Ethel Stewart had been very sick for a long time and had to be cared for. She slipped into a coma but everyone in and around the community thought she had died. After a few hours, she woke up and gave a clear depiction of where she visited while she was in her deep sleep.

Published Monday, May 23, 1938

'Dead' woman comes to life!

Sensational happening in Rennie, St Ann hamlet startles villagers – “A beautiful house but not a single soul …. I felt no pains there," she says.

STRANGE THINGS happened in a remote St Ann hamlet early one morning last week.

Three and a half miles from St Ann’s Bay, on the road to Bamboo, lies a sparsely populated place called Lewis - there, on Friday morning, a woman pronounced dead came back to life.

She is Ethel Stewart, 32-year-old Brown’s Town-born labourer, who now is telling the villagers of the “beautiful things” she saw in “a different place”.

This woman, who has lived nearly all her life in St Ann’s Bay, has been sick for about three years.

In a dilapidated thatched house, she has spent the last 18 months or so in bed with 60-year-old Sarah Davis, the mother of her friend, to care for her.

She has never been visited by a doctor. In fact, it is doubtful if she has received medical attention in many months. Her condition is pitiful; the very sight of her is heart-rending.

Slowly, Ethel had been sinking and, Thursday night especially, her condition was exceptionally weak. She soon passed into a coma.

Sarah Davis was at her bedside the whole evening and, at about midnight, she fell asleep beside her.

At 3 o’clock the sick woman’s mournful groans awoke her. She spoke to Ethel, but there was no answer … only the same soft painful groans. Again she spoke. This time she heard hardly a groan.

Then, Mrs Davis said, “I held her. I thought she had gone …. Bending over her, I whispered in her ear – 'Give your heart to God’.

I felt her hands, they were cold … cold.

Now I knew she had gone … .”

Before daybreak, the news that Ethel Stewart was dead had filtered to every home in the hamlet. The news was not surprising – it had been expected at any time.

In the morning, a boy was hurried off to St Ann’s Bay to inform Agustus Ewan, Mrs Davis' son, with whom the 'dead' woman had lived for some time.

GRAVE READY, COFFIN MADE

Ewan at once set about to make arrangements for the burial. In the public cemetery at St Ann’s Bay, a grave was prepared for the coffin which had been made.

Came 7 o’clock and with it the strangest happening the people of Lewis had ever seen or heard of. Sarah Davis … “I thought she was dead ….

Davis, who had also been busy about making preparation for the burial, entered the room at that hour. 

 

Ethel was breathing.

Davis put her hand to her mouth … gasping, she stared at the woman in the bed.

Yes, she was breathing … heartily.

For a moment, Mrs Davis could hardly speak. Then she muttered – “Ethel! Ethel!”

Ethel’s body moved momentarily. Slowly, she opened her eyes. She really was not dead …. The state of coma had passed.

The villagers were now aghast. This was surprising news. In a short time, the whole of the inhabitants of Lewis were in Mrs Davis’ yard. They couldn’t believe what their ears heard, and doubted what their eyes saw.

Soon, however, all doubt was dispelled from their minds for Ethel Stewart was telling her friends and neighbours of the many wonderful things she had seen during those three hours.

To The Gleaner reporter on Saturday, she related some of the “wonderful things”.

“I felt I had gone,” her pale lips muttered. “I saw a different place …pretty things … wonderful things … a beautiful house but not a single soul …” she said sighing.

 

Then her pallid face showed a sickly smile. She went on:

 

“I felt no pains there … I am sorry I have come back … how I am suffering.”

Pretty things, wonderful things, she couldn’t explain. She tried, incoherently, and sinking down in the pillow she admonished the reporter: “If you behave yourself nicely, you will see them.”

Then, closing her eyes, she sighed again, a sigh of pain.

Agustus Ewan, the startled caretaker, said to the reporter, “It was a mistake … but a costly one.”

 

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