Eerie Echoes: Psychic Visions of the Titanic Disaster With Terry Keefe

Michelle: Before we dive into the eerie tales of the past, I have some electrifying news to share with you. I'm excited to announce that The Haunted History Chronicles podcast now has its very own small shop of the macabre and mysterious. Picture this exclusive merchandise, hauntingly beautiful artwork, spine tingling stickers mugs that will make your morning coffee seem positively paranormal, and prints that capture the ghostly essence of days gone by. Whether you're a longtime listener of the show or a newcomer drawn to the enigmatic allure of haunted history, the shop is your gateway to the supernatural. Imagine decorating your space with a piece of history, a connection to the spectral past. The merchandise is designed to evoke the very essence of the stories I share, making it an essential addition to your collection of all things eerie. You can find all these hair raising treasures on the website, or simply follow the links conveniently placed in the podcast description notes. It's so easy, even a ghost could do it. So whether you're searching for the perfect addition to your haunted memorabilia collection or just wanting to immerse yourself in the world of the supernatural, the shop is here to provide. Dive into the past, embrace the spook, and let the stories of history's ghosts haunt your space. So why not visit the shop today? And remember, the spirits of the past are waiting for you. The Haunted History Chronicles exclusive merchandise is just a click away. Happy shopping, and may the spirits be with you. Hi everyone, and welcome back to Haunted History Chronicles. First of all, thank you for taking.

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Michelle: Today'S podcast or guest gather round. As we step into the past and explore the chilling echoes of a bygone era, we place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable, proclaimed Philip Franklin, the vice president of the White Starline, the proud owners of the ill fated Titanic. These words, uttered with unwavering certainty, set the stage for a voyage that would go down in history as one of the most tragic and haunting tales of all time. As we unravel the mysteries that shroud the Titanic, join us on this chilling journey through time, where the past comes alive and history's haunting pages are turned. Today, we embark on a voyage that takes us back in time to a story that has echoed through the ages, a story of grandeur and tragedy, of human ambition and nature's relentless force. Our tale begins in the year 1912, a time when the world was on the cusp of a new era and the allure of modern technology promised a brighter future. On April 10 of that year, an extraordinary vessel set sail from Southampton in England. The RMS Titanic, a majestic ocean liner of unparalleled luxury, was about to make its maiden voyage to New York City. The Titanic was not just a ship. It was a symbol of human achievement and opulence. At 52 310 tons, it was the largest passenger steamship the world had ever seen. Among its opulent amenities were a gym, plunge pool, Turkish bath, barbershop, electric lifts, library, restaurant and cafe, catering to the privileged few who could afford first class passage. The world had been told that this ship was unthinkable, that advancements in shipbuilding and sheer size made it invincible. But sometimes history has a way of humbling the pride of men. Four days after setting sail at 11:40 p.m.. On April 14, 1912, disaster struck. The Titanic, traveling at a high speed, collided with an iceberg in less than 3 hours. At 02:20 a.m.. On April 15, the ship had sunk beneath the icy waves of the North Atlantic, claiming the lives of 1517 of its 2223 passengers and crew. It was a tragedy that would become an enduring image of maritime disaster. But why were so many lives lost that fateful night? Was it a tragic accident? Or did human error play a role? Captain Edward J. Smith, in command of the Titanic, received warnings of icebergs in the vicinity. He altered the ship's course, believing that there was little risk so far south at that time of year. However, he did not reduce the ship's speed. Some believe this contributed to the disaster as the Titanic hit the iceberg just 37 seconds after it was first sighted. It's been suggested that Captain Smith's decision to maintain speed was influenced by J. Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Starline, who wanted to arrive in New York ahead of schedule for positive press about the new ship. The Titanic speed, coupled with a change in route, made it difficult for rescuers to locate the stricken vessel. Weather conditions played their part in this tragedy. Unusually calm seas and freezing temperatures created a deceptive calmness. With no moonlight to guide them and no binoculars for the lookouts, visibility was poor. The warning call from the crow's nest came too late. The Titanic was equipped with 16 watertight compartments on its underside. These compartments could be closed electronically to prevent sinking if water entered them. However, when the iceberg struck, six of these compartments were breached, causing the ship to become too heavy to remain afloat. Remarkably, ultrasound analysis of the wreck in 1996 revealed that the iceberg had caused stress to the rivets holding the hull plates together allowing water to flood in. As the Titanic began to break apart and sink, the nearby RMF Carpathia received distress signals and raced to the scene. The carpathia picked up the first lifeboats at 04:10, a.m. Nearly an hour and a half after the Titanic had sunk. But the SS. Californian, only 19.5 miles away, failed to react. Despite seeing distress flares from the Titanic, they did not respond promptly. A series of miscommunications and negligence on the Californian's part contributed to the loss of life. The most heart wrenching factor in this tragedy was the inadequate provision of lifeboats. The Titanic carried only 16 lifeboats, the minimum required by regulations at the time. This decision, based on tonnage rather than passenger numbers, meant that the majority of passengers perished from hypothermia in the frigid waters. Women and children were given priority, but class distinctions prevailed. First class passengers had a much higher survival rate than those in third class, and crew members suffered greatly. In the aftermath of this disaster. Maritime regulations were swiftly changed. The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea Solus was introduced, a treaty still in place today aimed at preventing such a tragedy from happening again. The human impact of the Titanic disaster cannot be understated. Survivors forever scarred by their experiences struggle to rebuild their lives. For some, like Colonel Archibald Gracie, the trauma proved insurmountable. Yet amid this tragedy, there were stories of hope and resilience. Heroes emerged, but so did those who faced public vilification. The sinking of the Titanic left an indelible mark on history, a story of opulence and hubris, of human error and the relentless power of nature. It's a tale of lives forever changed, of heroes and villains, and of a ship that now rests at the bottom of the ocean, a haunting reminder of the past. Today I am joined by a very special guest, terry Keefe. A retired professor, distinguished author, and researcher, has dedicated many years to unraveling mysteries, including the Titanic Disaster. His book, Premonitions of the Titanic Disaster delves deep into the eerie and enigmatic world of psychic foreknowledge. Terry has tirelessly collected and analyzed a myriad of premonitions related to the ill fated voyage of the Titanic. The sheer volume of these premonitions is staggering. Passengers canceling their tickets out of apprehension. A social reformer who prophesied his own doom in 1911 remote islanders in Fiji who sensed the sinking before news of the collision even reached the Pacific and a dying girl who saw a big ship sinking in the water on April 14, 1912, even knowing the name of the violinist in Titanic's Orchestra. These are just a glimpse of the countless claims of psychic foreknowledge surrounding the Titanic. Within days of the widely publicized disaster in 1912, stories of extraordinary omens and individuals with supernatural premonitions began to circulate. But what sets Terry's research apart is the meticulous examination of these claims, along with the discovery of four fictional works, one dating back 26 years that seemingly anticipated the Titanic disaster. Terry Keith's book is a comprehensive exploration of these premonitions. In it, he uncovers the analyses of five major commentators who have delved into this intriguing phenomena. These analyses, though not easily accessible to an English readership, provide invaluable insights into the world of Titanic premonitions. But the significance of Terry's work goes beyond the paranormal. It raises essential questions about premonitions and their legitimacy as subjects of examination. Stay with us as we embark on this extraordinary journey into the unknown. Remember, history has a way of revealing its secrets, even from beyond the grave. So fasten your seatbelts, or perhaps in this case, your life jackets, as we embark on a voyage to remember.

Michelle: Hi, Terry. Thank you so much for joining me this evening.

Terry Keefe : Hello, Michelle. It's a pleasure to join you.

Michelle: Would you like to just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Terry Keefe : Yes, sure. I'm an academic. I've never been anything else. I took separate degrees in French and philosophy, and then I came to working at Leicester University, university of Leicester for 20 years in Lecturing and researching in French, French literature, French philosophy. I became head of department and dean and wrote six academic books. And then I moved to Lancaster, became professor of French at Lancaster University, and was there for just over ten years. Took early retirement, moved to South Cumbria, a village in South Cumbria, and I was locally involved for a number of years, wrote a couple of local books, edited a conservation journal, and I began doing public lectures on mysteries, basically both locally and on cruise liners. Over about twelve years I did more than 20 cruise liner sessions. I became particularly interested in the mysteries associated with the Titanic. My wife and I moved to Sheffield in 2015 to be near grandchildren and children. Both my son and my daughter are professors at Sheffield University, and gradually I was homing in on the question of alleged premonitions of the Titanic disaster. And in 2021, just over two years ago, I published a long book called Premonitions of the Titanic Disaster. I'm now working on something quite different, but in a few words that's my life.

Michelle: But I think it's interesting that you came to writing this book premonitions of the Titanic disaster, very much from having been exploring mysteries, because it is, I think, part of the reason why so many people are captivated by the story and the tragedy of the Titanic. Because people still have questions and there are things that they ponder over. But one of the things that I think is particularly fascinating about the angle for which you've explored the account of the disaster is by coming at it from this position of exploring premonitions. And whilst premonitions about the sinking of the Titanic are well known, there isn't a huge wealth of information and books actually collating that information and putting that across for people to really dive into. There hasn't been much discourse, actually, around those premonitions and the scope and the level and the number of them either. And so the fact that you've come at it from that angle, I think, is a really interesting perspective to approach and to research. What was it that prompted you to kind of come at it from that angle in particular?

Terry Keefe : Well, I started giving lectures entitled Mysteries of the Titanic, and so much is known for certain about Titanic, but it does leave a number of remaining mysteries. And one area, mysterious area, is the question of premonitions. And it's quite remarkable that there are at least 250 alleged premonitions of the Titanic disaster. A number of people have said that that's the greatest number attached to any single event. I don't know if that's true, but it's a very impressive number in itself. And as I looked at it, I think, like you, I came to the conclusion that what was lacking was a serious examination of the whole matter and setting forward facts for people. But I'll come on to the book bit by bit, but I think the context of the question is quite interesting, too. There had been other major disasters, like Krakatoa in 1883 and the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, but I don't think those gave rise to any number of premonitions. They're both natural catastrophes. And obviously there was a strong human element in the Titanic disaster and a lot of rich, well known people on Titanic, I think that increased the interest in the whole subject. And also Telegraph, telephone, newspapers were all growing very fast at the time of Titanic, so that news of Titanic got round the world much more quickly than might have been the case earlier. And also the early 20th century was a period of intense interest in the paranormal in Britain, certainly lots of spiritualist journals. And in general, there was intense interest in the whole question of the paranormal. I think, in general, there's very little on record about premonitions before the disaster, very little that we have in print from before the disaster. But immediately after the disaster, the newspapers in particular started publishing tales of premonitions in great numbers. So that's the general background, I think, to the whole issue.

Michelle: I think you raise some very interesting points, and they kind of echo things that I've thought about myself, which is that it was kind of this melting pot of different things that I think really launched the incident and the tragedy of the Titanic all around the world. The fact that, like you mentioned, it involved people from very much from the upper classes, which, of course, made it very newsworthy. The fact that it involved people from so many different parts of the globe, I think made it a global event. And like you mentioned, the fact that you've got newspapers and telegraphs and telephones, it went around the world in a way that maybe other things just didn't. And absolutely right. This was kind of at that crucial moment, I think, when spiritualism was very much on the rise and communication with the dead was very much on the rise and there was very much this searching question about what things come through communication with the dead and almost a calling out for people to share and talk about their experiences. And I think when you have a tragedy that sparks the interest the way that this sinking did, the fact that it was a ship that was not supposed to sink, and yet it did, you've got that interest already. But then when people are asking for these experience, it creates a talking point. And so I do think it is something that was created. The interest in it was created for so many different reasons that really did elevate it, I think, into something not experienced before and possibly since, to be honest. In terms of the response from the public with regards to premonitions around the.

Terry Keefe : Event, yes, there's a whole topic related to premonitions regarding major events. Two catastrophes that are mentioned quite often in connection with Titanic premonitions are the Abavan disaster in 1966 and then 911 in the States. In both of those cases, there were a fair number of claims that people had had premonitions of the disaster. And in both cases, there were a number of those premonitions that were particularly striking, particularly prominent, and probably stick in people's mind when they come across them.

Michelle: Where did you draw your research and materials from? Where were you looking to begin the process of tackling this project of really understanding and bringing together and collating the propositions of the Titanic? Where did you begin?

Terry Keefe : Well, that turned out to be fairly straightforward because five commentators, major names, have written about premonitions concerning the Titanic. And I decided to limit the book to an examination of the cases that these five commentators had brought to light. And that means 201 premonitions overall. I cover all of the premonitions covered by these five commentators. One the first one is Ian Stevenson, who was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia in the States and became a well known figure in the spiritualist context. He did work on reincarnation, which was particularly prominent. And there was a lull of interest in Titanic between 1912, immediately after the disaster. A number of books were published by survivors. Then because of the world situation, two world wars, depression and so on, titanic kind of faded into the background. And it was Walter Lord who revived interest in Titanic in the mid 50s in his book A Night to Remember. And he interviewed he interviewed 60 or 70 survivors who still were still alive at that stage. And then five years later, in 1960, ian Stevenson published the first of two articles on Titanic premonitions and he published the second one in 1965. There was then a gap of 15 or 16 years before An American journalist called Rusty Brown widened the range of premonitions considerably. And then in 1986, A skeptic, Martin Gardner, wrote a book on Titanic premonitions and quite usefully reproduced a number of key texts in doing so. Very much a skeptic, the only skeptic of the five. And then in 88, George Bayer, who is one of the most respected of Titanic commentators, generally wrote a book and brought a number of other cases to light, including many trivial ones, it must be said. And finally, in 2006, a Frenchman betrayal. Mayer that's M-E-H-E-U-S-T. Bertrand Mayer published a book which is only available in French, and he had some new theories about premonition. So I decided to limit the scope of my book to an examination of the cases that they brought to light. They're all anecdotal cases. I think it needs to be remembered that there's a whole different side to premonitions, which is you might call the experimental side, which also, I think, came into prominence in the 1950s with the American professor Professor Rhine, j. B. Rhine. A number of you will know something about that name. All the cases I deal with and the five commentators deal with are anecdotal. They say very little indeed about experimental investigation of premonitions. There's some theoretical discussion in the book and some analysis of the author's own comments. But I do, in the forward, I do encourage people who want to to focus just on the premonitions and I give them the page references where the premonitions as such are discussed. So the book is a working tool. I think it has a comprehensive list of all the premonitions and who dealt with them, who talked about them and who missed them out and so on. So I think it's very much a tool that people can pick up and dip into and get into the whole question of premonition.

Michelle: Well, I think it's fascinating and it's a huge body of work because what you've done is collate all of the examples and then you have sectioned them into categories so that you can start to see the different types of premonitions that were being experienced and how they fit into certain roles, certain experiences. And the fact that you've done that by date as well as by category is exactly what you said. It's a really interesting, unique take that makes for a very good working tool to really kind of understand what was happening. Do you want to just explain the process of how you cataloged and created the book in terms of these distinct sections, how you broke those premonitions down?

Terry Keefe : Yes, they break down, it seems to me, into three categories premonitions in works of literature, and the singular fact about those is that they all incontrovertibly predate the disaster itself. So premonitions in works of literature then, I think the whole cluster of premonitions concerning the death of W. T. Sted we'll have to come back to Sted. He was a very prominent figure in the Victorian age, very prominent indeed. An editor, a writer, a controversialist, a man of politics. So the whole cluster of premonitions concerning the death of Sted because Sted died on Titanic, and thirdly, and finally, there are what you might call, for want of a better term, general premonition or other premonitions. That's the same basically by members of the public, some of whom many of whom were on Titanic or some of whom were on Titanic and many weren't. So I think as I worked at it, they fell into those three categories and I was able to, as you say, to superimpose the categories on the chronological order. So the way the book proceeds is to deal in the order in which the premonitions were brought to light by the five authors. But within those three categories, I think in a sense, it should be easy to follow the general line of it and basically that's how it came about and that's how I worked on it and that's how it came out.

Michelle: In the end before we dive into some of the premonitions themselves and some of the interesting things about them, because there are an awful lot, I think, that people would be very surprised if they picked up your book to realize actually, one of which I think, is just how far these premonitions predated the accident, the thinking itself. I think that will really surprise some people. Before we get into that, do you want to just explain some of the challenges of using and looking at some of these sources? Because it's not an easy thing to do when kind of chasing them down, first of all to find them, but then to also look at them in terms of their integrity, who that person is, their position, et cetera. Do you want to just kind of take us through some of those challenges that are unique to what you are trying to do here?

Terry Keefe : Yes, as I say, a lot of my work generally throughout my career has been scrutinizing text and comparing and contrasting texts. So in that sense it's text based. I start with the premonitions that a given author brought to light and say what that author said about a given premonition. But then also I include comments by later commentators so that in each case you have a survey of what's been said on a given premonition by each of the five authors, or however many of them commentated on that particular case. As for the source of them, it has to be said that a lot of them come from newspapers in one way or another. And I think this in itself constitutes a considerable challenge. There are lots of things in newspapers that are every bit as good as things in books, but there's also a lot of rubbish in newspapers, to be honest. And many of the newspapers used are local ones. And in very general terms, you have to suppose that the quality of the reporting and writing is a bit lower, at least in local newspapers. So that all the time, not all of them come from newspaper. A great proportion do. And that in itself makes you exercise some caution, I think, when you look at any given case.

Michelle: One of the things that I think is, again, really interesting is when you I mean, you mentioned just then how you are also giving these different commentators perspective on these sources as they presented it themselves. And it's really fascinating. Like so many other aspects of history or the paranormal, the supernatural, so many different kind of avenues where people have an interest, nobody can agree. And you see that really strongly in some cases where there isn't a consensus. And again, I think that's part of what makes the premonitions around the Titanic and the tragedy so interesting, because there isn't a consensus, there are different perspectives. And I think that continues the discussion, it continues the discourse because it isn't clear and cut. And I think you tied that and you bring that together so well because of the way that you presented the material that really highlights just the different perspectives that people have on this particular subject.

Terry Keefe : Yes, I think your earlier point about the length of time before Titanic itself, that when alleged premonitions appeared, is absolutely right. And that takes us to premonitions in works of literature, because one of the really startling cases is a novella published 14 years before the disaster and containing many, many, apparently very close parallels with the Titanic itself and what happened to it. Sted, or Steed, however it's supposed to be pronounced. Stead published a couple of works of fiction in 1886 and 1892, both of which are claimed by some to be premonitions of the Titanic. The first one, I don't think there is any case to be made because so many dissimilarities it struck the public or insofar as the public know about it, because it contains a sentence saying, this is what may happen. This is what will happen if liners go to sea with insufficient lifeboats. And that's made people pay a little bit more attention to it than it deserves. I think that's a story called how the Male Steamer Went Down in Mid Atlantic by a survivor. The second of his works of fiction is much more complicated. It's a long, rambling, sentimental novel, and only a couple of chapters in it are really relevant to Titanic premonitions. It does, however, contain many references to the paranormal. It begins with a kind of paranormal incident. And there's a woman in the story who claims to have dreamt that the line are sinking after collision with an iceberg. And there's a man who receives messages, so called by automatic writing from the only survivor from that sinking, and the man is eventually saved. But as I say, only two of the many chapters in that long story eleven pages out of 122 pages are really relevant to Titanic. But in itself it's interesting and it's well worth looking at. He tells conclusions from stead claims that it's based loosely on experimental studies of the paranormal and from the Old World to the new partly means we're just about to enter the telepathic era. One of the characters in the book says, but neither of those. They may be better known than Morgan Robinson, but neither of them has the kind of obvious claim to be strong premonitions of Titanic that Morgan Robin Robertson's book has. This was published in 1890, 814 years before the disaster. It was originally called Futility and it was republished in 1912 after the disaster under the title The Wreck of the Titanic of the Titan, or Futility. Partly it's the name of the ship in this book 14 years before Titanic. The name Titan is in itself somewhat shocking. It draws attention to it. Robertson. We don't know as much about him as it would be good to know. He said to have written 200 sea stories. His father was a sea captain on the Great Lakes and he knew all about ships and their development and so on. But some of the parallels are striking. The name is the first. The ship is of a similar length. It has three propellers. Like Titanic, it was said to be unsinkable. Like Titanic, it's supposed to be the largest ship, the largest moving object made by man. Similar passenger capacity, too few lifeboats, a massive loss of life, collision with an iceberg, similar speed at the time of collision. And it happens in April, just as Titanic did. And it happens near midnight, which is when Titanic was sinking. So the similarities can be seen to be immensely strong. And that in itself will be enough for some people to say that the story constitutes some kind of premonition of the disaster.

Michelle: I think what is interesting, though, is that you come from a background, a scholarly background, an academic background, and you're a skeptic. And I think some people have used that word as if somehow it's the dirty word. But actually approaching this in a journalistic academic skeptical review of them is actually really a positive thing, in my opinion, because you're presenting them, but also then providing the narrative and where this information could be coming from. And so someone is really getting a very thorough understanding of these premonitions and how they sat within this time frame, if that makes sense. And I think that's a really useful approach when looking at this because, again, there's very little discourse around that we know of these premonitions. We might have seen a few of them here and there, but to see them cataloged in this way but then to also see how they sat within that time frame, like I mentioned, and teasing apart how and where these things could come from, is so useful. It's context. And I think. In a lot of experiences and examples that's never been there before. It's not been present. So it's a really worthwhile read and a really worthwhile tool for that alone to be able to see all sides and all angles, which is very, very thorough. It's very unique.

Terry Keefe : Yeah, well, it's good to hear that because that's the spirit in which the book was mean, I suppose, if anything, I don't know. I'm a kind of general skeptic, but I didn't write it in order to shatter the illusions in the way that Martin Gardner wrote his book. So I've written it as objectively as I've been able to. For instance, in the case of Morgan Robertson's story Futility, there are things that you can say that counter any suggestion that it was a paranormal premonition. I mean, he himself said in a letter that he had no prophetic intention when he wrote the book. And also there are two autobiographical writings by Robertson which postdate the Titanic. Neither of them mentions the Titanic. There's even some kind of uncertainty about the extent to which he himself was a spiritualist, a believer in the psychic. You find different readings of his life and his preoccupation. So I've included that as well. So as you say, there's an attempt to present a balanced view and to allow people to make their own minds up.

Michelle: But I think that's so important because it can be very easy, I think if you're writing something and it's a real passion project to do that, yeah, your own bias can easily come into play. But to be objective and like you say, to present something in a balanced manner really does allow the person reading to analyze those sources for themselves, but they're being presented different perspectives. You then make your own mind up and I think it makes you much more thorough at the end of it because you can examine these sources and say, well, actually, I think these may be no, they are just examples of X, Y or Z, but these maybe warrant a little bit more scrutiny. People are going to fall on different kind of different parts of the equation, really in terms of what they believe or think about any or all of them. And I think that's the important thing. I think it allows people to be more critical when reading and analyzing them for themselves, which is, again, a very interesting approach, a very thorough approach to the research and to the book.

Terry Keefe : Yes, I think you're right. I think that if people can read what I've said on both sides of the equation and still believe that certain cases are genuine paranormal cases, then the grounds on which they're holding that opinion are stronger because they know what the objections are. And somehow or other they're thinking they're not worth valuing as much as the evidence in favor of them being premonition just to complete the picture. On literature, if I may, there's one other work that's probably, well, certainly least well known by an author who sometimes calls himself Main Clue Garnett. His real name was Thornton Jenkins Haynes, and again, we don't know as much about his life as it would be nice to know. He wrote a long story called The White Ghost of Disaster. And the extraordinary thing about this story is its date of publication, which, when you look into it, and it takes some looking into, turns out to have been the 7 April 1912. So it was in the few days before Titanic set out that he published this story. And again, it's a story about a liner that's about 800ft long inadequate lifeboats. It strikes ice at about the same speed and there are similar happenings concerning the lifeboats and so on. So, again, there are comparisons that can be made and have been made, and other people who regard these as coincidences. I mean, George Bayer, as I say, who is so highly respected in Titanic circumstances, has a very long section of his book called Curious Coincidences. And effectively, by including episodes under that category, he's saying that they're worth looking at, but only as Curious coincidences. But in general, I think that the treatment of authors, these authors that I've mentioned hasn't been as good as it might have been. The four stories all predate the Titanic disaster, but their premonition aspect can be otherwise explained. I mean, a number of people have explained the parallels between Robertson's story and Titanic by his knowledge of how ships were developing and saying that he wanted to write a dramatic story and collision with an iceberg was the most appropriate. April is the month when the iceberg is the most dangerous. Midnight is the best time to most dramatic time to have the collision take place and so on. So there you go. Both sides of the equation in the literary example, and at least as I say, they all emphatically predate the collision, which is more than many of the alleged premonitions do, I think.

Michelle: And I think you're right, I think they haven't had the same level of scrutiny that other things maybe have. I think sturd is the example within that kind of grouping that I think really stands out as being recognized. But I think that's partly because he was a man of influence and he was known so well both here in England and of course, in America, where he's got memorials here in London as well as in the States. And being a man of position of status. The fact that he was also on board the Titanic when it went down and sadly passed away, there's a lot of things that really kind of elevated this account that he wrote beforehand. And in some ways, that's overshadowed other examples of literary works that have, as you mentioned, have things in them that echo aspects of the Titanic sinking. So I think it's justified to include them and to bring that to people's attention because as a body of premonition examples, just in general, I don't think they've had the same type of attention as lots of the other things.

Terry Keefe : I think that's right. And that brings us on to Sted himself. And there's a section in my book on premonitions of his death on Titanic. He had many premonitions of his own death that is again irrefutable, but all of them concern death in a mob or in a throng of some kind. He thought he might be beaten to death. There's nothing that suggests that he regarded his passage on Titanic as particularly dangerous, in spite of the fact that a number of psychics seem to have warned him before his trip on Titanic of the danger that he was running. There's general agreement, incidentally, on the fact that he had no specific warnings regarding Titanic before he got on the ship. Even someone like James Coates, who wrote a book about Sted's reappearances after his death. Even Coates says emphatically that Sted wasn't warned specifically about the Titanic, but he did have premonitions of his own death. Much more interesting and elaborate and complicated are the premonitions that other people are said to have had about his death. Stead was a part of a very tight circle of friends and family and acquaintances. By this stage in his career, he was firmly committed to spiritualist views. And there's some kind of knock on effect. Some psychics were doubtless influenced by the predictions of others and so on. Some incidentally are widely inaccurate as well. One or two are worth mentioning. Perhaps the ones by a psychic called Kerlor are the most important. K-E-R-L-O-R Kerlor. He had a dream of a black ship which was upon its end, and he gave Sted many warnings before Sted embarked on Titanic. One, he dreamed of people struggling in the water and he saw more than a thousand bodies in the water, which is a parallel with Titanic. They are perhaps the most striking premonitions by Stead's friends and colleagues. There are a number of others that we could come back to, but I think they're the most memorable. They're the ones that really deserve careful attention, I think. But as always, the problem is dating. When you get down to the real facts about dates, when their premonitions came to light, in all cases they post date the disaster. And this makes one a bit doubtful about this cluster of premonitions among Stead friends. And again, you've got all five of the authors I deal with refer to the claims that Sted appeared to his friends and colleagues after his death. They all refer to that, and I'm not sure how many attach credence to that. But there's no doubt that in this group of friends of Steads, one colleague often influenced another. But their premonitions tend not to reinforce one another. That's another interesting fact. You don't get two separate psychics giving a very similar premonition, they tend to cancel one another out, in a way, anyway. That's a whole group of premonition. Incidentally. For those of you who might be interested in Sted, there's an excellent website called the WT Sted Resource Site, and it contains many texts and a load of material about Stead. It's the place to start any investigation of Stead himself and his influence and so on.

Michelle: Absolutely. And he was a fascinating character, as you mentioned, very much part of the spiritualist movement. But beyond that, huge reformer in terms of rights, making changes to politics for conditions around children and so many other things, and spiritualism, which he was very, very much passionate about and wrote about, it damaged his journalistic career. There's no two ways about it. It wasn't something that was seen favorably by everybody in the circles that he ran with. So he's a very interesting character, very interesting man, was busy doing a lot of things.

Terry Keefe : Yes, I've read comments saying that his day will come, suggesting that at some time some person or group of people are going to revive an interest instead. And I'm inclined to believe that may well happen because there's so much about him and his career and some of the things that he did aren't subject to any doubts that you might have about premonition. Some were just genuine political interventions of substance, and I think his day may well come back.

Michelle: To celebrate. Heading into the spookier season. Autumn nights, howling wind and freezing rain halloween spookiness in the dark depths of winter. Haunted History Chronicles will be posting daily podcasts on Patreon on all tiers over there, as well as the usual additional items offered. Signing up now will gain you access to these, as well as all previous archived content. For as little as one pound, you could be getting hundreds of podcasts to enjoy writing source material and more, and know that you are contributing and helping the podcast to continue to put out more content. You can find the link in the episode Description Notes as well as on the Haunted History Chronicles website or social media. So why not come along to enjoy a rich web of accounts perfect for this season dark tales of corpses, ghosts, folklore, Christmas and Halloween, macabre traditions and connections, and a whole lot more. And now let's head back to the podcast.

Michelle: I think what is one of the very interesting things about the premonition surrounding the Titanic, and we kind of touched about this briefly earlier on, was just the fact the nature of this meant that this was a global event. You do have premonitions from so many different locations, you've got source material from different locations, and it's something that doesn't seem to be localized in a way that you see in other examples and other cases where you get kind of a cluster of premonitions around an event.

Terry Keefe : Yes, I think that's right. Yeah. It's interesting that I don't know in which direction it points, but certainly some people have. Well, a number of the authors that I deal with talk about a collective experience, but unfortunately none of them really substantiates that claim, because for an experience to be collective, you really need some connection between the people involved. And, as you say, one of the characteristics of Titanic premonitions is that a fair number come from all parts of the world. There's one curious case which is brought to light by George Baer, if I remember rightly, of a town in Fiji which was visited by a liner and the people on the liner knew nothing about Titanic and were told by the people of Suva. It's called Suva in Fiji were told that the biggest line in the world had gone down with great loss of life. And the news, it is said, had not reached the Pacific at that time. And that's one example of far flung premonition. There's a lady in Brazil who had such a graphic dream on the night of Titanic collision that she woke her husband up and said, make a note of the date and the content of my dream, and so on. So you're quite right. There's a kind of international aspect to the question of Titanic premonitions which is lacking in many other cases, I think.

Michelle: And you mentioned something just then which I think is an interesting aspect, which is the dreaming aspect of premonitions of which you cover in the book, obviously. But you mentioned a really curious case there of well, here's an example of somebody who's not connected, who's not connected geographically either. And you've got a recording of a potential premonition of the Titanic without knowledge of it. And again, it piques the interest. Dream analysis, dream premonitions. It poses lots of very interesting questions. Do we make those connections because we want to afterwards? Are they precognition? It's difficult to know. Again, it's very much personal opinion, I think, where you come at the end of it. But it's an interesting aspect to cover, I think, as part of the analysis of types of premonitions, because it did seem to be something very much that factored into the experiences of people around the tragedy of the Titanic.

Terry Keefe : Yes, that's right. I mean, when you mention premonitions, one of the first things that comes to mind are dreams. And some people claim that most alleged premonitions are dreams. In fact, numerically, I think somewhere in the book I've cotted up the numbers, and it's quite right to say that dreams are very important, but they're not the most important form of premonition. A lot come when people are awake and in particular circumstances, rather than as dreams. There are also, it has to be said, I think, there are severe difficulties about dealing with dreams as premonitions. Gardner the Skeptic is very interesting on this. He reminds us how many millions of dreams are dreamt each night and how many predictings that don't, and suggests that there's a certain probability that one or two of those are going to end up being parallel to things that happen. That's an interesting statistical point, I think that has to be borne in mind. The other difficulty with dreams, of course, is remembering. Almost as soon as you wake up, a dream starts to disappear. And it's very difficult to be absolutely confident when someone tells you they had a dream that was a premonition, that they're recounting exactly what they dreamt. I think they do pose particularly severe problems.

Michelle: There are many in book, but I think you're right, the accuracy of them is an interesting one. And it is important to be mindful of that, because, like you say, holding on to a dream is very hard. And of course, then, when something is getting the kind of global attention that the thinking of the Titanic had, it's very hard not to be influenced that by that unconsciously, actually. That unconscious kind of drip feeding of information that you're being given in print or through discussions, through radio, so many different kind of ways into your psyche of the events surrounding the Titanic. And you have this dream about a sinking of a ship, and of course, then actual events with your dream could easily become blurred. It's a very difficult thing to navigate, I think, like you said, because of the vagueness in recollecting a dream in its exact detail. And so I do think it's an interesting aspect. Like you said, it certainly warrants a place of being in there and being able to examine them, but again, having that perspective of let's really try and think about what was happening at the time. And like you said, the likelihood of dreams around a sinking of a ship are likely to happen. It was something very much in people's consciousness. This was a means of travel. It was certainly a risk as well posed, traveling by boat at this time of the year, the risks of sinking, but also the fact that this isn't something widely experienced by so many people, just the danger of deep ocean, deep water, what lies beneath. There are so many aspects of the thinking of the Titanic that play into people's fears and thoughts, and certainly at that time when it wasn't as widely used as maybe as it is today, or even 50 years ago. And so, yeah, it's very realistic that people would be dreaming about the kinds of disasters like the sinking of the Titanic in the same way that people today might have very different types of dreams based on more current things. And so the statistical probability of having something that connects with something potentially that happens as a disaster is there. It's certainly there.

Terry Keefe : That's right. Yes, I think that's right. It's full of pitfalls looking at dreams, but at the same time, they have a tremendous force. And a number of the authors I've dealt with attach particular importance to the intensity of some of these premonition experiences. Some would like to regard it, I think, as a necessary condition of a premonition, that it's something that's felt with considerable intensity. And there are a number of cases that I deal with here where people were beside themselves with the vision that they had. And certainly the intensity of dreams can be very great, and that's one reason they need to be considered gone.

Michelle: I was just going to say, you mentioned that another big aspect is obviously the waking premonitions, people experiencing something whilst not asleep. And one of the ones that really stood out for me was the Woman on the beach is a fascinating example. Do you want to just elaborate and share that one? Because it hits so many different notes, doesn't it, in terms of a premonition, but also the eerie, supernatural quality to it. But it is a very intriguing example. I mean, it's really quite striking as a premonition example.

Terry Keefe : Yes, this comes out. In addition to the five books that I considered, there's another book that contains a chapter on Titanic, and the editors of the book, one of whom is George Bayer, another is Michael Goss. So I've included consideration of that. And one of the cases that they bring up in this chapter that hadn't been mentioned by any of the other authors at that stage was the woman, Estelle Barnes, who saw a ghost in Portsmouth. As Titanic was going by, her fiance was on board and she stood looking at Titanic and became very alarmed and thought that a tragedy was inevitable and went and told people they had to do something about it. But of course, nothing could be done. But, yes, it's strangely memorable, that case. If you asked me why, I think I'd find it very difficult to say, but it is one that sticks in your mind, I think. It's not the only example of someone seeing Titanic go by and allegedly claiming that it would sink, but it's the one that sticks in the mind.

Michelle: Well, I think there seems to be something very powerful in that experience, that real kind of sense of needing something to be done about it. And, yeah, almost the complete powerlessness of it all as well. Having this experience of being completely unable to do anything, I think again, helps to make it very striking. But also the fact that she has had this waking experience of an apparition with a very clear message. And like I said, just completely not being able to then make anyone believe what she had experienced and what she felt was really necessary.

Terry Keefe : It's difficult to say what draws our attention to it. But something, though, another example that I think is particularly memorable comes from Rusty Brown's book. Rusty Brown a curious figure in a way. She's the least scrupulous in terms of quoting sources and giving details. I might almost be tempted to say she seems by far the most gullible of the five authors. But curiously, she found 30 new cases new at that stage, and some of them have proved to be among the most famous. And one I think we really ought to mention, which is this dying girl, Jessie. She told a Salvation Army captain the girl was dying. And on the very evening when Titanic collided and went down, she apparently told a Salvation Army captain that she could see a big ship sinking and someone called Wally playing a fiddle. Now, the violin player in the band playing as Titanic went down was Wallace Hartley. And Sauden knew him from way back, but again, allegedly didn't know that he was at sea. So it's made to seem quite extraordinary that this dying girl could not only see a ship going down, but could also see a friend of the person she was talking to and name him. That's a very striking pace. I think the problem with it, again, is Sources. The Sources is a book by a man who interviewed the Salvation Army captain and really, it seems he called the man's Memories 50 years after the event. And with that length of time between the two, you have to be very careful. I think you have to be just a little bit easy to persuade if you think it's bound to be accurate, as it were, what he remembered. But it's a very striking case, a case of Jesse, I think.

Michelle: I'm glad you mentioned that one because, again, it's one that really stood out for me for so many reasons. I mean, I think the Wallace Hartley story itself is quite a poignant one. And if anyone has ever been to his memorial in cone, it's so touching, this huge erection of his monument and then the stone carving of his violin and the inscription of the pieces of music that are on there. I mean, it's so touching. And then when you know how many people turned up for his service yeah, I mean, it's an account that kind of brings the hairs up on the back of your neck. Anyway, but then have this connection, this account, where you not only have, obviously, what was being reported, potentially by this young dying girl of what she was seeing as a vision before the sinking of the Titanic, but then to have this personal connection with the Salvation Army man who obviously knew Wallace Hartley. Like you said, the difficulty is that only came to light decades. You know, you have to kind of look at that and think, well, like you said, how much of that did he recall accurately? Was it as true an account to what was experienced all those decades before, but still a very striking, interesting example of an experience reported about the sinking of the ship and a potential premonition of that by a young dying girl before the event of it is interesting. Really fascinating.

Terry Keefe : Yeah, that's right. I mean, there are a number of general pitfalls that one has to be aware of and be cautious of. A number of very young children who survived Titanic came to relate premonition incidents regarding their parents. And again, you have to be just a little bit skeptical about how accurately they would remember something when they were only four or in one case or seven in another case. Esther Hart and Eva Hart's. An example of that. A number of people interviewed Eva Hart who was, I think, four at the time. And I can't help thinking that the prominence given to her mother's alleged premonitions wouldn't have been anything like as great if people hadn't been able to interview her young daughter. But that's one pitfall. The other general issues of timing, which I just mentioned very quickly one is a number of people fall into a trap, as it were, they explain their premonition and come out with the fact that they learned on the 15 April of the disaster and of who had died. Now, nobody learned of the disaster until very late on the 15 April and then there was no question of having numbers or names. So that anybody who claims that they knew on the Monday on the 15 April that the disaster had occurred and that they knew somebody was dead and they seen passenger, that is automatically false. Now, it may not be deliberate attempt to mislead, it may be a mistake, but you have to be very careful of that. The other thing is the time difference. This is quite important that you've got to remember that this is an incident at sea, that Titanic was much closer to the States than to England. There's been a lot of discussion by eminent and very skillful investigators of the time difference. And the consensus, insofar as there is one, is that the difference between the ship's time and New York time was about 2 hours. So that when people give an exact time for when the premonition is alleged to have taken place, you've got to ask, well, are they taking account of the time difference and have they got it right? And so on. And a number of cases fall at that hurdle, I have to say. So there are a couple of pitfalls, there are a number of pitfalls and those are two of the really sharp ones in a way.

Michelle: Do you have a particular example that for you is a really striking case? A really interesting example of an interesting example of a premonition that stands out for you for one reason or other?

Terry Keefe : The ones we've mentioned, the ones I've picked out, I think are perhaps the most memorable for me. Robertson interesting thing about Robertson's story is that Martin Gardner, who is a very eminent skeptic actually, but he reckons that that's one of the most extraordinary cases. He doesn't accept it as a premonition, but he thinks it's one of the most extraordinary cases. And I think that you've got to partly agree with him there. It is a very striking example of an apparent premonition. But Jesse Estelle, estelle Barnes, the case of silver in Fiji, I mean, these are the ones that immediately spring to mind when you mention premonitions. There are many others that perhaps ought to but no, I have to say that I haven't found any single case that I find compelling. That's to say that in scrutinizing what each of the five authors have said about these cases, something in every case come to light that's made the case less than compelling. There's also a story to be told about how the author's comments relate to one another and which of their predecessors cases they pick up and which they don't mention at all. There's some extraordinary cases there. I said Stevenson published two articles. The second one contains seven new cases, and there are at least two authors who don't pay an attention to any of the seven. And that's a strange thing. And it makes me conclude when I look at all of the cases, that the authors didn't treat their predecessors with quite the respect and care that they might have done. And they certainly don't come to the same conclusion when they name their favorite cases. Mayer names eight, but a number of those figure are just curious coincidences. For George Bayer, for instance, and among Bayer's probable cases of psychic, that's as far as Bayer goes. He refuses to say anything is a definite case, but he lists a number of probable cases, and a number of those are rated very lowly by Mayer, who came after Mayer. So there's no common selection among the authors, and one might have expected that two or three cases would have struck them all as particularly prominent. But that doesn't seem to be the case at all, I'm afraid.

Michelle: And I think it comes back to something we were talking about right at the very beginning, which is because there hasn't been this analysis of these examples in totality and discourse around them. You don't have a wide pool of different people coming at looking at these and researching and theorizing and kind of taking next steps with them. For me, that's the kind of the thing that's missing in a lot of it, which is that without people really coming and analyzing and discussing in the way that I think your book does, which is very comprehensive, where, say, for example, like you mentioned, someone's left examples out. When you do that, when you're selective in what material you put in or selective in what you discuss from someone else who has also researched and looked at the premonitions themselves, when you aren't kind of bringing that whole body together, it's still lacking something, it's incomplete. And that, I think, is still something that is very much needed around this to have the kind of the rhetoric and the discussion and the analysis of them to see what are the. Next steps of what do you then do with them, if that makes sense.

Terry Keefe : Yes, it does. One of my conclusions in the conclusion is that to do a really good job on this would take a team of investor know that academics often claim to say at the end of their research, more research is needed. And to that extent it's predictable. But in a number of ways there are whole teams of investigators who've looked into aspects of Titanic, indeed written a whole book. One of the best books on Titanic in general is written by a group of experts who've got together. And I think to get to the bottom of premonitions, you'd need a team and they'd need to scrutinize sources. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of sources quoted by my five authors and I'm not making any claim to have looked at many of those sources. You'd need a whole team to look at it and really try to get to the bottom. But it has to be said that with every year that goes by, it gets further away. When this business started with Stevenson in 1960, there were still a lot of survivors. But we're way past the point now where anybody who survived is around. So it gets distant in that respect. But I think a job could be done by a team who worked systematically. They could look into each case and go as deeply into it as is possible. It'd be quite interesting if that ever happened.

Michelle: I think it would be fascinating. But equally, I think if you're looking at it from I mean, there's two different sides to this. I think you can come at it from the perspective of examining the sources simply for that connection with the Titanic just by itself. But obviously then to be able to examine these sources alongside other examples of types of premonitions, whether it is to do with other disasters like Abavan, like you mentioned, or the Earth 911, I mean, there are other examples that I think everybody will have in their consciousness. But to be able to examine these different types of sources, obviously we've got historical sources here, more recent examples to kind of see if there are connections, overlaps, things that crop up as similar type experiences or reports. There are all kinds of different examinations that can happen. But again, it doesn't seem to be something that has really been taken up as a no, it hasn't a piece of study. And I think part of that is because of something you mentioned, which is the further you get away from the disaster itself, the more difficult it becomes to actually trace that source back, to be able to fact check, to be able to check everything out, pursue all the avenues that you need to. And also you don't have the pool of people around it who are living survivors or witnesses or whatever to that example. And so it does make it difficult when you are examining sources that are 100 years old or older?

Terry Keefe : It does, yeah. But that applies to all aspects of Titanic and as I say, it has been done in certain cases and it could be done and it would be interesting to see it done. But whether there is enough general interest in Titanic to generate that kind of teamwork, I think is the key question. Maybe something will cause people to wonder more persistently about premonitions and the paranormal and maybe that would trigger a teamwork effort, but I don't know.

Michelle: It would be nice, though, as, say, I echo you, I think it's certainly something that would very much be of interest as a body of work, to be able to have someone look at it and examine it in that way and go even deeper and even further. But whether that happens, I don't know. I'd like to think it could, but whether it does, I don't know.

Terry Keefe : In the meantime, people have my book, or what it's worth.

Michelle: Yeah. And this is why I really wanted the chance to chat with you and to kind of discuss this, because, like I've said throughout our chat, I do think it is a very comprehensive, unbiased, objective look at these, whereby someone can read these examples. A huge number of them will be totally unknown to anyone, even if they are Titanic enthusiasts, they will be completely surprised at the variety, the examples, the range, the geographical range, the fact that they covered every spectrum of class system, from those working class members all the way through to people of position and wealth. I mean, there's no boundary in terms of the type and range of premonition that gets covered in the book. And as I said, the fact that you have presented them in such a manner, whereby someone can look at them, evaluate them and really not be told what to think, is quite interesting. So you really are allowed to come to your own conclusions, and I think that's really important to examine them for yourself and to come away with your own perspective and your own take. And as you said right at the very beginning, as a tool for a Titanic enthusiast or someone who is interested in premonitions, just as an example of an experience in itself, an amazing resource for people who sit either side of that interest, really. So it's something I very highly recommend and we'll make sure that links to it and to you are on the podcast and in the podcast description notes, as well as the website, because I really do think you've brought something together that has been lacking. As I said at the very beginning, not many people have really written comprehensively about Titanic premonitions and collated them all together in the way that you have so thoroughly.

Terry Keefe : Thank you for that. It's been good to talk to you. And if it just provides a resource for a certain number of people, then that's more than enough justification, I think, honestly.

Michelle: It's been such a pleasure to chat with you and thank you so much for coming along this evening to kind of bring this to people's attention.

Terry Keefe : Pleasure and the very best of luck with your general project of producing these podcasts. I've glanced at a few, listened to a few, and they're pretty impressive, I think. So keep going. And the very best of luck with it.

Michelle: Thank you so much. And I'll say goodbye to everybody listening. Bye, everybody.

Terry Keefe : Goodbye.