Bet On It

that's the beauty of dreams, right. They have no limits, no boundaries, and sadly, no probability of actually happening, which is why the phrase dream come true has so much power. Whenever someone wins the lottery or lands that promotion they work so hard for. To everyone around them, their dreams had just come true and it can't get much better than that. But not every dream come true is received well.

Take for example, the story of John Godly, known to the history books as Lord Kilbracken from Ireland because what happened to him just after World War Two was both amazing and, at least to him, more than a little disturbing. In the late nineteen forties, John was a student in Oxford, working hard and studying late into the nights, as most students in his position would do. But when sleep did finally come to John, it sometimes filled him with the

most unusual ideas. You see, despite the fact that John wasn't a gambling man, his dreams were filled with visions of horse races. One day, after a particularly vivid dream featuring two separate races, John mentioned the details to a friend, who raised his eyebrows in response. John had described two horses, one named Bindle and the other named Giladdin, and then described how each of them won their race. His friend showed him a newspaper which listed horses with those exact

names running in races. The following day, at his friends urging, John bet on both winners from his dream, despite the horrible odds, and then waited for the results. When it was over, John had made a small fortune because both

dream horses had actually won their respective races. Most of us would have been elated, and perhaps John was for a while, But soon enough friends began to pester him for new picks, hoping to strike it rich with John's help, And it seems that all the attention began to wear on John's patients, so instead of giving them tips, he did the next best thing. He moved back to Ireland to get away from all of them, but John couldn't

get away from his dreams. Later, not too long after settling in at his family's estates, he had another horse race dream, this one featuring a winner named Tubermore. Upon waking, John researched the horse name and found that there was a horse running in the famous Grand National that same day by the name of tu Burrows. Despite horrible odds of about seventeen to one, John bet on it, and one three months later, another dream to another bet, this

time on a horse named Monumental. The real horse had an eerily similar name and netted him another hefty payday, and those big victories tempted John into more frequent betting. But whether the dreams failed him or he began to bet without their help, he soon realized how destructive his gambling habit could become, and so he decided to quit, and after that the dreams became much less frequent. A whole decade went by with only a handful of dreams. Most of them proved to be true, but every now

and then the dream would steer him wrong. John was increasingly becoming gunshy with his predictions. And those losses must have stung more than a little bit. Losing money is never fun after all. His last dream arrived in June of ninety eight, just a day before the annual Grand National. In this dream, the winner was a horse named What Man, but John couldn't find that name listed in the paper.

The closest he could find was a horse named Mr. Watt, and after wrestling with his options, he decided to have eight in the dream and bet on the horse. Mr. What proved to be a good call, and John took home a tidy sum of money. After that, though his dreams came to an end. John Godly never again dreamt of horse racing, and as a result, his gambling career

was over. And from what I can tell, John was all right with that, because if there's anything to learn from his experience with it all, it's that sometimes getting what you hope for is a lot less satisfying than you might imagine. In fact, it can lead you down a dangerous path, one full of a tenuous balance between risk and reward. It seems the old adage might be a bit misleading. Not every dream come true is a

dream come true. Hill Beachy was a man with a dream, well, considering the contents of his it was more of a nightmare really. In it, Hill watched with horror as a shadowy figure cut his friend Lloyd McGruder down with the hatchet. The killer then placed his boot on mcgruder's chest and tugged the weapon free, And as the man straightened up, he seemed to look directly towards Hill beachy, and that's

when a bit of light fell across his face. In that moment, Hill knew exactly what his friend's killer looked like. Of course, dreams aren't real, and that's exactly what Hill's wife told him the next morning. But he couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen, or maybe already had. Lloyd McGruder was a good friend and he'd be sad to see the man get hurt. The trouble was, McGruder wasn't around to warn. Lloyd was the owner of the general store in Lewiston, a small community

in what is now the state of Montana. Back in eighteen sixty three, someone discovered gold about two hundred miles to the south in alder Gulch, attracting a flood of prospectors and fortune seekers to town. Unknown to Hill Beachy, Lloyd Magruder was already dead. It seems that he had loaded up his wagons with just about every bit of inventory he could find, and then rode south to set up shop for a few days in alder Gulch. When he was finished, he headed home, wagons empty but pockets full.

Being in the right place at the right time had made McGruder rich. And when you live in a town of wandering strangers and literal gold diggers, that had a way of putting a target on a person's back. So Hill Beachy's fear for his friend's safety wasn't misplaced. It was just unreasonable, considering the only information he had came from a dream. But Hill's dream had been accurate, because as Lloyd McGruder traveled home that week in the winter

of early eighteen sixty five, he wasn't alone. A handful of miners had decided to leave the digging and returned to town with him, and together they had all ridden north, and joining them on that journey was a group of four strange men, Doc Howard, Chris Lowry, William Page and Jim Romaine. But those four men weren't just strangers. They were hardened criminals freshly escaped from jail, and they didn't see empty wagons. No, they saw opportunity as well as

saddle bags full of cash and gold. So they tagged along and waited for their moment. When that moment arrived, the four criminals killed Lloyd Magruder and the other miners in their sleep. Then they tossed the bodies over the edge of a canyon, gathered up all of the money and gold and even the horses, and then made their way back to town. And with the snow storm covering their tracks with a nice layer of white powder, it seemed that no one would ever be able to connect

them to the crime. But they soon made a mistake. They chose to stay the night at the Luna Hotel in Lewistown. The hotel, as fate would have it, owned and operated by Hill Beachy, and when he looked up from his seat behind the desk, he felt the cold hand grip his heart at the sight of his friend's killer.

Convinced that the dream was more than just a bit of imagination run a muck, Beachy later snuck to the stables, where he found confirmation of his fears horses the men rode in on, as well as their saddles, belonged to McGruder. The rest of the adventure is a bit of a journey, and it took several weeks for it all to come to a close. In the end, the criminals were finally tracked down to San Francisco, where they had gone to

have their stolen gold minted into coins. Hill Beachy actually traveled there to help in their arrest, and after tricking one of them to reveal incriminating details, the authorities were led to the location of Lloyd mcgruder's body, a body with a hatchet wound in the head and a bloody bootprint on the chest, just as hill Beachy had dreamed. On March three of eighteen sixty five, three of the four criminals hanged for the murder of Lloyd Magruder, and

the adventure came to an end. Better yet, Mcgruder's widow, Maggie, was given all of the stolen money, a bag of freshly minted gold coins that would be worth close to a quarter of a million dollars today. It wouldn't bring her husband back, but it would servely help her build

a new life without him. It's fair to say that if it weren't for an eerily accurate dream, it's very likely that those men would have gotten away with murder, and the disappearance of Lloyd McGruder would never have been solved. Many criminals dream of the perfect crime, and they just about managed to pull it off. The trouble was someone else dreamt of it too. I hope you've enjoyed today's

guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Ye