Thursday, April 10, 2014

Chilling Paranormal Experiences of the Titanic Sinking

VS sez: From the archives, updated a tiny bit!

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:

Unknown said...

This post was fascinating. Imagine if Mrs Marshall had heared but ignored her psychic premonitions. *shivers