Paranormal Claim of Health Perceptions
When I look at people I feel a pattern or landscape across them from a distance. The variations in this felt pattern translate on their own into a corresponding shape and images. These images depict the inside of the body and health information. It is not something I do intentionally.
How it all started
I have had this experience for thirteen years now. It begun when I visited a New Age bookstore and saw a quartz crystal. I fell in love with crystals, got some and a book that described various exercises on how to work with crystals. The first exercise was to increase your sensitivity to the "crystal energies". You were supposed to hold the tip of the quartz crystal over the palm of your left hand, until you would feel something. At first I didn't feel anything, and I was disappointed. But I practiced for about two days, until suddenly, I was feeling and seeing a cool blue beam coming from it.
I then got several other types of crystals in all colors and held them in my hands daily for a long time, until there came a time when I felt as if I could feel them from the bowl they were in. I set them aside and did not do any more "crystal exercises". That would be that, although I still appreciated the crystals for their gemlike beauty.
One day I noticed a bluegreen aura shimmering around a houseplant. It was the prayerplant. I had never seen an aura or a colorful radiance before that I could remember. Not long after, I felt something around oranges in the store. And the way in which I had learned to distinguish a different "feel" from the different crystals, I was now feeling different "feelings" from different food items!
And one day I was having feelings of people - and seeing clear images of the inside of people's bodies in my head.
At first I was very uncomfortable. I was the kind of person who could not watch documentaries on tv that show surgery. Over time I got used to it, thought nothing of it, and came to appreciate the true beauty of human tissues, to the point of now wanting to study histology (the study of human tissues) on the side.
The Investigation
But I started noticing that my images were matching up well with people's actual health! I never told people about the images I was seeing of them, I always understood that I should assume them to most likely be my imagination. When I experience the health images I do not experience them as reality, and I keep them to myself. But one after another, my health perceptions were being confirmed in other ways! The major event that led me to begin to investigate this experience seriously, was when I met a new coworker for the first time, the images of female cysts in her was loud and clear, and was every time I saw her. I never said anything, and neither did she, but about a month later she announced to everyone that she was schedule for surgery for removal of female cysts. How could my clear image have been correct? What was going on?
So at first I begun to look for a normal solution. I was a bit of a critical thinker even then, and having an unexplainable experience does not mean one is not a skeptic. It is how you deal with an unusual experience that determines whether you are a skeptic or not. Perhaps I was remembering the hits and forgetting the misses, making it seem as if I was accurate more often than not? But when I started taking notes of my perceptions and writing down each case that was either proven accurate, inaccurate, or where the accuracy could not be checked, I found that I was either correct in all cases or that the accuracy could not be determined.
So, if I was seeming to be accurate, what then would be the normal explanation? It couldn't be prior information, because I was describing health information that I couldn't have known, and my perceptions were just as frequent and accurate in new persons as friends and acquaintances. External clues and symptoms? Could not be the answer either, since I was detecting internal and hidden information that comes with no external clues.
So I begun to investigate on a larger scale and involving skeptics. Since I could not find the answer myself, and the answer would not be obvious. I joined a local skeptics group, which advised me to study my claim in order to conform it to a test. I begun to learn more about the claim, how it works, under what conditions, and what possible clues it might have. I called this process the study. The study lasted for about a year, until in the study I came across detecting that a person was missing his left kidney. That is when I felt I was ready for a test, the test would involve detecting which of persons is missing a kidney.
In November 2009 I had a test with the Independent Investigations Group IIG. The test had three trials, each trial had its own six people one of which was missing a kidney. I had 27 minutes in each trial to select the person and side in which the kidney is missing.
I did not get 100% correct. In the first trial I knew I had the right answer, because the perceptions had not been as compelling that time around. But I knew that in advance of the results. In the second trial I was very confident. I was right in the second trial. By the third trial I was exhausted. I managed to choose a person, but had to guess on the side. The person was right, the side was wrong. Had I only submitted the partial answers that I was confident in before the results, I would have been 100% correct, but having completed only a part of the test.
Even with the inaccuracy, the results were interesting. In July 2010 I had a small test with the James Randi Educational Foundation JREF at their annual TAM conference. This time there were five persons, one of which was missing a kidney. Among the ten total kidney slots in the five persons, in seven of those ten I saw very clearly and many times a kidney. In the eight I saw a kidney only once and weakly. And in the remaining two I never saw a kidney. My firsthand choice was wrong. My secondhand choice would have been correct. And so I continue. I want to arrange yet another test.
And a recent reading I had on renowned skeptic Michael Shermer left me wondering too, whether there is something to this. And, based on the results, Dr. Shermer too encourages me to continue investigating this.
