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Speaker 1: Toward the end of Homer's Odyssey, a newly returned Odysseus

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Speaker 1: dines in secret in his own home, surrounded by the Suitors,

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Speaker 1: a group of vulgar men who for the past decade

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Speaker 1: had been trying to steal his life. Disguised as a beggar,

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Speaker 1: Odysseus watches with disgust as the men shamelessly stuffed themselves

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Speaker 1: on meat and wine, blissfully unaware of the true identity

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Speaker 1: of the stranger who sits among them and what he

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Speaker 1: plans to do to them. When suddenly, the prophet Theoclymenus

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Speaker 1: interrupts the banquet to deliver his fateful words to the

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Speaker 1: unsuspecting suitors. There is a shroud of darkness drawn over

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Speaker 1: you from head to foot. Your cheeks are wet with tears.

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Speaker 1: The air is alive with wailing voices. The war and

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Speaker 1: root beams drip blood, and the gait of the cloisters,

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Speaker 1: and the court beyond are full of ghosts trooping down

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Speaker 1: into the night of hell. And with that their fates

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Speaker 1: were sealed in what is perhaps one of literature's most

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Speaker 1: famous and brutal premonitions. Though the idea of prophecy was

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Speaker 1: common among many ancient cultures throughout the world. Homer's use

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Speaker 1: of it in Odyssey, produced sometime around eight hundred BC,

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Speaker 1: is one of the first times such an act had

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Speaker 1: been written about. Traditionally, supposed prophets and seers are individuals

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Speaker 1: believed to have been gifted with the unique connection to

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Speaker 1: the divine, individuals that can communicate with the gods or

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Speaker 1: tap into nature's hidden frequencies in order to deliver portentous

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Speaker 1: visions of the future. Sometimes the apparent visions arrive instantaneously,

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Speaker 1: delivered as if by lightning, fully formed into the seer's

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Speaker 1: mind's eye. Other times, divination might be employed, the prophecies

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Speaker 1: carefully deciphered from the scattering of bones or rounds, or

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Speaker 1: sometimes a message might merely be read in the language

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Speaker 1: of the world around them, an eagle tearing a pigeon,

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Speaker 1: apart as in the case of Homer's Odyssey, for example,

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Speaker 1: becoming the omen of a god's will. All such methods,

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Speaker 1: aside from contradicting all scientifically accepted laws of the universe,

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Speaker 1: would require a level of skill or understanding unknown to

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Speaker 1: the average lay person. However, there is one place in

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Speaker 1: which many, regardless of their level of skill, or understanding,

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Speaker 1: believe they are granted access to the power of premonition

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Speaker 1: in their dreams. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard

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Speaker 1: mcclaim myth. As Aristotle pointed out as far back as

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Speaker 1: the fourth century BC in his Treatise on Prophesying in Dreams.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps it is merely because so many believe their dreams

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Speaker 1: to possess a special significance that we are minded to

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Speaker 1: give them that significance either way, whether we believe it

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Speaker 1: to be true or not, Since most of us experience them,

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Speaker 1: the notion that somehow, with our dreams we possess the

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Speaker 1: power to know and perhaps alter future events remains a

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Speaker 1: potent one today. At institutions such as the Kessler Parapsychology

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Speaker 1: Unit at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the notion

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Speaker 1: of precognitive dreaming tends to be viewed as little more

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Speaker 1: than an illusion created by a combination of confirmation bias

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Speaker 1: and selective recall. It may be surprising to know that

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Speaker 1: not that long ago there were a number of credible

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Speaker 1: academics who took the notion of such things very seriously. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: one in particular, the psychiatrist doctor John Barker, having spent

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Speaker 1: a number of years in the nineteen sixties studying incidences

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Speaker 1: of apparent predictive dreams, eventually became convinced that such events were,

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Speaker 1: in fact not unusual at all. In nineteen sixty seven,

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Speaker 1: Barker even went as far as setting up his own

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Speaker 1: Premonition's Bureau, in the hope that by collating people's dreams

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Speaker 1: of impending tragic events, it might be possible to prevent

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Speaker 1: them from taking place. It was a plan that had

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Speaker 1: its seeds in a series of peculiar occurrences that came

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Speaker 1: to light in the wake of one of the United

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Speaker 1: kingdoms greatest tragedies of recent memory, a story that begins

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six in the valleys of South Cumry. Mummy,

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Speaker 1: I'm not afraid to die, said erro May, absentmindedly watching

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Speaker 1: the rain as it bucketed down outside the living room window.

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Speaker 1: Whatever do you mean, asked her mother, more than a

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Speaker 1: little unnerved by her daughter's matter of fact tone. It

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Speaker 1: certainly wasn't the sort of thing you expected a ten

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Speaker 1: year old child to say, let alone one usually so

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Speaker 1: bright and affable. In an effort to change the subject,

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Speaker 1: her mother offered her a lollipop, but for once, errol

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Speaker 1: May had no interest in taking it. I'm not afraid

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Speaker 1: because I'll be with my friends Peter and June, she said,

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Speaker 1: before heading off to play in her bedroom, leaving her

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Speaker 1: mother stunned and confused as to what on earth her

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Speaker 1: daughter had been talking about. In October nineteen sixty six,

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Speaker 1: erro May lived with her family in the village of Abavan,

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Speaker 1: along the banks of the River Taff in South Cumrie.

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Speaker 1: Known as a pit village, Abevan was established in the

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Speaker 1: late nineteenth century primarily to service the mirth of Vale Colliery,

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Speaker 1: where many of the villages a few thousand residents continued

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Speaker 1: to work. Coal had been the lifeblood of the region

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Speaker 1: for decades, having become a vital component in the ravenous

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Speaker 1: or a borus of industrial revolution, feeding the flames to

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Speaker 1: smelt the iron to make the machines that used the

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Speaker 1: coal that fed the flames to make the machines, and

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Speaker 1: so on and so on. By the late nineteen sixties, however,

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Speaker 1: with increasing competition from more efficient sources of energy, the

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Speaker 1: British coal industry was in steep decline. Not that you

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Speaker 1: would have known it if you were to visit southern

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Speaker 1: Cumri at the time, where mines like Mirth of Alee

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Speaker 1: had so far managed to avoid the downturn. Evidence of

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Speaker 1: just how dominant the industry was in the livelihood of

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Speaker 1: Abevan could be seen in the black rain water that

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Speaker 1: rushed through the streets during the heavier downpours, to the

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Speaker 1: coal smiced faces of the eight hundred or so men

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Speaker 1: who emerged from out of its pit each day, to

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Speaker 1: the vast towers of spoil that loomed over the village

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Speaker 1: to the west. Taken from the French word espoielier, meaning

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Speaker 1: to seize by violence, these gigantic obsidian mounds were comprised

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Speaker 1: largely of shale and any other waste materials removed in

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Speaker 1: the process of mining, plundered from its natural habitat in

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Speaker 1: the bowels of the earth, and piled perilously high above

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Speaker 1: ground where it didn't belong. There were seven in total,

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Speaker 1: with the largest stretching some eighty meters into the air,

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Speaker 1: steadily turning the lush green valley into a mountain of black.

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Speaker 1: Not that arrow May or any of the other children

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Speaker 1: in the village minded too much, for the black stuff

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Speaker 1: was all they had known some would even sneak off

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Speaker 1: to play on the spoiled tips, or in the blackened

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Speaker 1: streams that flowed steadily from underneath them. Not even rain

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Speaker 1: would deter them. By mid October in sixty six, it

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Speaker 1: had been raining solidly for near on two weeks. At

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Speaker 1: times like those, with the slate gray clouds hanging so

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Speaker 1: low and heavy over the tips, it could feel as

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Speaker 1: if the whole world might be about to turn gray.

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Speaker 1: And something, it seemed, was stirring. It was two weeks

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Speaker 1: after ten year old Errol May's peculiar talk of death

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Speaker 1: that she was startled awake by a terrifying nightmare. Later

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Speaker 1: that morning, she attempted to relay the details to her mother,

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Speaker 1: but she didn't want to hear it, not now, she said,

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Speaker 1: preferring to concentrate on getting her daughter ready for school.

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Speaker 1: But mummy insisted arrow May, you have to listen, fine,

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Speaker 1: but make it quick. She replied, you're going to be late. Well,

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Speaker 1: said erro May, searching for the best way to describe it.

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Speaker 1: I dreamt that I went to school, but there was

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Speaker 1: no school there. Something black had come down all over it.

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Speaker 1: Later that night, barely a street away from arrow May's home,

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Speaker 1: eight year old Paul Davis was at the living room

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Speaker 1: table drawing while his mother did the ironing in front

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Speaker 1: of the TV. It was only after her son had

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Speaker 1: gone to bed, as she packed away his things that

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Speaker 1: Paul's mother got a proper look at what he had

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Speaker 1: been drawing. From what she could make out, it was

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Speaker 1: a picture of the village, the peaked spoil heaps rising

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Speaker 1: up behind it. Little stick figures holding shovels were dotted

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Speaker 1: all about, while in the sky Paul had drawn a

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Speaker 1: plane with the letters NCB for National Coal Board written

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Speaker 1: on the side. Then Paul's mother was drawn to something

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Speaker 1: odd in the top right hand corner, just two words

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Speaker 1: spelling out the end. Thinking little more of it, Paul's

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Speaker 1: mother tucked the picture inside address a draw along with

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Speaker 1: the rest of her son's crayon masterpieces. Are you always

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Speaker 1: taking care of your family? Do you often take care

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Speaker 1: of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take

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Speaker 1: care of yourself, to make time for you. You deserve it.

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Speaker 1: Tele doc gives you access to a licensed therapist to

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Speaker 1: help you get back to feeling your best, to feeling

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Speaker 1: like yourself again. With tele adoc, you can speak to

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Speaker 1: a licensed therapist I phone or video therapy. Appointments are

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Speaker 1: available seven days a week from seven am to nine

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Speaker 1: pm local time. If you feel overwhelmed sometimes maybe you

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Speaker 1: feel stressed or anxious, depressed or lonely, or you might

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Speaker 1: be struggling with a personal or family issue, teledoc can help.

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Speaker 1: Teledoc is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they

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Speaker 1: make it easy to change counselors if needed. For free.

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Speaker 1: Teledoc therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download

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Speaker 1: the app or visit teledoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained

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Speaker 1: podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash

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Speaker 1: Unexplained Podcast. Later that night, just over a hundred miles away,

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Speaker 1: in a church in Plymouth, forty seven year old Caroline

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Speaker 1: Miller was preparing to share a recent vision with her

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Speaker 1: fellow spiritualists. As one of the group's more prominent members

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Speaker 1: and a self described medium, Miller was a regular contributor

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Speaker 1: to these private circle meetings, as she called them. On

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Speaker 1: this occasion, however, she seemed more agitated than usual. It

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Speaker 1: was terrible, she said, just an avalanche of black coal

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Speaker 1: hurtling down a mountainside and at the bottom, this young

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Speaker 1: boy staring up at it with a look of absolute

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Speaker 1: terror on his poor face. Then suddenly there were tens

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Speaker 1: hundreds of people digging into a mound of rubble, and

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Speaker 1: that boy again. He was alive, but his faith full

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Speaker 1: of so much grief. Sometime later, in the early hours

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Speaker 1: of the following day, Imbarnstable, half way between Plymouth and Abervan,

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Speaker 1: fifty four year old Mary Hennessy tossed and turned in

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Speaker 1: her sleep. Deep somewhere within her mind, she found herself

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Speaker 1: standing in a school corridor, peering into nearby a classroom.

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Speaker 1: Inside a small group of children appeared to be praying,

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Speaker 1: and at the back of the room what looked like

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Speaker 1: a series of wooden bars or pieces of wood was

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Speaker 1: sticking out at the ground. Then suddenly the children began

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Speaker 1: desperately trying to get through them to escape the room,

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Speaker 1: but they were trapped. Moments later she was outside the building,

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Speaker 1: watching helplessly as others frantically scurried about the place, a

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Speaker 1: look of abject horror on their tear stained faces. Hennessy

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Speaker 1: woke suddenly, gasping for breath, relieved to find herself safely

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Speaker 1: at home in bed. She was so affected by the nightmare.

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Speaker 1: She called her son first thing and begged him to

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Speaker 1: take extra special care with his daughters that day. But

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Speaker 1: as she recounted the dream to him, she had a

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Speaker 1: sudden realization. Clearly it wasn't about her grandchildren, since they

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Speaker 1: were little more than babies. That children that she'd seen

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Speaker 1: were school children. Back in Abervan. On the morning of Friday,

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Speaker 1: October twenty first, though the rain had finally stopped, dawn

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Speaker 1: revealed the village to be shrouded in a thick autumnal

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Speaker 1: fog that rose high up into the valley all about.

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Speaker 1: As some made their ways home, tired and exhausted from

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Speaker 1: night shifts, others were just beginning to stir in their beds.

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Speaker 1: Eight year old Gayner Minette was roused from sleep by

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Speaker 1: the sound of her mother preparing breakfast downstairs. Before long

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Speaker 1: she was down there too, sat at the table next

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Speaker 1: to her seven year old brother Carl and ten year

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Speaker 1: old sister Marilyn. The trio were all pupils at the

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Speaker 1: villages pan Class junior school, unlike their older sister, who

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Speaker 1: had since graduated to secondary school. However, all four them

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Speaker 1: were equally excited that morning since it was the last

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Speaker 1: day of term, with the promise of a full week's

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Speaker 1: holiday ahead of them. A short time later, all dressed

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Speaker 1: and ready to go, the children headed out into the

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Speaker 1: street as gain as mother waved them off from the

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Speaker 1: front door, watching on as slowly, one by one they

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Speaker 1: disappeared into the fog. Out on the streets, children from

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Speaker 1: all over the village were leaving their homes and making

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Speaker 1: their way to school, many knocking on neighbor's doors to

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Speaker 1: collect their friends to make their journey together, some stopping

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Speaker 1: off at Anderson's Touch shop along the way to grab

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Speaker 1: cola cubes and flying sources. It was hard to keep

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Speaker 1: track of everyone making their way along the street, the

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Speaker 1: fog being so thick they could barely see a meter

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Speaker 1: in front of them, But there was no mistaking the

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Speaker 1: heavy scrape and clang of metal coming from the tram

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Speaker 1: line to the the village as the waist carts, hidden

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Speaker 1: somewhere in the fog steadily made their way toward the

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Speaker 1: top of Tip number seven. No matter where you were

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Speaker 1: in Aberfan, you could always hear the sound of those

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Speaker 1: carts trundling along, one after another, as bucket load after

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Speaker 1: bucket load of waste was driven out west and discarded

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Speaker 1: onto those looming spoil heaps. Up At pank Glass Junior,

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Speaker 1: on the northwestern edge of the village, sixty four year

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Speaker 1: old head teacher and Jennings stood watch from the front

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Speaker 1: steps as the school's two hundred odd students emerged from

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Speaker 1: out at the fog. Then, at nine am on the dot,

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Speaker 1: the stern but much loved Jennings rang the bell to

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Speaker 1: summon them all inside. As the children filed into the

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Speaker 1: assembly hall. Inside one of the classrooms, newly installed Deputy

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Speaker 1: head David Banon was prepping for the day's lessons. The

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Speaker 1: forty seven year old Bayanon had only moved to the

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Speaker 1: village with his family that summer after taking on the

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Speaker 1: job as deputy head, and he had loved every minute

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Speaker 1: of it. In the main hall, Miss Jennings conducted a

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Speaker 1: short assembly as the children sat cross legged on the

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Speaker 1: parquet floor before her. After finishing with the spirited rendition

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Speaker 1: of all things bright and beautiful, she sent them on

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Speaker 1: their way to class. But high up in those blackened hills,

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Speaker 1: all the way through the fog to the top of

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Speaker 1: Tip seven, something was off. Earlier that day, when one

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Speaker 1: of the crane drivers had arrived for his morning shift.

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Speaker 1: He noticed something peculiar. The tracks of the crane appeared

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Speaker 1: to have sunk a little into the tip, and if

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Speaker 1: he wasn't mistaken, it appeared as though the entire top

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Speaker 1: of it was lower than usual. Back at pank Glass, Junior,

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Speaker 1: eight year old Gaya took her place at a desk

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Speaker 1: by the wall as her teacher, mister Davies, set up

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Speaker 1: his blackboard by the window. The classroom was one of

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Speaker 1: three at the back of the school that looked out

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Speaker 1: directly onto the face of Tip number seven. In the

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Speaker 1: classroom beyond the wall to her right were mister Bannon

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Speaker 1: and the nine to ten year olds, including her sister Marilyn,

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Speaker 1: along with Errol May Jones and her two best friends,

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Speaker 1: Peter and June. And in the classroom to the left

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Speaker 1: were sat the seven to eight year olds, including her

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Speaker 1: younger brother Carl. With it just gone ten past nine,

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Speaker 1: Gaya and her classmates were watching patiently as mister Davies

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Speaker 1: drew up some math problems on the blackboard. When a

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Speaker 1: few of them became aware of a distant rumble, Gaina

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Speaker 1: looked out at the window, straining to see where an

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Speaker 1: earth it might coming from, but saw only the thick

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Speaker 1: fog at the bottom of the hill. Having by then

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Speaker 1: heard it too, mister Davies reassured the children that it

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Speaker 1: was only thunder. Only the thunder was getting louder. Then

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Speaker 1: the lights dangling from the ceiling began to shake. It

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Speaker 1: can't be, thought mister Davies, as he ran to the window,

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Speaker 1: peering desperately into the fog as that hideous sound grew

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Speaker 1: louder and louder, his eyes widening in helpless inescapable horror.

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Speaker 1: It was shortly before nine fifteen am that the eight

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Speaker 1: meter high spoiled Tip number seven, soaked through by two

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Speaker 1: weeks of rain, collapse under its own weight. With nothing

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Speaker 1: in its way to stop it. A half a million

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Speaker 1: cubic foot avalanche of wet slurry, soil, and rock began

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Speaker 1: cascading toward Aberfan Village, moving at a speed of fifty

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Speaker 1: miles per hour. The one hundred and fifty thousand ton

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Speaker 1: mass first destroyed a farm along with its occupants, before

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Speaker 1: obliterating eighteen homes and completely smothered pank Glass Junior School.

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Speaker 1: As news of the collapse quickly spread, hundreds stopped what

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Speaker 1: they were doing, grabbed shovels from gardens and raced immediately

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Speaker 1: to help. Though the classrooms at the front of the

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Speaker 1: school had survived the brunt of it, the three at

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00:20:44,160 --> 00:20:47,159
Speaker 1: the back had been so swamped by the spoil that

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00:20:47,320 --> 00:20:51,439
Speaker 1: nothing inside of them could be seen. All about the

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00:20:51,560 --> 00:20:55,600
Speaker 1: ground was awash with thick black sludge as water gushed

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Speaker 1: down from the hill and mixed with the coal dust.

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Speaker 1: As anxious parents arrived to inspect the damage, many assumed

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Speaker 1: the children had been evacuated from the building, only to

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Speaker 1: realize with horror that half of them were still trapped inside.

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Speaker 1: Before long, the school was completely surrounded by villagers and

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Speaker 1: emergency services alike as they dug desperately at the mass

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Speaker 1: to get them out. Others, in their anguish, began to

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Speaker 1: claw at the muck with their bare hands, but for

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Speaker 1: most of those still trapped under the rubble, it was

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Speaker 1: already too late. Miraculously, eight year old Gayer survived the disaster,

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Speaker 1: having been pushed to the back of the classroom and

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Speaker 1: trapped under a radiator that saved her from suffocating. She

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00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:49,720
Speaker 1: was found alive just after nine thirty am, but her

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00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:53,800
Speaker 1: younger brother Carl and older sister Marilyn were not so lucky.

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Speaker 1: In fact, Gayner would be one of only ten children

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Speaker 1: rescued from under the spoil, the last of them her

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Speaker 1: class mate Jeff Edwards, being pulled out at eleven a m.

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Speaker 1: The rescue workers continued to work tirelessly throughout the day.

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Speaker 1: Where first they had heard cries from under the rubble,

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00:22:15,840 --> 00:22:25,960
Speaker 1: they had very quickly fallen silent. A hundred and seven

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Speaker 1: school children died that morning, along with five teachers, including

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Speaker 1: twenty one year old mister Davies, head teacher Anne Jennings

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00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:39,040
Speaker 1: and deputy head mister Bannon, who, when his body was

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Speaker 1: finally uncovered, was found to have been sheltering five of

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Speaker 1: the children in his arms. Forty four year old Nancy Williams,

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Speaker 1: a much loved staff member who like everyone else at

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00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:53,400
Speaker 1: the school, had come to see the children as her own,

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00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:59,680
Speaker 1: also died while trying to protect them. The Aberfan disaster

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00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:05,320
Speaker 1: was a national tragedy, uniting the country in grief. In total,

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Speaker 1: one hundred and sixteen children and twenty eight adults lost

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Speaker 1: their lives. Among them were ten year olds Errol May

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Speaker 1: Jones and her friends Peter and June, as well as

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Speaker 1: eighty year old Paul Davies. It was only a few

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Speaker 1: days after the disaster that strange stories of portents and premonitions,

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Speaker 1: apparently foretelling the event began to emerge. Chief among them

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Speaker 1: was Errol May's peculiar dream and the strange proclamation she

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Speaker 1: is said to have made in a few days prior

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Speaker 1: to the tragedy. It was two weeks later, when going

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Speaker 1: through her son's things, that Paul Davies's mother came across

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00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:52,159
Speaker 1: that unusual picture he had drawn, seeing its depiction of

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00:23:52,200 --> 00:23:56,160
Speaker 1: stick figures with shovels and the incongruous phrase the end

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00:23:56,640 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 1: in an entirely new light. Soon other stories would emerge too,

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00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:09,440
Speaker 1: news of premonitions of a different kind, with an entire

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00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:12,560
Speaker 1: nation demanding to know how on earth such a tragedy

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00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:15,600
Speaker 1: had been allowed to happen. Less than a week after

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Speaker 1: it had occurred, a tribunal was established to investigate. Over

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00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:23,720
Speaker 1: the course of seventy six days, with one hundred and

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00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: thirty six witnesses interviewed. The buck was passed back and

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00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:31,439
Speaker 1: forth as representatives of the National Coal Board attempted to

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Speaker 1: deflect any sense of responsibility for the disaster. Having carried

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00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:41,159
Speaker 1: out their own investigation into the catastrophe, The NCB claimed

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00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 1: it to have been the result of an unknown natural

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00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:48,119
Speaker 1: spring that had steadily destabilized the tip from underneath, of

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00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:53,080
Speaker 1: which nobody could have been aware. Only this was a lie.

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00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 1: The NCB had been well aware of the spring, but,

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00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:02,080
Speaker 1: threatened by the increasingly competitive market, had elected not to

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Speaker 1: incur the expense of moving the spoiled tip somewhere else.

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Speaker 1: Not only that the same tip had even partially slipped

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Speaker 1: only the year before. In fact, a petition raised by

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00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 1: the mothers of some of the school children expressly stating

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Speaker 1: their concern about the streams and springs under Pitch seven

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Speaker 1: had even been delivered to Murtha County Borough Council that

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Speaker 1: very same year, but nothing had come of it. As

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Speaker 1: the tribunal ultimately concluded with or without apparent precognitive dreams,

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Speaker 1: it seems the disaster had been well foreseen after all.

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Speaker 1: If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to

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Speaker 1: or small, are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are

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00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:13,920
Speaker 1: produced by me, Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate

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Speaker 1: the show on iTunes, and feel free to get in

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Speaker 1: touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've

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00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:22,919
Speaker 1: heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of

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Speaker 1: your own you'd like to share. You can reach us

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Speaker 1: Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward slash Unexplained Now,

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