Psychic Telephone · 37
Speculation
(Not sure what Psychic Telephone is all about? Check out our first and second posts for an introduction to the project.)
It’s probably time to acknowledge that there are many factors that call into question the accuracy of the stories I’ve been told, things that any observant skeptic would quickly note. Things that, even if we feel confident that my subjects are being honest, could mean there’s nothing extrasensory going on here at all—nothing paranormal, nothing truly psychic. There is, for instance, always the possibility of coincidence; the possibility of misperception; the possibility of misremembering. The possibility that these messages are not intercepted but rather unconsciously invented. Or that it is ordinary intuition—a set of natural abilities as opposed to supernatural ones—providing information that resonates so deeply with clients. There is even the possibility that my subjects’ experiences are shaped or created, as brain science has shown can occur, by expectation and repetition—that the conjurings they encounter are less magical than neurological, the work of brains filling in perceptual gaps.
During our conversations I often found myself thinking of such caveats—asking myself what I thought of their stories, what I might be able to believe and what I could not. I realized early on that defending their assertions against the typical challenges would be impossible. There were simply too many unknowns embedded in their retellings, too many memories that couldn’t be verified after the fact. But of course, many people, including the ones I interviewed, believe that none of these kinds of rational explanations can fully account for what they’ve experienced.
So I want to separate the phenomena from the ways individuals interpret them, distinguish the messages themselves from the stories people tell to make sense of them, especially when considering the mediums. Talking to the dead, of course, is a whole giant step beyond what seems possible with ordinary intuition. And yet it is deeply embedded in our collective imagination. Hauntings, for instance. What is a haunting? I can tell you, in the first couple of years after my mother passed away, I felt her in the house with me numerous times. Usually it was around the holidays. Family time. Wintertime. When the world was deep in its darkness and, sinking into depression, I was closer to my core. I had days when I felt her presence so thickly that I told my sister it was like she was following me through the house—walking with me down our long hallway, room to room. Sometimes I even turned and looked around, as if I might see her.
I’ve thought of this as part of grief, an expression of my brain grappling with loss, struggling to process the completeness of the absence. Others have assured me that my mother was there, that her spirit visited me. These interpretations depend on where we think spirit resides—whether we see it as external or internal, concrete or symbolic. When I’m depressed, the boundary to my subconscious grows porous—connects me to a place where metaphors give shape to thoughts, fears, hopes. Sometimes things surface, move around, take form. So I’m hesitant to make conclusions about external reality based on my internal perceptions.
But maybe I don’t have to believe in ghosts, spirits, or deities in a literal sense to still think it’s possible that mediums’ messages are legit. Are the messages really coming from the dead? From spirits? Or is it something else—something more akin to what they can know by way of their ordinary intuition? Say, for instance, that, more than just figments, the messages are distillations of something within a person, something real. What if it’s not the dead who are talking to the mediums, but deeper parts of ourselves?
I imagine, for instance, that an astute observer could sense the grief I carry, perhaps in signs like the jagged breaths I sometimes take. But do I also carry on my person not just my own experience but something of those I’ve lost? I wonder if there is a shape in the arch of my neck that conveys the radiance of my grandmother’s smile. Some aspect of my knitted brow that speaks to my brother’s bony hands. Do our loved ones form patterns on us that can be recognized, even after they’re gone?
Maybe this feels like a stretch. Maybe this is the point at which searching for rational explanations is no longer really appropriate. In my hunt for scientific support of psychic phenomena, sources have told me again and again that there is no reproducible evidence of the existence of ESP, clairvoyance, or life after death. That such phenomena have never been reliably demonstrated under controlled conditions. Parapsychologists nonetheless argue that existing evidence is valid, if incomplete. But it’s important to acknowledge its limits, as did psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, who believed reincarnation to be the best explanation for numerous case studies he recorded of children who seemed to remember past lives. “The evidence is not flawless and certainly does not compel such a belief,” he said in a 1989 lecture. “Even the best of it is open to alternative explanations.”
In any case, for the people I’ve interviewed, scientific explanations are largely beside the point. Their focus is more spiritual, on considerations of what their own spirituality is about and how it can be enacted in the world. And even when science is involved, it’s science at its theoretical edge, a space of conjecture and speculation. We’ve moved into a purer territory here—a place in which storytelling is not just a transmitter of meaning but also its creator, its source.