We’re in the last few days before the 102nd anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic,
after the ship struck an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. I’ve always been fascinated by that
disaster, to the point of writing an award winning science fiction novel
loosely based on it (WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM).... No, I realize the name of this blog is Paranormal
Romantics, not Science Fiction Romantics
LOL, but I’m going to share a few chilling, true paranormal stories about Titanic today.
As with any great disaster involving a large loss of life,
there were many psychic and paranormal dreams, warnings, and foreshadowings
reported. Some were probably hoaxes. Some, on the other hand, are very well
documented and generally accepted to be inexplicable but true.
This story gives me chills every time. W. Rex Sowden was a
Salvation Army officer and a doctor in Scotland in 1912. In the late evening of
April 14, 1912, he was summoned to the bedside of a dying child at the
orphanage, as she had no one else to sit with her. At 11:00 PM exactly, she sat up and asked Mr.
Sowden to hold her hand, saying, “I’m so afraid. Can’t you see that big ship
sinking in the water?”
The doctor thought she was perhaps a bit delirious, being so
ill, and told her she was only having a bad dream. She refused to accept that, answering that
the ship was sinking, many people were drowning and “Someone called Wally is
playing the fiddle.”
Feeling uneasy, he looked around the room but saw nothing.
The girl lapsed back into a coma and everything was peaceful for a few hours.
Suddenly the latch on the bedroom door lifted and Mr. Sowden felt someone brush
past him, although no one was there. The little girl opened her eyes, telling
him her mother had come to take her back to Heaven. She died a few moments
later.
In the morning Mr. Sowden heard about the sinking of the Titanic and learned that his boyhood
friend Wally Hartley, leader of the
ship’s musicians and a violinist, had drowned after playing as the ship sank. The
little girl’s vision occurred three hours before the ship actually struck the iceberg
and Mr. Sowden had never mentioned
his friend to her. Indeed, he was quoted as stating he hadn’t thought about
Wally in years.
Another well known psychic event occurred as Titanic was sailing. A Mr. and Mrs.
Marshall on the Isle of Wight were having a party on the flat roof of their
home, to watch the ship head out to sea on April 10th. Suddenly Mrs.
Marshall had a vision, exclaiming the ship was going to sink. Her embarrassed
family tried to quiet her, but she insisted she saw “hundreds of people
struggling in the icy water”. The party ended immediately of course and no one
mentioned Titanic to her all week because she would become upset.
Then on April 15th, word came that her vision had
been true.
Years later, this same Mrs. Marshall refused to sail on the Lusitania on the voyage of May 1st,
forcing her husband to exchange their tickets for much worse accommodations on
an earlier sailing. She told her family they’d be safe going on Lusitania on the earlier voyage,
but that it was going to be torpedoed with huge loss of life on the May 1st
trip, which indeed it was. I think I would have listened to her, for sure!
So what would you do if you had a premonition of disaster on
a trip? Would you go anyway, as so many did on Titanic? Or would you find an alternate way to travel?
WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM ("Titanic in space...'), a 2013 SFR Galaxy Award and Laurel Wreath winner:
Audiobook, narrated by Actor Michael Riffle – Available Now at Amazon and iTunes
1 comment:
This post was fascinating. Imagine if Mrs Marshall had heared but ignored her psychic premonitions. *shivers
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