• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Saved From Harm

I have one about the Zeebrugge disaster, too.

My Sister, who is normally rather disorganized, announced that she had booked tickets through The Sun newspaper to go on a day trip to Belgium. I had a bad feeling as soon as she mentioned it but thought that she would 'double-book' herself or forget to make proper arrangements to get there etc. and would not go.

As time went on it became clear that she and her young daughter were really looking forward to the trip and were determined to go. Every time the subject came up my dread grew.

Eventually I had to say something but she wouldn't listen. I was a killjoy, a mouse with no sense of adventure and should mind my own business. Several more exchanges happened but she was adamant.

The day of the trip came and I was still very uneasy but the feeling had changed slightly and I wondered if I had been over-protective (she had been badly injured the previous year and was still in a wheelchair).

Soon after 6pm the phone rang and it was her, furious. She had lost her balance getting into her wheelchair, broken her ankle, hit her head and had spent the entire day at the hospital. "I hope you're happy, you didn't want us to go and we didn't!" she raged. She was still grumbling when the newsflash came on announcing the tragedy.

I should add that although she has a sharp tongue I am not usually on the receiving end of it and her belligerence was out of character. She is usually quite psychic but did not have any misgivings about the trip at all.

Not their time to go it would seem.
 
Rosebud said:
I have one about the Zeebrugge disaster, too.
Being in a wheelchair on a capsized ship would indeed have probably been fatal.

I was sailing along that coast quite regularly, both before and after the disaster, but I had no premonitions about it. Hardly surprising, as it didn't directly affect me or anyone I knew. But it was a sobering sight, to see the capsized ship lying in the harbour for weeks afterwards.
 
I have one that's not mine, but my brothers. About 10 years ago my brother was building a wall in a friends garden, it was about 7 foot tall and made from various granite stones and blocks. He had almost finished when he started to feel uneasy, he was working with several pals who had all gone inside for a brew and he was on his own. He said he felt like something bad was going to happen, when in a split second a time slip type thing occurred. He had been up a ladder next to this wall, when he felt this unease, he then says he blinked and he was almost inside the house - he hadn't climbed down the ladder, he bliked and had moved "like a chess piece". Shocked to see where he was he turned to see where he should have been and this wall collapsed. It would have crushed him, had he still been working on it. Being moved by whatever it was saved his life.

This, of course shocked him and so he took a few days off to get his head around what happend, and what had saved him. He was in his flat with his wife and young daughter, stood in the kitchen, when he says felt that same sense of panic and time "jumped" again, and he was now stood in the lounge holding his daughter. A time slip of maybe 10/15 seconds, just like when stood at the wall. This time nothing bad happend.

He is still of the opinion that something saved him that day (altho he is not religious), and that same thing had made time jump a second time, so he would know it actually happend! :shock:
 
Soon after 6pm the phone rang and it was her, furious. She had lost her balance getting into her wheelchair, broken her ankle, hit her head and had spent the entire day at the hospital. "I hope you're happy, you didn't want us to go and we didn't!" she raged. She was still grumbling when the newsflash came on announcing the tragedy.

I was going to say 'Poor woman!', but it's rather a case of 'Poor, fortunate woman.'
It definitely seems that is she was not going to listen to you, 'something' was going to ensure she didn't go on that trip.
I remember that :cry:

He is still of the opinion that something saved him that day (altho he is not religious), and that same thing had made time jump a second time, so he would know it actually happened!

This is one of those happenings that really scrambles my mind. I have read about it before - and by the way, I am not belittling the experience, rather the opposite, because I have come across this on other threads, (probably on Reddit's Glitch in the Matrix), and when I read of several (or many more) accounts of the same kind of phenomenon, that it what really makes me think.
 
Yeh, just one of those totally nuts things that happens!

I've another little one from this week. We've had some rather nasty storms in the UK over the past few days and a friend of mine went to stable her horses to keep them out of the rain and wind. On her way home on a country lane she knows like the back of her hand - she usually does about 60 to get from the stables to her house & it's about 7 or 8 miles between the two, the radio in her car started to play up so she slowed right down to sort it out. After about 15/20 seconds she says that the radio was sorted and she carried on her way, when, turning a corner she came across a tree that was just hitting the ground. She slammed on the brakes and was fine, but if she hadn't stopped to sort out the bad radio reception, she would have been under that tree! :shock:
 
cherrybomb said:
she would have been under that tree! :shock:

That - kind of - happened to me when I was about 18, except there was no radio involved. I was going round a blind bend and there was a big old tree in the act of falling in front of me. I knew I couldn't stop before it or get under it in time, but I hit the brakes anyway, very well aware i might end up directly under it......

...and the tree stopped falling at about 45 degrees. I often think about that this time of year. There was an angel on my shoulder that day.
 
Sergeant_Pluck said:
cherrybomb said:
she would have been under that tree! :shock:

That - kind of - happened to me when I was about 18, except there was no radio involved. I was going round a blind bend and there was a big old tree in the act of falling in front of me. I knew I couldn't stop before it or get under it in time, but I hit the brakes anyway, very well aware i might end up directly under it......

...and the tree stopped falling at about 45 degrees. I often think about that this time of year. There was an angel on my shoulder that day.

:shock: Wow, it's mind boggling (sp?) how fate can deal the cards some times.
 
Loosely related to this were two occurrences that happened to me. Firstly I was supposed to go on a school trip when I was 11 or 12, a cruise around the med and visiting the Holy Land. Shortly before my last deposit my mum was made redundant and she couldn't afford the balance.
All my friends trotted off on this once in a lifetime cruise. I was babysitting for my neighbour when I saw the 10pm news and saw my French teacher looking bedraggled. the ship, the 'Jupiter' sank just outside Piraeus harbour, luckily no-one (not even my disabled history teacher) died.

Secondly I was asked to stay in London at a nice hotel overnight to oversee a late night refit. It was a last minute decision and one I grumbled about, but I decided to make the best of it and ask my husband, who worked in central London too, to stay with me. It was a cheeky move!
The next morning we came back from breakfast to hear my mobile ringing in the room, my mum was frantic and thought I was on my normal commute into London. She was nearly in tears telling me to 'turn the news on', and I saw the reports of the London terror attacks; including the route my husband and I would have taken if I hadn't have been drafted into that refit!

Would we have definitely been on that train? Who knows, but I haven't turned overtime down since then!
 
Don't know if this was saved from harm but certainly inconvenience.
Last year when we were booking our tour we changed the flight booking so that we went a bit earlier to be on the same airline. We arrived in Sydney and waited for an hour for our transfers so sifted through the paperwork and found a number to ring.
The man at the other end seemed a bit surprised and asked what flight we came on and said he'd send someone in 10 minutes.
At the hotel we turned our mobiles on and there were a lot of missed calls asking if we got to Sydney.
Turned on the tv to find that the airline staff had gone on strike and the CEO had shut it down, so apparently we were on the last flight out.
 
Rosebud said:
I have one about the Zeebrugge disaster, too.
Now, 25 years on, there's another one (but not inside the harbour this time, possibly well out to sea):

Cargo ship sinks after collision off Dutch coast

Dutch coastguards are mounting a major rescue operation in the North Sea after a cargo ship sank following a collision.
The accident took place off the coast of Belgium and the Netherlands, after the Baltic Ace sailed from Zeebrugge.
Some of the 24 crew members of the Baltic Ace have been rescued, but 11 are still missing in freezing waters.
A helicopter with infrared cameras has joined the search as strong winds and high winds make conditions difficult.

"We are feverishly looking for 11 missing crew members of the Baltic Ace which sank earlier. So far we have rescued 13," Dutch coastguard spokesman Marcel Oldenburger told the Agence France-Presse news agency,

The Baltic Ace was sailing under a Bahamas flag. It was transporting cars from Zeebrugge in Belgium to Kotka in Finland when it collided with the Cyprus-registered container ship, the Corvus J, sailing from Grangemouth in Scotland to the Belgian port of Antwerp.
The Corvus J is said to be badly damaged but not in danger of sinking. All 12 crew members are still on board.

The Dutch coastguard said the cause of the collision, which happened at 1815GMT, was not yet known.
"We have found life rafts, and the people in them are being picked up by helicopters," said spokesman Peter Verburg.

The shipping lane where the accident happened is one of the busiest in the North Sea, about 100km (60 miles) from the port of Rotterdam port, Europe's busiest.
But a spokesman for the port said its activities would not be affected by the collision.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20616997
 
rynner2 said:
Now, 25 years on, there's another one (but not inside the harbour this time, possibly well out to sea):


Yes, saw that on the news and thought; "fortean coincidence", as I had posted on the subject a few days earlier. My deepest sympathies to the families of the lost.

To this day I cannot look at an image of that upturned ferry without tears welling up.
 
Sense of doom

I think this is along the same lines as the original post but it has never made me changed my plans...maybe it will in the future! Here goes...

I consider myself a positive 'glass is half full' type of person, I always try to look for the good side of situations I find myself in. About 14 years ago I was engaged to be married ( a first time experience for me) and was happily planning a wedding. With about 4 months to go I began to get a real sense that something seriously bad was going to happen just before the big event. I had dark thoughts around the death of someone close to me or a serious illness. I just tried to ignore it and shake it off. It turned out that my fiancé decided to call the wedding off two weeks before the event. When I looked back at the experience I feel now that a 'knew' that the wedding would never happen although my premonition didn't extend to suggesting the real reason!

I was recently reminded of this when I got a similar feeling about a weekend visit from my parents - which is normally a positive, relaxing event, I hasten to add! Again I shook it off but after a lovely day spent together on the Saturday, we were met with the news on Sunday morning that my grandad, was seriously ill and my parents departed early to negotiate the situation. I spent the next few days terribly upset, although I am very pleased to say that he has since recovered.

I have come think that this is a premonition of my own impending distressed state rather than the event itself...
 
hi all-not sure if this is exactly fitting, its certainly not as dramatic as some of the previous posts but i thought it sufficiently similar to be worthy of consideration..
We have a woodshed which is situated in an old barn and any trees which we deal with end up here, cut up into (fairly) manageable sections of trunk to dry before being cut into firewood. I'd say these sections are usually 2-3' in length and as wide as the tree is round, so a fair bit of weight to each one and they're stacked to dry.
A couple of months ago we were chopping a load of firewood which involves quite a lot of moving around/using saws/lumps of firewood being tossed around a limited space. As such the dogs know to claim a spot and generally stay out of the way.
Halfway through chopping one stack i sort of zoned out somewhat, stopped what i was doing and looked over at my dog. He'd found his spot, slept for a bit, woken up, picked a lump of wood and was busy dismantling it. He'd been lying there for 1/2 an hour or more maybe-quite a while anyway quite happy. I felt...odd, unsettled and i heard a voice say (in my head) 'call him.'
So i did-'dog come here'. He wags, happy at the attention and comes over (which meant he was all in the way now). within the space of a few seconds the stack that he'd been next to partially collapsed, burying the very spot he'd occupied under three or four trunk sections.
I was quite pleased, he was pretty unfazed, work resumed.
 
cherrybomb said:
I have one that's not mine, but my brothers. About 10 years ago my brother was building a wall in a friends garden, it was about 7 foot tall and made from various granite stones and blocks. He had almost finished when he started to feel uneasy, he was working with several pals who had all gone inside for a brew and he was on his own. He said he felt like something bad was going to happen, when in a split second a time slip type thing occurred. He had been up a ladder next to this wall, when he felt this unease, he then says he blinked and he was almost inside the house - he hadn't climbed down the ladder, he bliked and had moved "like a chess piece". Shocked to see where he was he turned to see where he should have been and this wall collapsed. It would have crushed him, had he still been working on it. Being moved by whatever it was saved his life.

This, of course shocked him and so he took a few days off to get his head around what happend, and what had saved him. He was in his flat with his wife and young daughter, stood in the kitchen, when he says felt that same sense of panic and time "jumped" again, and he was now stood in the lounge holding his daughter. A time slip of maybe 10/15 seconds, just like when stood at the wall. This time nothing bad happend.

He is still of the opinion that something saved him that day (altho he is not religious), and that same thing had made time jump a second time, so he would know it actually happend! :shock:

Did he ask his wife and/or daughter if they also experienced the second jump?
 
ChrisBoardman said:
Whenever there is a tragedy like 9/11 or the tsunami, there will be always be people who were going to be there that did not go for some reason. A day off sick, didn't feel like going. To them it seems like some divine power but with billions of people on earth, all leading complex lives, these coincidences will happen.

This was my thought, too. So many times we change our minds about our plans, or miss trains, planes, or buses, but if nothing significant happens, we forget it or feel annoyed by it. But who knows. If there really is data suggesting that planes, trains, ships, or whatever, that met with disaster do have fewer people on them than they normally would, that would be interesting to study.
 
Looks like I had a close brush with death coming back home today.
A combination of fog and icy road is the worst possible driving situation, so something was likely to happen.
I was travelling North in the inside lane on the A1 somewhere around Stevenage at a point where there were 3 lanes, and a car much further ahead of me flashed its brakes, so I thought 'OK, I'd better slow down now'.
I'd slowed down quite a bit when from my left, a car went into a partial spin - putting it in a position spanning 2 lanes (i.e. 90 degrees from direction of travel).
I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop about 10 feet away from this car.

If I hadn't had this random thought about slowing down, I might not be posting this now.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Looks like I had a close brush with death coming back home today.
A combination of fog and icy road is the worst possible driving situation, so something was likely to happen.
I was travelling North in the inside lane on the A1 somewhere around Stevenage at a point where there were 3 lanes, and a car much further ahead of me flashed its brakes, so I thought 'OK, I'd better slow down now'.
I'd slowed down quite a bit when from my left, a car went into a partial spin - putting it in a position spanning 2 lanes (i.e. 90 degrees from direction of travel).
I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop about 10 feet away from this car.

If I hadn't had this random thought about slowing down, I might not be posting this now.

Phew! Glad you chose the safe option.
 
Re: Sense of doom

stellabud said:
I have come think that this is a premonition of my own impending distressed state rather than the event itself...

I think you may be onto something. A premonition is highly personal.

If Jung is more or less correct, the shadow he speaks about that precedes a great event is only perceived by persons who will suffer for a long time after the event, but not perceived by persons who won't make it through the event--and, therefore, we assume, won't be suffering after the event.

Furthermore, time is a factor. A person who is terminally ill may well perceive a shadow (as Jung describes the young girl whose dreams led him to his idea); but, a person who will be the victim of an unexpected, fast-moving event, just doesn't have the time to sense the future.

In the case quoted below, it seems that the shadow, being ignored, became manifest:

Rosebud said:
She had lost her balance getting into her wheelchair, broken her ankle, hit her head and had spent the entire day at the hospital.

Of course, all this speculation leads to other questions the answers to which might be a bit more than we humans would like to accept.
 
Very glad you avoided an accident, Mythopoeika.

If there really is data suggesting that planes, trains, ships, or whatever, that met with disaster do have fewer people on them than they normally would, that would be interesting to study.

I've read that there is data suggesting this many times over the years, but never who collected it, or where one might study it. Is it possible insurance companies might collect such data? You hear such things as green cars (for instance) are more likely to be involved in accidents; and I'm assuming that would come from looking at many insurance claims.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Looks like I had a close brush with death coming back home today.
A combination of fog and icy road is the worst possible driving situation, so something was likely to happen.
I was travelling North in the inside lane on the A1 somewhere around Stevenage at a point where there were 3 lanes, and a car much further ahead of me flashed its brakes, so I thought 'OK, I'd better slow down now'.
I'd slowed down quite a bit when from my left, a car went into a partial spin - putting it in a position spanning 2 lanes (i.e. 90 degrees from direction of travel).
I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop about 10 feet away from this car.

If I hadn't had this random thought about slowing down, I might not be posting this now.

:shock: I actually felt a bit sick reading that, icy roads can be awful. Glad you're ok!!
 
You hear such things as green cars (for instance) are more likely to be involved in accidents; and I'm assuming that would come from looking at many insurance claims.
I have a little green car and I'm sure some drivers just can't see it.
Although no actual accidents so far in the 12 years I've had it, I've had a lot of close misses mainly from 4 wheel drivers who don't indicate or pull out in front of me just as I nearly reach the side street they are in.
I really felt someone was looking after me the other week. On a Probus bus trip the driver wanted to turn left and patiently waited till all cars had gone only to be nearly collected by a 4 wheel drive speeding around without indicating. Oddly the same thing happened to me that night after I picked up my daughter from the station, again a 4 wheel drive whizzing around without indicating as I'm turning. I'm glad my brakes are good.
 
There is evidence (I read it in a driving instructor trade paper a few years ago) that cars that have indicator lamps near the corners of the car are more visible when indicating than cars which have them nearer the radiator grille.

It seems that drivers are attuned to seeing the flashing amber at the corners of the metal box and they don't always notice them if they are set further in.
 
Well this thread has brought it all back! Me and the husband were in New York when the September attacks happened. The day before we were actually in the Towers doing the tourist thing, in fact we were amongst the very last tourists on the roof because a storm moved in and the roof was closed just as we came down.

What haunts me is that I DIDN'T know what was going to happen. In fact, it messed with my head for quite a while after. We spent most of the day in and around the Towers and had absolutely no inkling that the next day thousands of people would be murdered there. It seemed impossible that we WOULDN'T know.

We were due to fly home on the 11th but were stuck in that poor city for several more days. Was horrible and I''ll never forget it. And I''ll never forget how unsafe I felt for a long time after, knowing I' d had no intuition about such a catastrophic happening. I' d always liked to think I had quite strong intuition, but... not so much now.
 
Well that killed this thread! If it helps, the day before the 7/7 London bombings I distinctly remember posting a comment on someone's blog that I had a feeling that something was building and something bad was going to happen. As I was typing the news came through that we had won the 2012 Olympics, so I made a joke at my own expense about what the hell did I know. But it would seem I did know.
 
Re: Sense of doom

lol Scribbles.

It was interesting that you mentioned having no sense of impending disaster at the WTC, that was what bothered me about my Sister, she was usually the one to sense immediately if something was wrong.

"If Jung is more or less correct, the shadow he speaks about that precedes a great event is only perceived by persons who will suffer for a long time after the event, but not perceived by persons who won't make it through the event--and, therefore, we assume, won't be suffering after the event."

The point that Shaybarsabe raised really resonated with me. If my Sister and Niece had died it would have been the rest of the family who would have suffered afterwards, not them.

Around that time there were several occasions where she was almost killed and her intuition seemed to be permanently switched off. It does make me wonder; was it hers or my Guardian Angel/Guide/Daemon (not Demon)/whatever, that prevented her going?
 
The idea that as a witness I couldn't have been expected to feel that dark shadow does make me feel better, thanks Rosebud.

My brother did the Zeebrugge trip, some short time before that awful ferry disaster. I was only a kid and I adored him (then, not so much now!) and worried every single time he went away after that.
 
An odd little thing that happened to me back in 2009...

I was visiting Warwick (UK) for the first time as I needed to research the museum there. I was walking from the train station to the museum in the centre of town, which involved me walking up a steep hill. The pavement was quite narrow and the buildings next to me were terraced. I usually get lost in thought when walking distances, so I was daydreaming as I powerwalked up the hill.

Suddenly for no reason I stopped mid-stride. I didn't think about it, I didn't have a feeling, I literally just paused. Then without warning a heavy metal flagpole fell off the building in front of me and hit the floor. If I hadn't stopped it would have struck me square on the head and would have done a lot of damage. I didn't know how to react, so I just stepped over it and carried on :oops:

I honestly have no idea why I stopped. I was walking at a constant speed, nothing crossed my mind and I didn't feel any forboding, I literally just halted. I was looking at the floor the entire time too, so it wasn't like I subconsciously noticed the flagpole being about to fall either.

Puzzling, but I'm grateful. I don't think my noggin would win in a fight between it and a flagpole!
 
Urvogel's story reminded me of something that happend to my father.

It was about 1995 and he was cycling along a country lane when he decided to stop for no real reason, as he stopped and put his foot on the ground a large branch fell off a tree only a few feet in front of him. If he hadn't of stopped he'd be dead. It wasn't windy and he said he remembers he took that route as it was a mild day. Then it gets creepy. After this near miss he decided to take a short cut though the grounds of a large old manor house, which was used at the time (& I think still is) as a nursing home for old folks. He walked with his bike up the drive way and through some woodland next to the home, when, he says, he felt ill and rather faint. He carried on anyway and found a tiny, old graveyard in the trees. The first grave stone he saw had his name on it. He then dashed home as quick as he could.

He told me and my mother this story a day or two later when he had time to calm down, we didn't believe the part about the gravestone so he took us to see it. My mother asked around over the following weeks and discovered it had been for the dead pets from when the home had been a manor house & they gave the pets "human names". One had happend to have my father's name!

Sidenote: All this happend on the same lane where there was a UFO/alien sighting in the early 1980's! Can't beat Cornwall for the weird and wonderful!
 
Back
Top