THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU might sound like an organisation straight out of a science-fiction movie. In fact, it was a serious scientific endeavour set up in the 1960s by two intellectually respected men. One was Peter Fairley, the science editor of London’s Evening Standard newspaper, who later presented ITV’s moonlanding coverage. The other was John Barker (1924-1968), a reforming psychiatrist at the badly outdated Shelton mental hospital in Shropshire.
But along with his day job, Barker had a deep interest in the psychic abilities for anybody who’d had a premonition of the catastrophe. Seventy-five people replied and, after a spot of sifting, the Premonitions Bureau was born: partly to see if some people really could foresee terrible events, but partly too with a view to preventing them.
