry
Wilson, who awoke one night at 2,10am when his normally reliable
antique clock stopped its familiar ticking. Next morning he learnt
that the friend who had given him the clock had unexpectedly died
at 2am in another part of the city.
Sometimes a clock starts
unexpectedly. In 1944 a Missouri farming family, whose son Ben was
fighting in Germany, had an old grandfather clock that had not
worked for years. On 29 November its hands began to move
spontaneously and at the same time Ben's dog began an incessant
howling. Days later the family were notified that Ben had been
killed in action on that date.
Did psychic energy from the dying affect these clocks or is their
stopping or starting at the time of death just a coincidence?
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