The morning Andrew Jukes heard that his brother and sister-in-law had died, before they died: a shared-death experience

Step 1

July 1854 · England and America · Andrew Jukes’ account

Andrew Jukes lives in England, and his brother Mark lives in America

Andrew Jukes was an English clergyman, and he lived with his wife in Hull, in the north of England. His brother Mark lived in America with his wife, Harriet, and their children. Mark had a parish there.

The last news Andrew had of them said that they were both well. There was no telegraph under the ocean yet, and letters took weeks to cross it.

At the end of July, Andrew was spending a few days away from home, in Worksop.

Step 3

That same morning · Andrew Jukes’ account

Before leaving the bedroom, he writes the words on a scrap of newspaper

The words stuck with Andrew so strongly that he wrote them down before he left the bedroom. He had no other paper, so he wrote them on a scrap of old newspaper.

The breakfast bell rang, and he took a while to come down. That day and the days after, he couldn’t get it out of his head. He was convinced that his brother had died. He thought that, if the voice was telling the truth, it must have been in a railway or shipping accident.

Mark and Harriet were still alive.

Step 4

July 31, 1854 · Hull · Andrew Jukes’ account

That same day he goes home, tells his wife, and copies it into his diary

That same day, Andrew went back to Hull. He told his wife what he had heard and wrote it down in his diary.

Years later, Andrew said he was almost sure that the diary entry copies what he wrote on the scrap of newspaper. The scrap of newspaper has not survived.

That same Monday, in America, Mark fell ill. It is not known whether that was before or after the voice.

Step 6

August 18, 1854 · Hull · Andrew Jukes’ account

Eighteen days later, Harriet’s letter arrives with the news

On August 18, Andrew received Harriet’s letter. That is how he learned that Mark had died.

Andrew set off for America right away and brought his brother’s children back to England.

Years later, Andrew told the whole story to a researcher in London.

Step 7

Before 1886 · The researcher Edmund Gurney’s account

The researcher Edmund Gurney sees the diary page, but he can’t copy it

Edmund Gurney was one of the researchers in London who collected cases like this. Andrew Jukes wrote his account for him and let him see the diary page. Gurney wanted to copy all of it, but Jukes asked him not to, for private reasons that had nothing to do with the case.

Jukes told Gurney that the voice came at the end of a dream, but that the dream was not about his brother. He said he had the impression he was already awake when he heard it. He also said that he had never written down any other dream in his life. And that he had never heard voices, except once when he thought he heard music.

Gurney published the case in 1886, in the book Phantasms of the Living. There he points out that the voice did not coincide with either of the two deaths. He thinks it may have coincided with the moment when Harriet became frightened at seeing cholera in her house. Gurney admits that this is only a guess, because it is not known at what time on Monday Mark’s illness began.

The question remains: how could Andrew hear that his brother and sister-in-law had died before they died?