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Show SCIENCE ASKS: Can Some People See into the OR NINE MONTHSbefore it happened, Lorna Middleton felt a strong premonition building up in her that Sen. Robert Kennedy would be assassinated. At first, the plump, 54-year-old, American-born piano teacher in London sensed he would be “in danger.” Then on March 15, she “saw” an assassination, probably while the Senator “is on tour in the West.” On April 5 and again on April 11, she felt a foreboding of death “connected with Kennedy.” The fatal shots were fired on June 5. can lay claim to hunches —but what’s remarkable about Lorna Middleton’s is that she wrote them all down at the time and sent them to a British psychiatrist to be recorded, evaluated, and later confirmed at the Central Premonitions Registry in London. The written Kennedy hunches were not isolated phenomena. As Mias Middieton reported “visions” involving plane and train crashes, floods, earthquakes, and other disasters, the Registry corroborated many of them by events that subsequently occurred. In a study of 469 premonitions by Britons filed with the Registry during 1967, only 18 proved true. Two persons were responsible for 12 of the 18. Highest scorer was Miss Middieton, closely followed by Alan P. Hercher, a 45-year-old telephone worker who apparently foresees events in amazingly vivid detail. Last June, a Central Premonitions Registry, modeled after the London bureau, was set up in New York. A four-man investigative panel of parapsychology researchers is headed by Dr, Stanley Krippner, clinical psychologist and director of the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn. Stili in its early stages, the Registry has already re- ceived more than 400 psychic fore- casts from manyparts of the nation, most are waiting to be evaluated. Although skeptics may jeer at precognition, clairvoyance, and ESP (ex- trasensory perception), a growing number of research scientists are taking premonitions seriously. Through the Registry where portents can be analyzed and checked, they hope to produce evidence to sup- 4 Family Weekly, May 4, 1969 port the concept of precognition. London’s check-up project was originated by Dr. R. D. Barker, an eminent psychiatrist who indulged his hobby in research of the supernatural. In October, 1966, a huge coal tip slid down on the Welsh village of Aberfan, killing 138 children and adults, At the time, Dr. Barker was writing a book, “Scared to Death,” and he visited Aberfan to find out more about a child who was said to have rushed out of school only to die of fright. The psychiatrist wondered if people anywhere had experienced some prevision of the catastrophe. Through a London newspaper,he launched an appeal for anyone claiming foreknowledge. Hundreds responded, but proof was hard to pin down. Thatled to formation of the prerecording Registry. Perhaps, Dr. Barker thought, if enough premonitions were scien- tifically collected, an “early warning system” could be set up that might prevent tragedies or reduce them. As the hunches poured in, Dr. Barker rated them by points based on significant relationship to actual events. After a year, he was able to produce evidence of accuracy, particularly by Middleton and Hencher, before the Royal Society of Medicine. “They are absolutely genuine,” Dr. Barker said of their premonitions. “Quite honestly, they stagger me. Somehowthese ‘sensitive’ people can gate-crash the time barrier—see the wheels of disaster starting to turn before the rest of us. It is difficult to attribute their experiences to coincidence alone.” From hisanalysis, Dr. Barker concluded that women makebetter “seismographs” than men; five times as Many women as reported pre- monitions. Those with the keenest perception, Dr. Barker found, had a sense of oppression and were unduly sensitive to calamities. Who are the human “seismographs,” and what makes them tick? High scorer Alan Hencheris a slender, balding bachelor of 45, shy and self-educated. Lunching with me in London a few weeks ago, he revealed: “At first, I would get visions, just words in my mind. Lately, as I concentrate more, I get pictures in natural color. Most often the premonitions come while I’m working, maybe because there’s a lot of electricity at the telephone switchboard. Yet they also come at night, when the air is clear, or after a glass of wine. “Usually my premonitions are ac- companied by headaches, like a steel band around my forehead. I believe it’s because I concentrate so hard. But as I write them down,the headache recedes. Then, when I hear a premonition las been borne oui, I feel utter relief. It’s as if something |