The Foretold

Humankind has always held a fascination with the future. Glimpses into what might happen however, have often kindled rebuke. In the mainstream of everyday life, most individuals do not want to walk up to the edge and look over the precipice of uncertainty. For centuries, those who might have the gift, or the curse of the foretold, have been looked upon as outcasts, gypsies, and quacks; but as time marches onward, perhaps the precognitive dream world might embrace others and even the Marco Beach Boys and Girls.

After midnight, on the day of his brother’s death, Mark Twain suddenly awoke from a terrible dream. The famous author dreamt he was at a crowded funeral where his dead brother Henry was lying in a newfangled metal casket and wearing a suit in the unmistakable new French style. The dreadful dream was so real the Huckleberry Finn author could not sleep the rest of the night.

The following morning the two brothers were set to board a paddle wheeler steamboat on the Mississippi River. Because Mark Twain was so upset, irritable, and tired from the previous sleepless night, he fell into a quarrel with a crewmember and became entangled in a fistfight. As a result, Mark Twain was ordered off the riverboat, but his brother Henry wished to remain aboard.

Later that day, the boiler on the steamboat exploded and killed 250 persons including Henry Clemens. When attending the crowded funeral three days later, Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens was taken aback and forced into shock when he saw his brother laid out in the new French suit and resting in the open metal casket. The reality of the funeral was the exact vision of the dream.

In 1911, Niels Bohr was confused about the structure of atoms. His calculations were not working out. One night after a particularly frustrating day with what would become Quantum Mechanics, he fell asleep and began dreaming of tiny solar systems. In the dream, Niels envisioned a bright nucleus in the center of rapidly circling electrons. The following day he knew the dream was perfection, and he began working on a way to prove the foretold theory.

Before her heroic devotion as a leader in the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman was in a frightening accident that fractured her skull. After the life-threatening injury, Harriet understood the vivid dreams she experienced almost every night were gifts from God. Without the guidance of the foretelling dreams, Harriet believed, she could not have successfully led over 300 slaves to freedom.

Shortly after the autumn equinox of 1966, J.A Taylor went to sleep and began the most unusual dream. Taylor was an avid reader and, in his dream, he was traveling to South Wales in search of a rare book. As the dream continued, he went onward to the village of Pontypridd to look for a bookstore but instead saw an unusual machine with the word Aberfan printed in large letters on the machinery. When he awoke the vision of the word Aberfan was seemingly everywhere.

After midnight on October 20, 1966, Eryl Mai Jones of the Welsh Town of Aberfan began dreaming of her school. In the dream, Eryl Mai’s school was suddenly in a storm with black clouds and black snow. When she awoke, she explained to her mother she could see everything and was not afraid to die. The following day, an explosion of coal mining waste poured over the town and took Eryl Mai Jones and 113 others in the disaster that still haunts the region today.

Because of multiple reports of similar dreams regarding the industrial coal disaster at Aberfan, The British Premonition Bureau became a creation of John Barker who was an esteemed British psychiatrist. Barker believed he could harness the collective precognitive power of the British people to foretell future disasters or perhaps help in the understanding of extra sensory perception.

Peter Fairly, the science editor for London’s Evening Standard agreed and soon an article in the newspaper was asking if any others had foretelling dreams about the Aberfan disaster. Seventy-six answered yes and reported vivid dreams. After much research, The Premonition Bureau began to believe that precognitive psychic ability might be as common as someone with red hair and freckles.

One night, after midnight, a Marco Beach Boy began a vivid dream. In the dream, the Beach Boy was mowing the grass at his home. The lawnmower was an old John Deere walk-behind and the mower was chugging along through the grass. The mower was self-propelled with the engine powering a belt-driven pulley to provide traction for the rear wheels. In the dream, in the backyard, the powertrain for the wheels suddenly stopped pulling and the Beach Boy stopped to look at a broken cable with a spring hanging from the handset that controls the mower. In the dream, the old cable was broken and had parted. The motor was still running, but the mower would not pull itself along.

Two days later after the vivid dream, the Marco Beach Boy was mowing the grass. When the John Deere came to the exact middle of the backyard, at the exact same place and facing the same direction as in the dream, the powertrain of the mower failed because the cable parted just as in the dream. The feeling when the cable parted was uncanny. It was a sensation much stronger than any episode of déjà vu. The lighting and angle of the sun was the same as in the dream. The broken and hanging cable with the rusting wear spot was exactly in the same place, as in the dream. The location in the yard where the mower failed was in the same row of the cut grass as in the dream.

With the New Year upon us, we naturally look to the future, but can the future possibly be foretold within uncanny dreams?