Being able to tell the future is a unique talent, if you believe that anyone has the ability to correctly predict the future. This rare and weird talent has many sceptics critical of people who claim to possess the skills. But it gets weirder again as not just people, but animals and even food claim to hold mystical abilities. In fairness, usually these animals and items are acting on the behalf of some lunatic, but it becomes really eerie when they seem to accurately predict the future…
The Octopus
The world is familiar with the physic octopus whose skills for predicting the future came to light during the 2010 World Cup. “Paul the Octopus” was hatched in 2008, and sadly died in October 2010, after having being used as an “animal oracle”. Paul’s abilities were first noticed in the lead up to the world cup. He was presented with two boxes containing the same food, but each box had a different country flag placed on top representing the football team that would be playing that week in the world cup. Whichever box Paul ate from indicated the team that would win the football match. He correctly predicted 11 out of 13 matches, including the final where Spain beat the Netherlands. In fact, so many people trusted in his predictions that people started betting based on Paul’s decisions. Paul had a history of correctly predicting football results during the 2008 UEFA Cup. Many people speculate that Paul was trained to go for certain teams and do not fully believe in his physic abilities.
Food for Divination
Whilst using tea leaves to read peoples fortune is an ancient “art”, there are so more unusual choices used as a medium by people with other-worldly gifts. One such woman is mystic Jemima Packington, who uses asparagus to tell the future. She has used the vegetable since she was 8 years old in order to predict future events, and claims to have a high success rate. Jemima, who is now 58, throws a handful of asparagus into the air and reads the patterns that they form which are apparently, indicative of the future. In recent years she claims to have correctly predicted the fall of the Labour government in Britain, the Royal pregnancy and birth of a baby boy, and the “credit crunch”. According to Jemima, her predictions are roughly 80% accurate due to the strong connection she has to her maternal grandmother, who was also physic. However, her grandmother was only trained in the art of reading tea leaves.
Dreams
David Mandell, a retired lecturer, claims that visions of the future come to him in dreams, which he then paints in pictures. The artist has a collection of paintings done many years ago, which appear to be images of events which have occurred recently. He first became famous for his painting depicting the World Trade Centre (Twin Towers) on fire and collapsing, which was painted almost 10 years prior to the collapse of the towers in a terrorist attack. He was heavily scrutinized for his claims, but a British TV channel did a documentary on his talents in which they put him through all manner of tests to see if he was another false physic. After undergoing lie detector test and scientific analysis of his works, it was proven that the paintings were done many years before the actual events occurred. While the overall results are inconclusive, he at least does not appear to be lying about his skills, and none of the pictures were edited in order to mimic the events after the events happened.
