The Premonitions Bureau: A True Story by Sam Knight

From Goodreads

Premonitions are impossible. But they come true all the time.

Most are innocent. 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In 1966, John Barker, a dynamic psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, established the Premonitions Bureau to investigate these questions.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.

My thoughts

I grabbed a copy of this from BorrowBox the digital lending side of my local Library. I am not sure what actually drew me to it, but drawn to it I was.

It's odd how books can you remind you of things in your past. In this book the author mentioned that John Barker had a Ford Zephyr car, our family used to have a black Ford Zephyr and it reminded me of ours when I read that he had had one.

I enjoyed this book, it was a look into the life of John Barker a psychiatrist who while working in a British mental hospital started the Premonitions Bureau.  His aim was to look into the premonitions that people had about things that were going to happen.  A portion of the book was about the Aberfan disaster, Barker found out after the event had happened that several people had had premonitions before the event and that some even saw that they would be killed in the disaster.  Barker was very intrigued with how people could have premonitions of things and that they would occasionally come true, he find the human mind to be an interesting thing to investigate.  

How many of us readers often have feelings of deja vu when something happens?  I certainly do, whether this is down to me having had a premonition of it happening or just a feeling that I get it, I doubt I will ever know.  

If you ever come across it, it's well worth a read in my opinion.