Dead Man Talking

Late at night, hours after having been put to bed, a little girl walks into the living room. She wipes her eyes and yawns to her mother, "There's a man in my closet." Gripped with fear, knowing she must rescue her baby who sleeps in that same room, the mother grabs a knife and heads to the bedroom, heart pounding in her chest.

But her search is in vain. No man.

Or is there? Is it an apparition, a dream, or a figment of the child's imagination?

The fourth possibility, of course, is that it's real.

Not since Rod Serling's Twilight Zone episodes in the 1950s and 1960s has the world been so intrigued with subjects rife with superstition, curiosity, and fear.

Metaphysical subjects are not a new phenomenon. Since the beginning of time, people referred to as "sensitives" (individuals who rely on more than just their five senses to validate the world for them), feel or "sense" things. They are more naturally tuned into what is referred to as a sixth sense than those who don't experience those same sensations. For the sensitive person, awareness of things unseen is commonplace. Belief in things unproven is also common.

One hundred years before Rod Serling mesmerized us with intriguing perceptions of reality, Mary Todd Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's wife, organized séances at the White House to channel the spirit of her son, Willie, after having lost him in 1862. Her husband and other prominent members of society attended those séances.

Thirty years after Twilight Zone, when Whoopi Goldberg's character, Oda Mae Brown, in the 1990 movie, "Ghost," pretended to communicate with dead people, the voice of an actual deceased person drew out her natural talent, that of a medium.

Nine years later, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) was haunted by visions of departed entities in the 1999 I-see-dead-people movie, "The Sixth Sense."

More recently, through the medium of television, soul communicators, such as John Edward and James Van Praagh invite audiences to participate in connecting with the other side.

Medium is the singular form of the word media. Media - newspapers, television, radio, and the Internet - work as channels of information, forms of communication. In the occult sense, a medium is a person who channels information from the dead.

In the television show, "Medium," a psychic crime investigator, Allison DuBois, taps into the afterlife for solutions. Patricia Arquette plays the role of the real-life psychic investigator.

According to a recent Gallup poll, one third of Americans believe in ghosts. On what do they base their beliefs? And does believing in ghosts mean believing in communicating with them?

How is it even possible to communicate with somebody who has no mouth to speak and no hands to gesture? But do we not gesture in our sleep while our hands lie firmly by our sides? And do we not see rainbows with eyes closed and listen to music that has never been recorded?

Our physical forms die, but our spirits live on. As disembodied spirits we no longer concern ourselves with clothing, housing, medical expenses, stealing, coveting, lying or cheating. If our spirits live on, awareness of being, of existing in a different form might be somewhat frightening for some of us. If we died, and were aware of our death, we might try to communicate with loved ones. But our form of communication would have to change.

While many police departments shun the use of mediums because of the controversy they invite, many use them anyway. The case of Christopher Meyer, the 10-year old boy abducted from the Kankakee, Illinois, area in August 1995 is a good example. Psychic investigators zero in on thoughts and images that may not be accessible through ordinary routes.

A new program, Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal - hosted by Chip Coffey, Psychic/Medium, and Lisa Miller, Ph.D., casts a new light on the previously frequently heard comment, "Children should be seen and not heard." When dead men talk, these children listen. And now we're listening to them.