The 1966 Aberfan Disaster, in which a mountain of waste from a coal mine collapsed onto a Welsh village, killing 116 children and 28 adults, left a long-lasting mark on the British psyche.
But some of its effects seemed to echo not just after the catastrophe, but somehow before it, breaking the 'time barrier': two of the children who died at Pantglas Junior School reportedly dreamed about the vast mudslide and drew pictures of it before it happened.
Psychiatrist John Barker wondered if there was some scientific reason behind these visions of the future and set up the British Premonitions Bureau to investigate them.
One particularly mysterious case that Barker investigated was the Hither Green railway disaster in South London.
On Guy Fawkes’ night, 1967, a packed commuter train on its way from Hastings in East Sussex to Charing Cross station derailed near the Hither Green maintenance depot. Eleven of the train’s 12 carriages – many of them filled with standing passengers – keeled over killing 49 and injuring 78.
Barker found two people who had foreseen the horrifying crash.
Alan Hencher, a London-based telephone engineer who had already predicted a tragic air crash, was hit by a crippling headache at the moment of the train disaster and had to go home from work. He said he had foreseen a huge train crash in London.
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But the more shocking premonition came from north London music teacher Kathleen Lorna Middleton.
Four days before the disaster she said she had been feeling “acutely depressed” and then, she wrote in a letter to the Bureau, she “saw a streak, then a flash of light and then a sort of grey mist…”
She added: “I see a crash, maybe on a railway… a station may be involved… people waiting in the station and the words Charing Cross …the sound of a crash."
"Quite honestly it staggers me,” Barker told the London Evening Standard at the time. “Somehow, while dreaming or awake, they can gate-crash the time barrier.”
These glimpses though time weren’t always accurate, which may be for the best.
Alan Hencher told Barker: "Sometime before September, 1969, a large lump of matter will be coming into space toward the Earth. Intense sunspot activity will reach an apex not known before.
"The combination of natural phenomena will cause floods, hurricanes, and severe earthquakes in various parts of the world. There will be approximately 500,000 dead."
He happily admitted later. ”Not all of my premonitions come true."
The strange story of The Premonitions Bureau is told in a new book by Sam Knight which is published by Faber on May 3.
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