Harbingers Of Doom

[michelleeb1970]

Just now, as I read about the death of Princess Alice, a crow hopped on my glass roof, which has never happened before. Naturally, this got me thinking about Harbingers of Death/Doom. Such as ghostly foxes that appear on a moonlit hall before the death of one of a family, or three knocks on the door (don't know which family that was, sorry.). Does anyone know any legends of harbingers pertaining to the royal family?

As a side note, Alice was born in the Buccleuch family, which I think has one of the best harbinger of death stories of all time. Earl of Buccleuch looks out his window at night, sees an incredibly ugly man crossing the lawn, carrying a coffin. Years later, sees the same incredibly ugly man operating a lift, therefore refuses to get into it, lift plummets to the ground, all die. (Well, not strictly a harbinger, as he survived). I could be wrong about the family, it's only a feeling that that name and that legend belong together. I tried searching for it online, but got no-where

 

[GNC]

Sounds like a variation on the "room for one more" bus tale from Dead of Night. I vaguely remember reading a different version in a big book of true ghost stories when I was a kid. Maybe it was the Buccleuch one.

 

[PeniG]

"Room for One More" has many, many versions. In one of the most frequently anthologized ones, the ugly man drives a hearse in the dream and is a bus conductor in the real incident. In the Twilight Zone episode, a woman in the hospital dreams of going down the morgue and being greeted by a nurse - "Room for one more inside, honey." After she leaves the hospital, she recognizes an elevator operator in a deptartment store and is saved from a fatal accident. And so on.

Birds getting in the house are supposed to be a portent of death. This has certainly always been true in my house, but the portent is for the poor bird, who either panics and breaks its neck, or is caught by a cat.

 

[escargot]

The Earl of Buccleuch story is illustrated in several kids' books that I've seen, most notably/frighteningly in the Usborne series.

I fist saw the Usborne one when I was in my 30s and it quite alarmed me! Must terrify kids.

 

[naitaka]

The elevator story is also associated with Lord Dufferin:

In the 1880s, Lord Dufferin, who was later to become British Ambassador to Paris, was on vacation in Tullamore when he saw an apparition that was destined to save his life.

One night, at about 2 o’clock in the morning, he was startled from a deep sleep. He got up, went to the window and saw, in the moonlight, a hunchbacked figure on the lawn, staggering under the weight of a coffin-shaped object. Lord Dufferin raced downstairs, out onto the lawn, and asked the figure what he was doing, what he was carrying and why was he there. As the man lifted his head, Lord Dufferin saw that he had an extremely ugly-looking face which was utterly repulsive. The figure then vanished before his eyes. The following morning, he told his host of his experience but his friend was at a complete loss to explain the strange man. Certainly, there had been no reports of a ghost at Tullamore.

A few years later, Lord Dufferin was to attend a diplomatic function at the Grand Hotel in Paris. He waited at the elevator with his secretary and the hotel manager. Just as they were about to enter the elevator, Lord Dufferin drew back in horror and flatly refused to get on it. The elevator operator was the same man he had seen carrying the coffin on the lawn at his friend’s house in Tullamore. The elevator doors closed and the cage began its ascent. When it reached the fifth floor, the cable snapped and the cage crashed to the bottom of the shaft, killing all of the occupants.

The accident was fully investigated, but there was nobody who knew who the strange elevator operator was.

http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/ACalend/TripleHalloween.html

 

[CuriousIdent]

Certainly one of the most surreal harbingers of death is the Dun Cow of Warwick.

A monstrous cow which was supposed to have come from Shropshire in the tenth century, where it was said to provide milk for local giants. The stone circle on Staple Hill was allegedly its cow-pen.

The Dun Cow's supply of milk was said to be endless. But one day an old crone, doubting that to be true, produced a sieve to test the theory. The cow was so insulted by this that she broke loose and wandered into Warwickshire, where she was finally killed by Sir Guy of Warwick on Dunsmore Heath.

Sir Guy had already made a reputation for monster slaying. His tally had previously included a dragon in Northumberland, the Windsor boar and two Danish giants who had come to England.

But the story did not end there.

Warwick Castle remained in the possession of the Warwick family for generations. And legend has it that upon the event of a death in the family, family members had seen the spectral vision of the Dun Cow appear before them, prior to the discovery of the death.

A pub remains in Warwick, going by its name, to this day.

 

[Hexebus]

The Earl of Buccleuch story is illustrated in several kids' books that I've seen, most notably/frighteningly in the Usborne series.

I fist saw the Usborne one when I was in my 30s and it quite alarmed me! Must terrify kids.

I got very spooked by those darn Usborne books as a child and it probalbly explains my wierd self now!

I remember the story about the lift quite clearly and the books currently reside at my mothers. They man illustrated in the book is a most grotesque figure of a man and I certainly wouldn't get in a lift with him operating it anyway, harbinger of impeding doom or whatever

 

[Stormkhan]

Don't forget the legends of the Bean Sidh, the Piper of Gamis, Black Shuck etc.etc.

Everyone would like to think of the horror of knowing your doom is foretold. It's a classic format in many horror stories and a recurring urban myth - it is the ultimate in moaning "I'm doomed! I'm doomed!"

The Lord Dufferin myth is a case in point.

While it'd be a wonderfully doom-laden story for the destruction of H.M.S. Camperdown, this was a tale which gained detail and credence with the telling rather than fact.

Perhaps it's a Celtic "thing" - we must "drae a' wyrd, wither it gae!"

 

[Hexebus]

http://www.deathclock.com

 

[Stormkhan]

Ha!Ha! Brilliant!

Some say that an acceptance of the final mortality was lost with the Victorians - with their love of mortuary, mourning and general acceptance of the Finality.

Me, I've no problem! I've done my Will, I've got my "affairs in order" and I find cemetaries interesting. This doesn't mean I want to die or I'm looking to die but when the Grim Reaper comes, I'm up for a game of Battleships, a match of fisticuffs and a carefree shrug of my shoulders.

 

[MankoW]

Look as for something weird think of that:
Three years ago I .. or it was four years ago I was swimming across the river, and when I finaly swam all the way which is 200m all in all, first there were two kids, interesting but sometimes I see kids which later never saw again. And that wasn't place for swimming, it was opposite from the town beach, but not the beach, a lot of grass and sharp edge coast preventing any enjoy in swimming. Kids went away and I sat to catch my breath. Two flocks of birds were flying overme. I started to count birds, I do that sometimes to try to count how many birds are in flock. First flock was 23 and second was 11, and I was born guess it; noveber 23rd. Interesting isn't it.
Can anyone tell me which are probabilities that to happen?
This is not doom harbinger but sign of something is.
Anyone comment it?

 

[EnolaGaia]

The tale of Dufferin and the ghostly(?) harbinger of death is described in his Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood,_1st_Marquess_of_Dufferin_and_Ava

... which claims he'd attributed the earlier encounter with the ugly man to the year 1849. He wasn't ambassador to France until 1891. The only known fatality from an elevator accident at the hotel in question occurred in 1878. It's now generally believed the story is an urban legend which Dufferin may well have adopted from an earlier tale.