There are many types of psychics offering all different kinds of predictions. Many of these psychics are just after money and are really more of a magician than a medium. Then you have the ancient prophets who spoke so vaguely that their “predictions” can be applied to just about any circumstance. We also have the great Mayan prediction of 2012, which is less a prediction and more of just some guys running out of space on a rock. The five predictions presented here were made very much by accident, some tongue in cheek remarks that turned out to come true, others works of fiction that became shockingly real.
5. Mark Twain
Mark Twain is the quintessential American writer. He wrote such famous works as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He was also known as a humorist often making funny quips about any subject thrown at him. In 1909 Twain could add “making an accurate psychic prediction” on his list of things he had accomplished in his lifetime.
In 1909, Twain said this of his own birth and death: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’” Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910 one day after the comets closest passing to Earth.
4. Advertisement Foresees the Internet
In 1969 a group of people got together and made a video hyping the future, as the most dismal days of the cold war were being pushed behind us this public service-esque video does not show a world devastated by nuclear holocaust but a world where people can shop from home, pay bills from home, and have a “home post office”.
While the makers of this ad clearly believed that the whole “women’s revolution” thing was a passing trend, they did pretty much nail exactly what the Internet can do decades before the Internet became a reality.
3. Wilmer McLean
Wilmer McLean was a man who lived in the small town of Manassas, Virginia in the 1800s. McLean enjoyed a quite life until the Civil War erupted and McLean realized that he lived on a road that was between Washington D.C., the Union capital and Richmond Virgina, the Confederate capital. What most historians consider the first real battle of the Civil War, The Battle of Bull Run, occurred on McLean’s front lawn.
The Confederates went as far to commandeer McLean’s house and use it as a Confederate headquarters, which resulted in McLean’s home getting bullets and cannon balls shot at it by Union soldiers. McLean grew tired of being shot at so he moved further into Virginia hoping to avoid the war.
The Confederates had been pretty much winning the war until the Battle of Gettysburg, where Grant’s Union Army drove Lee’s confederate army deeper into Virginia. It was at this point that Grant realized all he had to do was keep charging grant and pushing him back and the Union would eventually win, because the Union Army was bigger than the Confederate Army. It took 4 years of fighting and several hiring and firings of Union Generals before someone realized this.
Grant’s Army literally drove Lee’s army into defeat and on April 9, 1865 General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. The strange thing is that the surrender occurred in McLean’s new home that he bought to get away from the war.
“The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.” –Wilmer McLean
2. Edgar Allen Poe: The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym
Edgar Allen Poe is another one of those great American writers. His novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, is one of the most brilliant and underrated American novels and his Poe’s only complete novel. It tells the story of an adventure at sea. Sounds simply enough right? But the story has many Poe-esque twists and turns.
The novel is strange in many ways. Its most famous strangeness is perhaps its vague, abrupt, symbolic ending that literary scholars have been debating the meaning of for years. It is also told as a “true” story in the way that Pym hires Poe to put his name on his story, because Pym believes it will not sell as a true tale because it is too fantastic. So Poe was doing mockumentaries before mockumentaries were cool. The work is technically fiction, but it is important to note that many of the main plot points in the novel did actual occur but not until 46 years later. That’s right Poe predicted the future, and with incredible accuracy!
(Too bad he could not predict how annoying mockumentaries would eventually become! Just hold the camera still so I don’t feel like vomiting that’s all I ask.)
In one of the most dramatic moments of the novel, Pym and three of his shipmates find themselves stranded at sea and out of supplies. The four of them decide to draw straws and the loser will be killed and eaten. In the story a cabin boy named Richard Parker lost the morbid game and is killed and consumed by the group.
Back in real life: 46 years after the publication of the novel the Mignonette became lost at sea, drawing eerie parallels with the novel, the survivors decided to draw straws to see who would die so the rest could survive, and the cabin boy lost and was eaten, just like in the Poe novel. The cabin boy’s name was Richard Parker, the same name as the cabin boy in the novel who had the exact same fate.
1. Morgan Robertson
Morgan Robertson came to some prominence as an author in the late 1800s and early 1900s. His book Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan was considered an all around unremarkable book at the time of its publication. Another short story of his was titled Beyond the Spectrum and was considered a mediocre story at the time of its release. Robertson’s works would go largely unrecognized today and be lost to time or perhaps be found in the bin at a dollar store somewhere if it wasn’t for the events depicted in his stories becoming reality.
Beyond the Spectrum tells of a fictional war between the United States and Japan. In the book, Japan never formally declares war on the US but instead launches a sneak attack against naval vessels stationed around Hawaii. If this scenario sounds familiar it is because it should sound familiar. If you remember anything from 8th grade history class or from that crappy movie starring Ben Affleck, a Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii is what rallied public support for the United States entering World War II! Robertson’s silly war-fiction predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 27 years before it occurred.
Robertson did not stop there. His mediocre novel Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan pretty much predicts the sinking of the Titanic 14 years before it actual happens. In Robertson’s novel the Titan is an “unsinkable” (his words not mine) luxury ocean linear exactly the same thing said about the Titanic. Robertson seemed to have every detail correct, the Titan sunk when it struck an iceberg in the Northern Atlantic around 12 AM in the month of April. The Titan’s speed at the time of impact was 25 knots and they were 400 miles from Newfoundland. On top of this the Titan also had an insufficient number of lifeboats. All these details can also pertain to the Titanic except the Titanic crashed into an iceberg at 22.5 knots. Robertson’s psychic abilities were off by 2.5 knots.
Author: Jonathan Kaulay Copyrighted © paranormalhaze.com
