Psychic Detectives

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The idea of a psychic detective is an exciting and romantic one. They have appeared in much fiction, from short stories to movies, and the press love them. Documentaries are popular and newspapers love to report that a psychic is helping the police with an investigation. What's the reality behind the hype?

What Is A Psychic Detective?

The idea of a lone private investigator using his or her psychic powers to solve crime is very appealing but also very rare in the real world. Most psychic detectives are ordinary people - sometimes professional psychics, sometimes not - who assist the police by providing information or ideas.

At its simplest this often involves an ordinary person who sees a report on a crime and has a "feeling" about it. Sometimes they will report this to the police, more often they will keep it to themselves or share it only with their immediate family. Once the crime is solved and the details made public then they discover that they were right. This sort of experience is difficult to verify because we only hear about the successful cases - for every person who is right, many others probably have a "feeling" that turns out to be totally wrong and is quietly forgotten.

Professional psychics sometimes make their insights public. The press usually love to report on such things. Unfortunately they are less keen on reporting on the afertermath so it can be difficult to track down whether the psychic was ultimately right or wrong. It is the nature of the media to concentrate on the spectacular successes rather than boring failures.

It's sometimes claimed that the police have actively approached a psychic for help with a particular crime. Most forces deny this officially, although they will listen to information from a psychic as they will listen to anyone else. Despite this the belief remains that unofficially the police do use such psychic detectives. After all, if they're stumped on a case then what have they got to lose? At the very least having a new and possibly unusualy viewpoint might suggest previously unexamined avenues of enquiry.

The police also have to consider the outside possibility that someone claiming psychic knowledge of a crime might actually have been involved and be taunting or trying to mislead them.

Psychics on the Force

Rather than requesting help from outside psychics, the police might already have them as detectives, probably without anyone being aware of it.

If psychic powers do exists then such powers would obviously help in police work. A natural psychic might well be drawn to detection and if they did choose a career in the police would probably advance rapidly. If one believes in the existence of psychic abilities then it would seem likely that there are a significant number of detectives who have such abilities without realising it.

Some people believe that "psychic" powers are in fact highly developed versions of existing senses combined with strong intuitive abilities. The "psychic" is simply making observations and connections that other people might miss. If that's so then such skills would, of course, be extremely valuable to a detective, whether we choose to label them psychic or mundane.

Many detectives have hunches, gut feelings and a nose for the truth - the blue sense. That's a vital part of good old fashioned police work.

Maybe the best detectives are all, by some definition, psychic detectives.

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