Premonitions: Visions of the Future

A friend of mine mentioned the Aberfan coal landslide to me during a telephone conversation last week. I remember both my grandmother and school teachers telling stories of this disaster when I as a child in North Wales, so I decided to read a little more about this tragic event. 28 adults and 116 children were killed on October 21st 1966 when coal waste fell down the mountain covering the local school. I discovered that surveys after the event revealed approximately 200 cases of premonitions of the looming disaster…

A premonition is a prophetic and impressionable forewarning of a future event. You may recall a previous blog in which I referred to Abraham Lincoln’s premonition in dream state about his own assassination. The great Russian Psychic Wolfgang Messing also had a strong premonition of impending doom during a visit to Ashkhabad. He cut his trip short and cancelled his demonstrations. Three days later, Ashkhabad was destroyed by a gigantic earthquake that killed 50,000 people. Some of the worst disasters in history have been foretold by human beings who experience premonitions. Who would have imagined that the unsinkable Titanic could sink on her maiden voyage in 1912? 14 years before that tragic day, a booked entitled “Futility” was published – it told of the largest ship afloat, rich and famous passengers, a collision with an iceberg, and an insufficient supply of life boats…

Perhaps the most famous premonitions are those of Michel de Nostradamus – the reputed seer that we still speak of today around the world. Nostradamus foresaw World War II, JFK’s assassination, and the fall of communism. His book “The Prophecies” was first published in 1555. Apart from the bible, it is the only prophetic work to remain in print since the 16th century. Nostradamus discovered his specials gifts at an early age and began to predict birth dates and the sex of unborn children. He was also summoned by Catherine de Medici (King Henry II’s queen) to read astrological charts as an unofficial court advisor.