Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - Summer Scares: Deadly Premonitions and Final Destination

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

A writer who predicted the Titanic disaster. A child who dreamed of her own death. And a president haunted by a vision of his own funeral. Heidi Wong uncovers the chilling true stories from the Titanic premonition to the Aberfan disaster and Abraham Lincoln’s prophetic dream that prove Final Destination might not be fiction after all.For more follow Twisted Tales wherever you listen to podcasts: https://pod.link/1839058226If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Scams, Money, & Murder to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Scams, Money, & Murder is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Crime House 24/7, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios

Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus, Conner's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What The Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What The Fact Pod. A writer foresees history's most infamous shipwreck. People in a Welsh mining town predict a terrifying disaster. A president has a vision of a corpse in the White House just weeks before his own assassination. They say to trust your intuition. But what if you don't want to be right? Welcome to Twisted Tales, a crimehouse original. I'm Heidi Wong.

Every Monday, I'll take you deep into the true stories behind horror's biggest legends. From vengeful ghosts to bloody slasters to alien encounters and more, these real-life accounts are guaranteed to keep you up at night. But scary stories aren't any fun if you're telling them alone. If you've ever had a haunted moment or a twisted tale of your own, I want to hear about it. Drop it in the comments. The creepier, the better. Crimehouse is made possible by you.

Follow Twisted Tales and subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts for ad-free early access. And if you're into true crime as well as horror, go search and follow Crimehouse Daily. Our team's twice a day show bringing you breaking cases, updates, and unbelievable stories from the world of crime that are happening right now. Today, I'm talking about deadly premonitions inspired by the final destination franchise.

These movies are all about people who see visions of their own deaths, but no matter how much they try to outrun their fates, there's no escaping it. And in this episode, I'm getting into three different deadly events where the tragic outcomes were predicted before they are. actually happened. From the world's most famous shipwreck to a horrific disaster in a small mining town, to the infamous assassination of Abraham Lincoln, these stories will have your head on a swivel. And have you asking, is it possible to outrun death? There's no movie franchise out

there quite like Final Destination. From airplanes to log trucks to tanning beds, this series will make you look at even the most everyday things in a whole different way. By this point, the basic concept behind the franchise has warmed itself into the hearts of pop culture. They all begin with a character having a premonition, like a teenager seeing his flight to Paris blowing up, or a girl who dies in a deadly freeway pile up. In these visions, they and their friends will die one by one in the worst ways that you can imagine. And usually the very last one to meet their end is the main character who experiences the premonition. They always try to stop it, like getting off the plane or by blocking off the road. And while it's the very

It saves their lives in the moment, death comes for them all. If you're not familiar with any of the movies, here's how the first one goes. It starts with a high school kid named Alex Browning. He's headed on a school trip to Paris. Alex is psyched, but he's also nervous. When he gets on board, we can see he has some pre-flight jitters. They're crying babies, weird mechanical noises, all the triggers for anyone who doesn't like to fly. Alex tries to play it cool, but he's clearly having a tough time.

It doesn't help that his takeoff is a bit bumpy, and that's not the end of it. Once they get in the air, the turbulence is even worse. Soon, the electricity in the cabin is cutting in and out. Oxygen masks drop from overhead, and then. An electrical fire breaks out in the cabin, and chaos ensues. A portion of the plane rips off, flinging passengers out into the sky and towards their deaths. Eventually, the electrical fire envelops the entire plane, incinerating everyone on board. Just then, our friend Alex awakens in full sweat.

It was just a nightmare. Or so he thinks. When Alex comes to, he's still on the plane. They haven't taken off yet, and he does what I'd hopefully do if I were in his shoes. He panics his way off the airplane. A handful of his classmates follow, and back at the gate they watch as the plane glides away off to Paris. It seems like he freaked them all out for nothing. But then the unthinkable happens.

the plane does explode in a huge fireball. Everyone on board dies instantly. Alex and the other people who got off survive, but they've cheated death, and the Grim Reaper isn't going to stop until he claims what is rightfully his. Now, this story might have done a number on you when you first saw it. It might have made you think twice about boarding an airplane

or falling asleep on one. Not the ideal movie to watch before a flight. But behind all of the carnage, is there something real? Putting it simply, premonitions are the feeling that something bad is about to happen, and they've been around at least since the book of Genesis. Whether it's or or witch doctors, these spooky omens aren't anything new. I know what you're thinking.

Omen's, final destination? This all sounds unrealistic in our everyday lives. But what if it's not? What if a premonition can come true? What if it already has? Like, more than once? I want to take you through some of history's creepiest premonition. Aminitions. Stories that prove final destination isn't just a work of fiction. It's a reflection

of real events. Ones that can't be written off as a coincidence. And will have you looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. We all know how this first story ends, the greatest luxury liner in world history equipped with Turkish baths, swimming pools, gymnasiums, the finest food in champagne, a grand ballroom. It's an unscings. It's an unsciful. a thinkable ship that one chilly night slams into an iceberg and down she goes. Around 1,500 people died when the Titanic sank. Almost no one was spared as the ship plunged into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. She was the world's most luxurious cruise liner,

the largest ship afloat, the crown jewel of Edwardian luxury. So it was even more of a shock when it ended up on the bottom of the ocean. I mean, the sheer romance of the thing. No wonder, decades later, it inspired one of the greatest love stories ever told on screen. As for the sinking of the Titanic, no one could have seen it coming at the time. Well, almost no one. It was the late 1800s, over a decade before the Titanic was even built. A guy named Morgan Robertson decided he was going to write a book.

He wanted to start a new chapter, a new voyage, if you will, after working in the jewelry industry as a diamond setter. Before that, Robertson was a first mate in the Merchant Marines. So while thinking about his new literary career, he decided to focus on what he knew best, sailing and luxury. More specifically, a luxury cruise liner, the world's largest one. The book Morgan Robertson ended up writing was called The Rec of the Titan, or Futility. Again, this is before the Titanic was even a concept.

Robertson's book was published in 1889, way before anyone was even building the Titanic. That happened in 1909, about 20 years after Robertson's book came out. She was the largest craft afloat in the greatest of the works of men, equal to that of a first-class hotel. With nine compartments flooded, the ship would still float, and as no known accident of the sea could possibly fill this many, the steamship Titan was considered practically unsinkable. Well, you can probably guess where this goes.

The ship does sink. And it happens in the same way as the Titanic, after a collision with an iceberg. But that's not all. They both sank in mid-April. They were both basically the same size. The actual Titanic was just 25 meters longer than the Titan. That's about 82 feet for those counting at home.

And their engineering capabilities were really similar, too. Both shifts were capable of speeds over 20 knots. And the craziest of all, they both contained the legal minimum amount of lifeboats. That means neither one had enough to keep. carry all the passengers to safety in case they, for example, hit an iceberg and sank. Now, you could argue that Morgan Robertson's story is mere coincidence. He certainly did. After the Titanic sank, people took another look at his book. And I mean, the similarities were uncanny. So a lot of people are wondering if somehow Robertson predicted the sinking of the Titanic.

To that, Robertson said, no, I know what I'm writing about, that's all. And Robertson was extremely knowledgeable. He had a reputation for being diligent at his work, and there was another ship called the Oceanic that was being designed around the same time he wrote his story, whose specifications were pretty similar to the Titanic. And even the similarities in their names aren't all that surprising. Between 1865 and 1882, three ships named Titania sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, and one of them even hit an iceberg. Given these similarities, Robertson probably just wanted to move on with his life. But that was pretty hard to do when the entire world wanted answers. The LA Times called the Titanic tragedy the greatest marine disaster in the history of the world.

And a lot of other people agreed with that statement. The United States Congress convened special committees to investigate the ship's sinking. What went wrong, who's to blame, and how to make sure it never happens again. And while that was all going on, Morgan Robertson was struggling. In 1915, nearly two decades after the wreck of the Titan came out, and nearly three years after the Titanic sank, Robertson was found dead in his hotel room. His cause of death was listed as heart disease,

but there was more to the story. When Morgan Robertson's body was discovered in 1915, he was found standing up, leaning against a bureau. Curiously, beside him, atop the bureau, was a bottle of medicine called peraldehyde. Let's get into that for a second. It turns out, peraldehyde is a sedative that was used in the psychiatric wards back then to treat psychosis, delirium, and hallucinations.

The idea was that it would calm a patient down and eventually put them to sleep, but if you take too much, it can cause respiratory failure. And Robertson's death was thought to be a drug overdose, heart attack, or suicide. Which makes you wonder, was Robertson dealing with a mental health disorder that the peraldehyde wasn't able to treat? Was he just trying to sleep and took too much of his medicine? Or was there something more sinister at play? Additionally, in 1914, the year before Morgan Robertson died,

he wrote a story about a sneak attack from Japan against American forces near Hawaii, 27 years before Pearl Harbor. And although he did feel like he was just writing what he knew, he did admit that maybe there was something else inspiring him. Around the same time the Titanic sank, a poet named Ella Wheeler Wilcox reached out to Robertson. She'd been aboard another cruise ship when the Titanic went down, and when she made it back to port, she heard about Robertson's book. Wilcox was so disturbed by the similarities between his story and the Titanic sinking,

she just had to dig a little bit deeper into Robertson's mind. In a letter to Wilcox, Robertson said he was honestly just trying to write a good story, but that's when things get interesting. He also acknowledged that future events had an uncanny way of being predicted. In his letter to Ella Wilcox, he said, quote, I do not doubt that it is because all creative workers get into a hypnotoid, telepathic, and percipient condition, in which while apparently awake, they are half asleep, and tap not only the better informed minds of others, but the subliminal realm of unknown facts.

Basically, in Robertson's mind, there was a larger force guiding his hand. So what do you think? Did Morgan Robertson merely write a story, or was he treading in a different world? A different plane of knowledge that he entered through the creative process and exited with a story about a tragedy he'd foretold. Well, whether Morgan Robertson realized it or not at the time, there's no denying that the parallels are creepy. And the reality is, Robertson wasn't the first or last person to predict a catastrophe. You might be surprised to learn that decades after his death, an entire group of people had the same eerie premonition. Happy Halloween, Crime House listeners. I'm Vanessa Richardson. Join me every Sunday this month on Crime House 24-7 for Crime House of Horrors,

where I dive into four stories behind some of our favorite scary movies. If you can't wait and want all four episodes now ad-free, join Crimehouse Plus. Join on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at Cravely. Let me take you to a tiny mining village in South Wales in England. It's called Aberfan. And since the 19th century, coal has reigns supreme there. Generations of people had worked those mines. It was hard work, but the mines offered decent pay and stability. But they also set the stage for an unthinkable tragedy.

See, the waste from the mines, unusable coal, rocks, and debris, it all had to go somewhere. You'd think and hope that all that rubble would be disposed of far, far away from the village. Instead, they were left on the hills above Aberfan in what are called spoil heaps, or in mining terms, tips. These weren't just little trash piles either. The spoil heaps were huge, like the size of a massive hill. And the village's residents were not happy about this. They filed complaint after complaint. Engineers who worked for the mines even warned Britain's national coal board that these spoils

heaps were dangerous. They were unstable. They could lead to some kind of environmental disaster. In fact, there had already been small floods and rockfalls because of these spoil heaps. While the National Cold Board listened to all of this and did nothing, it would turn out to be one of the worst mistakes in British history. On the night of October 21st, 1966, Aberfan was hit with heavy rings. All that water soaked the spoil heaps. In the next morning, at 9.15 a.m., one of those heaps collapsed. Suddenly, an avalanche of coal, waste, water, and debris descended on the town of Aberfan. Within the blink of an eye, entire buildings, including a school, were enveloped in the flow. 144 people lost their lives that day. 116 of the victims were kids,

mostly between the ages of 7 and 10. The Aberfan disaster shocked Great Britain. And what made it even more tragic was that this could have been prevented. But while engineers and residents had sounded the alarm before the disaster took place, some people saw more than a warning. They saw the exact event play out in their minds. Enter Dr. John C. Barker. He was a psychiatrist who specialized in treating fear, panic, and psychosis. He also founded an organization called the British Premonitions Bureau. Like the name suggests, the Premonitions Bureau researched and documented people's premonitions. Well, after the Aberfan disaster, Dr. Barker caught wind that some people had actually predicted the tragedy. At the time, Dr. Barker was studying something he called

pre-disaster syndrome. Not only did he believe that people could truly predict disasters, natural and otherwise, but he also thought these visions could be used to avoid events like this. So when he heard that folks in Aberfan may have experienced visions of this awful disaster, he knew he had to travel there himself. He ended up interviewing several residents who have all said they either had a vision of the disaster themselves or knew someone who did. And if you think that's spooky, wait till you hear these stories. On October 20, 1966, the day before the spoil heaps gave way, a local 10-year-old girl named Errol May Jones went to her mom. Seemingly out of nowhere, Errol May said to her, I'm not afraid to die.

Her mom was understandably confused. But then, Aero May said it had to do with the dream she had the night before. She went on to say, I dreamt I went to school and there was no school there. Something black could come down all over it. The following day, her school was pummeled by wreckage from the slide, and Aero May didn't survive. Tragically, she wasn't the only child to seemingly predict her own death. On the evening of October 20th, 8-year-old Paul Davies was doing some drawing,

but he wasn't sketching bunnies or fantastical creatures. He reportedly drew a picture of someone digging on a hillside. Nearby, Paul wrote The End. While the details around what exactly he drew and who he showed it to have been debated, one thing is certain. The next day, the 8-year-old died in the Aberfan tragedy. And it wasn't just the kids or even the residents of Aberfan who had these visions. The night before the tragedy, a woman named Carolyn Miller,

who lived nowhere near the village had a premonition in the form of a dream. It was shockingly similar to the events that would unfold the next day. It featured a schoolhouse in a valley and a Welsh minor, enveloped in coal cascading down a mountain. Another woman, Mary Hennessy, also foresaw the disaster in a dream. It was so vivid, she called her son and daughter-in-law the next morning, who didn't live in Aberfan, to make sure her grandkids were okay. Dr. Barker collected all these premonitions and created a scoring system of sorts.

His goal was to rate the legitimacy of the visions themselves to see if they could be used to predict and prevent tragedies from occurring. He graded for accuracy, timing between premonition and events, as well as sheer weirdness of the premonition themselves. After Averfan, Dr. Barker kept meeting with folks who were said to have psychic abilities or some sort of sixth sense. Sadly, in the end, none of this research ever prevented. an oncoming tragedy. A lot of his colleagues in the medical field dismissed Dr. Barker's work as

unscientific. They claimed he was just collecting stories, nothing more. I can understand both sides here, but still, you can't help but wonder if only someone had taken what those kids said seriously, maybe none of this would have happened. But I guess you can't blame them for being cautious, because sometimes even the most powerful people in the world questioned their own intuition. What's up, Little Psychos? I'm Investigator Slater, host of the Psychopedia podcast. Psychopedia is a true crime podcast delivering real, raw, and insanely gripping episodes every single week.

I dive deep, way beyond the headlines to uncover a staggering amount of details about heinous true crime cases, while also exploring law, criminology, and psychology theories to better understand the twisted mind of the perpetrator. because exploring the darkest corners of the human psyche is my absolute favorite activity. Every episode is peppered with pop quizzes for you, the listener, to engage with, because I got to keep you sharp and on your toes at all times. Psychopedia is true crime like you've never heard it before. Investigated and delivered with pleasure by me, your dark queen, who's been on the front lines fighting for victim justice and exposing the darkness others might shy away from. Be sure to subscribe, follow, and listen to Psychopedia everywhere you get your podcast.

Before we get into our next and final story, I want to introduce you to a minor witness to major history. His name was Ward Hill Lemon. He lived in the 1800s, and one of his closest friends was none other than Abraham Lincoln. Back then, the president didn't have formal bodyguards, but he had people around looking after him. Ward Hill Lemon was one of those guys for Lincoln. They first got to know each other in the Illinois law scene. They stayed close, and when Lincoln eventually became president in 1860s, 11th sort of tagged along for the ride. In 1862, a year into his presidency, Lincoln's son,

Willie, died of typhoid fever. The president and his wife, Mary Todd, mourned the tragedy in their own ways. Lincoln shut himself in his room and cried. Mary Todd didn't leave her bed for weeks either, but she also sought closure in other ways. After Willie's death, she was known to hold seances in the White House. She hoped that maybe one day she could speak to her son again, And according to her, she did. Mary Todd claimed that Willie would come to her at night and stand at the foot of her bed, smiling. And Willie wasn't the only dearly departed child that she would see. Their other son, Eddie, who had died when he was four, would sometimes accompany his brother.

It seems like nobody minded because everyone grieves differently. Still, Lincoln wasn't exactly seeking out ghosts and spirits himself. But that didn't mean that they weren't going to find. him. On or around April 11, 1865, the president approached his friend Ward Hill Lemon. Lincoln was spooked. He said he had the most terrifying nightmare. He dreamt that he was dead. Lincoln told Lemon he was entering the East Room, the biggest and most ceremonial room in the White House, when he saw a corpse on the ground. It was wrapped in what he called funeral vestments. There were soldiers surrounding the body like they were guarding it. And there was a massive crowd of people

coming to pay their respects. At that point, Lincoln approached one of the soldiers and asked who the body belonged to. The soldier replied, the president, killed by an assassin. That's when Lincoln woke up in a cold sweat. Unfortunately, his dream was more than just a vision. Because three days later, Lincoln was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth. Now, I'm not sure how seriously Lincoln took the dream. At the time, he was under constant threat. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, and a lot of people were angry about all of the enslaved people that he freed. Lincoln knew there were plenty of folks who would love to see him dead. So maybe his vision was the product of the paranoia he must have felt, walking around worried that someone could kill

him. But there were things about what he saw that seemed too specific to write off as a coincidence. For example, the body Lincoln saw was lying in the East Room. After his assassination, Lincoln was taken to this very room where he was guarded by soldiers as visitors paid their respects. Still, we can't ignore the fact that the only reason we know any of this is because of Ward Hill Lemon. And who knows how much of his claims are true? After all, he only wrote about Lincoln's dream

about three decades after his assassination. The reality is we'll never know if Lemon was being lost. honest. But either way, it makes for a pretty great story. Morgan Robertson and the Titanic. The visions of the Aberfan disaster. Abraham Lincoln's ominous dream of his death. It's easy to write off these events as random coincidences, but if we dig a little deeper, we can see that there's more to the story. As human beings, we're always looking for patterns. It's natural to want to understand the world, especially when so many things seem outside of our control. And I'd argue that's a good thing. I'd also argue that two things can be true at once. Sure, maybe Morgan Robertson

didn't know he was writing a story that would turn out to be chillingly accurate. Maybe all those people in the UK randomly envisioned a disaster just like one in Aberfan. And maybe Abraham Lincoln was just feeling paranoid. And yet, all of these premonitions came true. Which brings us back to the question that I asked at the beginning. Can you stop a vision from happening? Is it possible to outrun death? I wish I had better news, but after everything, it seemed like Final Destination was right. When death comes knocking, it's just a matter of time. So in the meantime, why not enjoy life? Do what makes you happy.

Whether it's reading a cozy book, hanging out with friends, or rewatching Final Destination, for the tense time, it's all fair game. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Twisted Tales, a crimehouse original. I'd love to hear from you. What did you think about today's stories? Anything you're dying for me to cover? Leave a comment or review wherever you're tuning in. And make sure to follow Twisted Tale so we can keep building this community together.

I'll be back next week with another unbelievable true story. Until then, stay curious. And remember, there's no reason to fear the dark unless you try to hide from it. Did you know penicillin, the drug that has saved more lives than any other in history, was discovered because a scientist forgot to clean a petri dish before going on vacation? I'm Connor Tomlinson and history is my thing has been my whole life. And I'm Carter Roy and this is what the fact. The history lesson you actually wished you had in high school

with everything they cut for being too interesting put back in. Every week we take the wildest true things that ever happened and tell you the whole story behind them. I bring the history. I bring the facts, the tangents and the occasional British accent. The wildest stuff is real. And the real stuff is wilder than you think. New episodes every Wednesday.

Follow What the Fact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or subscribe on YouTube at What The Fact Pod. You know their names. You know their faces, but you've never heard these stories. On Celebrity Ghost Stories, an A&E original podcast presented by Rewind Studios, you'll hear spooky stories directly from the actors, musicians, and athletes you love. love in their own words. What do you do when a spirit saves you from the edge of death? When a single night in a strange hotel ends with you running for the door, from angry

spirits to haunted houses to unexplainable magic. These are true first-person accounts told by the stars who lived through them. Follow Celebrity Ghost Stories available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're looking for your next podcast, check out What The Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Follow What The Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What The Fact Pod.