1878, February 24: Lord Dufferin's Vision

A story is often told regarding a strange event in the life of Englishman Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava [1826-1902]... more popularly known simply as 'Lord Dufferin.'

Just call him Lord Dufferin... it's easier. [Larger version here]

Lord Dufferin was a very successful Victorian diplomat who was also publicly well-known for his book A Yacht Voyage: Letters from High Latitudes, which was an account of his travels in the North Atlantic.

        According to the story, Lord and Lady Dufferin were staying at the home of a friend in Ireland on a bit of a holiday. One night, Lord Dufferin awoke suddenly for no apparent reason, and couldn't get back to sleep. In his restlessness he went to the window and looked out; it was a brightly moonlit night. Dufferin noticed movement in the shadows of the house, and watched as a man bearing a large object slowly walked into view. As this man passed close to the window, it became clear the large object he was bearing was in fact a coffin!

        Then the man under the coffin lifted his face to gaze back at the window and Lord Dufferin. The man was so indescribably ugly that Dufferin was immediately shocked beyond the ability to react. The man soon continued his walk, and Dufferin was unable to step away from the window until he had seen the figure walk out of view... and then Dufferin went back to bed, where he had much trouble getting back to sleep.

        In the morning Dufferin asked his host about the strange man, but quickly found that they knew of no one fitting the description; nor were there any burials scheduled for the village at the time. So no answers were to be had.

        Years passed. On February 24, 1878, Lord Dufferin -- now England's Ambassador to France -- was attending a diplomatic reception being held at the Grand Hotel in Paris with his private secretary. They waited for the lift to take them to the correct floor with several state officials attending the same event; and when the lift arrived, they allowed Dufferin to go first in respect of his position. But Dufferin found himself unable to enter the lift... for the man operating it was the same strangely ugly man who had gazed up at him all those years ago in Ireland!

        Dufferin instinctively stepped back. He excused himself, stating he had forgotten something and, as all the others loaded into the lift, Dufferin and his secretary headed straight for the hotel's office with the intent to once and for all discover the identity of the strange man who had startled the Lord twice now. But Dufferin failed to ask the question when he reached the office.

        For, with a horrifying crash, the lift had smashed into the bottom of the shaft.

        The lift had elevated up several floors before a catastrophic failure had sent it plummeting back down. All aboard the lift were killed instantly, crushed and mutilated.

        In the aftermath of the accident, Dufferin did eventually get some answers; but they didn't help. The lift operator had been a vagrant hired for the day as an extra helper... and the hotel management knew nothing more about him.

Did It Happen?

        I've encountered the story of Lord Dufferin's rescue in many, many places; and almost none agree on when the main event, the fall of the lift, happened. It took some digging, but I found out why the dates didn't match... in the very earliest report of the story in print, no dates were actually included.

        The first appearance in print of this event was in Camille Flammarion's 1922 book Death and its Mystery: At the moment of death. Flammarion was a very well-known astronomer and author of a number of books on paranormal matters. Death and its Mystery was a study of the evidence he had assessed regarding life after death and other strange topics, and in this volume he printed a letter he had received in 1920 from a "distinguished psychologist," Monsieur R. de Maratray, which told the tale above of Lord Dufferin's adventure. According to Flammarion, Madame de Maratray was a relative of Lord Dufferin, and therefore the de Maratrays were informed about the events in Dufferin's life.

        De Maratray does not give any dates within his accounting of the event, instead offering: "The accident is historic, and its precise date could be easily verified;" a statement which proved to be true when I went to look. Previous to World War I, there was only one elevator failure that resulted in people dying from the fall of the cage, and that was in Paris on February 24, 1878, and happened at the Grand Hotel where Dufferin's story is said to have occurred... which is why I set that as the date for this event.

        Of course, looking that detail up also exposed a major problem: the nature of the accident that actually occurred.

The Facts of the Matter

        The Grand Hotel in Paris had installed a hydraulic lift system in 1876 that used a piston to lift the cage from floor to floor. On February 24, 1878, the lift was at the second floor of the hotel when an operator and two passengers entered it to head to the first floor; but the casting that attached the piston to the bottom of the cage broke free. The piston headed down, but the cage, pulled by the action of the counterweights that normally assisted the piston in the lift, shot upwards towards the top of the shaft.

        When the cage hit the cross-beams at the top of the shaft, the impact broke the chains connecting the counterweights to the cage... and the cage then plummeted back to the bottom of the shaft, falling 65 feet into the basement, and killing all on board. No one was crushed or mutilated; though dead, only minor traces of blood flowed from ears and noses. The shock of the impact had shattered bones and organs.

        So: if the lift was at the second floor and heading down, then was Dufferin and the hotel office on the second floor? Perhaps more notably, there were very few people on the lift when the accident happened... and there is no indicator that any sort of special event involving public figures was occurring in the hotel at the time. So the very reason for Dufferin to even be at the Grand Hotel doesn't appear to exist. All of which leads to the one question most of you should have asked already: If this event happened to Lord Dufferin in 1878, why is the first mention of it in print in 1922?

        What's most annoying about this story is that Camille Flammarion, who was attempting to be scientific in his assessment of paranormal events, failed to double-check the story himself. Perhaps de Maratray was a trusted friend; still, it would not have been hard for Flammarion, whose first language was French, to have checked the basic premises of the account. And because the public at large had come to respect Flammarion's work, later authors all just took his word for the story being true and kept repeating it as was.

Reading Too Much Into Too Little

        As I mentioned, later authors often attached a variety of dates to when the event might have happened; this was apparently largely to try and make their presentations of the story look more authentic. Many of these later authors also claimed that the event had been studied by the Society of Psychical Research [aka "SPR"], which is another claim that adds a feel of authenticity to the story... but this claim is likely due to a mistake, rather than a trick.

        First, Camille Flammarion was in fact associated with the SPR at times, though only he -- and not the SPR -- was involved in the publication of de Maratray's letter. Secondly, within the December 1898 Journal of the SPR, there was reprinted a short section from a book written by Lady Dufferin, which discussed a strange case of drowning the Dufferins had been involved with... but neither the SPR nor their Journal ever discussed the story of Lord Dufferin's strange rescue mentioned above.

        Finally, in 1933 a new version of the story of Dufferin's rescue was printed in an issue of the Reader's Digest magazine, and this printing probably is the main reason the story of Dufferin's rescue became so well known publicly as a "true" paranormal story. This version of the story was written up for the magazine by "Louis K. Anspacher, Playwright and member of The American Society for Psychical Research," which not only added an air of authenticity to the Reader's Digest presentation, but also added to the idea that the SPR was somehow actually involved (it still wasn't). So it appears that someone looking at these three slim connections to the SPR eventually just assumed that the story had been researched by the SPR, and following authors copied that idea from then on... but the SPR was never actually involved!

        Notably: while Lord Dufferin died in 1902, and the story of his paranormal rescue became a public tale in 1933, Lady Dufferin -- who lived until 1936 -- doesn't appear to have ever made a public statement denouncing the story of Dufferin's rescue. This would normally be some indication that this person believed the story to be true enough to not say anything; but it turns out Lady Dufferin may have had a vested interest in this particular tale being left alone.

        And, as it turns out, the first person to report the story, Monsieur R. de Maratray, had initially heard the strange story from someone he trusted implicitly in the matter.

The Unlikely Source

        The answer can be found in the book Helen's Tower, written by Harold Nicolson and published in 1937. Nicolson was actually a nephew of Lord Dufferin, and Helen's Tower was a biography of his uncle from an insider's point of view. It included an account of the elevator rescue story, which Nicolson had heard when he was very young, and from someone he was bound to trust on the matter... Lord Dufferin himself. It turns out that Lord Dufferin enjoyed telling the tale of his paranormal rescue; and this is likely where Monsieur R. de Maratray had heard the tale also.

        But actual facts tell us the story is not true; though a lift accident did indeed happen at the Grand Hotel in Paris in the late 1800's, Lord Dufferin was not there for it. And, though Lady Dufferin would likely have known the story was not strictly true, she would also likely not say anything about it once it became public, lest she be accused of slandering Lord Dufferin's name and integrity after his death.

        I'll also now note that I have found two other examples of the story premise of "face remembered, deadly elevator avoided"... and one of these may have been early enough for Lord Dufferin to have seen it, which may be where he started to tell his own tale.

        In an 1892 of the magazine Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research, the editor tells of a young female friend of his who had a dream of a hearse coming to collect her and her refusing to go. Weeks later, she refused to enter a lift because the operator resembled the driver of the hearse in her dream... and the lift then failed and killed those aboard it.

        Another story turned up five years after Lord Dufferin died in an 1907 issue of The Progressive Thinker, a weekly newspaper focused on strange and spooky tales. This story also tells of a young woman who saw a hearse waiting for her in a dream; and, the following day, she saw a man who resembled the hearse driver in her dream working as the lift attendant when she is about to enter it on the fourth floor of a department store. She refused to enter and, moments later, the lift plummetd down the shaft.