by Nigel Percy

Created on: July 29, 2009

The ability to sense the future in some fashion has always been part of being human. For some, it comes in the form of premonitions. These premonitions, in turn, can have various forms. They can range from the very vaguest of feelings to the strongest of suspicions, as we'll see.

Of course, the easy thing to do is to dismiss any such premonition as being nothing more than happening by luck or by chance. Yet, there is compelling evidence which shows that such things are real and true and happen to people all the time.

Each of us, no doubt, can think back to a time when we had feeling about an event we were due to attend. Anything from a dinner party with friends to just going for a drive. There was a brief, fleeting feeling, perhaps good or bad, which we got when we first thought of it. And, it turned out to be right or accurate or true in some way. And, most of the time, because it was quiet, we dismissed it.

But what of the truth about premonitions? Can they, actually, be proved? Well, the answer turns out that they can. All it requires is a study of what people do or don't do, in large enough numbers or great enough detail. For example, a study in 1960 of train crashes over a 5 year period (1950-55) showed that on most days when there were accidents, the number of passengers on the train was significantly less than usual. In one case the average was 65 passengers, and on the day of the crash there were only 9. This seems to point out that there were a lot of people avoiding those trains in one way or another. They had had premonitions!

Then there's the Titanic. It is a very dramatic and well-known disaster that has captured the imagination of millions over th years.. But what is less well-known is that she sailed with only 58% of her total capacity of passengers. Many people cried off in the weeks prior to her sailing. In fact, a whole shift of stokers (for the engine room) missed the sailing. Yet this was the most publicized liner by far. How could it not be full and have a full complement of crew? Premonitions!

What about Aberfan? In 1966, this small Welsh village suffered a huge and almost unbearable loss when a hill of coal waste, turned almost into liquid mud through constant rain, slid down and buried the village school. 28 adults and 116 children were killed.

Grief counselors found that for two weeks prior to the accident people had feelings of depression, feelings of gasping or choking, children running and screaming, and visions of coal dust and black clouds.

These three incidents by themselves are sufficient to prove that premonitions are real.

And still there are the anecdotal stories of people missing planes which later crashed. In the case of Carole Lombard, both her mother and a famous psychic, Jeanne Dixon, urged her not to fly. Yet, even though she had had a premonition of a friend's death on the day he died many years before, her own determination to return to her love Clark Gable meant she ignored the warnings. She died in a crash in January 1942.

Premonition, it seems, is a continual factor in the lives of everyone. The trick, as ever, is learning to recognize it and then, having done that, to listen and act upon it. Many people have saved their own lives like this. many more could have done if they had not overridden it.

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