I’d like to tell you all, if I may, about something that has fascinated me since I was a young boy: a loose grouping of phenomena known as ‘Death Portents’. Basically, a death portent is, as the name suggests, some sort of phenomenon by which a person can apparently predict the death of themselves or others.
There has been a large range of different methods recorded in folklore, superstitions and witness accounts whereby someone has apparently predicted their own death, covering vast swathes of the Fortean spectrum. For example, there are tales of ghosts involving a close relative seeing a ‘crisis apparition’ of a dying loved one miles away from where the loved one is currently dying, or a dying person seeing an angel or the ghost of a long-dead friend standing at the foot of their bed not long before they draw their last breath. There are also tales of time-slips. For example, Abraham Lincoln allegedly woke up in the middle of the night and saw himself lying in state. Alternatively, doppelgangers - Abraham Lincoln saw his face reflected twice in a mirror on the first night of his first term in office and noted that one of the faces had a deathly pallor to it. Such instances could be explained as dreams (which are also often cited when talking about death portents) or looking into a thick grubby mirror from the wrong angle when a bit over tired, but either way, like most death portents, they were of little use if they were intended as genuine warnings to President Lincoln.
With such a wide variety of death portents reported you would expect there to be a few Fortean zoology-related ones around too, and you’d be right. In South Wales it was once a widely held belief that to see a white or grey fox heralded a death in the family and in Gower and Swansea a black fox would also be a sign of impending doom. Even common red foxes were seen as death portents in South Wales at times; there was a legend that foxes would howl and make ‘uncommon’ noises in the village of St Donats whenever the death of the castle’s incumbent was near.
As well as foxes, birds were often cast as being able to predict death and sometimes even the manner in which it would occur. For example, in various parts of Britain there was a widely held belief that if a single crow circled above somebody’s head then that person would die from decapitation. The most famous example of birds as death portents is that of corpse birds. Miners were a superstitious bunch, as you might expect if you are spending your entire working day hundreds of feet below ground, chiselling away at things that might be holding up the ceiling, and held a healthy belief in the power of portents. The corpse bird was one of these portents and often took the form of a dove hovering near the entrance of the colliery and it was said to predict mining disasters. Birds were seen behaving in this manner in coalmines in Llanbradach, Morfa and Senghenydd before explosions caused the deaths of many miners in the pits. A bird might not seem that terrifying or ominous but if events from Glyncorrwg in the Cwmavon valley recounted in the South Wales Echo on 15th of July are to be believed then it sounds like something out of a Stephen King story:
“A Batch of Evil Omens”
“The men have been whispering their fears to each other for some time past, but the drastic action of Monday was probably the outcome of so-called evil omens which are said to have been heard in the mine. About two months ago the night-men began to tell `creepy' tales of the strange and supernatural happenings which took place in the colliery every night. Now and then a piercing cry for help would startle the men, and during the night shift horrid shrieks rang through the black darkness of the headings, and frightened the men nearly out of their wits. There is, of course, the usual tale of the dove hovering over the mouth of the level.”
These incidents (and to be honest probably the newspaper’s over-sensationalised reporting of them) resulted in around 300 men refusing to work at the mine so whether a ‘corpse bird’ can accurately predict a mining disaster or not, the miners certainly thought it was not worth taking that chance.
So, next time you see a bird or a fox, pay attention. Who knows; it might be trying to tell you something.
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