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The Titanic – Premonitions and Prophetic Dreams and Visions
Identifier
024893
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
HERBERT B. GREENHOUSE was born in Chicago, educated at Northwestern University and the University of Southern California, and served in the Army during World War II. He worked as an advertising copywriter, a playwright for stage, radio, and television, and was also a pianist and composer.
An avid investigator of psychic phenomena, Mr. Greenhouse was a member of the American Society for Psychical Research and participated in many ESP laboratory experiments. He was also the author of In Defense of Ghosts, Thoughts of the Imitation of Christ, and How to Double Your Vocabulary.
He lived in New Jersey and had a retreat in the Berkshires.
A description of the experience
Premonitions: A leap in to the future – Herbert Greenhouse [1971]
On April 10th, 1912, the impregnable Titanic with its 20 lifeboats and its watertight bulkheads was ready to sail. Close to 2,500 persons had booked passage from London to New York. One of them was W T Stead [who had had premonitions about the ship].
TWICE THE SAME DREAM
Unaccountably, from April 3 to April 10, several persons, including banker J. Pierpont Morgan, cancelled their passage. Many gave the excuse that it was unlucky to sail on a ship's maiden voyage. Not everyone, however, is a human seismograph and most of the passengers had no such fears.
On March 23, 1912, seventeen days before the date of sailing, passage was booked by a gentleman named J. Connon Middleton, a London businessman. A week later Mr. Middleton had a disturbing dream, far more vivid than his usual dreams. He saw the Titanic "floating on the sea, keel upwards and her passengers and crew swimming around her." The next night he had the same dream. Middleton did not see himself struggling in the water. He "seemed to be floating in the air just above the wreck."
Middleton began to have the pre-disaster syndrome. He felt uneasy, then depressed. Yet because his business in America was urgent, he did not cancel passage. He was a practical man, not given to belief that dreams come true, and he tried to put his two dreams out of mind. Mercifully, his life was saved in another way. About four days after his first dream, he received a cable from New York urging him to postpone his trip for a few days. Before the ship sailed, he told members of his family and friends about the recurring dream, and they corroborated his story later.
Did the man who sent the cable have a premonition about the Titanic? Although knowledge of the future may not reach an individual's consciousness, the person finds himself compelled to act in a way that will avert disaster for himself and others. This may have been true of those who suddenly cancelled passage without knowing why they did so.
"DON'T LET THEM DROWN!"
On Wednesday, April 10, the day the Titanic was to embark on her maiden voyage, a psychic, V. N. Turvey, warned that "a great liner would be lost." He then sent a letter to a Madame I. de Steiger predicting that the ship would sink in two days. The letter was published in Light magazine on June 29, 1912.
Turvey's warning went unheeded. On a bright, sunlit morning thousands of passengers, among them Col. John Jacob Astor and his young wife, stood on the decks of the Titanic as it proudly steamed out of Southampton on its way to America. The time for premonitions was past, and if the passengers had uneasy feelings, they quickly put them out of mind. An exciting journey was about to begin on the world's greatest steamship, with its decks like "broad promenades," its "spacious cabins," and its three dining rooms. The Titanic even had a swimming pool and gym, and a hospital with an operating room.
Friends and relatives who came to see them off shared the festive mood as they waved goodbye. And families in their homes along the coast gathered on rooftops to watch the ship as it slowly ploughed through the water. It was a calm day, with only a slight breeze blowing, and an accident was unthinkable.
As the ship passed near the Isle of Wight, members of the Jack Marshall family stood on the roof of their home, watching it in the distance. There was a slight fog, but the Titanic was clearly visible, and they waved their handkerchiefs enthusiastically. Never had they seen a more magnificent liner. But the mood was suddenly broken when Mrs. Marshall grabbed her husband's arm and screamed, "It's going to sink! That ship is going to sink before she reaches America!"
Her family tried to quiet her, but she became more hysterical. In a vision she saw the Titanic going down and its passengers dying far off in the Atlantic. "Don't stand there staring at me," she cried. "Do something! You fools, I can see hundreds of people struggling in the icy waters! Are you so blind that you are going to let them drown?"
As the ship slowly disappeared over the horizon, Mrs. Marshall kept yelling, "Save them! Save them!" The night-marish film of the future was already unreeling in her mind………..
THE UNSINKABLE SHIP SINKS
It happened almost imperceptibly. The time was 11:40 P.M. First there was a slight impact, then a booming sound as the ship struck the iceberg, ripping open five of the Titanic's "watertight" compartments. Steam hissed out of the boilers, while the engines slowed and finally stopped.
The passengers gathered on deck, wondering what had happened, but there was no panic. They watched the crew working but were not aware that there was any danger.
Finally the call came for the lifeboats, and flares were sent out to signal other ships. Slowly the liner tilted upward while the crew frantically worked to lower the lifeboats, which carried mostly women and children. A first-class passenger, Miss Edith Evans, remarked to a survivor that a fortune teller had once warned her to "beware of water." Impulsively she gave up her place in a lifeboat to another passenger and was later drowned.
The ship's stern rose as the bow sank. At 2:20 A.M. the Titanic slid at a sharp angle into the depths while, all around in the dark night, people were struggling in the water and screaming for help. One of them, Colonel Archibald Gracie, prayed that he could somehow reach out to his family in New York and send them an affectionate good-bye.
At the same moment, Gracie's wife in New York City woke up with a start and heard a voice say, "On your knees and pray." She got out of bed, opened a prayer book and her eyes fell on the words, "For those in peril on the sea." Suddenly she realized that her husband was praying for her. She lay awake until 5 A.M., certain that something terrible had happened.
In another home in New York City a woman had a nightmare. There had been a shipwreck and her mother was in a crowded boat in the middle of the ocean. The woman woke up and told her husband about her dream, but he reassured her that since her mother was safe in London, there was nothing to worry about. But the dream had been so real, she couldn't get it out of her mind. It was as though she herself had been there in the water, the cold salt air whipping her face as she shivered in the boat with her terrified mother. Nearby a great liner disappeared into the icy waters, while all around she could hear the pitiful cries of the drowning.
The next day she heard about the disaster and saw her mother's name on the passenger list. The mother was one of the survivors. When she reached New York, she told her daughter that she had booked passage as a surprise. At the time of her daughter's dream, she was in an overcrowded lifeboat that swayed precariously in the sea, in imminent danger of turning over. All her thoughts had been concentrated on her daughter.