For ten nights in May 1979, an ordinary office manager in Cincinnati had exactly the same dream: a huge jet with its engine sounding wrong, one wing rising, the whole aircraft rolling over and going into the ground in fire. He was so sure it was real that he telephoned the federal authorities to warn them. They took the calls. Days later, it happened.

His name was David Booth. He was twenty three, and nothing about him suggested visions. On the night of May 15th the dream came for the first time: he was standing near a low building, watching a great three engined airliner in American Airlines colours climb away, when the sound went wrong. The plane banked, the wing came up, it rolled onto its back, and it came down in an explosion so vivid that he said he could feel the heat. The next night, the same dream. Identical, beginning to end. Then again. And again. After a week of it he could not eat or sleep, and he did something most people would not have dared: he started making telephone calls.

He called the Federal Aviation Administration. He called American Airlines. He called a university psychiatrist. To each of them he described the same thing: a big American Airlines jet with three engines, rolling over just after takeoff. The FAA men did not laugh at him. One of them, spokesman Jack Barker, said later that Booth sounded perfectly sane and credible, and that the officials discussed his warning seriously. But there was no date, no flight number, no city. There was nothing they could ground. All anyone could do was wait.

On the afternoon of May 25th, 1979, the tenth day, American Airlines Flight 191, a three engined DC 10, lifted off from Chicago O'Hare. Its left engine tore away from the wing. The aircraft rolled past vertical and came down beside the runway. Two hundred and seventy three people died. It is still the deadliest single aircraft crash ever to happen on American soil. Afterwards, the FAA confirmed to reporters what makes this story different from every campfire premonition ever told: the calls came first. Days first. Logged, discussed, and remembered by the men who took them. What David Booth saw ten nights running has an explanation, or it does not. The record only proves the order.

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