The Premonition of Ella Mae Bowles

It was late in the fall of the year 1889 in the small rural Southern Illinois township of Emma. The sun was starting to set when 15-year-old Ella Mae Bowles was going out back of the family home to use the facilities; which in that day meant the "outhouse." The stillness of the afternoon was broken by her sudden horrifying screams and the whole family rushed out to see what had happened. They found her, standing there frozen, staring transfixedly into the darkening evening sky.

At first, they thought it was the handyman that had scared her again. But, when they asked her if this was the case, all she could do was shake her head "no." When asked further about what had frightened her, young Ella Mae could not speak about what had happened. It was if her toungue had become frozen and she couldn't vocalize exactly what she had seen.

The event soon faded into the past, and was not mentioned again, as autumn faded into winter.

It was an unusually warm winter day in January of the next year. There had been a lot of rain the previous fall and the pond nearby was swelling with water. It was a popular place to go so Ella, her brother and sister, and some friends decided to go there and have some fun. A party of six young people, ranging in ages from 14 to 25, gathered to visit the pond that day. There was John, Ella Mae's 25 year old older brother; a friend of his named William Rose, aged 25; Sarah Elizabeth Bowles, the 18 year old older sister of Ella Mae's; 17 year old Lou Asbury; Ella Mae Bowles, 15; and the youngest of the six, 14 year old Daniel Asbury. When they got there, they all climbed into a rowboat and decided to head out to the middle of the pond where the fishing would be better.

What should have been an ordinary thing for the six to do on a warm, sunny day like that, turned into a horrible calamity.

Once they had reached the center of the pond, the rowboat they were in started to capsize, due to it being overloaded. It overturned and the six began fighting for their lives. Splashing around in the water, four of it's occupants drowned almost immediately, leaving only Ella Mae and her brother John. Somehow, they both managed to cling to the side of the overturned rowboat, yelling for help and waiting for someone to arrive from the banks of the pond to come and rescue them. In the end, Ella Mae and John were the only surviors that day.

For the small area that Emma Township was, to have lost four young lives in this manner, at the same time, was a shocking event. The entire village was affected by this tragedy. It was decided that the funerals of the four would be held at the same time so that the residents could all attend and offer their condolences to the families of the victims.

Young Ella Mae and her family also attended the funeral, having lost a family member of their own in the tragic event. It was then that the reason for her terrified screams from the previous autumn became known. When they arrived and entered the school auditorium, where the funerals were held, Emma Mae beheld the four caskets of the deceased lined up in a row at the front of the room and then turned and fainted dead away into her mother's arms. Once she had been revived, she told the crowd gathered around her what had caused the sudden shock. It was at that moment that she was finally able to tell what she had seen, and had frightened her so much, on that day four months past.

Ella Mae described to her parents and those gathered around her that it was four coffins floating slowly across the sky that she had seen, lined up just like they were in the school auditorium. And upon entering the room with the four caskets laid end-to-end like she had witnessed, it had caused an immediate reaction and she had fainted. She hadn't realized that what she had been shown was some kind of a premonition of what was to be, and what ultimately happened. And the shock of that sudden realization was what caused her to pass out.

You may say it's all just folklore or an old wive's tale. Or it's just a "spooky story" to tell around a campfire at night. But it really happened. I know because Ella Mae Bowles was my Great Grandmother. She was the only child of six in her family to have not died early or from accidents. My mother was even named "Ella" after her. This is Ella Mae Bowles as a young child (before the accident):

a reply to: Station27Thank you for sharing your story!

I believe you 100%, because something similar happened to me when I was 17. It wasn't a vision; one morning I woke up and just 'knew' a futuer event was going to happen. I wouldn't wish death on anyone, but death it was that came calling.

The psychologist Carl Yound believed nothing of importance happens to us that we don't dream about first. I think maybe he was right.

a reply to: Station27

Thanks for the great family story.

My dad told me a similar one.
When he was a young boy, dad lived in southern Pennsylvania. There was an old swimming hole in the nearby river he and his three buddies used to go swimming in on hot summer days.

They went frequently, but one day his buddies showed up at his house to say they were going to the place for a swim.
The night before...dad said he had a really bad nightmare of drowning...so he said he was going to stay home and he begged his buddies not to go.

They all laughed at him and went anyway...leaving dad behind.

Turned out that all three of dad's friends drowned in a freak undercurrent in the river that day.