The Mary Celeste Syndrome

by John Pinkney

  Synchronism Scuppered a Suicide

  Some coincidences seem to have a benign purpose. Jewish Week magazine (12 February 1993) reported the case of an Israeli man who tried to kill himself in Bnai Brak by leaping from a pedestrian footbridge. The highway below was teeming with rush-hour traffic - and witnesses were convinced he would either be struck by one or more of the speeding cars or crushed beneath a giant transporter’s wheels.

  Instead he landed on a passing truckload of mattresses - and bounced back into life with minor bruises.

  Titanic Haunted by Number 10

  A pattern of bizarre synchronicity surrounds the doomed luxury liner Titanic, which in April 1912 sank in the Atlantic after striking an iceberg. Students of the tragedy have noted that the number 10 plays an oddly prominent role in the ship’s dark story. Examples include:

  Number of letters in the name of Bruce Ismay, principal of the company that owned Titanic: 10.

  Letters in name of Robert Marx, who found the wreck in 1985: 10.

  Ship’s final port before heading toward USA was Queenstown: 10.

  Lightoller (only officer to survive the sinking): 10.

  Ship’s name The Titanic: 10.

  The definitive book on the disaster remains A Night to Remember. Number of letters in name of author Walter Lord: 10.

  Other 10s derive from standard numerology. The liner sank on 15 April 1912. Total the digits 1,5,1,9,1,2 to obtain 19. Add 1 to 9 to get 10.

  Number of deaths in disaster: 1,513. Digits 1 + 5 + 1 + 3 = 10

  Number of years from sinking to discovery of wreck, 73. Digits 7 + 3 = 10.

  The Professor and the 9/11 Lottery

  On 11 September 2002 (9/11/02) the winning numbers in New York’s State Lottery were…911.

  As the lottery had been drawn on the anniversary of the mass murder exactly one year earlier (9/11/01) many people regarded this as an extremely eerie coincidence. But not John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University.

  In his column Who’s Counting, on America’s ABC News website, Paulos argued that there was nothing particularly odd about 911 coming up on 9/11. He said, in part:

  On any given day each of the 1000 possibilities - 000, 001,…233,…714,…998, 999 - is as likely to come up as any other. This is true of September 11 as well, so the probability that 911 would come up on that date [9/11] is simply 1 in 1000. This probability is small, but not minuscule.

  The broader question that should come to mind, however, is: What is the probability that some event of this general sort - something that is resonant with the date - would occur on September 11? The answer is impossible to say

  with any precision, but it is, I argue, quite high. …Keep this in mind when you read the following excerpt from the great science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. In his 1973 novel Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke wrote:

  At 0940 GMT on the morning of September 11 in the exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball…Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate…The cities of Padua and Verona were wiped from the face of the earth, and the last glories of Venice sank forever.’

  Who would have thought that Arthur C. Clarke was the brains behind Osama bin Laden?

  My friend the poet Jack Taylor was mildly annoyed by this essay, and emailed me to draw it to my attention. He commented:

  The writer seems to imagine he’s successfully debunking these two coincidences. But his omissions are glaring, to say the least…

  NY Lottery - For 911 to roll out on 9/11 would not be a mere 1 in 1000 chance - but a 1 in 1000 x 365 chance.

  The odds would then have to be further increased by multiplying the chances of 911 having been drawn in the very year (of all years) that followed the mass murders…and in the very city (of all cities) where those murders occurred. A reasonable person would have to concede that this lottery result was a freakish occurrence - not, as the professor suggests, ‘a small, but not minuscule’ probability.

  Rendezvous with Rama - A joke about Arthur C. Clarke and bin Laden does nothing to dismiss this ‘coincidence’. Clarke’s reference to his fictional September 11 fireball appearing at 9.40 am prompted me to look up 9/11 on Wikipedia - which reveals that the Pentagon plane crash occurred at 9.37:46 am (local time). Clarke was therefore one minute and 14 seconds out in his unwitting precognition. But as he published the novel 28 years before the Twin Towers atrocity, I’m inclined to forgive him. He also mentions in this passage that September 11, 2077 was an exceptionally beautiful morning. And so, of course was the morning of September 11, 2001 - as the azure skyline in the horrific jet-crash footage reveals.

  The professor does not mention (or perhaps doesn’t know) that Clarke, albeit a sceptic, has discovered such ‘coincidences’ in his own novels before: the most remarkable of which appears in 2001. When this book was published in 1968, Saturn’s moons were barely visible through earth’s strongest telescopes. But Clarke, in his imagination, could see them clearly. In chapter 35, The Eye of Japetus, he describes his fictional astronaut Bowman gazing down on the eponymous moon and seeing a huge eye-shaped crater with a black dot in the centre (a monolith) staring up at him. Eleven years later Voyager I transmitted the first photographs of Japetus to earth. The main feature on the moon’s surface was an eye-shaped crater - just as Clarke had described it, down to the dot in the middle. It would be possible, I suppose, to crack another dry academic joke about this. But my reaction is to stand back in awe.

  Christened in Triplicate

  In 1926, penniless and abandoned by her husband, a distraught young mother gave her triplet sons to a St Louis orphanage. According to an Associated Press report each of the boys was adopted into a different family. In 1983 the ageing triplets rediscovered each other and held a family reunion in Wichita, Kansas.

  John Burch, John Jones and James Hahn were pleased to hear that their siblings had been lovingly brought up - and were fascinated to find that their fraternal similarities included a fear of heights, an allergy to milk, and ringing in the ears.

  Burch had been first to discover he was a triplet. The revelation came the previous year when he called the Children’s Home Society to seek a birth certificate for a passport application. Through a phone number supplied by the orphanage he found Hahn and Jones. The three men were astonished to realise that they had had chance encounters previously in their lives - but had not guessed they were related to each other.

  Then they talked about their wives and children - and learned that all three triplets had a son named John and a daughter named Mary.

  Coincidental Cash

  Lotteries have long been a rich source of synchronicities.

  On 1 January 2002, the winning numbers in the Massachusetts Lottery’s daily numbers game came up as 2-0-0-2.

  During a four-year span, lawn maintenance man John Dent of Ballan, Victoria, won Tattslotto three times. In 1976 he shared the top prize of $373,000 with friends and shared another top prize in 1998. In 2000, having decided to try his luck solo, he pocketed $810,000. The Herald Sun asked Melbourne University’s maths department to estimate the probability of winning a first division prize three times. After a pause lasting several hours the department responded that, based solely on three winning entries, the odds were one in 540,359,590,097,466,216,000. Or - to express it more simply, less than 1 in 540 billion billion.

  Pennsylvania retirees Joe and Dolly Hornick defied even steeper odds - winning major lottery prizes five times in 12 years. They began with a $5 million jackpot in 1989, followed by $136,000 in 1997 - and in 2001, $24,000, $412,000 and $140,000. A statistician described the odds against this happening as ‘being struck by lightning times 600’. The couple was also notorious at the local casino for their ability to collect prizes from $5000 to $20,000 after mere moments at a poker machine. Dr J. B. Rhine, founder of Duke University’s parapsychology faculty, believed that such multiple wins had less to do with chance than
with a subtle, unconscious psi ‘ability’ possessed by the player.

  In July 2000 Oregon’s Columbian newspaper published the winning Pick 4 lottery numbers several hours before they were drawn. Investigation revealed that a copy editor had mistakenly pulled Tuesday’s numbers from Virginia’s draw - and headlined them as Wednesday’s winning pick in Oregon. However, the Columbian had no need to apologise. The same winning numbers - 6-8-5-5 - were also drawn on Wednesday evening in Oregon.

  And on 25 November 1999 The Australian reported that a grandfather had ‘bucked odds of around 80 million to one’ by twice winning the $1 million Keno jackpot at Perth’s Burswood Casino. The gambler, who had returned ‘just for fun’ after winning his first million 11 days earlier, said he was shocked when his numbers came up again.

  The Cod and the Seasick

  Dutchman

  In 1994, while leaning over the rail of a storm-tossed cruise ship, nauseated tourist Cor Stoop lost his dentures into the raging North Sea below. Several months later, listening to a radio news service, he heard a fisherman say he had found a pair of false teeth in a cod’s stomach. Cor and the clackers were reunited.

  Booked Out: Four Authors,

  One Idea

  When bestselling British author David Lodge sat down in 2003 to write a novel about literary genius Henry James, he was unaware that three other writers were already toiling at the same task.

  As it later emerged, the four novelists had each suddenly decided that a book about James (1843-1904) would be an excellent idea - even though few 21st century readers were particularly aware of him.

  Lodge titled his book Author, Author to reflect its concentration on James’s attempts to start a new career as a playwright. Several weeks after handing the manuscript to his publisher, he was distressed to learn that Colm Toibin was about to publish The Master - a book on the same theme - and at much the same time.

  Both Lodge and Toibin were then horrified to hear that yet another author, Alan Hollinghurst, was about to publish a novel about James titled The Line of Beauty. There was now a logjam of Henry James novels - and the sales of all three writers suffered.

  Meanwhile, in South Africa, the novelist Michiel Heyns suffered an even worse blow. After spending two years writing a reportedly moving and brilliant novel about James, he innocently submitted it to his publisher - only to be told there was no more room in the marketplace.

  Coincidences can be curious and entertaining. But to Heyns, this one was crippling.

  Six Eerie Coincidences

  A SHABBY COAT, which the Wizard of Oz costume department randomly bought for the actor playing Professor Marvel, was amazingly found to have been owned by the deceased L. Frank Baum - author of the original book. In The Making of the Wizard of Oz, film historian Aljean Harmetz tells the story:

  What did occur on the film - perhaps the most astonishing thing - is vouched for by cinematographer Hal Rosson and by Mary Mayer, who says, ‘For Marvel’s coat they wanted grandeur gone to seed… tattered. The wardrobe department went down to an old secondhand store on Main Street and bought a whole rack of coats. Frank Morgan [the actor playing Marvel], the wardrobe man and [director] Victor Fleming got together and chose one.’

  The coat fitted Morgan and had the right look of shabby gentility. One hot afternoon Frank Morgan turned out the pocket. Inside was the name L. Frank Baum.

  ‘We wired the tailor in Chicago,’ says Mary Mayer, ‘and sent pictures. And the tailor sent back a notarised letter saying the coat had been made for Frank Baum. Baum’s widow identified the coat too - and after the picture was finished, we presented it to her.’

  THE KING JAMES BIBLE was published in the year Shakespeare turned 46. The 46th word of Psalm 46 is ‘shake’…and the 46th word from the end is ‘spear’.

  ON 13 FEBRUARY 1846 Jean Marie Dubarry was executed in France for the murder of his father. Exactly 100 years earlier (13 February 1746) his great-grandfather, also named Jean Marie Dubarry, had been executed for the murder of his father. [From a historical article in the Oakland Tribune California, published 14 October 1934.]

  TWO BRITISH SOLDIERS, who each thought the other had died during World War II, discovered in 2004 that they had, in fact, become next-doorneighbours. When he moved into a new retirement bungalow Gilbert Fogg, 80, thought there was something familiar about the man next door. Before long he discovered that his new neighbour was former comrade-in-arms Tom Parker, 82. The last the pair had seen each other was during the battle of Anzio in Italy. Britain’s Daily Mirror (25 July 2004) reported that both left on stretchers, each assuming his friend had been killed.

  A DARK TANGLE of coincidence linked the lives - and deaths - of racedriver Antonio Ascari and his son Alberto.

  Antonio died on 26 July 1925 while taking a bend in the French Grand Prix.

  Alberto died on 26 May 1955 while taking a bend in Monaco.

  Each man died aged 36, leaving a widow and two children.

  Each perished while driving an Italian car on the 26th of the month in a year ending with 5.

  Each man had escaped unhurt from a serious accident four days before his death.

  Alberto died wearing an effigy of his patron saint, St Antonio, after whom his father had been named.

  Like the Ascaris, St Antonio died aged 36.

  A FIGURINE OF ANNE BOLEYN, Henry VIII’s hapless second wife, re-enacted history when a Bournemouth, UK, auctioneer accidentally knocked the head off as he placed it in a cabinet.

  * * *

  The Dream that Proved

  a ‘Dead’ Man Was Alive

  Sleep and the Seventh Sense

  * * *

  In 1944, as World War II neared its bloody climax, the Australian Army wrote to the parents of medical orderly Eddie Hooker, to report him missing, presumed dead. The young soldier’s family was shattered by grief - but curiously his brother Harold was unable to mourn. For many weeks he had been experiencing a recurring and ‘astonishingly realistic’ dream which showed Eddie returning home, healthy and unhurt. When the Pacific war ended, Harold’s dream came true in intricate detail. Like many millions of people before him he had unconsciously used his seventh sense: an astonishing faculty which enables the dreaming brain to burst the bonds of time - and offer tantalising glimpses of the future…

  EVERYBODY LOVED EDDIE HOOKER. When the official letter of regret arrived, his parents’ Sydney suburban house was thrown into chaos. Relatives wrote, or knocked at the door, to ask if there were anything they could do. Neighbours called around with cooked meals. And as the news spread, friends and old flames that no one had ever met arrived at the front door.

  But to the family’s astonishment - and anger - Eddie’s brother Harold showed no sign of grief. Repeatedly he assured his mother that her beloved son was alive. Patiently he kept describing to her the series of electrically vivid dreams which (long before the army’s letter appeared) had convinced him his brother would come safely home. And the following year, with the Pacific war won, Eddie did indeed return.

  When I spoke with Harold Hooker he was retired and living in Guildford, New South Wales. But his memories of the war, and of those breath takingly real dreams, remained sharp.

  When Eddie joined up, I wanted to go too. But because I was a boilermaker, in a protected defence occupation, the authorities wouldn’t allow it.

  Eddie sailed off on a troopship. We received a couple of widely spaced cards from him, then nothing. The family suffered the agony and worry that the whole world was enduring. Then the official letter arrived and everyone was sure he was dead. Everyone except me - and Mum - because she’d come to believe in the recurring dream I kept describing to her.

  In that dream, which was always incredibly real, I’d walk into the Royal Hotel at Granville. Eddie would be at the bar with my father, my younger brother and a neighbour. As I entered, Eddie would walk toward me and we’d embrace. Then the dream would fade away.

  After peace was declared we heard nothing for
several weeks. Then came a telegram from Eddie, saying he’d be back in a few days.

  When I got home next night, Mum met me with the cry, ‘He’s home!’ She then told me where he was.

  I ran the mile or so to the Royal Hotel - and there, reproduced exactly, was the dream I’d had for so long. At the bar, just as I’d so often seen them, were my father, my brother and that neighbour. Then Eddie walked up to me and we embraced.

  Never before or since have I had any other kind of supernatural experience.

  A Champion Boxer’s Deadly Dream

  Some precognitive, or future-revealing, dreams have become world-famous. One such vision was experienced by 26-year-old Sugar Ray Robinson, the boxer whom Muhammad Ali described as ‘the greatest fighter of all time’.

  In the small hours of 24 July 1947 Robinson (real name Walker Smith Jr) woke sweating from a nerve-tattering nightmare. In the dream he had seen himself standing, tearful in a boxing ring, looking down at a blankly staring opponent sprawled at his feet, while the crowd shouted, ‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’

  Shocked and frightened, Robinson reached for the phone and rang his manager who was staying at the same Cleveland hotel. He begged him to cancel that night’s world welterweight championship bout against Jimmy Doyle. The manager, angry, voice slurred with sleep, refused. Jettisoning an international match because of a dream would not only cause million dollar losses but would ruin his, and Sugar Ray’s, careers.