On the morning of October 21st, 1966, around 100,000 tons of coal waste slid a third of a mile down a Welsh hillside. It engulfed a village school and 16 houses. In this, 144 people lost their lives, 116 of them children, mostly aged 7 to 11. The impact of the flowslide stopped the school clock at 9:13 a.m.
Responding to the scene in Aberfan, an English psychiatrist, John Barker, heard local people tell of dreams and omens of the disaster before it happened. Wondering if others had foreseen the tragedy, Barker worked with the London Evening Standard science correspondent Peter Fairley to seek premonitions from people across the United Kingdom. That, along with a parallel call by the Oxford Institute for Psychophysical Research, garnered a collection of 150 precognitive dreams, visions, and uncanny feelings.
Speculation arose: what if a mass collection of potentially precognitive experiences could provide an early warning system that could prevent such tragedies? Could this defy time to save lives? Various organized attempts have been made to explore this possibility, including Barker and Fairley’s own Premonitions Bureau.
The social and cultural historian Christopher Laursen enhances the context to recent publications exploring premonitions around the Aberfan tragedy, including the writer Sam Knight’s new book The Premonitions Bureau and Alan Murdie’s study of the Oxford Institute for Psychophysical Research collection.
Often the premonitions are left out of the greater history of the Aberfan disaster. Likewise, narratives on the premonitions neglect the life-altering scope of the disaster. The two become separate stories. What can we learn when we consider them together? Could a unified narrative help clarify the nature of precognition, time, and trauma?
Biographical Information
Dr. Christopher Laursen is a social and cultural historian and transdisciplinary researcher. He studies how people experience and try to explain extraordinary things that can’t easily be rationalized.
Christopher is best known for his historical studies of the poltergeist phenomenon. His ongoing research considers encounters with non-humans and the natural world, physical anomalies, dreams, precognition, and after death communications as personally and culturally transformative experiences.
Christopher is teaching a four-week online course, Premonitions, for the Rhine Education Center, running Tuesdays, 2-4 pm Eastern from May 17 to June 7, 2022.
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