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Is it art that imitates life or life that imitates art? Better yet is it life that imitates the creative spirit? Writers tend to fabricate tales that mirror the experiences of life and artists engage canvas creations for what they see. But what happens when life itself duplicates the power of the mind and alters the structure of reality?

Probably the most famous case of this type of phenomena is the correlation that has been made to the sinking of the liner Titanic in 1912 to a fictitious book titled Titan written 14 years prior to the Titanic sinking by a struggling writer Morgan Robertson which also featured a liner that sunk. The details of the novel bore an uncanny likeness to the real tragic event. In addition, and also some years earlier, a work of fiction with a similar tragic theme appeared in a London newspaper. The editor of that newspaper was W.T. Stead who made the following statement about the story:

“This is exactly what might take place, if liners are sent to sea short of boats.”

As fate (?) or the hypothesis provides, W.T. Stead was a passenger on the ill-fated Titanic years later.

In 1935, a coal boat named Titanium nearly went down after just missing an iceberg near the location of the Titanic accident.

Were these incidents merely prophesy or the creative mind and imagination altering reality? How can real life accounts replicating fictional accounts be rationalized?

In 1975, writer David Boulton wrote The making of Tania Hearst, a book which was based on the kidnapping of heiress Patricia Hearst 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army. In the book Boulton had made an observance and what he felt was a connection to a pornographic novel titled Black abductor, which was published in 1972. In that piece an heiress named ‘Patricia’ was abducted from a college campus while her boyfriend was beaten up. Messages were sent to her parents by the abductors via personal ads in newspapers. She is seduced by the young black leader of the revolutionary group which she eventually joins. The author of the book James Rusk (who wrote it under a pseudonym) was interrogated by the FBI because they felt the SLA had copied the plot to carry out a real crime and that Rusk may have been an accomplice. Rusk was astonished that this was the case because even if copying were true, what guarantee could there possibly be that the real Patricia (Hearst) would be won over successfully as the fictitious heroine in the book had been?

The Daphne Du Maurier novel, Don’t look now, was made into a movie (same title) starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in 1973. In that tale a couple is haunted by the spirit of their child who had drowned in a pond near their country home. In 1979, friends of Christie who were staying at her country farmhouse in Wales, suffered the same consequences when their own child drowned in two feet of water in a duckpond near the house. The mother had waded into the pond to recover the child just as Donald Sutherland had done in the movie but to no avail.

And what about art?

(image credit: Pristina)

This is an advertisement for a Pakistani travel company published in 1979. Was it a future reality creation about 911?

This painting by Mrs. Claire Fearon was not anything like what she usually painted. Not knowing it at first, she later came to believe it was a painting of what later was the Japanese earthquake and nuclear plant explosion. She had painted it a year prior to the event. She said: “I was watching the news of the earthquake and when I saw the pictures I thought ‘that’s my painting’.”*

What is really going on?

“When faced with such events, it is inadequate to try to explain them in terms of life copying art. The idea of art imitating nature is familiar enough – but in fact the influences are bound to be in both directions. Perhaps we underestimate our own abilities to shape the world about us, abilities that are well known to every village shaman, healer, magician and mystic.”** – Bob Rick

Resources:

The Unexplained Vol. 8 pg. 915

The Unexplained Vol. 9 pgs 1070-1073

**Quote pg. 1073

* http://www.daydaypaint.com/blog/japanese-quake-was-predicted-by-an-artist-one-year-ago.html

https://usahitman.com/5cptpwe/