The Knowledge
Psychics, sensitives, and intuitives have always been with us. They have become part of our culture and it is generally accepted that there are certain people among us who have unique access to knowledge through supernatural means.
In Chapter 3, we discussed the different types of psychic abilities — clairsentience, clairaudience, claircognizance, and clairvoyance — and how individuals with these abilities might be helpful in the course of an investigation. Different sensitives experience the situation based on their own gifts. For some, the experience is auditory. For others, it is visual. Others may feel a presence, a sensation known as kinesthesia.
Many psychics' perceptions combine in the mind's eye to convey a sensory image experienced as a haunting. At this point, the observer believes the image to be three-dimensional, although it may be semitransparent or look superimposed onto the environment.
Tarnished Reputations
It is very unfortunate that the spiritualist's movement of the nineteenth century and some flamboyant fame-seekers and TV psychics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have tainted the psychic community. Because building credibility is so important to ghost hunters, it is obvious why some organizations have steered away from evidence that smacks of chicanery or that cannot be verified independently.
Some groups, however, feel that including psychics on the team adds so much to the investigation that they simply cannot be excluded. The knowledge and insights psychics intuit may play a huge part in the investigation and may bring closure to a situation when nothing else will.
Asset Versus Liability
Those groups with sensitives on their team feel that they are a huge asset to the investigation. Their contributions to the gathering of evidence are often integral to the case, and they have the ability to bring closure to the restless spirits that created the haunting. However, many groups draw the line at using mediums. A medium who becomes possessed during the course of an investigation is a definite liability to the team.
Some parapsychologists feel that so-called spirit possession is often a two-way street. Wanda Pratnicka, author of Possessed by Ghosts: Exorcisms in the 21st Century, theorizes that ghosts may come back and possess people repeatedly. “Emotional bindings between people and ghosts are like rubber bands,” she says, “that draw the ghost back into the patient's body.”
