Dr. Sylvia Hart-Wright writes that two out of five Americans report sensing meaningful contacts with lost loved ones. Such contacts are usually comforting and surprisingly intense. Most do not involve mediums, and unlike near-death experiences, they come unexpectedly to healthy people going about their normal lives.
Dr. Hart-Wright wrote the book, When Spirits Come Calling in which she describes her study of people’s contacts with loved ones in the afterlife. The book contains moving, never-before-published stories of apparent afterlife communication told in the perceivers’ own words. Comparing today’s Western beliefs with those of other traditions, ancient and modern, Professor Wright opens the door to reasoned discussion about this often hush-hush subject.
For the book, Dr. Hart-Wright interviewed 78 everyday Americans who believed they’d sensed contacts with dead relatives or close friends. In her book, she reports their dramatic stories in their own words, analyzes elements in their personal histories that might make some more psychic than others, and describes how experiences of apparent contact with the dead are viewed in different cultures and faith traditions around the world.
Dr. Hart-Wright Studies What Makes a Good Medium
She continued her work by seeking to learn about the abilities of mediums and people who practice automatic writing. She wondered, what empowers them to have these abilities? She felt that answering this question may help us respond to those skeptics who believe that since they don’t receive psychic impressions, nobody does. Dr. Hart-Wright noted that skeptics assume the capacity to receive psychic information should be present in all of us if it exists. A growing body of research suggests that is not true. There are influences upon the child that result in an adult with psychic abilities.
Dr. Hart-Wright performed a study that was published as “Childhood Influences That Heighten Psychic Ability,” in the Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, June 19, 2015. She wrote the following results of her research:
Sensitivity to psi appears to run in families. Intensely sensitive people often come from households with a history of psi or a strong belief in its reality and/or a history of multiple births such as twins. Mounting evidence also suggests that intensely psychic adults are particularly likely to have suffered severe trauma in their first 10-12 years. In general, women tend to be more psychic than men. The person least likely to be sensitive to psi is a man who had a generally pleasant childhood, is not the product of a multiple birth, and comes from a family with no history of psychic experiences or belief in psychic powers. In the special case of after-death communication, people with limited psychic gifts may nonetheless sense the presence of departed loved ones with whom they have an especially strong bond.
In her conclusions, she writes that the evidence from her studies indicates that the person least likely to receive paranormal information is a man who enjoyed a generally happy childhood, is not a twin, and comes from a family with no interest or belief in the paranormal. These are the predictors for a child’s having special sensitivity to psychic knowledge:
- A family history of psychic activity where psychic abilities are accepted as a normal fact of life
- Having been a child in a multiple birth, such as a twin or triplet
- Suffering serious trauma in the child’s first 10 to 12 years of life, such as living in a home with one or more alcoholics resulting in experiences of childhood abuse
- Women are more likely to be psychic than men.
In the special case of medium and afterlife communication abilities, people with limited psychic abilities might often have the sense of the presence of loved ones now living in the life after this life with whom they had a strong bond.
