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True Crime, History

4.4 • 697 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the 1960s, one hopeful British psychiatrist hoped he could prevent disaster—not with science, but with the supernatural. For a number of years. Dr. John Barker’s “Premonition Bureaus” collected psychic visions with a single goal: stopping tragedy before it could strike.

Hosted by Laurah Norton

Researched by Anna Luria

Edited by Laurah Norton and Maura Currie

Produced and Engineered by Maura Currie

Works Cited:

Bastian, Jonathan. “Predicting the future: The true story of the Premonitions Bureau.” KCRW [Santa Monica, California], 16 Jul. 2022, Accessed May 2023.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Nicosia.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Jan. 2023, Accessed May 2023.

Cope, Michael. “Premonition: Royal Family to Face Scandal?” The Des Moines Register, 21 Nov. 1972. Accessed May 2023.

Cummins, Anthony. “The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight review - the press, psychiatry and the paranormal.” The Guardian, 03 May 2022. Accessed May 2023.

Freeman, Sue. “A woman’s intuition…” Liverpool Echo, 05 Feb. 1973. Accessed May 2023.

Gladstone, Bill. “Future Watch.” The Gazette [Montreal, Canada], 12 Jan. 1980. Accessed May 2023.

Harrison, Dave. “Does Mr. Spock figure in your dreams?” Leicester Chronicle, 01 Jun. 1979. Accessed May 2023.

Irwin, Theodore. “Can Some People See into the FUTURE?” The Pantagraph, 04 May 1969. Accessed May 2023.

Knight, Sam. “The Psychiatrist Who Believed People Could Tell The Future.” The New Yorker, 25 Feb. 2019. Accessed May 2023.

Mail Reporter, Evening. “The ‘early-warning premonition bureau.’” Birmingham Evening Mail, 06 Feb. 1968. Accessed May 2023.

Post Reporter, Birmingham. “A Bureau to avert disasters?” The Birmingham Post, 28 Feb. 1968. Accessed May 2023.

Spraggett, Allen. “Was the premonition a dream or truth?” The Victorian, 06 May 1974. Accessed May 2023.

“4 Britons among 124 dead in plane crash.” Birmingham Evening Mail and Despatch, 20 Apr. 1967, p. 18. Accessed May 2023.

“Hitching Hopes To the Stars.” Muncie Evening Press, 10 Jun. 1969. Accessed May 2023.

“Miss Future…” Evening Post, 06 Feb. 1973. Accessed May 2023.

“Peering into the future - some just have the knack.” Calgary Herald, 13 Dec. 1972. Accessed May 2023.

“Royal Puppies.” Evening Standard [London, Greater London, England], 23 Sep. 1971. Accessed May 2023.

“Soyuz 1.” NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, NASA Official, 28 Oct. 2022. Accessed May 2023.

“The future is theirs to see.” Evening Post, 07 Jan. 1975. Accessed May 2023.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, strangers. We're going on vacation, so we thought it would be fun to leave you with some extra listening material in case you're traveling to.
0:08.6	One of our older premium episodes released in full on the main feed.
0:13.2	You can find 50 other premium episodes, with two new episodes released every month on Patreon or Apple Podcast Premium. On Patreon, you also get an
0:23.0	ad-free feed of our regular episodes, plus access to fun giveaways and blogs and occasional
0:28.6	live streams. We hope you enjoy this episode about a fascinating, if little-known, attempt to
0:34.4	prevent disaster in the United Kingdom, the Premonitions Bureau.
0:39.7	Just a note before we get started. This episode, while not graphic, does discuss quite a bit of
0:46.5	death, though not in detail. In any case, listener discretion is advised. And another small note,
0:53.0	I'm getting over an endless cold, so I do
0:55.9	apologize for the hoarseness. I'm Laura Norton, and this is one strange thing, the show where we
1:07.3	search the nation's news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.
1:21.1	Most of us have heard this advice at some point in our lives. If you see any numbers in your dreams, you better write them down.
1:30.7	It might well be a prediction, your chance at a winning lottery ticket, perhaps.
1:36.1	The idea of seeing the future in dreams is, of course, an ancient concept.
1:41.6	It seems like people have always been looking for ways to add a little more
1:45.5	structure to the chaos of life. Charms, spells, palm reading, taro, even astrology, fill a similar
1:53.3	niche like believing in karma, or that weather in Atlanta can be predicted. It's all about
2:00.0	making us feel in control when we're all so incredibly
2:03.7	not. So with that in mind, even the most skeptical among us might just write down numbers from our
2:11.9	dreams. You know, just in case. If you've had an instance of those dream numbers actually popping up in real life,
2:20.4	do a drop us a line because content needs creating after all.
2:24.9	But let's move beyond the stuff that can realistically be chalked up to coincidence.
	...

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