The Premonitions Bureau

“This is rich, florid, funny history, with undertones of human grief . . . Knight is shrewd and perceptive . . . [he] pushes his material into neurobiology, into the nature of placebos and expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies . . . Knight’s book is crisp.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times "[E]legant and eccentric . . . [Knight's] prose glides like mercury and he does not waste a word. With deft skill, he explores historical theories of perception, time, death, fear." —New York Times Book Review "[A] thought-provoking and deeply researched book . . . Knight probes the space between coincidence and the ineffable mystery of supernatural possibilities." —NPR Books "[Knight's] prose delights." —Wall Street Journal “Stunning… An enveloping, unsettling book, gorgeously written and profound.” —Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain From a rising star New Yorker staff writer, the incredible and gripping true story of John Barker, a psychiatrist who investigated the power of premonitions—and came to believe he himself was destined for an early death On the morning of October 21, 1966, Kathleen Middleton, a music teacher in suburban London, awoke choking and gasping, convinced disaster was about to strike. An hour later, a mountain of rubble containing waste from a coal mine collapsed above the village of Aberfan, swamping buildings and killing 144 people, many of them children. Among the doctors and emergency workers who arrived on the scene was John Barker, a psychiatrist from Shelton Hospital, in Shrewsbury. At Aberfan, Barker became convinced there had been supernatural warning signs of the disaster, and decided to establish a “premonitions bureau,” in conjunction with the Evening Standard newspaper, to collect dreams and forebodings from the public, in the hope of preventing future calamities. Middleton was one of hundreds of seemingly normal people, who would contribute their visions to Barker’s research in the years to come, some of them unnervingly accurate. As Barker’s work plunged him deeper into the occult, his reputation suffered. But in the face of professional humiliation, Barker only became more determined, ultimately realizing with terrible certainty that catastrophe had been prophesied in his own life. In Sam Knight’s crystalline telling, this astonishing true story comes to encompass the secrets of the world. We all know premonitions are impossible—and yet they come true all the time. Our lives are full of collisions and coincidence: the question is how we perceive these implausible events and therefore make meaning in our lives. The Premonitions Bureau is an enthralling account of madness and wonder, of science and the supernatural. With an unforgettable ending, it is a mysterious journey into the most unsettling reaches of the human mind.

"I feel it is one of the best approaches I have found to grasp the most jarring enigma humanity has ever faced." —George Noory, host of Coast to Coast AM “We cannot separate the earth from its greater cosmic environment. What is needed is a new story and Alan Steinfeld’s Making Contact is part of that story.” —Deepak Chopra, Author, Total Meditation How can we prepare for an event that is literally beyond anything humanity has ever faced? Making Contact presents multiple perspectives on what no longer can be denied: UFOs and their occupants are visiting our world. The book answers questions which remain in the wake of the recent Pentagon’s disclosures as to who and why these beings are here. The volume contains original writings by the leading experts of the phenomena such as: Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles reporter, Whitley Strieber best-selling author of Communion, Professor John E. Mack, former head of the Harvard Medical school of psychiatry and an alien abduction investigator, Darryl Anka internationally known for his communication with the extraterrestrial Bashar, Nick Pope, former UK Ministry of Defense UFO investigator, Grant Cameron expert on American presidents and UFOs, Drs. J.J. and Desiree Hurtak, globalists and founders of the worldwide organization, The Academy for Future Science, Caroline Cory, director of Superhuman and ET: Contact, Mary Rodwell, author of the New Human about star-seed children, Henrietta Weekes, actress and writer, expressing the poetic aspects of making contact. Alan Steinfeld, contributes and curates the collection with 30 years of experience with the subject. The Foreword by George Noory of Coast to Coast AM kicks off the volume with his veteran overview of the need to wake up to the “new realities of extraterrestrial existence.” At this critical juncture in the government’s official acknowledgement of the reality of UFOs/UAPs, scientists, politicians and mainstream news outlets have no idea what to make of these startling revelations or the outpouring of sightings and “contact” experiences currently being reported on a global scale. The book stands as the most comprehensive clarification to date on the intent and intelligence behind the phenomena. The variety of viewpoints expressed in the volume provide a solid foundation for the “preparation” of the greatest challenge to ever face humankind. Making Contact stands as the essential handbook for embracing the most exalted moment in history: Meeting the cosmic others.

Premonitions are impossible. But they come true all the time. Dr John Barker was an ambitious psychiatrist with an uncontrollable interest in strange mental conditions. Then, in 1966, in the wake of a national disaster, he had an outlandish vision. He would collect the public's premonitions and forebodings. He would build a database to predict the future and help avert future disasters. The Premonitions Bureau is the astonishing story of this bizarre real-life undertaking - the radical thinking and peculiar characters behind it; the hundreds of correspondents, their visions, the headlines that they made; and the Bureau's two most gifted "percipients", a charismatic piano teacher and a troubled switchboard operator. Together, the pair predicted plane crashes and train wrecks, assassinations and international incidents with disturbing accuracy. And then, they called to give Barker their most unnerving premonition: a glimpse of his own imminent demise. The debut book from one of today's most exciting long-form storytellers, The Premonitions Bureau is an enthralling secret history of madness and wonder, promethean ambition and mortal fear - a journey to powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Soon to be an FX limited series streaming on HULU • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. "Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.

A dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression—“queer, English, a masterpiece.” (Hilton Als) Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing “They” creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick’s They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.

A fascinating first-hand account of an awakening into a psychic consciousness, paired with a revolutionary analysis by a respected professor of religion When Elizabeth Greenfield Krohn got out of her car with her two young sons in the parking lot of her synagogue on a late afternoon in September 1988, she couldn't have anticipated she would within seconds be struck by lightning and have a near-death experience. She felt herself transported to a garden and engaging in a revelatory conversation with a spiritual being. When she recovered, her most fundamental understandings of what the world is and how it works had been completely transformed. She was “changed in a flash,” suddenly able to interact with those who had died and have prescient dreams predicting news events. She came to believe that some early traumatic and abusive experiences had played a part in preparing her for this experience. Told in matter-of-fact language, the first half of this book is the story of Krohn’s journey, and the second is an interpretation and analysis by respected professor of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal. He places Krohn's experience in the context of religious traditions and proposes the groundbreaking idea that we are shaping our own experiences in the future by how we engage with near-death experiences in the present. Changed in a Flash is not about proving a story, but about carving out space for serious discussion of this phenomenon.

To most people, man is a highly advanced organism whose life depends on the continuing performance of both his body and his mind. To some they are inseparable; when the body dies, so does the mind. But there are many people who see man as the sum of many equal but independent parts that have an existence quite different from and beyond the physical body. These people accept the existence of the spirit as the eternal factor of human life, believing that this part of man does not die when the body dies, but continues its existence beyond death. According to Dr. Hans Holzer, author of Love Beyond the Grave and many other books on the spiritual world, we already have a wealth of hard evidence regarding this next state of existence. Strong emotions are considered essential in order to make contact with someone from the spiritual world. We usually equate such emotions with anger or with crimes of passion. Dr. Holzer believes that love is also a strong enough emotion to enable people in the physical world to contact those of the spiritual, and in Love Beyond the Grave, he gives many examples of such relationships including "Sally and the Highwayman," "The Case of the Spurned Lover," "The Strange Case of the Psychic Callgirl," "The Ghostly Bedmate," and "The Affair Death Could Not Stop." This is an extraordinary collection of twenty-one cases of "love beyond the grave," all based on sound scholarship and hard facts, proving once again that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

SCIENCE: GENERAL ISSUES. What could fingers and sex possibly have in common? What does the shape of a child's fingers reveal about future musical talent? And why should professional footballers have longer fingers than other men? This book is about a simple measurement of the human hand: the 'finger ratio', or the length of the ring finger relative to the index finger. John Manning uses a tiny difference between the sexes - that men tend to have a greater finger ratio than women - to examine a dizzying group of questions about human behaviour, from sexuality, to musical ability, to predisposition to disease. Provocative, intriguing and balanced, John Manning's cutting-edge research poses many fruitful and unusual questions about what makes us as we are.