Author(s): Sam Knight

Non-Fiction | Marianne's Book Talkers

Premonitions are impossible. But they come true all the time.You think of a forgotten friend. Out of the blue, they call.But what if you knew that something terrible was going to happen? A sudden flash, the words CHARING CROSS. Four days later, a packed express train comes off the rails outside the station. What if you could share your vision, and stop that train? Could these forebodings help the world to prevent disasters? In 1966, John Barker, a dynamic psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, established the Premonitions Bureau to investigate these questions. He would find a network of hundreds of correspondents, from bank clerks to ballet teachers. Among them were two unnervingly gifted "percipients". Together, the pair predicted plane crashes, assassinations and international incidents, with uncanny accuracy. And then, they informed Barker of their most disturbing premonition: that he was about to die. The Premonitions Bureau is an enthralling true story, of madness and wonder, science and the supernatural - a journey to the most powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind.

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: MARIANNE

Sam Knight takes us back to Britain in the mid-1960s, and the ambitious and somewhat unorthodox figure of John Barker, a psychiatrist preoccupied with the study of premonitions.

Inspired by the many reports of precognition associated with the Aberfan mine disaster of 1966, Barker set out to record and analyse as many predictions as he could, and in doing so, hoped to determine whether disasters could be prevented by psychic means. Thus, he opened up a cabinet of curiosities, or perhaps a Pandora’s box, full of questions about everything from the nature of time to the foresight of his own death.

Knight weaves a thoroughly researched and engaging tale around a topic that remains, ultimately, mysterious. It’s tricky, after all, to apply the exacting tools of science to a topic as slippery as psychic premonitions. Perhaps what makes this story so interesting, though, is both Knight’s and his intriguing subject’s willingness to dive deep into the inexplicable.