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Premonitions That Came True! Aberfan, Plane Crashes & Death Foretold | New Yorker Staff Writer Sam Knight on Seemingly Impossible Stories of Dreams and Visions Before Catastrophe

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Dec 12, 2025
Sam Knight, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of The Premonitions Bureau, explores eerie cases of premonitions and their implications. He delves into the infamous 1966 Aberfan disaster and the psychic warnings that preceded it, leading to the establishment of the British Premonitions Bureau. Sam discusses how historical understandings of extrasensory experiences differ from today, the moral responsibility of those receiving premonitions, and cultural patterns surrounding these mysterious events, while questioning if we access alternate timelines through these insights.
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INSIGHT

Aberfan Sparked Systematic Premonition Study

  • The Aberfan disaster produced numerous premonitions reported afterward, suggesting a pattern worth investigating.
  • Sam Knight shows these reports catalyzed the Premonitions Bureau to collect and analyze such warnings systematically.
ANECDOTE

Children's Dreams Before Aberfan

  • Sam Knight recounts children in Aberfan who had dreams of a blackness covering their school and some who avoided school that day.
  • These contemporaneous accounts pushed John Barker to solicit public premonitions and collect hundreds of responses.
INSIGHT

Fear Can Trigger Real Physiological Harm

  • John Barker linked extreme fear and suggestion to real physiological harm and explored 'scared to death' cases.
  • Barker framed premonitions as both a clinical and cultural phenomenon worth scientific inquiry.
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