The recent death of the singer Cilla Black was interesting in a slightly Fortean way.
She was 72 and though, according to her friends, she had complained of the growing infirmities of age and was somewhat down about them, there was no illness or overwhelming depression to make her sudden departure seem less of a shock. The thing of interest though is that as recently as last year she was widely reported as saying she didn't want to live past 75, despite its nearness, and that it was a good age to go.
This would lend credence to one close friend claiming she willed herself to die as she was down about her failing senses. He also added the detail that her last words to him in recent weeks were that "Bobby (her late husband) was waiting for her"...with its unspoken implication of either a ghostly communication or a sense of foreboding/wishing to go.
What makes the wish fulfilment interpretation of her well timed demise so interesting though is that we now know her death was partially accidental. She is believed to have had a fall and banged her head resulting in a stroke. This is surely not something she could have willed upon herself? So how did she appear to know death was so close?
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I seem to remember Peter Ustinov, I think, telling how his father or some such had declared decades in advance that he would only live to such and such an age..lets say 70...and in seeming perfect health upped and died on that very birthday.
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The late controversial but amusing Tory MP Alan Clark, i recall reading, had an obsessive fear that he would die of a brain tumor....and did.
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These last few you might put down to some kind of self programming, like the victims of voodoo are imagined to suffer. Indira Ghandi referencing her possible assasination the day before it happened can be put down to coincidence.
But its impossible to watch Martin Luther King's final speech before he was shot and believe he did not know and expect to imminently die.
This is explained away by those who try as him having recently recieved death threats...but one suspects if he did it would be as out of the ordinary as you or I recieving junk mail. Watching him and hearing his words the man clearly knew something specific and certain about his fate. But from where? There is no known conspiracy involving his killer to explain it. And if he did know from an ordinary informant why not avoid it? Could he have consented to his own death? Or was the - seeming - knowledge apparent in this speech recieved by extraordinary means?
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In 2008 teenager Ben Kinsella was stabbed to death as an innocent by stander to a gang fight. His family found an essay he wrote for a creative writing class a couple of weeks before his death.
"Describing an attack startlingly similar to the one he suffered, Ben wrote: "I've been stabbed, three times in the chest, twice in the back, once in the gut for good measure.
"The pavement feels so very cold on my so very punctured back. Everything feels cold. Numbness persists. As I stare up at my killer-to-be he feels not the slightest measure of remorse at what he has just committed. Instead his dark smile sickens me in ways I couldn't imagine."
Then, describing his emotions in heaven, he said: "I just feel free. Free from anger, worries, anguish and pain."
"I can only wonder whether I deserve to die here, now. Was it all for a reason? Who can say?
"As my mind becomes inflamed with questions I can only feel the pain pass over me like a shadow. Blood escapes my wounds. Blood once destined for greatness now seeps into the drains."
Later on he said: "I knew I was gone and couldn't ever come back. I just wished I had the strength to say goodbye. I was dead now."
Ben then described meeting his grandfather, aunties and uncles in heaven.
He ended the essay by writing: "This is my home now and I've never felt better. I'm not scared any more. There's no weight on my shoulders, no struggle.
"I'll never say I'm glad he did it because, well, I'm simply not. But I much prefer it here than being stuck on a weird world."
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Thoughts, examples, wild speculations?
