The Premonitions Bureau

The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight (2022 Faber and Faber paperback 249pp)

I’ve always had an odd, uneasy intellectual relationship with things that may be classed as ‘paranormal’ or ‘supernatural’. The rational part of me wants to be a hard-nosed sceptic and dismiss it all as rubbish and fantasy and for the most part I do. However, for the last 40 or so years I’ve also found myself drawn to study many of the same liminal ‘Fortean’ topics. I gives me a sense of wonder and a feeling of ‘what if?” that I can’t easily dismiss. Perhaps just a form of entertainment but sometimes there’s just enough evidence and testimony to keep the sceptic at bay and make me think there must really be something going on here or indeed out there.

Although ostensibly about the subject of people telling the future, Sam Knight’s excellent book wisely keeps the speculation to the minimum.

Starting with the 1966 Aberfan disaster, this book is really the story of one ordinary man, his extraordinary interests and how they intersected to eventually change his life.

On October 21 1966 a pile of coal mine waste products which had, despite warnings, been piled upon the hillside above the Welsh town of Aberfan collapsed and came racing down the hill in a black slurry that submerged much of the town. 144 people lost their lives including 116 children who were at two schools on the edge of town that took most of the impact.

Into the aftermath came psychiatrist John Barker. At the time writing a book about people dying from shear fright and shock he was attracted by stories of victims of the disaster surviving the physical trauma only to die suddenly later. This led to him uncovering multiple accounts of people, some children, who seemed to have had premonitions of what was about to happen. Fascinated by this possibility Barker decided to study the topic of premonitions and general. Contact with Evening Standard science reporter Peter Fairley led to the pair setting up an experimental ‘Premonitions Bureau’ at the newspaper. They encouraged readers to send in examples what they thought were predictions of disasters and world events and then reviewed them to see which correspondents had the best ‘hit-rates’

Two individuals stood out and Knight’s book only really focuses on them when it comes to the bureau’s successes. Lorna Middleton and Alan Hencher seemed to be able to visualise coming events and had almost physical reactions when these would involve significant death or disaster. Neither Barker or Knight’s book really explain how this could possibly happen apart from a few lines about the nature of time being different than what we imagine and so on.

The book diverges into equally interesting accounts of the other topics taking up Barker’s professional and private life. The state of mental health care and the patients in the UK system in the 1960s take up a large chunk of this book as Barker struggles to work at and then help run crumbling facilities with outdated policies. Barker continued his work on the physical effects of fear publishing several papers and a book which drew disdain from his colleagues and employers. At the same time, he was attempting to provide for a young family and something had to give. His own physical and mental health suffered and soon the bureau’s star correspondents were warning him of dark things around the corner.

I found this book most fascinating and engaging as it covered several topics that personally interest me as well as introducing me to things like the grubby world of 1960s newspapers and the so-called nocebo effect. This is much more than a book on the paranormal field of precognition, it is about human lives and is more interesting as a result.