• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Clocks Stopping At The Time Of Death

ogopogo3

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Oct 25, 2001
Messages
1,371
Then there is the strange phenom of clocks stopping at the exact moment of someone's death. I wonder how far back these legends go? I remember reading that supposedly a famous French clock stopped at the exact moment of the death of Louis XVI, and has never worked since. Sound familiar to anyone?
 
When my uncle died a few years ago, my mother was given his wall clock. It is quite a decorated clock and so it has never worked since then.The same thing happened to a watch of my father's when he died. I guess the objects that they cherished just stopped when they died. It reminds me of that nursery/school song about grandfather's clock that stood ninety years on the floor etc????
 
Last edited by a moderator:
tony stepton said:
died. It reminds me of that nursery/school song about grandfather's clock that stood ninety years on the floor etc????

Gratuitous bibliographic information
"Grandfather's Clock," by Henry Clay Work, 1832-1884, author of "Marching Through Georgia" and the temperance song with the chorus "Father, dear father, come home to me now." Frequently anthologized, and covered also by various artists - including the Everyly Bros., who do their usual charming job on it but don't sing all the verses. The subject matter refers to a common folk belief that clocks are attuned to the head of the house, who is usually also the person who winds them.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
On the Antiques Roadshow last week, they had the Mk II speaking clock, as used on the phone. The man who looks after it now said it was on working display, and suddenly stopped for no good reason. It took quite some fixing.

Later, they found that the clock had stopped on the same day that Pat Simmons, the voice of that clock, died.

:shock:
 
Mr Snail told me this story recently, d'you think it's Snopes-tested?

A clock stopping at time of a significant person's death often turns up in folklore, family stories and popular culture. I've read people's personal accounts of it on here.

The idea is nicely summed up in the song 'My Grandfather's Clock'. The song was (according to Wiki) written in 1876 and based by its writer Henry Clay Work on the true story of a real clock.
 
I watched the episode of the Antiques Roadshow, saw the rather uninspiring looking machine and heard the story. They even referenced the song. So all that much happened, as least as far as my judgement can tell, but I'm afraid something about the tale of spooky synchronicity elicited an immediate 'bollocks' from everyone watching with me at the time.
 
I would have been very sceptical if the guy who curates it, and had to fix it, hadn't been the one telling the story.

He might be embellishing the story to promote the National Horological Museum or whatever it was, I suppose... :cry:
 
Yes, I feel a bit bad for being so dismissive - it's entirely possible, of course. Something about the classic folkloric nature of the story and the slightly underwhelming appearance of the machine made me think it could easily be a tale concocted to make the whole thing a bit more interesting, but I'm a bit of a sceptic really, and it was just a knee-jerk reaction.

So who knows.
 
Also, when a family friend died, so did his watch. It stopped the moment he died. He was a watch mender for 40 years 8)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
cherrybomb said:
Also, when a family friend died, so did his watch. It stopped the moment he died.
Wow - this is a story theme I've heard many times, and there's an old song about this too. Is this a real recurring phenomenon does anybody know?
 
I always suspected that this stemmed from self-winding watches, where the spring in the watch was wound via the swinging motion of one's arm.

Since the spring would stop being wound upon death, I figured that it would be easy to extrapolate the approximate time of death based on when the watch's hands stopped moving. It's easy to see how this could "become" the watch-stopping-on-one's-death-thing.

Of course, digital watches are a whole 'nother story....
 
The song is Grandfather's Clock by Henry C. Work, the American popular song composer, who visited England in 1875 and was inspired by a story he heard at the George Hotel, Piercebridge. It is said that use of the term Grandfather Clock for a long-case timepiece stems from this song.

Wikipedia has more detail (including the full words of the song, here)

And more on Henry C. Work, here.

It's curious to note that Piercebridge was the home of pioneer folklorist Michael Denham, author of the famous Denham Tracts. He died in 1859 and - so far as I can trace - did not comment on the clock story, which Work collected some sixteen years later.

There are historic cases of clocks supposed to have stopped on the moment of death. It was also a sign of respect in some houses to stop a clock to mark a bereavement. I think I recall my grandmother doing just that! But it is possible such a sentimental gesture postdates the song! 8)


I was almost forgetting the celebrated Auden poem!
 
I think this "meme" greatly predates self-winding watches, and isn't limited to watches.

Yes "My Grandfather's Clock" is the song I was referring to.

I know I've heard other tales of clocks/watches stopping at the moment of their owner's death but I don't remember where.
 
"An ornate clock belonging to King Louis XIV of France stopped at the precise moment of his deathm 7:45 am, on September 1, 1715, and has never run since. (Ripley's Giant Book of Believe It or Not!)

Quoted in Reader's Digest Giant Book of Usually Unsourced Piffle.

aka Mysteries of the Unexplained, 1982, 1987

"The clock has not been fixed since that day, and to this day still reads a quarter to eight. When he was a child, When Louis XVI of France was a child, an astrologer warned him to be always on his guard on the twenty-first day of every month. His date of death is January 21st, 1793. Now that's scary."

From http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/1267

It seems to go the rounds and even shows up as Teacher's Trivia on
http://splendors-versailles.org/Activities/3.html

But sourced again to Ripley's Believe it or Not! :)
 
This is something you hear of quite often. But why? Are we more connected with the world around us than we know? Does it prove reality isn’t as real as we think?
 
(This was posted on 4 November 2014 by a now-anonymized former member.)
I was very close to my paternal grandmother. She was like a second mother to me, and I count myself blessed that she was in my life and always there for me.

She died in hospital at 1.45 am on New Year's Day 2011.

I was out pubbing and a bit drunk but I remember at 1.45am I suddenly looked up at the clock. It was one of those 'crash zoom' moments where your attention is suddenly at full alert on one detail in the room. Then the moment passed and I carried on.

A few days later, when we opened her house for the first time, we found that her carriage clock had stopped at 1.45. Couldn't say whether it was am or pm because it was an analogue clock, but I found it very strange. (Clocks that stop when their owners die being quite a 'thing' in old-school forteana, not so much in this digital age).
 
The writer of a haunting ballad about WW1 (subsequently used in a film) reported that the clock fell off the wall in the presence of his grandmother and she instantly knew that her husband had been killed in battle, which proved to be true.
 
Reading this thread reminded me of being told this story as a child. My memory is of being sat in the assembly hall at school looking at the very clock in question (brown, roundly rectangular in a modernist sort of way, with gold numbers and hands). And so a roomful of small children aged 5-8 were being told how it had stopped when a previous teacher (headmaster?) had died. I totally believed it (though to be honest I don't have any faith in the accuracy of any of the details I'm remembering). But in retrospect it's a very odd thing to tell a roomful of small children and it would have been a battery-driven clock that someone could have just stuck a new battery in without thinking at all about someone's time of death being relevant). It was probably just poppycock but I guess it made an impression on me? Very strange.

In any case, the idea makes a good story. And it only has to happen once in real life (out of all the millions of times it doesn't happen) for someone to seize on it and make a story out of the 'significance'. I guess it evidently appeals to the human mind (hence probably going back to whenever people invented clocks!)
 
Well, the little alarm clock that my mother bought for me when I went off to University in 1989 finally died this morning, and I think I'm still here...

There's a aircraft clock on display in Hawaii that stopped at the time of the pilot's death, but since it was retrieved from a Japanese kamikaze plane that's not really surprising.
 
I remember Tom Rolt describing in his autobiography how strange it was to have his father's watch still ticking away as the energy his late father had put in to it slowly dissipated.

Also there is this, which my own grandparents used to sing -

My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;
But it stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.

Ninety years without slumbering
His life seconds numbering,
It stopp'd short never to go again when the old man died

In watching its pendulum swing to and fro,
Many hours had he spent while a boy.
And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know
And to share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four when he entered at the door,
With a blooming and beautiful bride;
But it stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.

Ninety years without slumbering
His life seconds numbering,
It stopp'd short — never to go again —When the old man died.
My grandfather said that of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found;
For it wasted no time, and had but one desire —
At the close of each week to be wound.
And it kept in its place — not a frown upon its face,
And its hands never hung by its side.
But it stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.

Ninety years without slumbering
His life seconds numbering,
),It stopp'd short never to go again -
when the old man died.

It rang an alarm in the dead of the night —
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit was pluming for flight —
That his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time, with a soft and muffled chime,
As we silently stood by his side;
But it stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.

Ninety years without slumbering
His life seconds numbering,
It stopp'd short — never to go again —When the old man died.


Somehow they made it quite upbeat.
 
Last edited:
There's a aircraft clock on display in Hawaii that stopped at the time of the pilot's death, but since it was retrieved from a Japanese kamikaze plane that's not really surprising.

l’m reminded irresistibly of an old Bob Monkhouse (?) gag:

My friend bought a watch with a lifetime guarantee: When it breaks, the mainspring cuts your wrist.”

maximus otter
 
... There are historic cases of clocks supposed to have stopped on the moment of death. It was also a sign of respect in some houses to stop a clock to mark a bereavement. I think I recall my grandmother doing just that! But it is possible such a sentimental gesture postdates the song! 8)

Over the years, and on more than one occasion, I recall hearing and / or reading that Work's song was inspired by an anecdote about the death of Thomas Edison. This claim is false, insofar as Edison didn't die until 1931.

However, it is true that the Edison anecdote is perhaps the most widely cited historical example of a clock stopping at the time of a person's death. Some accounts claim the ornate wall clock in Edison's personal library / study stopped at the exact time of his death; others claim it was 3 minutes (always 3 minutes ... ) thereafter.

Here's a commemorative print from 1933 showing the clock. It states the clock stopped 3 minutes after Edison's death and the hands were tacked in place to memorialize the event.

EdisonStudy&Clock.jpg
However ... This 1975 New York Times piece describing the tour of Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange indicates the clock was manually stopped (and quotes Work's lyrics). Note that this account indicates tour guides are given to claiming the clock reflects the exact time of death rather than a 3 minute delay.

The library, the main room of the main building, is where the guides begin and end their tours. ...

Below the rolled‐up screen which he would let down to preview his company's movies is the big, carved face of the library clock, reading 3:24, exactly the time Thomas Edison died on the morning of Oct. 18, 1931. The clock seemingly stopped short, never to run again, when the Old Man died—but years later a worker owned up. ...

SOURCE: Edison: Catnaps In the Alcove By Frederick Platt; Oct. 26, 1975
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/10/26/...e-tom-edison-those-catnaps-in-the-alcove.html
 
Now you're making me feel like a spring chicken.
I was also told of the clock stopping at the time of my grandfather's death. I'll see if I can get more information.
 
I doubt that in 1931 many clocks or watches would be showing a time true to
two or 3 minutes even if synchronized to the radio pips every day, even the time
piece used to pronounce is not likely to be spot on, so unless some mighty hand
set the exact time when stopping it a little lee way is to be expected if it is a true
happening that is.
 
So what's the phenomenon behind this? Is it some release of energy (unknown quantum forces?) from the body in the death moment which makes the clock stop, or is it the spirit/ghost of the dead that stop the clock itself?
 
Back
Top