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A very wide range of individuals have claimed to have psychic powers. They include: historical and religious figures (such as Gen. George S. Patton, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, St. Joan of Arc, and St. Francis of Assisi); people who have been employed or recruited by the U.S. military for their alleged psychic talents (such as Joseph McMoneagle, Pat Price, Lyn Buchanan, and Ingo Swann); individuals who have made a living or a reputation off of their claimed psychic abilities (such as Edgar Cayce and Jean Dixon), or who have attempted to aid police investigations; people who have been the subjects of scientific investigations into psychic abilities; and people who have been exposed as frauds. As is predictable, a large literature sprouting from many sources (scientific, autobiographic, biographic, anecdotal, journalistic, and so on) documents these people’s claims about, and the evidence of, their alleged abilities.

Introduction

Since the scientific cause of psychic abilities is unknown, any other-than-rudimentary classification of those abilities must rest partly on subjective criteria. This kind of attempt tends to lead to classifications that may arguably overlap. Therefore some individuals who study or claim to possess these abilities may disagree with some of the following classifications. Or, they may prefer to describe some of these classifications as just different ways of describing a single ability, or as different ways of initiating / summoning a single ability.

This article attempts no description of psychic abilities as they have appeared in fictional works.

Note: Some people who claim to be psychics claim to experience their abilities by intentionally trying to use them, while others claim that their powers work involuntarily, and others claim to experience both involuntary and voluntary psychic phenomena. This article does not attempt to distinguish abilities solely on the basis of whether they are experienced as voluntary or involuntary phenomena. It is a safe assumption, however, that all the abilities listed below have been described as capable of working in either manner-- automatically.

Psychic Abilities

Adhering Psychic Artifacts to Physical Objects. In his book The Seventh Sense, Lyn Buchanan claims to have, through several hours of effort, been able to leave a sort of aura of protection around a physical object that interferes with other psychic's attempts to psychically learn about the object, even without Buchanan's continuingly or consciously attempting to maintain the protection around it. Another example is recent research into psychics' using their intentions to increase the health benefits of eating a piece of chocolate. Probably the best comparison to this skill is the idea from religion of blessing inanimate objects.

Automatic Writing. Similar to what one is supposed to experience using a Ouija board, this alleged ability involves spontaneously writing out information independent of one's own volition and awareness-- one's hand seems to do the drawing or writing on its own. The remote-viewing process developed by U.S. government remote viewers involves an automatic writing-like drawing of simple pictograms as described in Lyn Buchanan's book The Seventh Sense.

Clairvoyance. This is the experience of envisioning things one cannot see (such as something located hundreds of miles away, or something inside an envelope). In modern psychic literature it is often referred to as remote viewing, which is the term a U.S. Army project that studied and employed psychic powers (Stargate Project) coined for it. In works written by various remote viewers such as Joseph McMoneagle, Lyn Buchanan, and Ingo Swann they describe being able to see through remote viewing things such as the internal construction of far-away machinery, subatomic particles, and the composition of a distant planet's atmosphere.

Communicating with Animals. Stories describe St. Francis of Assisi as being able to attract all sorts of wild animals that are usually shy of humans.

Communicating with Spirits / Mediumship. The term "medium" or "mediumship" is used to refer to a few different psychic abilities, but most often it is used to refer to the alleged ability of communicating with the spirit of a person who has died. Various psychics who have also claimed to possess other psychic abilities have claimed to possess the ability of mediumship.

Disassociated sensations (literal gut feelings). A feeling that is not strictly a vision, but is for instance a feeling in the gut, a smell, a feeling of hot or cold, or a pain that gives a clue to information that is not physically in the experiencer's immediate environment (for example, smelling peanut butter when a friend far away is at a peanut butter factory, or feeling physical pain when a loved one experiences it).

Disease Diagnosis. This is the alleged ability to determine what is wrong with an ailing person through psychic means. Valentine Greatrakes, a 17th-century Irishman who convinced no less a person than father-of-modern-chemistry Robert Boyle, claimed to have this ability. Another example is Edgar Cayce.

Dowsing. Dowsing is the ability to psychically locate precious objects. In her book Extraordinary Knowing, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer reported that a psychic she met was able to locate lost objects for people he had never met before very quickly and at great distance.

Dream Influencing. A lot of modern research has been done on dream influencing. This is trying to make someone experience a chosen image or other experience in their dreams.

Faith Healing. Various exposed frauds, as well as the aforementioned Valentine Greatrakes (who was reported to have healed many illnesses within minutes) and Jesus were supposed to have the ability to cure diseases through psychic ability. In her book Extraordinary Knowing about alleged psychic abilities, psychiatrist and gender-researcher-turned-psychic-researcher Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer recorded cases of individuals including physicians who claimed to have either this ability or a disease-diagnosis ability.

Past Life Viewing. This is envisioning lives a person lived prior to being reincarnated into their current life. In her book Extraordinary Knowing Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer reported of a psychic who claimed to be able to scry another person's past lives by looking at the person's right hand. That psychic suggested that the past life might just be a metaphor for current problems in the persons' life the psychic was able to psychically diagnose.

Perfect Site Integration. This is a remote viewer's experience of an absolutely realistic hallucination of being physically present at the site they are remote-viewing. According to Lyn Buchanan, it is a very rare experience for a remote-viewer.

Phantasms of the Living. This is a term that comes from an old book of the same name describing the results of research into psychic phenomena. The book was written by Eleanor M. Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. Myers, and Frank Podmore. A phantasm of the living is envisioning a person who is not physically present or psyhcically sensing that the person may be in danger (unlike the typical phantasm or ghost of fiction and folklore). Typically, and similar to precognitive or telepathic dreaming discussed below, a person has an impresion while either asleep or awake of a friend or a loved one, and the experiencer subsequently finds out that the "phantasm" was similar to an event that actually happened after or during the vision.

Precognition. This is envisioning an event before it happens. Perhaps the most famous example of a person who is alleged to have seen the future is Nostradamus. A lot of modern scientific research has been done on precognition. U.S. government psychics such as Joseph McMoneagle, Pat Price, Lyn Buchanan, and Ingo Swann have claimed to experience precognition. The exact properties of this claimed precognition are somewhat elusive: Buchanan described government remote-viewing efforts in precognition as aimed at determining one inevitable future that must happen, but according to Buchanan, people these predictions were reported to were typically able to change the predicted events using information contained in the prediction (typically the people the predictions were given to reported back to the government project that were in not for the information they received from the prediction, the predictions would certainly have come to pass). So although the viewers' attempts at achieving a 100% accurate vision were frustrated, they perhaps discovered a more valuable tool than visions of a completely inevitable future could be.

Precognitive or Telepathic Dreaming. The experience of having a dream one discovers later apparently described an event that happened subsequent to or that happened simultaneous to the dream.

Psychic Defense. In Lyn Buchanan's book The Seventh Sense he claims to have pioneered several techniques for keeping other psychics from being able to psychically obtain information about an object with their normal ease.

Psychokinesis. This is the psychic influencing of the physical world. It takes several forms, such as levitating the psychic's own body or other objects, bending metal without using physical force, or influencing the physical properties of plants. Ingo Swann claims to have psychically raised the temperature of objects by using psychokinesis. In Lyn Buchanan's book The Seventh Sense he suggests that he subconsciously or accidentally used psychokinesis to attack a bully as a youngster and to interfere with the operation of computers during his military career. Psychic researcher Dean Radin has performed studies of whether people can psychically influence the workings of computers. Psychokinesis can also be used as a more general term to refer to all psychic phenomena (as in the Misplaced Pages article Psychokinesis), and then telekinesis used to refer to the more specific phenomena of affecting physical objects.

Psychometry. Psychometry employs a physical object to psychically obtain information about the object itself, or about someone or something associated with the object, such as its owner. Joseph McMoneagle claims to have psychically obtained information about a person by touching him-- sort of a psychometry or scrying using a person as the object.

Out-of-body Experience (OOB) / Astral projection. This is an ability similar to clairvoyance or precognition, but the psychic experiences it as being disembodied and able to float around, pass through objects, and look at his or her own body from a disembodied point of view. This disembodied experience is the only reported difference between an out-of body experience and other psychic methods of obtaining information such as clairvoyance, so it may not have other additional utility. Lyn Buchanan and Joseph McMoneagle have described having out-of-body experiences in their books about their careers as psychics. Many scientific studies have been done on out-of-body experiences, especially on figuring out how to initiate them, although Lyn Buchanan who otherwise has claimed quite an array of psychic abilities and experiences has claimed very limited success at out-of-body experiences.

Remote Influencing. This is an ability to influence other people in various ways. In Lyn Buchanan's book The Seventh Sense he claims to have attained the ability to remotely influence and suggests the possibility that he put thoughts in Mikhail Gorbachev's head and made Saddam Hussein sick.

Retrocognition. Similar to precognition, retrocognition involves psychically viewing past events. Lyn Buchanan describes his alleged experiences viewing past events in his book The Seventh Sense.

Scrying. Scrying is the experience of using a particular thing, typically a physical object unassociated with the event being psychically viewed, to summon a particular psychic ability such as precognition or remote viewing. Scrying is in some contexts referred to as augury. The term scrying is most commonly associated with reading palms, or looking into crystal balls or black mirrors (a technique supposedly employed by Nostradamus), but the ability has also been practiced by gazing upon such various instruments as scorched tortoise shells, animal bones, animal entrails, and birds in flight.

Sixth Sense. The experience of sensing that another person is physically nearby, or is watching you (or is perhaps thinking about you), that perhaps is what we colloquially call "the feeling of being watched."

Spontaneous Alert. A person has a sense of impending danger that causes them to irrationally take a certain action that proves to save them from an otherwise unforeseen physical danger. Ex-U.S. Army psychic Lyn Buchanan claims in his book The Seventh Sense to have been so saved from an auto-accident and from a mugging. Information obtained by spontaneous alert can also be more mundane than that used to avoid danger, such as, for example, feeling that one should take one road instead of another, or pull one book off of a shelf instead of another; one should keep in mind that the main difference between a spontaneous alert and another ability like disassociated sensations or sixth sense is the specificity of the information imparted by the impression, i.e., a spontaneous alert tends to allow or even prompt one to make a decision, rather than just providing a mere vague impression.

Telepathy. This term describes a range of experiences, of which knowing another person's thoughts is a typical example. In his book The Seventh Sense, Lyn Buchanan claims to have been particularly good at "accessing other people," or telepathy.

Arguable Psychic Abilities

These are claimed abilities which may not commonly be thought of as psychic abilities, but which some proponents of the existence of psychic powers might propose a psychic explanation for.

Control of Autonomic Physical Functions. Various people have claimed or demonstrated conscious control over bodily functions such as heart-rate and pulse that are normally out of control of the conscious will. This is usually associated with yoga and the like.

Pain Resistance. This is an intentional and abnormal indifference to pain. Again, this has been the realm of yoga and the like.

Psychic Invulnerability. This is the ability of making one's body physically impervious to harms such as walking over hot coals, or placing hot coals in one's mouth. Various spiritual disciplines such as yoga try to teach this ability.

Unusual Strength. There are many reported cases of people who, while experiencing a great danger or psychological stress, apparently spontaneously develop incredible physical strength that allows them to overcome the danger. While there may be more conventional explanations such as an increase in natural hormones such as adrenaline, a proponent of the existence of psychic powers might interpret this as an extreme case of psychokinesis that merely coincided with the laying of hands on an object, such as a car that pinned a child to the ground.

The Zone. This is the experience of attempting an (often skilled) endeavor and, along with an experience of feeling that one is putting very little intentional effort into the attempt, doing quite well at it. It is a very common experience, for example in sports, and it is perhaps the goal of various ki/chi/qi-employing East Asian traditional crafts and martial arts.

Limits of Psychic Abilities

Often, self-described psychics such as Joseph McMoneagle, Lyn Buchanan, and the dowser described by Elisabeth Lloyd Mayer claim to have less than 100% accuracy. The government psychics such as Joseph McMoneagle, Lyn Buchanan and Ingo Swann supposedly used computer databases to improve their accuracy. Self-proclaimed psychics also describe hints about information they sought to psychically discover, or their own preconceived notions, prejudices or spontaneous fantasies about that information-- all of which the government psychics have referred to as "pollution"-- as sources of error in their readings. Psychics and psychic researchers also have claimed that being tired (of performing psychically) or overworked (from psychic performance) negatively affects a psychic's ability. Psychics have also claimed to experience problems such as emotional problems, depression, panic, or being driven towards dementia when they access individuals such as depraved criminals or persons who are dying a violent death, especially when the psychic attempts such access frequently and repeatedly.

References

1. Lyn Buchanan, The Seventh Sense, Paraview Pocket Books, New York (2003), chapter 10.
2. Gail Hayssen, Dean Radin and James Walsh, Effects of Intentionally Enhanced Chocolate on Mood, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Volume 3, Issue 5, p. 433-546 (September 2007).
3. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing, Bantam Books, New York (2007), p. 70-72.
4. Ibid, chapter 1.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid at 5, 11-3, 28-35, 70-72.
7. Ibid at p. 47-48.
8. Ibid.
9. Lyn Buchanan, The Seventh Sense, Paraview Pocket Books, New York (2003), chapter 13.
10. Ibid at p. 154.
11. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing, Bantam Books, New York (2007), p. 76.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Lyn Buchanan, The Seventh Sense, Paraview Pocket Books, New York (2003), chapter 10.
15. Ibid., p. 14.
16. Ibid, p. 53-57.
17. See e.g. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing, Bantam Books, New York (2007), p. 45-46.
18. See e.g. Ingo Swann, Natural ESP, Bantam Books, New York (1987), p. 132-134.
19. See e.g. Lyn Buchanan, The Seventh Sense, Paraview Pocket Books, New York (2003), chapter 12.

• Parapsychology
• Psychic powers
• Paranormal