'Psychic' TikToker's dream creates massive demand for 22-year-old book of poetry

It all started with a dream. 

At the end of 2021, American TikToker "Ohmarni," who claims to have psychic powers, posted a video to the social media platform about a dream she had in which a man asked her: "Is the fifth window open?". 

According to the video, which has been viewed 3.2 million times, when she woke up she searched the term online and found out there was a book called The Fifth Window. She was unable to find much information about it or a way to access it — except from reserved sections in universities such as Harvard — which piqued her curiosity. 

"Now explain to me, why is a book about the psychic world and the real world meeting in the reserves, request section, like super locked up tight? That's weird, that's suspicious," Ohmarni, whose real name is Marni Webb, says in the video. 

The hunt was on for her and her followers to find The Fifth Window. This was all unbeknownst to Vancouverite Russell Thornton, two decades removed from the writing of a book by that title.

The Fifth Window was published back in 2000 by Thistledown Press in Saskatoon, and it was Thornton's first trade publication that was of any significance. 

"The book does have a mystical, or at least metaphysical component to it," said Thornton, whose subsequent work was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry and the Griffin Prize.

He was at his home computer when he received an email from Vancouver poet Rob Taylor, asking if Thornton had heard about what was happening with his book on TikTok. 

"I'm not on TikTok, I've heard the words, but I had no idea what it was all about," Thornton said. "My 13-year-old daughter was home and I said: 'Do you know anything about TikTok?'"

His daughter, Leora, quickly tracked the video down and showed it to him, and they both realized that Webb and her followers thought there might be a conspiracy behind why the book was so hard to find. 

Thornton's daughter eventually started replying to some of the comments, saying there was no conspiracy, it was just an older book from a Canadian poet, which might be hard to come by in the U.S. 

"The whole business of being able to get a hold of a book, in the minds of these people, as if it contains information that's dangerous or radical in some way… That kind of business seems to be so rampant in the world right now, I think that entered into it," Thornton said. 

Eventually, he asked his daughter to see if Webb wanted a copy of the book. Webb reluctantly gave Thornton her mailing address, and he shipped her one of his two remaining copies. 

He received an email from her a few weeks later, thanking him for the book.