S04 Episode 9: Darkness in Sight

plans to do to them. When suddenly, the prophet Theoclymenus interrupts the banquet to deliver his fateful words to the unsuspecting suitors. There is a shroud of darkness drawn over you from head to foot. Your cheeks are wet with tears. The air is alive with wailing voices. The war and root beams drip blood, and the gait of the cloisters, and the court beyond are full of ghosts trooping down

into the night of hell. And with that their fates were sealed in what is perhaps one of literature's most famous and brutal premonitions. Though the idea of prophecy was common among many ancient cultures throughout the world. Homer's use of it in Odyssey, produced sometime around eight hundred BC, is one of the first times such an act had

been written about. Traditionally, supposed prophets and seers are individuals believed to have been gifted with the unique connection to the divine, individuals that can communicate with the gods or tap into nature's hidden frequencies in order to deliver portentous visions of the future. Sometimes the apparent visions arrive instantaneously, delivered as if by lightning, fully formed into the seer's

mind's eye. Other times, divination might be employed, the prophecies carefully deciphered from the scattering of bones or rounds, or sometimes a message might merely be read in the language of the world around them, an eagle tearing a pigeon, apart as in the case of Homer's Odyssey, for example, becoming the omen of a god's will. All such methods, aside from contradicting all scientifically accepted laws of the universe, would require a level of skill or understanding unknown to

the average lay person. However, there is one place in which many, regardless of their level of skill, or understanding, believe they are granted access to the power of premonition in their dreams. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard mcclaim myth. As Aristotle pointed out as far back as the fourth century BC in his Treatise on Prophesying in Dreams.

Perhaps it is merely because so many believe their dreams to possess a special significance that we are minded to give them that significance either way, whether we believe it to be true or not, Since most of us experience them, the notion that somehow, with our dreams we possess the power to know and perhaps alter future events remains a

potent one today. At institutions such as the Kessler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the notion of precognitive dreaming tends to be viewed as little more than an illusion created by a combination of confirmation bias and selective recall. It may be surprising to know that not that long ago there were a number of credible

academics who took the notion of such things very seriously. Indeed, one in particular, the psychiatrist doctor John Barker, having spent a number of years in the nineteen sixties studying incidences of apparent predictive dreams, eventually became convinced that such events were,

in fact not unusual at all. In nineteen sixty seven, Barker even went as far as setting up his own Premonition's Bureau, in the hope that by collating people's dreams of impending tragic events, it might be possible to prevent them from taking place. It was a plan that had its seeds in a series of peculiar occurrences that came to light in the wake of one of the United kingdoms greatest tragedies of recent memory, a story that begins

in nineteen sixty six in the valleys of South Cumry. Mummy, I'm not afraid to die, said erro May, absentmindedly watching the rain as it bucketed down outside the living room window. Whatever do you mean, asked her mother, more than a little unnerved by her daughter's matter of fact tone. It certainly wasn't the sort of thing you expected a ten year old child to say, let alone one usually so

bright and affable. In an effort to change the subject, her mother offered her a lollipop, but for once, errol May had no interest in taking it. I'm not afraid because I'll be with my friends Peter and June, she said, before heading off to play in her bedroom, leaving her mother stunned and confused as to what on earth her daughter had been talking about. In October nineteen sixty six, erro May lived with her family in the village of Abavan, along the banks of the River Taff in South Cumrie.

Known as a pit village, Abevan was established in the late nineteenth century primarily to service the mirth of Vale Colliery, where many of the villages a few thousand residents continued to work. Coal had been the lifeblood of the region for decades, having become a vital component in the ravenous or a borus of industrial revolution, feeding the flames to smelt the iron to make the machines that used the coal that fed the flames to make the machines, and

so on and so on. By the late nineteen sixties, however, with increasing competition from more efficient sources of energy, the British coal industry was in steep decline. Not that you would have known it if you were to visit southern Cumri at the time, where mines like Mirth of Alee

had so far managed to avoid the downturn. Evidence of just how dominant the industry was in the livelihood of Abevan could be seen in the black rain water that rushed through the streets during the heavier downpours, to the coal smiced faces of the eight hundred or so men who emerged from out of its pit each day, to the vast towers of spoil that loomed over the village

to the west. Taken from the French word espoielier, meaning to seize by violence, these gigantic obsidian mounds were comprised largely of shale and any other waste materials removed in the process of mining, plundered from its natural habitat in the bowels of the earth, and piled perilously high above ground where it didn't belong. There were seven in total, with the largest stretching some eighty meters into the air, steadily turning the lush green valley into a mountain of black.

Not that arrow May or any of the other children in the village minded too much, for the black stuff was all they had known some would even sneak off to play on the spoiled tips, or in the blackened streams that flowed steadily from underneath them. Not even rain would deter them. By mid October in sixty six, it

had been raining solidly for near on two weeks. At times like those, with the slate gray clouds hanging so low and heavy over the tips, it could feel as if the whole world might be about to turn gray. And something, it seemed, was stirring. It was two weeks after ten year old Errol May's peculiar talk of death

that she was startled awake by a terrifying nightmare. Later that morning, she attempted to relay the details to her mother, but she didn't want to hear it, not now, she said, preferring to concentrate on getting her daughter ready for school. But mummy insisted arrow May, you have to listen, fine, but make it quick. She replied, you're going to be late. Well, said erro May, searching for the best way to describe it. I dreamt that I went to school, but there was

no school there. Something black had come down all over it. Later that night, barely a street away from arrow May's home, eight year old Paul Davis was at the living room table drawing while his mother did the ironing in front of the TV. It was only after her son had gone to bed, as she packed away his things that Paul's mother got a proper look at what he had been drawing. From what she could make out, it was a picture of the village, the peaked spoil heaps rising

up behind it. Little stick figures holding shovels were dotted all about, while in the sky Paul had drawn a plane with the letters NCB for National Coal Board written on the side. Then Paul's mother was drawn to something odd in the top right hand corner, just two words spelling out the end. Thinking little more of it, Paul's mother tucked the picture inside address a draw along with the rest of her son's crayon masterpieces. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care

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podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained Podcast. Later that night, just over a hundred miles away, in a church in Plymouth, forty seven year old Caroline Miller was preparing to share a recent vision with her fellow spiritualists. As one of the group's more prominent members and a self described medium, Miller was a regular contributor to these private circle meetings, as she called them. On

this occasion, however, she seemed more agitated than usual. It was terrible, she said, just an avalanche of black coal hurtling down a mountainside and at the bottom, this young boy staring up at it with a look of absolute terror on his poor face. Then suddenly there were tens hundreds of people digging into a mound of rubble, and that boy again. He was alive, but his faith full

of so much grief. Sometime later, in the early hours of the following day, Imbarnstable, half way between Plymouth and Abervan, fifty four year old Mary Hennessy tossed and turned in her sleep. Deep somewhere within her mind, she found herself standing in a school corridor, peering into nearby a classroom. Inside a small group of children appeared to be praying, and at the back of the room what looked like a series of wooden bars or pieces of wood was

sticking out at the ground. Then suddenly the children began desperately trying to get through them to escape the room, but they were trapped. Moments later she was outside the building, watching helplessly as others frantically scurried about the place, a look of abject horror on their tear stained faces. Hennessy woke suddenly, gasping for breath, relieved to find herself safely at home in bed. She was so affected by the nightmare. She called her son first thing and begged him to

take extra special care with his daughters that day. But as she recounted the dream to him, she had a sudden realization. Clearly it wasn't about her grandchildren, since they were little more than babies. That children that she'd seen were school children. Back in Abervan. On the morning of Friday, October twenty first, though the rain had finally stopped, dawn revealed the village to be shrouded in a thick autumnal fog that rose high up into the valley all about.

As some made their ways home, tired and exhausted from night shifts, others were just beginning to stir in their beds. Eight year old Gayner Minette was roused from sleep by the sound of her mother preparing breakfast downstairs. Before long she was down there too, sat at the table next to her seven year old brother Carl and ten year old sister Marilyn. The trio were all pupils at the villages pan Class junior school, unlike their older sister, who

had since graduated to secondary school. However, all four them were equally excited that morning since it was the last day of term, with the promise of a full week's holiday ahead of them. A short time later, all dressed and ready to go, the children headed out into the street as gain as mother waved them off from the front door, watching on as slowly, one by one they

disappeared into the fog. Out on the streets, children from all over the village were leaving their homes and making their way to school, many knocking on neighbor's doors to collect their friends to make their journey together, some stopping off at Anderson's Touch shop along the way to grab

cola cubes and flying sources. It was hard to keep track of everyone making their way along the street, the fog being so thick they could barely see a meter in front of them, But there was no mistaking the heavy scrape and clang of metal coming from the tram line to the the village as the waist carts, hidden somewhere in the fog steadily made their way toward the

top of Tip number seven. No matter where you were in Aberfan, you could always hear the sound of those carts trundling along, one after another, as bucket load after bucket load of waste was driven out west and discarded onto those looming spoil heaps. Up At pank Glass Junior, on the northwestern edge of the village, sixty four year old head teacher and Jennings stood watch from the front steps as the school's two hundred odd students emerged from

out at the fog. Then, at nine am on the dot, the stern but much loved Jennings rang the bell to summon them all inside. As the children filed into the assembly hall. Inside one of the classrooms, newly installed Deputy head David Banon was prepping for the day's lessons. The forty seven year old Bayanon had only moved to the village with his family that summer after taking on the job as deputy head, and he had loved every minute

of it. In the main hall, Miss Jennings conducted a short assembly as the children sat cross legged on the parquet floor before her. After finishing with the spirited rendition of all things bright and beautiful, she sent them on their way to class. But high up in those blackened hills, all the way through the fog to the top of Tip seven, something was off. Earlier that day, when one of the crane drivers had arrived for his morning shift.

He noticed something peculiar. The tracks of the crane appeared to have sunk a little into the tip, and if he wasn't mistaken, it appeared as though the entire top of it was lower than usual. Back at pank Glass, Junior, eight year old Gaya took her place at a desk by the wall as her teacher, mister Davies, set up his blackboard by the window. The classroom was one of three at the back of the school that looked out

directly onto the face of Tip number seven. In the classroom beyond the wall to her right were mister Bannon and the nine to ten year olds, including her sister Marilyn, along with Errol May Jones and her two best friends, Peter and June. And in the classroom to the left were sat the seven to eight year olds, including her younger brother Carl. With it just gone ten past nine, Gaya and her classmates were watching patiently as mister Davies

drew up some math problems on the blackboard. When a few of them became aware of a distant rumble, Gaina looked out at the window, straining to see where an earth it might coming from, but saw only the thick fog at the bottom of the hill. Having by then heard it too, mister Davies reassured the children that it was only thunder. Only the thunder was getting louder. Then

the lights dangling from the ceiling began to shake. It can't be, thought mister Davies, as he ran to the window, peering desperately into the fog as that hideous sound grew louder and louder, his eyes widening in helpless inescapable horror. It was shortly before nine fifteen am that the eight meter high spoiled Tip number seven, soaked through by two weeks of rain, collapse under its own weight. With nothing

in its way to stop it. A half a million cubic foot avalanche of wet slurry, soil, and rock began cascading toward Aberfan Village, moving at a speed of fifty miles per hour. The one hundred and fifty thousand ton mass first destroyed a farm along with its occupants, before obliterating eighteen homes and completely smothered pank Glass Junior School. As news of the collapse quickly spread, hundreds stopped what they were doing, grabbed shovels from gardens and raced immediately

to help. Though the classrooms at the front of the school had survived the brunt of it, the three at the back had been so swamped by the spoil that nothing inside of them could be seen. All about the ground was awash with thick black sludge as water gushed down from the hill and mixed with the coal dust. As anxious parents arrived to inspect the damage, many assumed the children had been evacuated from the building, only to realize with horror that half of them were still trapped inside.

Before long, the school was completely surrounded by villagers and emergency services alike as they dug desperately at the mass to get them out. Others, in their anguish, began to claw at the muck with their bare hands, but for most of those still trapped under the rubble, it was already too late. Miraculously, eight year old Gayer survived the disaster, having been pushed to the back of the classroom and

trapped under a radiator that saved her from suffocating. She was found alive just after nine thirty am, but her younger brother Carl and older sister Marilyn were not so lucky. In fact, Gayner would be one of only ten children rescued from under the spoil, the last of them her class mate Jeff Edwards, being pulled out at eleven a m. The rescue workers continued to work tirelessly throughout the day. Where first they had heard cries from under the rubble,

they had very quickly fallen silent. A hundred and seven school children died that morning, along with five teachers, including twenty one year old mister Davies, head teacher Anne Jennings and deputy head mister Bannon, who, when his body was finally uncovered, was found to have been sheltering five of the children in his arms. Forty four year old Nancy Williams, a much loved staff member who like everyone else at the school, had come to see the children as her own,

also died while trying to protect them. The Aberfan disaster was a national tragedy, uniting the country in grief. In total, one hundred and sixteen children and twenty eight adults lost their lives. Among them were ten year olds Errol May Jones and her friends Peter and June, as well as eighty year old Paul Davies. It was only a few days after the disaster that strange stories of portents and premonitions,

apparently foretelling the event began to emerge. Chief among them was Errol May's peculiar dream and the strange proclamation she is said to have made in a few days prior to the tragedy. It was two weeks later, when going through her son's things, that Paul Davies's mother came across that unusual picture he had drawn, seeing its depiction of stick figures with shovels and the incongruous phrase the end

in an entirely new light. Soon other stories would emerge too, news of premonitions of a different kind, with an entire nation demanding to know how on earth such a tragedy had been allowed to happen. Less than a week after it had occurred, a tribunal was established to investigate. Over the course of seventy six days, with one hundred and thirty six witnesses interviewed. The buck was passed back and forth as representatives of the National Coal Board attempted to

deflect any sense of responsibility for the disaster. Having carried out their own investigation into the catastrophe, The NCB claimed it to have been the result of an unknown natural spring that had steadily destabilized the tip from underneath, of which nobody could have been aware. Only this was a lie. The NCB had been well aware of the spring, but, threatened by the increasingly competitive market, had elected not to incur the expense of moving the spoiled tip somewhere else.

Not only that the same tip had even partially slipped only the year before. In fact, a petition raised by the mothers of some of the school children expressly stating their concern about the streams and springs under Pitch seven had even been delivered to Murtha County Borough Council that very same year, but nothing had come of it. As the tribunal ultimately concluded with or without apparent precognitive dreams, it seems the disaster had been well foreseen after all.

If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can now go to Unexplained podcast dot com forwards support. All donations, no matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of

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