British Premonitions Bureau

British Premonitions Bureau
Established	1966
Founder	John Barker
Dissolved	1968
Purpose	psychic research
Location	United Kingdom ;
Fields	parapsychology

Last updated February 20, 2024

The British Premonitions Bureau was formed in 1966 by psychiatrist John Barker after the Aberfan mining disaster in which 144 people, including 116 children, died when 500,000 tons of debris smashed through the Welsh town and buried the primary school. Reports of precognitive dreams foretelling of the catastrophe prompted Barker to form the bureau in the hope of predicting and avoiding future tragedies.

History

John Barker worked as a psychiatrist at Shelton Hospital, a Victorian asylum housing people considered "unfit" to live in society. While Barker pushed for reforms to improve the conditions there, he engaged in unconventional research such as aversion therapy, which used electric shocks to discourage "undesirable" behavior including addiction, homosexuality, and transvestitism.^[1]^[2] Barker was a member of The Society for Psychical Research and was interested in unorthodox ideas, especially in apparent prophecies.^[3] Around the time the Aberfan disaster in Wales occurred, Barker was working on a book called Scared To Death. Earlier, the head of psychology at Harvard Medical School, Walter Cannon, coined the term "voodoo death"^[4] to describe a response of "primitive people" dying of fear. Based on Cannon's concept, Barker argued that hearing a premonition of one's death may result in a deep fear which could affect the body's immune system and result in death.^[5]^[6] After the disaster, he heard of a boy who escaped in Aberfan but later died of shock.^[5]

Barker visited the Aberfan disaster site and noted that a number of people seemed to escape death by coincidence, such as missing their bus or sleeping in late.^[3] Bereaved families spoke of dreams and portents. On the eve of the disaster, a young boy named Paul Davies had reportedly drawn figures digging in the hillside under the words “The End”. Davies died in the school. A young girl named Eryl Mai Jones reportedly told her mother that she was not afraid to die, two weeks before the collapse.^[7] A different account of the girl was later published by Barker. In this version, which had been signed by her parents and attested by a local minister, Jones told her mother about a dream where she went to school, but the school "wasn't there" because "something black had come down all over it". According to the report, the next day the girl was among the dead in Aberfan^[6]. While touring Aberfan and hearing various stories of foreboding, Barker wanted to investigate whether the claims could be evidence of precognition and he contacted science journalist for London's Evening Standard, Peter Fairley. They invited the newspaper's readers to contact Barker with their 'dreams and forebodings'.^[5] While Barker and Fairley received a large number of responses, they were aware the reports had little value as evidence of precognition because they were created after the event.^[3]

Formation of the Bureau

John Barker wanted to use claims of precognition to predict and hopefully avert future disasters from occurring. Barker and Fairley created a 'Premonitions Bureau' and invited the public to report experiences that they thought might predict future events.^[3] Fairley had a time stamp made and the reports were carefully catalogued^[7] and set up with an 11-point system:

5 points for "unusualness"
5 points for accuracy
1 point for timeliness

In theory, the Premonitions Bureau would be a repository for "mass premonitions" to detect patterns which might suggest a possible date, nature, or place of an upcoming disaster.^[7]

During its first year, the bureau collected 469 predictions.^[7] In one "hit", Alan Hencher, a switchboard operator, predicted a plane crash involving 123 people. Nine days later, a plane crashed near Nicosia in Cyprus, killing a total of 124 people on impact. Another came from music teacher Kathleen Lorna Middleton, who wrote about a vision of a petrified astronaut. Earlier that day, Vladimir Komarov was killed when the Soyuz 1 capsule had crash-landed in Russia, but the incident wasn't reported until later.^[5] Middleton also sent a warning about American Senator Robert Kennedy on March 11, 1968, and reportedly called the Premonitions Bureau three times on June 4.^[7] Kennedy was assassinated, having been shot on June 5, 1968, and died the following day.

Meanwhile, Barker's psychiatric work overwhelmed him as the conditions at Shelton became intolerable. His trip to the United States to promote his book was miserable and both Hencher and Middleton predicted that he would soon die.^[1] In 1967, Hencher contacted Barker about his prediction,^[6] and Middleton warned him of a dream "that may mean death".^[4] Barker, who in his late thirties, suffered "emotional stress almost to the point of 'crack up'" and left his previous job as the superintendent of a mental hospital in Dorset,^[7] was depressed and believed his end was near. He died in August 1968, 18 months after starting the bureau^[1] of a brain embolism, not by a “gas supply” or “a dark car” as one psychic had suggested.^[8] On the morning before, Middleton reported that she woke up with a choking sensation and called out for help.^[4]

Shortly after Barker's death, the Premonitions Bureau closed.^[7] In the 18 months of the bureau's existence, 723 predictions were collected and 18 recorded as hits, with 12 of those coming from only two correspondents, Hencher and Middleton.^[5] No disasters were prevented.^[6]

Critical review

The premise of the Premonitions Bureau has been evaluated by sceptics and psychologists. Joe Nickell has pointed out several issues with premonitions including:

Premonitions reported after events cannot be considered evidence since they may be mental confabulations constructed after the fact.
Prediction accounts can be misleading in details
Some premonition stories may be altered over time.
A prediction made in advance may be interpreted and reconstructed after an event to better fit the details of the event. In addition, the person doing the retrofitting may be seeking credit for details of the premonition that were not specified.
The problem of determining probability. There is no way to evaluate how dreams run counter to statistical laws.^[8]

Michael Shermer explains that precognitive dreams are formed by how the human brain is designed to see patterns and not randomness. Given the number of people dreaming each night, odds are high that someone will have a dream about somebody dying who actually dies soon after. But the many dreams where somebody dying didn't come true are quickly forgotten. The dreamer remembers the "hit" not the misses.^[9] In his book Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there, Richard Wiseman discusses how, based the work by Eugene Aserinsky, sleep scientists found that people have an average of four dreams a night and forget the vast majority of their dreams when waking. People usually remember dreams only if they wake during the dreaming episode. Even then, they remember mostly fragments and soon forget them unless they are remarkable.^[6] Because people have many dreams based on the various events from their waking lives, occasionally a dream may seem relevant to a particular event, when it is actually due to the laws of probability. Sleep scientists further discovered that around 80% of dreams are about negative events and therefore bad news will more likely trigger a memory of a corresponding dream, which may explain why many reported premonitions seem to be about death and disasters.^[6]

References in media

In 2019, film and studio rights to the story of the British Premonitions Bureau, based on Sam Knight's book, The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold, was sold to Amazon Studios in a 19-way bidding war.^[10]

Related Research Articles

Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke University botanist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as intuition, telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, empathy and their trans-temporal operation as precognition or retrocognition.

In German folklore and ghostlore, a poltergeist is a type of ghost or spirit that is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. Most claims or fictional descriptions of poltergeists show them as being capable of pinching, biting, hitting, and tripping people. They are also depicted as capable of the movement or levitation of objects such as furniture and cutlery, or noises such as knocking on doors. Foul smells are also associated with poltergeist occurrences, as well as spontaneous fires and different electrical issues such as flickering lights.

Precognition is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychic</span> Person claiming extrasensory perception abilities

A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, such as psychokinesis or teleportation. Although many people believe in psychic abilities, the scientific consensus is that there is no proof of the existence of such powers, and describes the practice as pseudoscience. The word "psychic" is also used as an adjective to describe such abilities.

"The Minority Report" is a 1956 science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in Fantastic Universe. In a future society, three mutants foresee all crime before it occurs. Plugged into a great machine, these "precogs" allow a division of the police called Precrime to arrest suspects before they can commit any actual crimes. When the head of Precrime, John Anderton, is himself predicted to murder a man whom he has never heard of, Anderton is convinced a great conspiracy is afoot.

An omen is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change. It was commonly believed in ancient times, and still believed by some today, that omens bring divine messages from the gods.

A prediction or forecast is a statement about a future event or about future data. Predictions are often, but not always, based upon experience or knowledge of forecasters. There is no universal agreement about the exact difference between "prediction" and "estimation"; different authors and disciplines ascribe different connotations.

A psychic detective is a person who investigates crimes by using purported paranormal psychic abilities. Examples have included postcognition, psychometry, telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, and remote viewing. In murder cases, psychic detectives may purport to be in communication with the spirits of the murder victims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Browne</span> American writer (1936–2013)

Sylvia Celeste Browne was an American writer, medium, and psychic. She appeared regularly on television and radio, including on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live, and hosted an hour-long online radio show on Hay House Radio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aberfan disaster</span> 1966 collapse of a colliery spoil tip in Wales

The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on 21 October 1966. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. Heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, killing 116 children and 28 adults as it engulfed Pantglas Junior School and a row of houses. The tip was the responsibility of the National Coal Board (NCB), and the subsequent inquiry placed the blame for the disaster on the organisation and nine named employees.

<i>An Experiment with Time</i> 1927 book by J. W. Dunne

An Experiment with Time is a book by the British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher J. W. Dunne (1875–1949) about his precognitive dreams and a theory of time which he later called "Serialism". First published in March 1927, the book was widely read. Although never accepted by mainstream scientists or philosophers, it has influenced imaginative literature ever since. Dunne published four sequels: The Serial Universe, The New Immortality, Nothing Dies and Intrusions?

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baba Vanga</span> Bulgarian mystic (1911–1996)

Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova, commonly known as Baba Vanga, was a Bulgarian attributed mystic and healer who claimed to have foreseen the future. Blind since her early childhood, she spent most of her life in the Rupite area of the Belasica mountains in Bulgaria.

The Flatwoods monster, in West Virginia folklore, is a creature reported to have been sighted in the town of Flatwoods in Braxton County, West Virginia, United States, on September 12, 1952, after a bright light crossed the night sky. Over 50 years later, investigators suggest the light was a meteor and the creature was a barn owl perched in a tree with shadows making it appear to be a large humanoid.

Joe Nickell is an American skeptic and investigator of the paranormal.

Peter Fairley was a British science journalist who was the Science Editor for Independent Television News and TV Times magazine the late sixties and early seventies. His name became synonymous with ITN's extensive live coverage of the Apollo Moon landing missions.

Richard J. Wiseman is a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. He has written several psychology books. He has given keynote addresses to The Royal Society, The Swiss Economic Forum, Google and Amazon. He is a fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a patron of Humanists UK. Wiseman is also the creator of the YouTube channels Quirkology and In59Seconds.

In West Virginian folklore, the Mothman is a humanoid creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area from November 15, 1966, to December 15, 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register, dated November 16, 1966, titled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird ... Creature ... Something". The national press soon picked up the reports and helped spread the story across the United States. The source of the legend is believed to have originated from sightings of out-of-migration sandhill cranes or herons.

In psychology, anomalistic psychology is the study of human behaviour and experience connected with what is often called the paranormal, with few assumptions made about the validity of the reported phenomena.

Deathbed phenomena refers to a range of experiences reported by people who are dying. There are many examples of deathbed phenomena in both non-fiction and fictional literature, which suggests that these occurrences have been noted by cultures around the world for centuries, although scientific study of them is relatively recent. In scientific literature such experiences have been referred to as death-related sensory experiences (DRSE). Dying patients have reported to staff working in hospices they have experienced comforting visions.

References

1 2 3 Akers, W.M. "Harnessing ESP to Forestall Death and Disaster". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
↑ Masad, Ilana. "The 'Premonitions Bureau' considers whether some can sense future events". NPR. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
1 2 3 4 Wiseman, Richard. "A data bank for the nation's dreams and visions". The Psychologist. The British Psychological Society. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
1 2 3 Altschuler, Glenn. "The Power of Premonitions". Psychology Today. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
1 2 3 4 5 McConnachie, James. "The Premonitions Bureau review: A 1960s hunt for paranormal powers". The New Scientist. New Scientist Ltd. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Wiseman, Richard (2010). Paranormality : why we see what isn't there. London: Spin Solutions Ltd. pp. 145–150. ISBN 978-0-9568756-5-5.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Knight, Sam. "The Psychiatrist Who Believed People Could Tell The Future". The New Yorker. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
1 2 Nickell, Joe. "Premonition! Foreseeing What Cannot Be Seen". Skeptical Inquirer. Center For Inquiry. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
↑ Tait, Amelia. "I knew that was going to happen... The truth about premonitions". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 April 2023.
↑ Mansfield, Katie. "Faber snaps up Sam Knight non-fiction as Amazon triumphs in 19-way auction for screen rights". The Bookseller. The Stage Media Company Ltd. Retrieved 28 April 2023.