DREAM ENDING

WESTERN BUREAU:

Wild celebrations erupted in Clifton, Hanover, yesterday as a community gripped by tension breathed a sigh of relief as five days of searching came to a joyous climax after relatives acted on a vision a cousin received in a dream to find a missing 27-year-old woman.

Last night, it was a party-like atmosphere in the district, punctuated with drumming and dancing, even as residents and relatives of Chaleen Evans prayed, thanking God for the happy ending to their nightmare.

Evans had reportedly appeared in the dream of her cousin, Javaine Crooks, early Wednesday morning and he saw her on the beach in Hopewell, Hanover, near the town’s high school.

Evans went missing last Saturday morning after running from her babyfather’s home in Orchard, Hopewell. Days of searching the hilly terrain in the area without success elapsed, and the police called off the search.

But this was the third time the young mechanic was having this type of revelation. However, he was fearful of going to check for himself because he did not want to find her dead.

“I had lost hope,” Crooks admitted in an interview with The Gleaner yesterday.

“I saw him calling me at 5:45 a.m., and I decided not to answer because I felt he was too tormented to be calling me so early in the morning,” Crooks’ mother, Trishauna Jackson, who found Evans dehydrated and soaking wet on the beach in Hopewell, told The Gleaner.

It took her five hours to get the message from her son, another two hours to get to the location he directed her to, and five minutes to find her 27-year-old cousin.

“I fell asleep at about 3 a.m., and at about 5 a.m., I realised I was in a bus and Chin (Evans) was driving the bus. I asked her where she was, and she said she was behind a lab, hiding. She said she was all right,” Crooks said of the dream.

He said that as the dream continued, Evans told him that she was behind the house of an Englishman that her mother had met some time ago.

“In the dream, I saw her mom with the baby walking and she fell in a hole by the seaside, and I jumped in and caught her although I can’t swim,” the young man said.

When he woke up and told his friends about the dream, they laughed because they felt he was joking.

Crooks said that he then decided to share the dream with his mother, but when she did not answer his call, he never felt like calling back.

But by midday, he was uneasy and called again.

This time his mom answered the phone and he told her about his dream. He directed her to the little lane across from the Hopewell High School.

“I told them to check down there, and she (my mom) did see an Englishman and heard dogs barking,” he said.

The dogs, the Englishman, and the water were all part of his dream.

It took Jackson and a relative two hours to get to the location and five minutes to find Evans.

“We walked for two miles because we could not get any transportation and we finally got a ride to Lucea,” stated Jackson.

When they reached Hopewell, they saw the gate to the property described by her son locked.

“We said this is a part of the dream, but we still didn’t know how we would get over the gate,” said Jackson.

They were encouraged to walk, although fearful, until they could find a passageway. They walked in the bushes and saw the hole in the dream and heard dogs barking.

“We walked until we saw an English-sounding man with a machete, and we told him we were searching for Chin. He said he had seen it in the media, but he had not seen her in the area.”

Within minutes, they saw her walking out of the water at approximately 3:22 p.m.

“She was soaking wet. I had on three blouses, so I placed one on her to give her some warmth. She was badly dehydrated, saying she needed water,” Jackson recalled.

“When I saw her, I was reminded of a Lifetime movie. She looked so scary and could only recognise my voice, yet our other cousin who was with us and she is very close to, she didn’t remember,” she added with a sigh.

Evans, Jackson disclosed, drank two 16-ounce cups of water and asked for bread to eat, but a lady offered her a piece of cake.

The police were called, and the young woman was taken to the Noel Holmes Hospital in Lucea, where she has been admitted.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com