Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClean smith, where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make it into the previous show. In last week's episode, Darkness in Sight, we explored the harrowing tragedy which has since become known as the abbe Van disaster, in which one hundred and sixteen children and twenty eight adults were killed
by a collapsed spoiled heap in nineteen sixty six. A tribunal set up in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy established that the National Coal Board, who were responsible for the spoil tip, had been given consistent warnings of the dangers it posed, would routinely ignored them. It was only a few weeks after the spoiled collapse that other fore warnings of a slightly more bizarre nature began to emerge.
In a series of extraordinary proclamations, people from up and down the country claimed to have experienced visions of the disaster, most often in their dreams, in the days leading up to it. Two children killed in the landslide, ten year old errold May Jones and eight year old Paul Davies are also said to have foreseen the event. These stories were brought to light by radical psychiatrist doctor John Barker during an unusual experiment which he conducted shortly after the tragedy.
At the time, Barker had been researching a book about the apparent phenomenon of what he called psychic death, in which victims of it were thought to have literally scared themselves to death. Barker had heard reports that one of the young victims from Abavan had been completely unharmed by the spoil, only to die from shock a short time later. It was while visiting the village to investigate this story only days after the event, that Barker first learned at
the strange rumors of portents and premonitions. Haunted and moved by what he saw in Abervan, Barker had a curious idea. If premonition were possible, he thought, might there be a way to harness its power to prevent such a terrible tragedy from occurring in future. It was an idea that some belief may have contributed to Barker's own premature death
only a few years later. Born in nineteen twenty two, As a child, John Charles Barker was a dedicated and straight laced student, making his way to Cambridge University before qualifying as a Doctor of Medicine in nineteen forty eight. Barker would go on to establish himself as a highly credible and innovative psychist, being mostly celebrated for his pioneering work on aversion therapy. However, it was a career in which, by his own admission, he was often torn between a
conscious rationalism and a fascination with the supernatural. Writing in his nineteen sixty eight book Scared to Death, Barker believed this conflict first arose after learning of the peculiar occult happenings that his father claimed to have experienced while fighting in the First World War. Knowing his father to be a usually matter of fact individual, these stories had always
stuck with him. Sometime later, Barker became convinced that he possessed a mild extrasensory perception of his own, in which he was able to sense impending disaster. It was his fascination with the potential for ESP that drew him to the concept of psychic death, believing some as yet unknown effect of ESP might be responsible for it, though he believed he had seen similar in patience of his own.
Barker's interest in the idea intensified after reading of a peculiar case published in the British Medical Journal in nineteen sixty five. The case involved a forty three year old woman who had undergone an operation for a minor gynecological problem. With the operation successfully completed, the patient, who had no other underlying issues, regained consciousness, only to die an hour later after suffering a rare hemorrhage brought on by shock.
As it transpired when the patient was five years old, she had been told by a fortune teller that she would die at the age of forty three the night before her surgery. She had subsequently insisted to her sister that she would not be surviving the operation. Thinking this might be a case of psychic death, Barker exchanged a series of letters through the British Medical with the patient's doctors.
The letters, in turn brought Barker to the attention of Peter Fairley, who was science correspondent of the London paper Evening Standard at the time. Fairley was intrigued by Barker's position as a medical professional with an interest in the supernatural, and the pair Julie became acquainted, and it was to Fairley who Barker turned in nineteen sixty six when he had his brain way regarding the potential power of premonitions.
Having learned of rumors that the Abberfan disaster had been foreseen by a number of its local residents, Barker realized, given the scale and emotional resonance of the tragedy, that it would be a perfect case study around which to see if anyone else had sensed it too, And so it was that on twenty eighth of October nineteen sixty six, an appeal was launched on behalf of Barker by Fairly in the Evening Standard, asking for anyone to get in
touch who believed that they had experienced a premonition of the Abervan disaster. Within two weeks, Barker had received seventy
six replies. Out of those, sixteen were discarded immediately. The rest, which were mostly taken from dreams, were assessed for their credibility according to the criteria established by parapsychologist G. W. Lambert the previous year, which included, most fundamentally that the premonition had been reported to a credible witness before the event took place, that the time interval between the dream and the event should be short, and that the four
seen event should be something that would have been completely improbable to the seer at the time. In total, Doctor Barker found thirty five accounts to be worth noting, including those of Errol May Jones, Carolyne Miller, and Mary Hennessy mentioned in the previous episode. The Abovan experiment convinced Barker that premonition was a real phenomena and one that I managed properly could ultimately be used to save people from
similar disasters in future. In January nineteen sixty seven, Barker announced the launch of his Premonition's Bureau, a public repository for the nation's precognitive dreams, in which anyone who felt they had experienced a premonition was encouraged to call or write in and tell him about it. Within two days, Barker received twenty different warnings of impending disaster, but it wasn't until a few months later that he received what
appeared to be a genuine hit. It came from Alan Henscher, a forty four year old telephone operator from Essex who had been one of the original dreamers from the Abavan experiment. Hench claim to have experienced a vision of a plane crash over mountains, killing around one hundred and twenty four people. The corps was received on March twenty first. The following month, a Swiss Globe Air flight en route from Bangkok to Basel crashed into a hill in Cyprus while attempting an
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Download the app or visit teledoc dot com forward slash Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained Podcast. Over the next eighteen months, Barker's Premonitions Bureau received countless accounts of potential premonitions, with varying degrees of accuracy. Alan Hensher would go on to become one of its most frequent and seemingly accurate contributors, along with
one other, Lorna Middleton. Middleton, who was born in Massachusetts but later moved to North London, had also been one of the original participants of the Abervan experiment. Recounting in her own book Prediction or Premonition a few years later. Middleton had been suffering a restless night on the eve of the cold disaster, before waking at six a m with a choking sensation, convinced that the walls were caving
in on her. However, it was her prediction of the assassination of Robert Kennedy in June nineteen sixty seven that most impressed doctor Barker. Middleton's apparent premonition began in March nineteen sixty seven with the constant appearance of the word assassination in her dreams and thoughts, believing it to have something to do with Robert Kennedy. But when doctor Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated three weeks later, Middleton assumed
it was his death that she had in fact been foreseeing. However, a week later, Middleton again became preoccupied with the notion of assassination. On June the fourth, she wrote to doctor Barker declaring simply that she had sensed another assassination and again in America. In the early hours of the following day, Robert Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Back in the early hours of April twenty first, nineteen sixty seven, Alan Henscher called Barker, warning him to check his gas supply immediately. The previous day, Henscher had had a vision involving a dark colored car, which he interpreted as a sign of imminent danger to doctor Barker. Fortunately for Barker, there was no gas apply to his home. Henscher paused on the other end of the line and then asked, do you have a dark colored car? Barker
thought for a moment before realizing he did. It was dark green. Hensher ended the call by telling Barker to look after himself. The morning after Hensha's phone call, Barker was sufficiently unsettled by his leading seer's premonition that he made note of it in a short memo, declaring that, having recently written a book on people who were scared to death, I am perhaps beginning to feel what that
would be like. And as noted in a recent New Yorker article about Barker's life written by staff writer Sam Knight, the premonitions didn't end there. The following year, Hensher repeated his concern to Barker that his life was in danger, and then in February, Lorna Middleton also experienced a vision of Barker involving her deceased parents, which she took to be an ominous message concerning the doctor. A few weeks later, a fire broke out at Shelton Hospital in Shrewsbury, where
doctor Barker worked. Though Barker wasn't present at the time, twenty four patients were killed. In late July, not long after her apparent successful premonition regarding Robert Kennedy, Middleton had another dream involving her deceased parents. She informed the premonition's bureau about it the following day. Three weeks later, the forty four year old John Barker was rushed to hospital
having collapsed at his home. Barker, who had suffered a massive and inoperable brain hemorrhage, was pronounced dead soon after. According to New Yorker writer Sam Knight, the same day that Barker died, Lorna Middleton snapped awake in the early morning, gasping for breath and crying out for help. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can now go to Unexplained podcast dot com forward slash support. All donations, no matter how large or small,
are massively appreciate. 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 your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward slash Unexplained Now. It's
time to take care of yourself. To make time for you. Tele a doc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot com. Forward slash Unexplained Podcast Today to get started. That's t e LA DC dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast