You're a fool if you thought I would wait.

It's the last time I'll let you be late.

I've licked the gin from my lips,

Brushed my skirt down my hips,

And now you will see how I hate.

That finger of yours must be sore,

But it won't swipe right anymore.

It's just after two

And I'm coming for you,

Cock your ear for my knock at the door.

Knock-knock, and now I am in.

Your cat glares up from its tin.

Don't stare so that way,

You know what they say,

Revenge is never a sin.

As his wrist was lovingly snapped from the roomy door, and he sank like a frozen angel into the depths of the North Atlantic, who amongst us did not shed a salty tear for the passing of Jack Dawson?

I was so mesmerised when I first saw Titanic, that it began a weekly ritual of me stuffing my mother's shoulder pads into my training bra to pass for twelve, and solemnly making my pilgrimage to the cinema. Kernel after kernel of popcorn were slowly inserted into my mouth as I stared wide eyed at the screen, the flickering images of Leo's hair, Kate's tits, and icebergs reflected in my heart shaped pupils. Twenty one times I went to see it in the cinema. That is a lot of DiCaprio. Posters of Ginger Spice began to be plastered over by Leo's icy blues, and my Top of The Pops magazines lay in tatters around my bed as I snip snip snipped out anything Titanic related. I was obsessed.

And so imagine my surprise to discover that a most fascinatingly sinister little nugget of information had passed me by about the Titanic, after my years of maniacal interest.

While researching an article on Victorian spiritualists, I came across a passenger named William Stead. Stead (1849 -1912) was a newspaper editor and rather radical journalist for his time. He launched a campaign against child prostitution and had the legal age of consent raised from 13 to 16. Pretty nifty, eh? In fact, he was said to be an all round brilliant man, who spent his last evening on board the Titanic telling hair-raising tales of cursed mummies, and chortling through his eleven course meal. He had been on his way to a peace congress at Carnegie Hall, and it was said that he was due to receive a Nobel Peace Prize that year. As the boat sank he helped women and children into the boats, and gave away his own lifejacket to another passenger. Top bloke.

Here's the interesting thing. While in the 1890's he did go on to develop a strong interest in spiritualism, in 1886 he had had, as yet, no supposed contact with the supernatural. He had always claimed that he would die from either drowning or lynching, and in March of that year he wrote and published a short story called How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor.

The short story is believed by many to portend the sinking of the Titanic nearly thirty years later, and it is easy to see why. Written to highlight the dangers of a ship with insufficient lifeboats, there are a number of parallels to the real disaster.

Shortage of boats. The real Titanic carried 2,208 passengers, and yet only had enough boats for half, 1,178. In Stead's short story the ship has 916 passengers, and enough lifeboats for 390.

Boats half filled. Despite having enough boats for half of the passengers, only 701-713 people survived the sinking of the Titanic, as chaos and confusion on deck meant that the lifeboats were launched only partially filled. This is also the case in Stead's story, and in both crew had to shoot male passengers who were trying to jump into the boats.

"Meanwhile the captain had reloaded—alas! what a pity he only had two barrels— and a third and fourth boat went off with half their proper complement."

The Steamers Sank At Night. The Titanic sank at 02.20am, and in Stead's story the boat goes down just before dawn, with many of the passengers still in their nightclothes as they swarmed terrified on the deck.

The Dark Haired Girl and JJ Astor. Stead writes of being drawn to an Englishman and his beautiful dark haired daughter;

"One Englishman of distinction attracted me strangely. He had his wife and family with him, and a more beautiful group I never saw. The eldest girl was a dark beauty about eighteen years of age, and it was a pretty sight to see the father beau-ing her about."

The last time that Stead was seen alive, he was clinging to a raft with John Jacob Astor, the richest man on the ship and potentially in the world at the time of his death. JJ Astor was on board with his new dark haired bride, 20 year old Madeline Astor, twenty seven years his junior. It is interesting that Stead's narrator is drawn to this passenger, when he so closely resembles the man that he would die with.

While there is some dispute as to the last words of JJ Astor, reports agree that one of his final acts was to give his place in the lifeboat with his wife to either a woman and her daughter or to two children. He was later seen calmly smoking a cigarette on the deck. The older gentleman in Stead's story behaved in a remarkably similar manner.

"Women first here. Thompson, you will steer her. Take four men, and no more. The young English lady was lowered down, although she clung hard to her father and begged him to let her stay. "No, darling, good-bye. Be happy!" he said, and then stood composedly amid the hurly-burly."

Tragically for Stead, one aspect of the story which proved not to be prophetic was his own survival. While his narrator does fall into the sea,

"I heard a humming noise in my ears, and with a gasp I was up amid a blackened, wriggling sheet of drowning creatures, "

He is rescued by a lifeboat that drifts past him. While Stead's body was never found, we do know that he was with Astor at the end, and drowned.

As a caveat to his tale, William Stead added an editors note at the bottom. It read,

[NOTE.— This is exactly what might take place and what will take place if the liners are sent to sea short of boats.—ED.]

Rather chilling, wouldn't you say? The Titanic remains one of the most fascinating moments in history for me, and having discovered Stead's haunting foreshadowing of the event, I think I love it now more than ever.

Terence Erskin has today been found guilty of the Murder in the First Degree of his niece, Rose Oliver, in one of the most sensational criminal cases of recent years.

Erskin, 47, who is an American History Professor at Corpus Christi College, was charged with the poisoning, and subsequent suicide of Miss Oliver, 17, who was living under his care. The media storm that engulfed the trial was fomented by the manner of poisoning with which Erskin had driven the deceased to end her own life, and its sinister ties to the past.

Formerly considered within academia to be the foremost expert on the Salem Witch Trials, Erskin’s work and teachings had been severely challenged by the publication last year of Linnda Caporael’s thesis ‘The Fungus Theory’. Caporael advocated that the Ergot fungus on the rye grain eaten by the Salem residents during the trials may have caused severe hallucinogenic reactions, therefore accounting for the mass hysteria which gripped the town during the 17th century. The hypothesis directly contradicted the findings of Professor Erskin, upon which he had built his career. He confessed to the court that in a bid to disprove and discredit Caporael, he had begun to feed the corrupted grain to Miss Oliver shortly after the paper’s initial publication.

Oliver, suffering under the escalating effects of the poison, and experiencing disturbing delusions in the week leading up to her death, was said to have believed that the world was coming to an end. There are several reports from Jericho residents stating that she was stopping passers-by and bursting into shops, screaming that there were only a few days left until mankind would be slaughtered.

‘It was getting really scary,’ said Julia, a classmate and sometime friend of Rose. ‘She was running around campus and grabbing people, trying to get them to listen. She said we were all going to die. It was horrible.’

The court heard how Miss Oliver, in a final desperate attempt to communicate her nihilistic fantasies to her fellow students, climbed to the roof of the faculty building on the 14th of July this year. With her arms spread wide, she shouted,

‘The clock is ticking, time is up!’ and jumped.

When asked why he didn’t cease to administer the fungus, when he clearly saw the devastating effect that it was having on his niece, Professor Erskin’s answer chilled the court.

‘If she had survived, she would have been in a position to communicate her experiences with Ergot poisoning to Linnda, and to participate in further studies. As the fungus clearly was a hallucinogen, this would have strengthened the academic reputation of my rival. That would have somewhat defeated the purpose, wouldn’t you say?’

Terence Erskin has been served a life sentence with no chance of parole.