A&E's Psychic Kids: A Hoax or a True Horror?

Ghost stories never really freaked me out when I was a child. I always found them interesting and suspenseful but hardly believable. Yet every once in awhile I would find myself in the dark hearing sounds that didn't quite make sense and would give me the chills. A&E's "Psychic Kids" show does the same thing to me...for the most part.

"Psychic Kids: Children Of The Paranormal" is one of those shows that teeters between completely fake and completely believable at its root. Sure, we had The Blair Witch Project back in the late 90s and a strange run of Paranormal Interest shows like Johnathan Edwards and his traveling ghost tour, but there is something about "Psychic Kids" that separates itself from others. The biggest attraction? The kids.

"Psychic Kids" basic set up is that there are children around our country that supposedly have some ways to communicate with the dead or spirits. A psychic named Chip Coffey takes along a child psychologist (Dr. Lisa Miller) to meet these kids and find out what's going on in their lives and what paranormal experiences they are having.

It seems fitting to bring along a kid's doc. Regardless of whether you believe these kids are truly psychic or not, they often appear isolated and guilt-ridden for making life difficult for their parents. Most of their personal stories revolve around not getting along with other people at school because they think they are weird. Chip and Lisa usually bring the kids to meet others that are different. It's like Xavier's School For The Gifted, except these children don't pop metal claws from their skin.

The parents seem to genuinely want their kids to be understood as well as understand them. No doubt it must be tough for someone to be the parent of a "psychic kid". Again, this is an area that Dr. Miller is able to help out with by speaking with the parents individually and as a group. One source of conflict that often comes up is the thought of bringing their kid to a mental health professional-other than Lisa, of course. The fear is that they may be diagnosed with a mental disorder such as schizophrenia, where sufferers tend to hear voices and have paranoid delusions that can be rooted outside of reality.

But the truth of the matter is that this is highly possible. Some of those kids just might have a disability. It is hard to tell because of the production and Chip's playing into their claims. But schizophrenia is often diagnosed at later ages than the ones these kids are in (most appear to be under 12). And some of them frankly don't look like candidates for mental illness; they just seem lonely and truly scared of what is going on in the dark.

These kids seem like they truly believe in their own differences and they don't entirely embrace them, either. One boy, Brad, seemed very reluctant to admit he can "feel" things and spirits. He talked about how he gets sick when others around him are sick. He was the complete opposite of his sister, 10 year-old Morgan, who seemed very comfortable with her abilities to predict natural disasters. Her story about Hurricane Katrina was downright eerie. She seemed very much like Christina Ricci's Wendy in The Addams Family, except a little less dark. Even the popular ones, such as 14 year-old cheerleader Alexa, just wanted to be a little more brave when confronting the "evil" that drove her and her mom from their house.

As much as I want to believe these kids 100%, the production elements of "Psychic Kids" and Chip's natural dramatic intonations (he has a past life as a theater actor) make you constantly guess and raise an eyebrow. The frequent chop-cuts and colorful, twisted face flashes they put on these kids when they talk make it look like a mockumentary a la Blair Witch and its sequel. It's one thing to have some low piano keys from time to time in "Psychic Kids", but it's another to constantly have a watered-down version of the soundtrack to The Hills Have Eyes constantly looming around every dark corner.

If anything I'll give the parents credit for trying to work things out with their special children. None of them seem like they just want to be famous or stage moms. The mother of Joel, the boy who sees animal spirits, seemed truly saddened by what her son was going through. She tried everything she could to hold back tears when explaining what she feared for her son and how what she saw as a kid was repressed by her own mother. Whether these kids are psychic or mentally sick, I believe that they believe, and that their parents want the best for them. Maybe that isn't so paranormal after all.