In 1943, actress Gloria Dickson had a sizable part in THE CRIME DOCTOR'S STRANGEST CASE.
The scene to focus on starts below at 44:23. Gloria is married to a man who's very careless with matches, even starting fires in bed. She remarks that she's been "almost cremated."
Two years later, Dickson would die in a domestic fire in her bedroom, apparently started by a stray match.
Psychic Ernesto Montgomery claimed to have predicted many events (the assassination of JFK, the death of Princess Diana, various airplane crashes, etc.), but for some reason the authorities that he insisted he had contacted beforehand could later never remember having heard from him.
Predictions are standard fare for psychics. But what really set Montgomery apart was the highly unique source of his psychic powers:
"I was born with two appendages below both ears," he explained. "They are like little bones, maybe 1/16th of an inch or so but when I am about to pick up psychic vibrations about the future, they shoot out to a length of 2 or 3 inches.
"Think of your TV antenna," he said.
Unfortunately I couldn't find any photo of his "appendages".
According to old tradition, if you peel an apple and throw the peel over your left shoulder, it'll form the initial on the ground of your future one true love. But this only works on Halloween.
The Tennessean - Oct 13, 1949
The love divination spell may be aided by reciting either one of the following poems:
By this paring let me discover
The initial letter of my true lover.
Or:
Paring, paring, long and green,
Tell my Fate for Halloween.
Jemima Packington divines the future by interpreting asparagus. She calls this the art of Asparamancer. She throws the asparagus in the air, and where they land tells her the future. Using this method, she claims to have correctly foreseen Brexit, Prince Philip's death, Theresa May's resignation, and the Queen's death.
The latest thing that the asparagus have told her: "King Charles will take a step back, due to his age, and make William Prince Regent."
Twitch divination (also known as palmomancy) was the ancient art of divining the future by interpreting body tremors, tics, and twitches.
According to the Faces and Voices blog, few manuals of palmomancy survive from ancient times. But the few that do offer some interesting advice. For instance, from a treatise preserved at Manchester's John Rylands Library:
‘If the anus, that some also call ‘ring’, twitches, it shows inspections, abuses, and the discovery of secret matters’.
Two surviving texts attributed to the legendary diviner Melampous deal with divination: On Divination by Twitchings (Peri Palmon Mantike) and On [Divination from] Birthmarks (Peri Elation tou Somatos)... Both of these texts are very neglected, with no English translation of either in print...
Melampous' Twitchings covers some 187 cases. Involuntary twitchings of the body were easily interpreted as ominous by those who experienced them, and this handy guidebook provided instant advice to the reader as to their meaning... Dating to the third century AD, the earliest papyrus begins with the entry:
[A twitching of] the left buttock means joy: for the slave, something beneficial; for the virgin, blame will fall on the widow for strife [this is somewhat difficult to understand; there may be an allusion here the reader would have recognised]; for the soldier, promotion.
This is in fact a more elaborate version of two short entries in Melampous' Twitchings, which indicate that twitching of either buttock means prosperity.
Invented in the late 1970s by Vincent Siano and his cousin Nicholas Piazza. They named it the Tarottells Machine. However, it doesn't seem to have ever made it onto store shelves. So, for now, tarot readers remain unthreatened by the automation that has swept other industries.
Nicholas Piazza with the Tarottells Machine
Some details about the Tarottells Machine from an AP News story by Kay Bartlett (June 11, 1978 in the Allentown Morning Call):
Siano and Piazza have high hopes for their Tarottells Machine, an invention that so excites Vinnie, the spokesman, that he likes to take off his jacket and stand as he describes it.
Siano, an artist at Grumman Aircraft and a textbook illustrator, rises to lyrical heights demonstrating his machine: "This is the first time in the history of the world — the first Tarot machine. Automation has come to Tarot..."
The machine, with cursor and compass, has a custom carrying case. The game is made of black plastic and bright orange Tarot cards and measures some 27 inches square.
You get the cards' message by pressing a lever to cut the cards three times to the left — mandatory procedure in Tarot. Then they spin around until another lever activates a silver pointer that singles out the card.
"We have also incorporated astrology to get the best possible reading," says Siano, whipping out a tray of beautifully drawn figures of the Zodiac. "And we have also adopted ESP into this machine.
"You'll get a better answer from this than any Ouija Board. What we need is a dynamic corporation that has the guts to turn this thing out."
Siano says a big toy manufacturer had the machine in its vaults for six weeks, but the man who thought it a good idea was fired and the machine was returned.
Published in the Dayton Daily News - Sep 29, 1920. What stands out to me is that the author believed that entirely new forms of power would be in use in 2020... and while wind, solar, and nuclear do provide some power nowadays, the old forms of power (coal and gas) still dominate. So the author was too optimistic about the pace of change.
Wooden houses may not be known in 2020. The street cars, railroad cars, and other familiar methods of travel doubtless will have passed the way of history a century from this hour. Out of all the agencies which men use today electricity alone seems likely to survive. Many scientific men believe that coal and gas will have passed out of common use within the century.
Some one has suggested that the air and the water will furnish us our methods of heat and power in 2020. No one can doubt but that the flying machines of a new and important type, not known today, will be in general use a century removed.
Airplanes probably will be driven by electricity with storage batteries providing the power. Gasoline is not likely to be utilized in 2020. The fuel problem will be solved in a far different way than it is solved now. The air will provide an immense motive power for various things. The sun, doubtless, will be called upon to furnish the greater portion of the heat utilized by manking. Out of the waters on the face of the earth something will be developed for the benefit of the human family.
The automobile will be succeeded by something entirely different. Horses and cows may not be known.
Students of the human race have told us that the primitive man, like the primitive animal, was great in stature. The bones that the scientists have unearthed have verified this. Maybe human beings a century hence will become either much smaller of much larger than they are today. Everything will have changed.
A century past has given us an unlimited amount of great inventions, the sewing machine, electric irons, electric washing machines, airplanes, automobiles, radium and electricity. The next 100 years will see this process of enlargement carried on until it reaches even greater heights.
It may not be a cheerful picture to paint, but most of us will not be here to see the year 2020 roll around. But we can rest assured time will bring changes and improvements. This is a progressive earth and progress has marked each succeeding year since the beginning.
Back in the early 1980s, orthodontist David Marshall, from Syracuse, NY, liked to speculate about what humans would look like 2 million years in the future. Or what "Future Man" would look like, as he referred to our descendants. Based on previous trends in our evolution, he concluded that Future Man will be hairless, big-skulled, small-jawed, and have few teeth.
I was going to say that 'Future Man' sounds like a great name for a comic or TV series. But when I googled the name, I discovered that there already is a Future Man series.
Spokesman Review - Jun 15, 1981
Marshall’s version of the future human being is a sleek-featured, diminutive person, much like the creatures seen in many science-fiction movies.
Today’s diet of soft, processed foods will take its toll on the human jaw and teeth, which have been diminishing since prehistoric days when our ancestors used their mouths as weapons, in addition to making tough foods palatable, Marshall says.
“Nature has a wonderful way of providing for her needs. Whatever she doesn’t need, she gets rid of,” Marshall says. “Things develop according to function. If you use something, it develops. If you don’t, it disappears.”
Since people today do not use their teeth the way they once did, future people probably will have much smaller, and fewer teeth, Marshall’s prediction indicates. They will be practically hairless and their jaws will diminish as they have for thousands of years, he says. The chin and nose will be more prominent.
The changes Marshall foresees also will give future people a wider range of facial expressions…
He has turned his office into a museum on the development of the human skull, tracing its evolutionary and embryonic progress in exhibits and photographs… One of the exhibits in his personal museum is a line of busts depicting the evolutionary changes in the human skull from prehistoric times to his vision of what people will look like 2 million years into the future…
But even with the possibility of scientific advances influencing evolution, Marshall expresses confidence that his projections cannot be disputed.
“No one is going to disprove me,” he says. “They won’t be around.”
-The Semi-Weekly Spokesman-Review - June 15, 1981
According to Marshall's obituary (he died in 2006), the anatomical museum he once had in his dental office was eventually moved to Syracuse University. Although I can't find any record of it there now.
David Marshall, “Changes in the skull—past, present, and future—because of evolution.” Journal of the American Dental Association. Nov 1975.
In the late 1990s, psychic Terrie Brill of Elk Grove, California made headlines by claiming that roadkill could be used to predict the future. Specifically:
Running over a cat is a sign you're about to have a spiritual crisis.
Running over a deer means you're about to hurt someone you love.
Crushing a crow with your car means you're not prepared for the future.
Rolling over a snake could mean you're about to have a heart attack or other serious accident.
If you run over a dog, expect your friendships to take a turn for the worse.
If a bee collides with your windshield, you need to make more time for yourself.
... mashed mosquitos have no effect whatsoever on your future.
Brill died in 2001, but her son maintains a Facebook page about her, promoting her posthumously published book The I-Factor. Unfortunately, the Facebook page doesn't seem to contain anything about the roadkill predictions.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.