Speaker 1: Toward the end of Homer's Odyssey, a newly returned Odysseus
Speaker 1: dines in secret in his own home, surrounded by the Suitors,
Speaker 1: a group of vulgar men who for the past decade
Speaker 1: had been trying to steal his life. Disguised as a beggar,
Speaker 1: Odysseus watches with disgust as the men shamelessly stuffed themselves
Speaker 1: on meat and wine, blissfully unaware of the true identity
Speaker 1: of the stranger who sits among them and what he
Speaker 1: plans to do to them. When suddenly, the prophet Theoclymenus
Speaker 1: interrupts the banquet to deliver his fateful words to the
Speaker 1: unsuspecting suitors. There is a shroud of darkness drawn over
Speaker 1: you from head to foot. Your cheeks are wet with tears.
Speaker 1: The air is alive with wailing voices. The war and
Speaker 1: root beams drip blood, and the gait of the cloisters,
Speaker 1: and the court beyond are full of ghosts trooping down
Speaker 1: into the night of hell. And with that their fates
Speaker 1: were sealed in what is perhaps one of literature's most
Speaker 1: famous and brutal premonitions. Though the idea of prophecy was
Speaker 1: common among many ancient cultures throughout the world. Homer's use
Speaker 1: of it in Odyssey, produced sometime around eight hundred BC,
Speaker 1: is one of the first times such an act had
Speaker 1: been written about. Traditionally, supposed prophets and seers are individuals
Speaker 1: believed to have been gifted with the unique connection to
Speaker 1: the divine, individuals that can communicate with the gods or
Speaker 1: tap into nature's hidden frequencies in order to deliver portentous
Speaker 1: visions of the future. Sometimes the apparent visions arrive instantaneously,
Speaker 1: delivered as if by lightning, fully formed into the seer's
Speaker 1: mind's eye. Other times, divination might be employed, the prophecies
Speaker 1: carefully deciphered from the scattering of bones or rounds, or
Speaker 1: sometimes a message might merely be read in the language
Speaker 1: of the world around them, an eagle tearing a pigeon,
Speaker 1: apart as in the case of Homer's Odyssey, for example,
Speaker 1: becoming the omen of a god's will. All such methods,
Speaker 1: aside from contradicting all scientifically accepted laws of the universe,
Speaker 1: would require a level of skill or understanding unknown to
Speaker 1: the average lay person. However, there is one place in
Speaker 1: which many, regardless of their level of skill, or understanding,
Speaker 1: believe they are granted access to the power of premonition
Speaker 1: in their dreams. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
Speaker 1: mcclaim myth. As Aristotle pointed out as far back as
Speaker 1: the fourth century BC in his Treatise on Prophesying in Dreams.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it is merely because so many believe their dreams
Speaker 1: to possess a special significance that we are minded to
Speaker 1: give them that significance either way, whether we believe it
Speaker 1: to be true or not, Since most of us experience them,
Speaker 1: the notion that somehow, with our dreams we possess the
Speaker 1: power to know and perhaps alter future events remains a
Speaker 1: potent one today. At institutions such as the Kessler Parapsychology
Speaker 1: Unit at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the notion
Speaker 1: of precognitive dreaming tends to be viewed as little more
Speaker 1: than an illusion created by a combination of confirmation bias
Speaker 1: and selective recall. It may be surprising to know that
Speaker 1: not that long ago there were a number of credible
Speaker 1: academics who took the notion of such things very seriously. Indeed,
Speaker 1: one in particular, the psychiatrist doctor John Barker, having spent
Speaker 1: a number of years in the nineteen sixties studying incidences
Speaker 1: of apparent predictive dreams, eventually became convinced that such events were,
Speaker 1: in fact not unusual at all. In nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: Barker even went as far as setting up his own
Speaker 1: Premonition's Bureau, in the hope that by collating people's dreams
Speaker 1: of impending tragic events, it might be possible to prevent
Speaker 1: them from taking place. It was a plan that had
Speaker 1: its seeds in a series of peculiar occurrences that came
Speaker 1: to light in the wake of one of the United
Speaker 1: kingdoms greatest tragedies of recent memory, a story that begins
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six in the valleys of South Cumry. Mummy,
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid to die, said erro May, absentmindedly watching
Speaker 1: the rain as it bucketed down outside the living room window.
Speaker 1: Whatever do you mean, asked her mother, more than a
Speaker 1: little unnerved by her daughter's matter of fact tone. It
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't the sort of thing you expected a ten
Speaker 1: year old child to say, let alone one usually so
Speaker 1: bright and affable. In an effort to change the subject,
Speaker 1: her mother offered her a lollipop, but for once, errol
Speaker 1: May had no interest in taking it. I'm not afraid
Speaker 1: because I'll be with my friends Peter and June, she said,
Speaker 1: before heading off to play in her bedroom, leaving her
Speaker 1: mother stunned and confused as to what on earth her
Speaker 1: daughter had been talking about. In October nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: erro May lived with her family in the village of Abavan,
Speaker 1: along the banks of the River Taff in South Cumrie.
Speaker 1: Known as a pit village, Abevan was established in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century primarily to service the mirth of Vale Colliery,
Speaker 1: where many of the villages a few thousand residents continued
Speaker 1: to work. Coal had been the lifeblood of the region
Speaker 1: for decades, having become a vital component in the ravenous
Speaker 1: or a borus of industrial revolution, feeding the flames to
Speaker 1: smelt the iron to make the machines that used the
Speaker 1: coal that fed the flames to make the machines, and
Speaker 1: so on and so on. By the late nineteen sixties, however,
Speaker 1: with increasing competition from more efficient sources of energy, the
Speaker 1: British coal industry was in steep decline. Not that you
Speaker 1: would have known it if you were to visit southern
Speaker 1: Cumri at the time, where mines like Mirth of Alee
Speaker 1: had so far managed to avoid the downturn. Evidence of
Speaker 1: just how dominant the industry was in the livelihood of
Speaker 1: Abevan could be seen in the black rain water that
Speaker 1: rushed through the streets during the heavier downpours, to the
Speaker 1: coal smiced faces of the eight hundred or so men
Speaker 1: who emerged from out of its pit each day, to
Speaker 1: the vast towers of spoil that loomed over the village
Speaker 1: to the west. Taken from the French word espoielier, meaning
Speaker 1: to seize by violence, these gigantic obsidian mounds were comprised
Speaker 1: largely of shale and any other waste materials removed in
Speaker 1: the process of mining, plundered from its natural habitat in
Speaker 1: the bowels of the earth, and piled perilously high above
Speaker 1: ground where it didn't belong. There were seven in total,
Speaker 1: with the largest stretching some eighty meters into the air,
Speaker 1: steadily turning the lush green valley into a mountain of black.
Speaker 1: Not that arrow May or any of the other children
Speaker 1: in the village minded too much, for the black stuff
Speaker 1: was all they had known some would even sneak off
Speaker 1: to play on the spoiled tips, or in the blackened
Speaker 1: streams that flowed steadily from underneath them. Not even rain
Speaker 1: would deter them. By mid October in sixty six, it
Speaker 1: had been raining solidly for near on two weeks. At
Speaker 1: times like those, with the slate gray clouds hanging so
Speaker 1: low and heavy over the tips, it could feel as
Speaker 1: if the whole world might be about to turn gray.
Speaker 1: And something, it seemed, was stirring. It was two weeks
Speaker 1: after ten year old Errol May's peculiar talk of death
Speaker 1: that she was startled awake by a terrifying nightmare. Later
Speaker 1: that morning, she attempted to relay the details to her mother,
Speaker 1: but she didn't want to hear it, not now, she said,
Speaker 1: preferring to concentrate on getting her daughter ready for school.
Speaker 1: But mummy insisted arrow May, you have to listen, fine,
Speaker 1: but make it quick. She replied, you're going to be late. Well,
Speaker 1: said erro May, searching for the best way to describe it.
Speaker 1: I dreamt that I went to school, but there was
Speaker 1: no school there. Something black had come down all over it.
Speaker 1: Later that night, barely a street away from arrow May's home,
Speaker 1: eight year old Paul Davis was at the living room
Speaker 1: table drawing while his mother did the ironing in front
Speaker 1: of the TV. It was only after her son had
Speaker 1: gone to bed, as she packed away his things that
Speaker 1: Paul's mother got a proper look at what he had
Speaker 1: been drawing. From what she could make out, it was
Speaker 1: a picture of the village, the peaked spoil heaps rising
Speaker 1: up behind it. Little stick figures holding shovels were dotted
Speaker 1: all about, while in the sky Paul had drawn a
Speaker 1: plane with the letters NCB for National Coal Board written
Speaker 1: on the side. Then Paul's mother was drawn to something
Speaker 1: odd in the top right hand corner, just two words
Speaker 1: spelling out the end. Thinking little more of it, Paul's
Speaker 1: mother tucked the picture inside address a draw along with
Speaker 1: the rest of her son's crayon masterpieces. Are you always
Speaker 1: taking care of your family? Do you often take care
Speaker 1: of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take
Speaker 1: care of yourself, to make time for you. You deserve it.
Speaker 1: Tele doc gives you access to a licensed therapist to
Speaker 1: help you get back to feeling your best, to feeling
Speaker 1: like yourself again. With tele adoc, you can speak to
Speaker 1: a licensed therapist I phone or video therapy. Appointments are
Speaker 1: available seven days a week from seven am to nine
Speaker 1: pm local time. If you feel overwhelmed sometimes maybe you
Speaker 1: feel stressed or anxious, depressed or lonely, or you might
Speaker 1: be struggling with a personal or family issue, teledoc can help.
Speaker 1: Teledoc is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they
Speaker 1: make it easy to change counselors if needed. For free.
Speaker 1: Teledoc therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download
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Speaker 1: podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained Podcast. Later that night, just over a hundred miles away,
Speaker 1: in a church in Plymouth, forty seven year old Caroline
Speaker 1: Miller was preparing to share a recent vision with her
Speaker 1: fellow spiritualists. As one of the group's more prominent members
Speaker 1: and a self described medium, Miller was a regular contributor
Speaker 1: to these private circle meetings, as she called them. On
Speaker 1: this occasion, however, she seemed more agitated than usual. It
Speaker 1: was terrible, she said, just an avalanche of black coal
Speaker 1: hurtling down a mountainside and at the bottom, this young
Speaker 1: boy staring up at it with a look of absolute
Speaker 1: terror on his poor face. Then suddenly there were tens
Speaker 1: hundreds of people digging into a mound of rubble, and
Speaker 1: that boy again. He was alive, but his faith full
Speaker 1: of so much grief. Sometime later, in the early hours
Speaker 1: of the following day, Imbarnstable, half way between Plymouth and Abervan,
Speaker 1: fifty four year old Mary Hennessy tossed and turned in
Speaker 1: her sleep. Deep somewhere within her mind, she found herself
Speaker 1: standing in a school corridor, peering into nearby a classroom.
Speaker 1: Inside a small group of children appeared to be praying,
Speaker 1: and at the back of the room what looked like
Speaker 1: a series of wooden bars or pieces of wood was
Speaker 1: sticking out at the ground. Then suddenly the children began
Speaker 1: desperately trying to get through them to escape the room,
Speaker 1: but they were trapped. Moments later she was outside the building,
Speaker 1: watching helplessly as others frantically scurried about the place, a
Speaker 1: look of abject horror on their tear stained faces. Hennessy
Speaker 1: woke suddenly, gasping for breath, relieved to find herself safely
Speaker 1: at home in bed. She was so affected by the nightmare.
Speaker 1: She called her son first thing and begged him to
Speaker 1: take extra special care with his daughters that day. But
Speaker 1: as she recounted the dream to him, she had a
Speaker 1: sudden realization. Clearly it wasn't about her grandchildren, since they
Speaker 1: were little more than babies. That children that she'd seen
Speaker 1: were school children. Back in Abervan. On the morning of Friday,
Speaker 1: October twenty first, though the rain had finally stopped, dawn
Speaker 1: revealed the village to be shrouded in a thick autumnal
Speaker 1: fog that rose high up into the valley all about.
Speaker 1: As some made their ways home, tired and exhausted from
Speaker 1: night shifts, others were just beginning to stir in their beds.
Speaker 1: Eight year old Gayner Minette was roused from sleep by
Speaker 1: the sound of her mother preparing breakfast downstairs. Before long
Speaker 1: she was down there too, sat at the table next
Speaker 1: to her seven year old brother Carl and ten year
Speaker 1: old sister Marilyn. The trio were all pupils at the
Speaker 1: villages pan Class junior school, unlike their older sister, who
Speaker 1: had since graduated to secondary school. However, all four them
Speaker 1: were equally excited that morning since it was the last
Speaker 1: day of term, with the promise of a full week's
Speaker 1: holiday ahead of them. A short time later, all dressed
Speaker 1: and ready to go, the children headed out into the
Speaker 1: street as gain as mother waved them off from the
Speaker 1: front door, watching on as slowly, one by one they
Speaker 1: disappeared into the fog. Out on the streets, children from
Speaker 1: all over the village were leaving their homes and making
Speaker 1: their way to school, many knocking on neighbor's doors to
Speaker 1: collect their friends to make their journey together, some stopping
Speaker 1: off at Anderson's Touch shop along the way to grab
Speaker 1: cola cubes and flying sources. It was hard to keep
Speaker 1: track of everyone making their way along the street, the
Speaker 1: fog being so thick they could barely see a meter
Speaker 1: in front of them, But there was no mistaking the
Speaker 1: heavy scrape and clang of metal coming from the tram
Speaker 1: line to the the village as the waist carts, hidden
Speaker 1: somewhere in the fog steadily made their way toward the
Speaker 1: top of Tip number seven. No matter where you were
Speaker 1: in Aberfan, you could always hear the sound of those
Speaker 1: carts trundling along, one after another, as bucket load after
Speaker 1: bucket load of waste was driven out west and discarded
Speaker 1: onto those looming spoil heaps. Up At pank Glass Junior,
Speaker 1: on the northwestern edge of the village, sixty four year
Speaker 1: old head teacher and Jennings stood watch from the front
Speaker 1: steps as the school's two hundred odd students emerged from
Speaker 1: out at the fog. Then, at nine am on the dot,
Speaker 1: the stern but much loved Jennings rang the bell to
Speaker 1: summon them all inside. As the children filed into the
Speaker 1: assembly hall. Inside one of the classrooms, newly installed Deputy
Speaker 1: head David Banon was prepping for the day's lessons. The
Speaker 1: forty seven year old Bayanon had only moved to the
Speaker 1: village with his family that summer after taking on the
Speaker 1: job as deputy head, and he had loved every minute
Speaker 1: of it. In the main hall, Miss Jennings conducted a
Speaker 1: short assembly as the children sat cross legged on the
Speaker 1: parquet floor before her. After finishing with the spirited rendition
Speaker 1: of all things bright and beautiful, she sent them on
Speaker 1: their way to class. But high up in those blackened hills,
Speaker 1: all the way through the fog to the top of
Speaker 1: Tip seven, something was off. Earlier that day, when one
Speaker 1: of the crane drivers had arrived for his morning shift.
Speaker 1: He noticed something peculiar. The tracks of the crane appeared
Speaker 1: to have sunk a little into the tip, and if
Speaker 1: he wasn't mistaken, it appeared as though the entire top
Speaker 1: of it was lower than usual. Back at pank Glass, Junior,
Speaker 1: eight year old Gaya took her place at a desk
Speaker 1: by the wall as her teacher, mister Davies, set up
Speaker 1: his blackboard by the window. The classroom was one of
Speaker 1: three at the back of the school that looked out
Speaker 1: directly onto the face of Tip number seven. In the
Speaker 1: classroom beyond the wall to her right were mister Bannon
Speaker 1: and the nine to ten year olds, including her sister Marilyn,
Speaker 1: along with Errol May Jones and her two best friends,
Speaker 1: Peter and June. And in the classroom to the left
Speaker 1: were sat the seven to eight year olds, including her
Speaker 1: younger brother Carl. With it just gone ten past nine,
Speaker 1: Gaya and her classmates were watching patiently as mister Davies
Speaker 1: drew up some math problems on the blackboard. When a
Speaker 1: few of them became aware of a distant rumble, Gaina
Speaker 1: looked out at the window, straining to see where an
Speaker 1: earth it might coming from, but saw only the thick
Speaker 1: fog at the bottom of the hill. Having by then
Speaker 1: heard it too, mister Davies reassured the children that it
Speaker 1: was only thunder. Only the thunder was getting louder. Then
Speaker 1: the lights dangling from the ceiling began to shake. It
Speaker 1: can't be, thought mister Davies, as he ran to the window,
Speaker 1: peering desperately into the fog as that hideous sound grew
Speaker 1: louder and louder, his eyes widening in helpless inescapable horror.
Speaker 1: It was shortly before nine fifteen am that the eight
Speaker 1: meter high spoiled Tip number seven, soaked through by two
Speaker 1: weeks of rain, collapse under its own weight. With nothing
Speaker 1: in its way to stop it. A half a million
Speaker 1: cubic foot avalanche of wet slurry, soil, and rock began
Speaker 1: cascading toward Aberfan Village, moving at a speed of fifty
Speaker 1: miles per hour. The one hundred and fifty thousand ton
Speaker 1: mass first destroyed a farm along with its occupants, before
Speaker 1: obliterating eighteen homes and completely smothered pank Glass Junior School.
Speaker 1: As news of the collapse quickly spread, hundreds stopped what
Speaker 1: they were doing, grabbed shovels from gardens and raced immediately
Speaker 1: to help. Though the classrooms at the front of the
Speaker 1: school had survived the brunt of it, the three at
Speaker 1: the back had been so swamped by the spoil that
Speaker 1: nothing inside of them could be seen. All about the
Speaker 1: ground was awash with thick black sludge as water gushed
Speaker 1: down from the hill and mixed with the coal dust.
Speaker 1: As anxious parents arrived to inspect the damage, many assumed
Speaker 1: the children had been evacuated from the building, only to
Speaker 1: realize with horror that half of them were still trapped inside.
Speaker 1: Before long, the school was completely surrounded by villagers and
Speaker 1: emergency services alike as they dug desperately at the mass
Speaker 1: to get them out. Others, in their anguish, began to
Speaker 1: claw at the muck with their bare hands, but for
Speaker 1: most of those still trapped under the rubble, it was
Speaker 1: already too late. Miraculously, eight year old Gayer survived the disaster,
Speaker 1: having been pushed to the back of the classroom and
Speaker 1: trapped under a radiator that saved her from suffocating. She
Speaker 1: was found alive just after nine thirty am, but her
Speaker 1: younger brother Carl and older sister Marilyn were not so lucky.
Speaker 1: In fact, Gayner would be one of only ten children
Speaker 1: rescued from under the spoil, the last of them her
Speaker 1: class mate Jeff Edwards, being pulled out at eleven a m.
Speaker 1: The rescue workers continued to work tirelessly throughout the day.
Speaker 1: Where first they had heard cries from under the rubble,
Speaker 1: they had very quickly fallen silent. A hundred and seven
Speaker 1: school children died that morning, along with five teachers, including
Speaker 1: twenty one year old mister Davies, head teacher Anne Jennings
Speaker 1: and deputy head mister Bannon, who, when his body was
Speaker 1: finally uncovered, was found to have been sheltering five of
Speaker 1: the children in his arms. Forty four year old Nancy Williams,
Speaker 1: a much loved staff member who like everyone else at
Speaker 1: the school, had come to see the children as her own,
Speaker 1: also died while trying to protect them. The Aberfan disaster
Speaker 1: was a national tragedy, uniting the country in grief. In total,
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixteen children and twenty eight adults lost
Speaker 1: their lives. Among them were ten year olds Errol May
Speaker 1: Jones and her friends Peter and June, as well as
Speaker 1: eighty year old Paul Davies. It was only a few
Speaker 1: days after the disaster that strange stories of portents and premonitions,
Speaker 1: apparently foretelling the event began to emerge. Chief among them
Speaker 1: was Errol May's peculiar dream and the strange proclamation she
Speaker 1: is said to have made in a few days prior
Speaker 1: to the tragedy. It was two weeks later, when going
Speaker 1: through her son's things, that Paul Davies's mother came across
Speaker 1: that unusual picture he had drawn, seeing its depiction of
Speaker 1: stick figures with shovels and the incongruous phrase the end
Speaker 1: in an entirely new light. Soon other stories would emerge too,
Speaker 1: news of premonitions of a different kind, with an entire
Speaker 1: nation demanding to know how on earth such a tragedy
Speaker 1: had been allowed to happen. Less than a week after
Speaker 1: it had occurred, a tribunal was established to investigate. Over
Speaker 1: the course of seventy six days, with one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty six witnesses interviewed. The buck was passed back and
Speaker 1: forth as representatives of the National Coal Board attempted to
Speaker 1: deflect any sense of responsibility for the disaster. Having carried
Speaker 1: out their own investigation into the catastrophe, The NCB claimed
Speaker 1: it to have been the result of an unknown natural
Speaker 1: spring that had steadily destabilized the tip from underneath, of
Speaker 1: which nobody could have been aware. Only this was a lie.
Speaker 1: The NCB had been well aware of the spring, but,
Speaker 1: threatened by the increasingly competitive market, had elected not to
Speaker 1: incur the expense of moving the spoiled tip somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Not only that the same tip had even partially slipped
Speaker 1: only the year before. In fact, a petition raised by
Speaker 1: the mothers of some of the school children expressly stating
Speaker 1: their concern about the streams and springs under Pitch seven
Speaker 1: had even been delivered to Murtha County Borough Council that
Speaker 1: very same year, but nothing had come of it. As
Speaker 1: the tribunal ultimately concluded with or without apparent precognitive dreams,
Speaker 1: it seems the disaster had been well foreseen after all.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to
Speaker 1: help support us, you can now go to Unexplained podcast
Speaker 1: dot com forwards support. All donations, no matter how large
Speaker 1: or small, are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are
Speaker 1: produced by me, Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate
Speaker 1: the show on iTunes, and feel free to get in
Speaker 1: touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
Speaker 1: heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of
Speaker 1: your own you'd like to share. You can reach us
Speaker 1: online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained
Speaker 1: Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward slash Unexplained Now,
Speaker 1: it's time to take care of yourself. To make time
Speaker 1: for you, Tell a doc gives you access to a
Speaker 1: licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best.
Speaker 1: Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime
Speaker 1: between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days
Speaker 1: a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers.
Speaker 1: Download the app or visit teledoc dot com. Forward slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained Podcast Today to get started. That's teladoc dot com
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