This Paranormal Life - #207 The Children That Saw The Future: British Premonitions Bureau

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

What if you could see the future? What if you could predict natural disasters before they happened? That's exactly what one British psychiatrist attempted in the 1960s after devastating landslide. This is his story.STREAM 'KEEP RUNNING'https://ffm.to/keep-runningPatreonpatreon.com/ThisParanormalLifeYouTubeyoutube.com/thisparanormallifeTwittertwitter.com/ThisParaLifeInstagraminstagram.com/thisparanormallifeSecret Society Facebook Pagewww.facebook.com/groups/thisparanormallife/Edited by Kami Tomantomanedits.comResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music: www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are dreams reality and reality is dreams? Could I live in space if I got really good at holding my breath? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Welcome back to This Paranormal Life! This is the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday we investigate a different paranormal case and decide within the hour if it's truly paranormal or not. As always, you are joined by myself, Mr. Kit Grimovena. This guy crossed with me, Mr. Roy Powers. How are you doing today, Roy?

I'm doing great, Kit. Very interesting intro questions right off the bat. A lot of my knowledge of space and what happens in space does come from children's cartoons. And I would love to know how much of it is real. For example, if you take your helmet off in space, does your head inflate like a balloon before exploding? Yeah, was that in cartoons? I mean, it seems too violent, doesn't it?

I think, I mean, it is. It's in my memory as well. Yeah, why was that a thing? They would always take off their helmet, turn into a balloon animal, and then burst into a ball of flesh. I just think the problem is breathing right what is space if not up water up sea okay but i think there's a bit like there's also dangerous radiation sorry i'm just trying to get the thought out here

in the same way what is this space but up water in the same way that one must learn as a child to swim in the ocean, one must also learn to live in up water. Yeah. I just want to go on record and say that it's not obviously just holding your breath. I think, you know, being up in space, you're exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Get a good tan though. There's no atmosphere up there. So, I mean, the pressure alone. I think atmosphere is overrated to be honest all right but i'm just saying if you think zero g's if you think you're gonna be okay up there because you can hold your breath i've

seen you hold your breath before by the way you didn't make it more than 17 seconds before you collapsed but i really think that the asthma will die will dial back a little bit once I'm basking in all that solar radiation. Kicking back on the f***ing rings of Pluto. Pluto doesn't have rings. Saturn has rings. Learn one thing about space before you go up there. The crisp white sands and pure waters of Pluto. Am I thinking of the Caribbean?

I've seen you almost drown in down water, in earth water. So you don't need to be going up to up water. I didn't say I could swim. All right. I really think I'll be able to swim better in up water.

Okay. I think we should probably move on from here. Exactly. On this episode, we're going to dive right into a huge investigation. So thank you right off the bat

to Tammy Nichols for sending this one in to this Paranormal Life podcast at gmail.com. Thank you, Tammy. We're in Aberfan, Wales, about half an hour from Cardiff. We're in New York. I don't know what that is.

Are you questioning my pronunciation of these authentic Welsh place names that I couldn't be bothered to look up? I think you're doing a good job. We're about half an hour outside of Cardiff. The date is October 21st, 1966. Though the mining industry is in steep decline, still 8,000 residents of Aberfan are employed at Merthyr Vale, a 100-year-old coal mine. Wales probably isn't the country to not care about the pronunciation of.

Probably any other country that we've been to, like South America and Asia, people don't expect us to know it but i feel like welsh people might care yeah we're kind of obliged i'll get uh i'll get my my welsh colleague gav to dub in some of these names oh shit in post you guys sound kind of alike people go about their business as usual the miners are working in the pits children safely at school as far as everybody knows a completely normal day is about to unfold. But this day was about to be anything but normal. Meanwhile, 160 miles away in London,

dance teacher Kathleen Middleton awakes with a start. She gasps for breath, feeling as if the walls were closing in. She can't shake the horrid feeling as she sits at the breakfast table. Her lodger, Alexander, strolls into the kitchen, stifling a yawn after finishing his overnight shift at work. He notices she seems a bit off. Morning, Miss Middleton. Is everything okay?

Just a bad dream. Not another one of those visions of yours. You see, Kathleen Middleton has a habit of seeing into the future. A habit? She has a, well, yeah, it's like a little fun little hobby on the side. Why? Is it by choice or is it just kind of thrown, thrust upon her? Well, she couldn't shake the horrid feeling of dread gasping for breath at the breakfast table, so probably not by choice.

She hasn't worked as a psychic or ever publicly shared her gift, but throughout her 52 years, she experiences headaches before things happen. Information about impending disasters just occasionally pops up in her head. I hope not. This one was really bad. I need a cuppa.

Blimey, you never have tea. You must be rattled. Within the hour, it becomes clear that Kathleen's gut is correct. One of the country's worst mining disasters is about to strike. After weeks of rain, the piles of coal dust on top of the hill above the town are heavily saturated. At about 9 o'clock that morning, 150,000 tons of built-up coal waste starts to slide down the hill towards the town at a frightening pace. Whoa. It moves too quickly for the town to evacuate, and it eviscerates everything in its wake. The sound is like a roaring jet engine. The landscape is decimated and entire buildings are swallowed by the avalanche of coal dust that had been building up on top of the mountaintop for decades. My god! Pipes burst

and start flooding the valley. Every able-bodied person in the village swarms to free the people trapped under the debris. People comb through the rubble with their bare hands. Soon bulldozers are mobilized and silence falls as rescuers strain to hear the survivors. Residents of surrounding towns hear the news and rush to lend a hand. Phone lines jam as so many people offer help in any way they can. Requests for rubber gloves turn up thousands of pairs. A fundraising campaign over the coming weeks draws in millions in donations. But despite the massive efforts, 144 people die in the disaster. Holy shit. This is pretty dark for this Prime Rumble Life episode.

Sometimes reality is dark. I did an episode a couple weeks back on the Lizard Man, and I thought that was edging me in a little too real of a territory. I thought that was a little intense. A couple you suggested we move to chernobyl that was for a mine i was to go live in a mine okay it was for our own good that wasn't for a dark reason so that mining disaster was fine for you but this disaster is too dark pretty crazy i actually yeah i didn't really know much about the history of this disaster. Truly a tragic moment in British history. Here is, just for reference, a picture of the village. And you can see the pretty conspicuous mounds of coal above the town and then the trail of coal down towards the town.

Wow, yeah. This thing, it looks like a volcano went off, essentially, and seeped down into the town. Looks like a volcano went off, essentially, and like seeped down into the town. How is this not addressed? Sooner to have this giant pile of coal building up right on top of the mountain above a town. My God, like once you see what happened here, it feels like it was probably pretty preventable. Sadly, very true. Among the hundreds of volunteers is 42-year-old psychiatrist John Barker. When he arrives, the emergency responders are still digging through the rubble.

He begins striking up conversations with locals trying to keep their spirits up. He's comforting a young mother, Mrs Davies, when she tells him a strange story. You're going to think I'm crazy. I shouldn't be telling a psychiatrist this of all people. But I can't shake this thought. What's that? Last night, my eight-year-old Paul was drawing. I popped my head over to see what he was drawing, and I thought it was the strangest thing. A picture of a huge group of people digging at the bottom of a hill. At the bottom of the page were two words. The end. John mulls this over as he walks around and speaks to others, but is again shocked when

he speaks to the mother of 10-year-old Errol Jones. She recalls that the day before the disaster, her daughter looks up and says, Mommy, let me tell you about my dream last night. Mrs. Jones is wrapped up in her housework. Darling, I've no me again later no mummy you must listen i dreamt i went to school and there was no school there something black had come down all over it kids are so creepy john barker can't believe what he's hearing what are you thinking if you're john at this point you just came to help out uh in this tragedy. And at least two parents immediately confide in you that their children psychically predicted this event. If I ever have a kid and I wake up one morning,

we're down at the dinner table and the kid goes, oh, papa, I must tell you about my dream last night. And I go, I'm late for work. I can't really do it right now. And the kid goes, but papa, you must hear it. I it i'm like well now i absolutely don't want to hear it because it's gonna be something weird you're a weird little kid and i didn't want to say this in front of your mother but you f**king scare me sometimes i've seen the drawings of the darkness writing the end signing it off with the end uh i don't want to hear it i think uh i think maybe it's something

that will change when i have a child of my own but uh i know i want to hear it i think uh i think maybe it's something that will change when i have a child of my own but uh i know i would find this so creepy to be fair you're just scared of children full stop right non-stop yeah and i got a whole bunch of the little bastards so you think you know you think i would have gotten used to it by now but i just borderline a horror game every night when they stay over which is like is messed up because you did work in Disneyland for a while. Why you applied for that job is beyond me. Yeah, well, it was like, I thought it would be, you know, when you're afraid of spiders, they say the best thing to do is like cover yourself in spiders.

No one says that. So I'm afraid of children and talking mice. Okay, I think we better stop now before you incriminate yourself. I couldn't make it five minutes into Ratatouille without freaking the f*** out. Children and talking mice are the most terrifying two things on this earth. Horror movies are relaxing to me. It's f***ing wholesome stuff that's terrifying. Children, puppies, falling in love.

That's really scary. Because what's more scary than opening up to people? Luckily, he isn't just a psychiatrist. John is a paranormal enthusiast in the middle of writing a book about people that can predict the future. He's most interested in investigating people who know that they're going to die. So immediately after visiting Aberfan that day, John writes a paper for Britain's Society for Psychical Research, which we've talked about many times in the past. I still don't really know what these guys do. I feel like psychiatrist slash paranormal enthusiast is a bad career combination.

Oh, God. That's like being policeman slash criminal. Those are two very contradictory things. You shouldn't be trying to understand the human mind and also think that ghosts are real. things you shouldn't be trying to understand the human mind and also think that ghosts are real like you're not gonna get a lot of help from the man that thinks the problem might be there's a demon in your ass if i as say for sake of argument a depressed person and i look through the yellow pages and find oh great there's a local psychiatrist to me john barker he sounds like a respectable gentleman and then i go go to the office and

hey, I had an appointment with Dr. Barker. Yep. Come on in. Yeah, absolutely. Hi. Nice to meet you. My name's Craig. Pleasure. Pleasure. If you just like to take a seat here on the couch. Yeah. Yeah. Just relax. You know, I like to just get into these things in a very informal manner. It's your first time. You know, we don't want to open up too much so sure because i yeah because i do feel you know like this is the first time i've ever talked to psychiatrists so i guess i feel like a little in the dark and a little um worried maybe about the process of course yeah well there's nothing to be worried about speaking of the dark though the dark arts specifically um have you ever participated in the dark arts that was an incredibly pregnant pause um no right all right

i'm way too anxious to be you know messing around with the dark arts or whatever so okay that's good to know if you take a seat on the couch i'm already on the couch all right i'm sorry i'm just looking at my notes here i'm just drawing a crucifix on my page uh tell me Tell me about your childhood. Was your father a man? He was. Good to know. Good to know. He is a man, yeah. Yeah, I had great parents growing up.

Do you ever see them pass through a wall? Did their feet touch the ground? Did they have feet? Does my father have feet? Was your house underground growing up? What are you getting at? Did you open the door just then or did you float through it i wasn't paying attention i'm starting to feel anxious right now

is it could we we put a pin in this you lock the door i've got you cornered you ghost you're gonna want to take two of these pulls pulls out a double barrel shotgun. Holy! He turns into a ghost, floats through the door. I knew it! That's right, so John writes a paper for Britain's Society of Psychical Research, an organisation

entirely dedicated to investigating the paranormal. He announces that he intends to compile people's premonitions of this disaster to see if anyone truly predicted what was going to happen. Word of this reaches the local papers and towns around the area and immediately people start writing into John. I'm looking forward to seeing the scope of this. You know, was it just a thought or was it, as we have seen before, more drawings or premonitions in that sense? Yeah, that would be interesting because, you know.

It's hindsight 2020. It's really easy for people to go, yeah, no, I actually had a bit of an upset stomach the morning of. You know, it's easy to kind of put that in your mind that you felt that way beforehand. But if there's some physical evidence like the kids had, that's some interesting stuff. In total, 76 people around the country wrote to Dr. Barker to say they predicted the coal slip in one manner or another. He replied to around 60 of these people and started driving around the country visiting those that seemed most promising. He was astonished at what he heard. Two days before the accident, a Lancashire man dreamed about buying a book from

a machine with the word Aberfan on it, which he had never heard of before. A woman at a religious meeting in Plymouth had a vision of a small school, a Welsh miner, and an avalanche of coal hurtling down a mountainside towards a floppy-haired boy. So pretty black and white, yeah. More than, yeah, the book with the name of the town on it. She claims she told six people about her vision before it came true. When all is said and done, John is most intrigued by the seven correspondents

who had physical symptoms, like Kathleen Middleton, the woman from the very beginning of our story. He develops a theory that some people have a medical condition called pre-disaster syndrome, and that it could be as common as being left-handed. John decides the most sensible thing to do is to establish the British Premonitions Bureau with the help of the science editor of the Evening Standard newspaper. A year-long experiment to collect people's premonitions in the name of science. Wow, So we're talking about a team here similar to the Avengers

that, you know, can't do anything to solve the problems that are happening, but they might be able to tell everyone that they're about to happen. It's like if the Avengers was made up of guys like Bruce Banner, but they couldn't turn into the Hulk. Right.

Just scientists. Yeah. So, you know, they say, they call a big meeting together. They're like, Mr. President, in about 12 months, Thanos and his Starfleet are going to engage on warfare all across New York City. Half of humanity are going to disappear in the snap of a mighty finger. And I'm like, oh, my God. What are you going to do?

Me? What do you mean, me? What am I going to? I just told you the thing's going to happen. I'm done. I wrote the paper. The f*** are I going to? I just told you the thing's going to happen. I'm done. I wrote the paper. The f*** are you going to do? You're the president. I'm going on annual leave tomorrow. I busted my ass to get this report ready.

Break his fingers or something. We have no idea. You called yourself the Avengers. I thought you were going to do something. Yeah, you need, that's a separate team. Why the f*** do you have a stealth jet? You know, it's, it's, it's a valuable, valuable in a separate team. Why the f*** do you have a stealth jet? You know, it's valuable in a different sense. It is. John decided that responses

will be rewarded for accuracy, timing, and unusualness. John saw in the future a database for the entire world's psychic visions that could be used to stop bad things happening. He said, we should set report trying to stop things happening. It seems like proximity plays a role in this because the people that predicted that the accident was going to happen were all locals in the town.

Some of them were around the country. But yeah, I mean, the first ones were, yeah, I think I mentioned they were in like Lancashire and Plymouth. But yeah, no one got in touch from like... Zimbabwe or something. I was dreaming of coal. I guess they didn't see the ad in the local paper, though, to write in. That is a good point. That is a good point.

But yeah, trippy to think that if any time you had, you know, the other night, I had a pretty bad dream of getting chased by someone with a knife. Horrible to think that in some part of the world probably was someone getting chased with a knife somewhere. That's a really good point. Maybe I predicted that. Wow. That dark that is that's pretty dark yeah that's a dangerously realistic dream did you really have that dream i did actually yeah who was it bit of a stress dream do you know who was it in the dream that was chasing you i mean i don't want to call them out right here and now, but it starts with Rory and rhymes with Bowers.

I kept saying the podcast was late. The podcast was late. Running after you in the streets. That's really how I see you. And as soon as the Bureau is launched, more than 20 warnings come through in the first 48 hours. But no incident happened afterwards

to corroborate with those reports. But John isn't put off. He knows there are going to be some dud submissions, but thinks it'll be worth it in the end. If only one major catastrophe could be shown to have been prevented by this means, the project would have been more than justified itself, perhaps for all time. They got their first chance sooner than they might have thought. On the 21st of March, Alan Hencher phones John Barker at 6am to share a premonition. John, a plane is going to crash. I saw it. It crashed over mountains. 124 people are going to die. crashed over mountains. 124 people are going to die. Within 30 days, a plane carrying 130 people crashed into a hill in Cyprus. The next day, the headline read, 124 die in airliner. So they didn't do anything? Well, how could they know? The dream, The permanent inlet. The whole point of the goddamn mind force.

So he calls up every airline on planet Earth and says, I had a dream. They all hang up. You got to get a couple W's under your belt before people pick up the phone. Exactly. All right. That's fair. But at least, look, if you're going to assemble this brain squad of psychic wizards, you need to have then a team of people who can also enforce the protection

that needs to be brought in to save the catastrophe from happening. Sure. Because otherwise you're just saying, yeah, I had a dream that a plane crashed and, yep, there it is. You got to start somewhere. It's a W. The premonition is so startlingly accurate, the newspapers even write about Alan Hensher who phoned it in.

He's a phone operator for the post office and began seeing the future after hitting his head in his 20s. He says that when he sees the future, I get a sick headache, a heavy, dull feeling, until it's as if a band of steel were around me head. John Barker was thrilled. Not exactly about the crash with 124 people dying, but this is just the first of several hits the Bureau will experience. Wow. The majority of which coming from this guy, Alan, and Kathleen Middleton, who we discussed at the beginning.

Which kind of makes sense if you think about it. Like, okay, it's a really awesome idea, the idea of anyone in the world can call in and register premonition. But realistically, how many psychics do we expect to be out there like Kathleen? Yeah. You know, it kind of makes sense that once he's found one or two psychics, they're going to do most of the reporting. You put them in the roster, top of the roster. Yeah.

I like the idea of him hitting his head and that's how the premonitions start. Very in line with, you know, superhero narratives, you know? Yeah. Something befalling some sort of tragedy and in the wake of that being gifted some sort of incredible power, Spider-Man being bitten by a radioactive spider,

I believe wasn't a Hulk like trapped in a machine. And that turned like the gamma rays, the radiation turned into the Hulk. I believe that was something like that. You know, I like that idea. Yeah. I mean,

the annoying thing is by this logic, I should be able to see the end of time. Right. Your whole life has been befalling tragedies. My parents dropped me on my head. I banged my head three times a day. I did, being honest, I did a couple of years back skateboarding.

I fell over off a ledge and whacked my head off a bin. A lot of these are just banging your head. Yeah, well, that's all Alan did. He can see the future. and whacked my head off a bin and blacked out. A lot of these are just banging your head. Yeah, well, that's all Alan did, and he can see the future. He did it once, and it worked for him. I don't think if you banged your head once, you didn't get powers. You shouldn't keep trying to bang your head harder to get those powers.

I'm not trying to bang my head. It's just a byproduct of being a f***ing dumbass. It would be funny to think if I did get powers the first time and then the second time I hit my head, it immediately wiped out any powers I had. This is the equivalent of like, you know, letting yourself get bit by a spider to try and become a superhero. Getting so poisoned, you spend eight months recovering in the hospital and the day you're released, you're like, all right, no big deal.

It was the wrong spider. I need to go back into the jungle. And then I, no, there is no spider. Yeah, I really think that one of these guys is going to give me the special juice.

I really think if more venom would have actually given me the special stuff. It's a bad, yeah, it's a bad idea. If it doesn't work, I think call more venom would have actually given me the special stuff. Yeah, it's a bad idea. If it doesn't work, I think call it quits. You know, if you stick your fork in the toaster and you get a pretty bad zap. Fork in the toaster is actually... Don't think you're going to get...

Might be on to something there. No, I'm saying don't get some... Can we just pause for a second? I need the bathroom, actually. I know what you're going to go do and I think you're going to put your fork in the toaster. Why would you ask that? Why would you ask that if you knew what. And I think you're going to put your fork in the toaster. Why would you ask that? Why would you ask that if you knew what I thought you were going to do was put a fork in the toaster? I just, I have a snack here.

And I just feel like I would enjoy it with a nice fork. That's a packet of gum. You're holding a packet of mint gum. Why would you want to eat that with a fork? Well, I'm a civilized guy. I'm not going to eat it with my hands, am I? just worried if i give you the fork i might want to toast the gum you're gonna i might want to toast the gum i think it's better hot so you're gonna use the toaster if you don't mind and the fork the fork i mean if sure if the gum gets stuck at the bottom of

the toaster and gets all gummed up i might try and scrape it out with the fork sure i'm also worried that on the way to the toaster you're gonna bang your head i mean if there is there something hard that would be good for that at like head height okay so you want to also bang your head and then stick the fork i think at the same time something interesting could happen you know what go for it i'm not gonna babysit you anymore i think you can i think you should do it all right wish me luck I think you should do it. All right. Wish me luck.

You're going to wish you had had a go at this toaster once you see my laser vision. You're blind. You have no pupils anymore. Alan Hensher and Kathleen Middleton are... The phones are ringing off the hook from these two. They're calling into the Premonitions Bureau. They both see a train crash on its way into London in their minds.

Kathleen predicts a French maritime disaster, Alaskan floods, and tornadoes across the United States. The evening before Soviet cosmonaut Vlasimir Komarov's return to Earth, Kathleen has a vision of a spaceman feeling a great deal of fear. And indeed, he died on reentry to Earth the next day. Wow. These are all pretty vivid dreams. Not just a hint of something. You know,

I didn't feel like I was floating in stars or something. And I felt a bit sad. It's like, I dreamt an astronaut, a Russian astronaut died in space. I got his phone number if we want to call him. Even my dream about getting chased by you, a murderer. I don't really remember the details. My recollection basically stops at knife, run. Right, right, right. I'm kind of putting the, you put the pieces together in your mind after the fact. My brother literally dreamed a week ago

that I chased him down and injected him with poison. You whispered in his ear, there can be only one. So I'm a little bit worried if you had a dream where Dream Roy was chasing you with a knife and my brother had a dream that- You're f***ing Freddy Krueger. What kind of impression am I giving off in my day-to-day life that this is how you all think of me in your dreams you're f***ing Freddy Krueger you are a dream killer my dreams are all

butterflies and chocolate rivers and everyone else's dream, I'm Michael from Halloween. Yeah, he said he had a dream. It was a zombie apocalypse, but every zombie was Rory. He said I injected him with a poison. And then it was one of those moments in a dream where once he was injected, like he can't walk. Oh, that's a good one. He was like, what did you give me?

And I'm just standing there with a needle so uh it's so vivid yeah it's really weird isn't it goodness i hope we have um we have people in the um the paranormal commune who say they listen to us sometimes when they're going to sleep yes and occasionally we will pop up in their dreams so hopefully their dream isn't you podcasting and me chasing them around the room with a knife. I know it's like in their dream, they walk into our podcast studio and you just put down the mic and are like, you immediately get a knife. I get a fork and a toaster and start chasing them. I would love to know if we have tried to murder you in your dreams.

Let us know. Apart from Kyle. That wasn't a dream, brother. We did come for you after that nasty iTunes review. This is where things start to take a dark turn. Suddenly, the premonitions start getting personal. Alan Hensher calls up John one evening. John, I've been worrying about you all day.

Check your gas line. I think it might be leaking. Dr. Barker dutifully checks, but there's no problem. But Henshaw continues to give ominous warnings. Have you a dark car? Why, yes, Alan. It's dark green. Be very careful. Look after yourself, Dr. Barker. Beads of sweat start to form on John's forehead. Is my life in danger? Yes. Hensher's four warnings continued for more than a year before Kathleen Middleton started too.

She tells him she's seen a vision of him with her deceased parents. She saw it for a week straight until she finally broke down and told Dr. Barker. Dr. Barker writes about these grim prophecies in a memo titled, Some Interesting Predictions and a Possible Death Sentence. to some extent, sticks his neck out and must accept what he gets. The important thing is, though, for this information to be recorded, so that if anything does happen, it should cause some interest and may stimulate others to continue this important work. The most disturbing part is that during all of this, Middleton and Hensher keep making accurate prophecies.

Kathleen knows JFK will be assassinated months before it happens, and calls three times on the morning it happens in a panic. I guess this is the problem is how do you, like you say, they should step in and solve this problem. You can't call the president of the United States. Yeah. And be like, hey, heads up, you're going to get assassinated today. By the way, yeah, yeah. Because the CIA will track the phone line and think you're the assassin.

Yeah, if you're tipping someone off about getting assassinated the day of their assassination, you're the murderer. You're the one who's going to do it. There's only one explanation. Yeah, I guess it's as you said, that's why you need to have so many 100% hits leading up to this that it becomes a point where people can't avoid it anymore. Exactly. And sure enough, in the early hours of 18th August, 1968, Kathleen wakes up breathless. She's sure that the feeling means death. And within a few hours, she'll receive the news

that the same day, John Barker died from a brain hemorrhage at his home at the age of 44. Whoa. Rory, what do you think of all these mad predictions we've had so far? Wow, this is pretty insane that they kind of predicted he was going to die. There was some weird stuff about a gas leak and asking about the color of his car. And that was a year before he died. Is that how far forward these premonitions can be? God, hard to imagine, eh? I mean, sometimes in the movies, you know, it's a cool plot device when the person has a premonition

that's like 40 years in the future. Right, right, right. They're a child and they have a vision. And then when they're 45 years old, they're walking down the street and they're like, I've been here before. Yeah. Oh my God. And then a plane crashes or whatever. How do these people, I don't even remember the dream I had last night. How do they remember a dream they had a year ago? I guess maybe they're logging it pretty well. I think that's the idea. That's what dream people,

not people in the dream realm, people who know about dreams. That's what they always say is if you want to start lucid dreaming, you got to start writing down your dreams every morning and then your brain gets better at recalling them. Yeah. Dream people, as in the people in dreams talk mostly about stabbing knives and knives uh yeah i've heard that that it's good to keep a diary by your bed if you want

to get into this kind of thing so that you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is turn and just write down whatever you can remember because isn't it like most dreams are forgotten within like the first 15 seconds of waking up? Something kind of crazy like that? I think so. Especially when, especially now because of Instagram. Yeah, of course. If there was any hope of remembering a dream,

now that like 60% of people on planet Earth, the first thing they do in the morning is look at their phone. Yeah. You're not remembering anything. Sometimes I Instagram live waking up. Like it'll start with my eyes closed. I don't even remember starting it, the app open.

So all told, the Bureau of Premonitions received 469 entries. Some foretell horrifying tragedies laden with death and destruction, and others just claim to predict the winners of horse races. Some prophecies came true.

Most did not. Those horse race ones actually sound pretty interesting. That's maybe maybe it's a different department, I think, for sure. Some sort of Wolf of Wall Street-esque department, not really preoccupied with the conservation of human life, but more the conservation of the party and making a little bit of profit. The trouble is, Roy, there's some layers to this. You know, for one, it is astounding that any predictions came true through the Premonitions Bureau. But it doesn't exactly help that some of the practices were less than scientific. For one, the guy in charge of the whole thing is a full-on paranormal believer who is a little biased.

Some even wondered if his death could have been equally explained by the nocebo effect. What? You know the placebo effect? Yes. There's a nocebo. What? A nocebo effect is when believing in something negative happening to you, even if it's not happening,

has a real negative effect on you. Right. Rather than a positive one. So while writing his book, he visited tons of fortune tellers to try and predict his own death, despite his suspicion that he was creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right, right. But as an example of how it works, in 2003, men in a trial were given placebos that would cause erectile dysfunction. And in the end, despite literally nothing happening to their health,

30% of the man's dick stopped working. Wow. Sorry, you said that there was like a, something to fix that? A nocebo? Right, so in their case, I guess all they had to be told was, hey, nothing actually happened.

And then it was all in their head and they were able to, their junk was able to start working again but but you said there was something that could fix it if it was happening i think there was i didn't say that you mentioned a pill you said it no they took they took a sugar pill right which didn't do anything that like gave the penis the energy to rise once more sorry i, I'm just saying I didn't say anything like that. I feel like maybe some of our listeners out there are interested in this subject.

I don't think we get very hung up on the penis thing at all. It's just like a little aside on how the nocebo works. About how it works. So anyway, we'll look at it some more premonitions. I just want to know, is the nocebo an over-the-counter thing or is that a a dark web sort of thing no you're really really you're not listening to what i'm saying because the nocebo the point is that it doesn't do anything

at all right okay if anything i'm just saying you know it stopped people's dicks working hypothetically well hypothetically speaking yeah if you know there was a listener out there that was having problems downstairs with the little i would just say you know get talk to a doctor or something okay okay you're saying but belief is what makes it work again but like it depends what the issue is because right okay but you're saying it's like santa claus if you close your eyes and just say like rise tiny soldier rise tiny soldier and just repeat that you're saying it could it could come it could have a second wind and the pills i feel like you won't tell me where i can get the pills so in the case of someone who maybe has some kind of mental block i guess that could work you know just taking for someone like you let's say who well me no no no no no that's not me it's not me like bmxing and you sacked

yourself on a rail uh in someone like your case. I told you that. It was in confidence that I told you that. No kind of mantra such as, well, rise little soldier, rise. I don't think that would ever. Your penis isn't a cast. It's pretty busted. I've been burned before, all right? I spent 1,500 pounds on what turned out to be a bag of Skittles on the dark web, thinking that they would solve the problem, and they didn't. They burst into flames and literally burned my penis.

You're saying it's more of a mental barrier. For these people, not for me. For these people in this case. For you, it's a physical issue. But for other people. For you, it's physical. So it's definitely not proven that believing you're going to die will make you die. But it does make us think, what's more likely here?

And this is a real question. A psychic paranormal prediction or a really powerful nocebo effect? Right. I mean, this is the thing. Look, if you are so stressed out, you're going to die. You're 100% convinced any day, you're going to die. You're a hundred percent convinced any day. Now you're going to die. All of a sudden you're not sleeping well anymore. You're you're up late at night, smoking cigarettes. There's no time to cook. You're going to die any second. You're ordering cheeseburgers off the internet.

Of course, you're going to die. Your ticker is going to pop. And you're sitting there chanting to yourself, rise, little soldier, rise. Nothing nothing's happening you're stressed out of your mind whereas you know if you're just living your best life if you're out there you know getting up early exercising doing yoga thinking you're an immortal you've got an erection that'll last seven hours you've never felt better in your life you're probably gonna live longer isn't that what the ad says is like if your erection lasts longer than two hours, call a doctor. That's a problem? I thought it meant it was working well.

I need to cut back on those nocebos, man. You dark web skittles. Yeah, you're like, those are still skittles. They're just the sour ones. Oh, they sting. the sour ones oh they burn you know it probably is worth noting that even the foundations of the british premonitions bureau were as shaky as the foundations of that shaky mountain of coal above the town of aberfan uh lots of non-psychic people also predicted that disaster given that they saw a quarter million cubic meters of coal,

should not have been balanced precariously on top of a mountain above a school. Residents and officials of Aberfan raised their concerns three years before the landslide, but the National Coal Board ignored their complaints to keep the mine open. But the question remains, Rory, and we have to come down to a conclusion today. Can people really predict the future? Or do some people just have a little bit more intuition than others? I'd love to. I'd love to have the hit record for this organization, because as you said, it seems like a hotline where pretty much anyone and anyone could call in with any type of premonition they

had. Presumably, you're going to get a lot more misses than hits. I'll tell you right now, it wasn't good. All right, okay. I mean, given that they got all of their predictions from two people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, towards the end, especially. They had 469 predictions.

And how many did those two people phone in? Probably like a dozen each or something. Yeah. Like it was a very bad rate, but I think that's okay. I think if when everyone knows the paranormal is a subtle field of inquiry, it's not like a crazy obvious phenomenon we're looking for here. We're looking for the needle in a haystack that proves the exception to the rule. Yes.

Yeah. I guess it's only difficult because difficult because you know and i don't want this to be an indication of where i'm leaning towards the conclusion of this but uh as the saying goes if you throw enough shit at the wall some will stick so is that the saying it is isn't it i guess well there's the shit hitting the fan right then there's throwing then there's the rule if you throw cooked pasta against a wall and it sticks it's properly cooked is that a saying or just a thing that's a thing oh right and then there's um you know if you hold a butter cup up to your chin and it glows yellow

then you like butter that's another that's also a thing sure uh not relevant to the case i think if you open a bag of crisps upside down, it means you're in love. Yeah. I think when we were in school, it either meant you were in love or gay. Yeah. Which, I mean, could be both the same thing. Exactly. You could just be in love with someone from the same sex.

It's really a beautiful thing. It truly is. We were so far ahead of our time as 11 year olds. We didn't even know it. I'm so happy for you, brother, to see that you opened a bag of crisps upside down. Yeah, there's a lot of sayings. I think specifically today we're going to throw our shit at the wall and see what sticks. I feel like that's maybe what was happening in these cases.

I'm going to take the lead on this one, Rory. All right. I feel like we went into that then. this one, Rory. All right. I feel like we weren't into that then. I have decided in the case of the British Premonitions Bureau that not all of the predictions landed were true, were hits, but some were. And I do think that it's possible. I think that people have predicted the future. Now, whether that is pure chance is almost impossible to know. There is many people in the world, many events to predict. But I do think that uncanny, bizarre predictions have occurred. And I think that by definition, predicting the future is paranormal. And that's why I'm going to give it a yes seal of approval

today. Wow. Oh, my goodness. I did not expect that from this case. not to say it wasn't a great case you know there's lots of conflicting sources uh can you predict what my conclusion is going to be here's a way to test it hold on let me just can i use the toaster though because i feel like that might help the toaster didn't work before it definitely didn't think if i put my tongue in the toaster no i think that will just cut out the middleman don't need the the fork. Cut out the fork? The fork's probably the only thing that kept you alive. The middleman took most of the charge. Right. I'm just making the middleman my tongue.

That's like cutting out the body armor in a SWAT raid. Look, how about this? I'm going to make a prediction right now. I predict I'm going to win the lottery this week. I'm going to make that prediction right now. I can really, I feel like it's going to happen. Okay. Right. And I'm going to buy a lottery ticket. And if I win, then this case is a yes. The predictions are real. I did it myself. And if I do lose this week, it's going to be a no from me i mean you you gotta know that makes no sense it makes a lot of sense you have absolutely no no established history as a as a psychic or someone who makes predictions oh i really think if you just for once let me have a bang on the

toaster things will be a little bit different and also you're not predicting like what's going to happen in the future you're just saying what you want to happen. You're trying to change the future, not predict it. You're trying to manifest. This isn't predicting the future. So all I'm going to say is, you're going to have to tune into next week's episode of This Paranormal Life to find out whether humans truly can predict the future.

And I actually might not be here because if I've won, I'm getting the f*** out of here. I'm not doing another goddamn episode of this podcast. That kind of hurts to hear. So a bit of a hung jury today. We've got one yes and one, I don't know what the f*** you want to call that,

but one undecided. Very true. Well, I'll be decided. I'll be decided very soon. Hope that is not too dissatisfying for our loyal listeners. and thank you so much to tammy nichols for sending that one in to us at this part of my life podcast at gmail.com of course thank you to cammy toman for editing and amy grisdale for researching this episode i do hope

you enjoyed this week's episode of this paranormal life uh we all wait with bated breath to see what rory well how big he wins if you follow him on instagram and you see him on a super yacht with models popping bottles oh yeah uh ignoring all covid laws you know that he's won a couple milli a couple dollars for sure oh it's gonna be i i got a good feeling guys maybe. Maybe it is going to be a double yes this week if the dollars start coming in. But if you just cannot wait to get that result and until next week's investigation, head on over to patreon.com forward slash thisparanormallife,

where from as little as $5 a month, you get access to every single bonus episode we've ever made for just $5. We've been making those things for almost four years yeah and for just one fell swoop one fell swipe of your credit card uh for five dollars get access to over approaching 40 investigations and it'll be interesting to note that you know all of your patreon donations this month and for well all the following months go directly to kit greer uh the poor poor son of a bitch who didn't believe that i would actually win the lottery you haven't won it yet i feel now you know that we've talked about it a little bit i'm actually

feeling really confident that this is gonna happen so confident that you know what i'm gonna write you a check right now for half a million dollars uh i feel like you could be a little more generous if you're gonna win what like the euro millions or something uh just wait to the end of the pocket that though i mean wait to the end of the week to cash it though because i'm a little dry at the minute i'll cash it whenever i see well no no i almost insist because i i do need to wait for the fortune to come in i got a couple other checks that need to be cashed a lot sooner than that one does i mean if you want to want to get you to sign something else, if you don't mind, you could sign this contract to say that the Patreon is mine. Well, I can sign that right now, brother.

All right. Boom. Damn, this is a pretty profitable no episode for me. Yeah. So if you want to go and support Kit on Patreon, head on over to patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life that would actually be swell all money goes directly to this poor son of a bitch who uh you can call me whatever you want i've got a check for half a million dollars in my pocket which is more than you're gonna win by the way because you ain't gonna win shit i might have been a little too much i might

have got carried away a little bit do you mind if i cross off one of the zeros at the end of that check you you only win half a million dollars and sign all of it over to me oh shit you get all the patreon money and all of my lottery money next week i'm like hosting the podcast on my own all proceeds of the go fund me go to per person of a bitch rory pars everyone redacts their donations so come on guys you you gave them the kit oh you assholes i'll see you in your dreams with a knife all right yeah i did it yeah every night i do a satanic incantation to chase people in their dreams rory is right uh the money from the patreon directly goes towards making this show making it possible for us to do it is weirdly our job now which is kind of unfathomable to the people who started making this

a few years ago and it's all possible through your donations at patreon.com so if you enjoy the show please head over there and check it out of course there's lots of free content out there um not on patreon head on over to youtube.com forward slash this paranormal life where we post up clips video clips of the episodes all the links to all our social media and patreon and everything is in the description of this podcast check out the socials to see the video of me scratching the winning ticket live all right and then prepare to worship me like a god because i'm not also rich but apparently i'm psychic and rory's gonna be feeling pretty generous when he wins so if everyone could just comment underneath that

video uh tagging you and a friend and whoever you want to donate a thousand dollars to the winnings rory is going to give away a thousand dollars to every person who comments on that video hell yeah brother plenty to go around the tap is is flowing. Everyone have a drink. And in the last couple of weeks, we played our brand new single, Keep Running. And we implored you to pre-save it on Spotify. And so many of you came through. We're so thankful. It really, really makes a huge difference to us releasing the song.

We really hope you liked it. I know some of you did. And we did promise that we would give away some merchandise to a few lucky winners who pre-saved the song and gave us their email address. And I can announce those right now. So the winners are Saxon Freiner O'Quinn. Great name. Kat Ann Lorimer-Taylor. Another great name. And Nicholas Montoya. So thank you so much for pre-saving, Nicholas Montoya. So thank you so much for pre-saving guys. I've got your

emails so I'm going to contact you about sizes for your prize. Thank you so much to everyone though who did enter and who took the time and pre-saved it and hopefully listened to it. Hugely helpful. The song is now out everywhere. Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere you get your music.

We really hope that you love it. But that just about wraps it up for today. Hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Hope you tune in next week to hear all about Rory's winning ticket. We'll be back next week with a brand new paranormal investigation. See you then.