In my approach to the supernatural, I find myself just about halfway between your textbook skeptic/materialist (“No! No! and still NO!”) and your TV-style ghosthunter (“That orb is back on unfinished business! I can tell by the EVP. Maybe it just needs an exorcism.”). While it might seem logical to take the middle ground in the observation of difficult and unverifiable subjects, I find very few people in a similarly neutral philosophical position. One thing I am not neutral about is my belief that ESP and PK exist in people and animals.

Skeptic/materialists represent one extreme of paranormal belief. They do not acknowledge that there has ever been a single case of legitimate psychic phenomena in the history of the world.

At the other end of the spectrum is the extreme spiritualist (small “s”), meaning generally, “someone who believes that disembodied spirits are active in the world.” There are ghosthunters out there who like to call themselves skeptical. The TAPS crew would probably say that of themselves, because they try to rule out material causes for apparent psychic effects.

While it’s admirable to be a skeptical thinker, what it means in this case is that these investigators are simply harder to convince of the legitimacy of potentially psychic cases than people who see spirits in every waft of a breeze or fall of a leaf. Once they’ve started to presume that psi activity is valid, even the hardest-minded ghosthunters I’ve observed reflexively project into the spiritualist theory, looking for messages, motives, and “unfinished business,” as if–like the TV people I talk to now and then–they can’t quite think any other way. They don’t differ philosophically from the extreme of spiritualist-style belief, such as that demonstrated by that untrained, irresponsible crew who have started calling themselves “demonologists.” (There is a big difference between this uneducated lot and an official representative of one of the major faiths who has reluctantly and privately specialized in this delicate and dangerous subject.) The difference, then, between the skeptical ghosthunters and the amateur exorcists is not one of philosophy; it’s just in the percentage of cases they consider “real” and the chosen method of reaction.

While I am convinced that psychic phenomena exists, I seldom come across hard evidence suggesting that it is due to the conscious activity of spirits, in or out of living bodies. It could be, of course, that spirits are behind the scenes, pulling all the strings; but in most cases my picture of the puzzle is so incomplete that all I can say is, “Somebody thinks something spooky happened.” Sometimes I agree that it did, but I don’t know what caused it. We shouldn’t be doing so much talking about spirits. We can’t get spirits into a lab for testing, at least not ones we know of.

There are, though, terrestrial psychic events that can be tested in laboratories, specifically some kinds of information talents and “mind-over-matter” abilities in people and animals. I refer to ESP, which you all know as Extra Sensory Perception, and PK (psychokinesis, mind over matter). Whatever these types of talents in living beings ultimately mean, I can’t see why informed people still debate their existence.

It should be well known by now that, in some form, ESP exists in human beings. Lab tests have demonstrated many a time the existence of telepathy– reading information from someone else’s mind–and telecognition (traditionally called “clairvoyance”), which is supernaturally knowing something no one knows. I am convinced that J. B. Rhine’s 1960s experiments at Duke University have proved the validity of both phenomena, as well as suggested their difficulty. (Anything dealing with the human organism will always be a “soft” science.) That hasn’t stopped materialist skeptics from arguing about it.

One very prominent example of ESP that no skeptic/materialist wants to bring up is the fact that many people know in just a few seconds when another person is closely watching them. Some very reliable tests have demonstrated that most human subjects “feel” themselves being intently regarded to a far greater degree than is likely by chance. (Have you ever tried this experiment yourself in a public place? Pick someone across a café and just watch. Don’t give anything away with your movements. Move only your eyes. See how long it takes your subject to look up and around, as if sensing the fact of being studied. Much of the time the individual will look right to you, though a dozen other people could be the source of the stare.)

Each of us must have experienced this in our personal lives many a time, and lab tests have confirmed this uncanny tendency. Sensing when you are being observed would have been a survival advantage, if not a prerequisite, in many of the millennia of human existence. Imagine yourself a few thousand years ago leading your hunter-gatherer band into a grove in new territory. Knowing when a stranger behind a bush may be drawing a bow could be a key to your continued existence. Sensing when you’re being looked at is a simple and direct example of ESP: “supernatural” information talents.

In humans, the simple existence of PK seems to me to be so well demonstrated by now that only an activist group funded to argue against it should continue to do so. (See the filmed demonstrations of Russian subjects like Irina Kulagina and Rosa Kuleshova.)

ESP in animals, sometimes nicknamed An-psi, seems even better proven than in people. (There are fewer variables, and extreme control conditions can be more easily established.) Long before I started studying the supernatural history of upstate New York, I was told that it was folk wisdom in many world societies that companion animals like dogs and cats can see spirits. From somewhere I developed the impression that all cats were naturals for it, but that dogs had to be trained. The litter box is like that, too. If a Native American elder brings you a pup, be sure to keep it and raise it well. You will have a guide and protector for as long as it lives. But I was recently told by Algonquin mystic Michael Bastine that dogs and cats are considered to be equally gifted by the Native Americans of the Northeast. I think I can attest that each species has “the sight.”

I have never loved an animal in my life like I did Oscar, the polar-bear-cub of a dog belonging to a former companion. I lived with him and his mistress from 2003 to 2008. I am sure Oscar could see things that would answer to the working definition of spirits. Many a time on our late walks of the farm and fields behind my house he stopped and stared straight ahead at… blank night air. The only things moving across the moon-shadowed meadows were the turquoise outlines of clouds, well below the line of his gaze. The pearly sphere that cast them and the turbulent winds that drove them were well above it. Nothing on any other plane was moving, and nothing animate was in the field of his stare. “Spirit-stares,” I used to call these stop-and-looks. Four out of five nights we went without them, but on the fifth, they were especially marked. He stopped, stared as if evaluating a threat, then dropped all attention and went back to his walking as if to say, “Hey!… Ah… It’s only a ghost.”

I wonder if my 18-month old cat could be psychic. I remember a scene from October 2010 shortly after Disko had come into my life. I’d been gone most of the day, I’d come into the kitchen about ten at night after some kind of talk or tour, and she’d given the sign that she was hankering for a cuddle. She jumped into my lap, and we had one of those moments. I remember the feel of her tiny neck, the sound of her purring, and the joy of her trust in me. The moment got me reflecting. Our seat in the kitchen was three feet from the porch on which she’d appeared two months before as a starving one-pounder. She was still so fragile. I remember stroking the smoky down under her chin and reflecting on the miracle that she’d survived even a couple nights on her own among the coyotes, foxes, and raccoons. The natural world is dispassionate, and it can be harsh. We humans create most of the tenderness there is, and the worst of the cruelty. How could anyone hurt one of these? I thought to myself as I held her, snuggled into my elbow like a newborn. Some celebrated cases of animal abuse came to my mind. Her mood changed, and she froze me with those eyes. They were filled with shock. I considered the possibility that she had read my mind.

I tried a freelance experiment. The thoughts of evil or injury faded, and we went back to our comfort-zone. She lay on her back, closed her eyes, and purred. I changed nothing in my touch or manner, but deliberately thought of something awful in the world, particularly instances of animal cruelty, and then gave it up. At least three times I did this. Each time she changed attitude and looked at me suspiciously, then went back to peace when my thoughts returned to normal. The last time she seemed so disillusioned with me that I quit the game.

I realize that this is an anecdote, not an experiment; but experiments have been done that seem to demonstrate the existence of animal ESP. One in particular comes to mind.

Because of the 2009 film The Men Who Stare at Goats, we are all familiar with the idea of CIA experiments with ESP. They weren’t the only ones who did that during the height of the Cold War. Looking for any imaginable edge, the Russians made pioneering studies of their own. While their main interest was in developing psychic spies and assassins to use against their earthly enemies, they realized that they had to understand the discipline of ESP as a whole to make much progress. One of their studies of animal ESP I call “the Russian bunny experiment.” (No, not Mikhail Prokhorov’s Playboy Club Moscow.)

A mother rabbit was kept in a lab on land with electrodes implanted in her brain. Her litter of bunnies were taken under the water in a submarine, then systematically and sequentially killed. (Bop the bunny, Stalin-style.) The exact times of their deaths were compared with the spikes in the mother-rabbit’s brain waves. An uncanny correlation was found. It seemed as if the mother rabbit knew exactly when each offspring died. There should have been no natural way for her to sense it. You tell me what to make of it.

While paranormal subjects of every type get muddled together in the minds of many people, for serious students there are distinct categories among them, not all of equal relevance or legitimacy. Even if they could be validated to the satisfaction of all serious thinkers, psychic abilities like ESP and PK need have no direct connection to the activities of spirits. Radio waves, magnetism, and electricity are invisible, powerful forces, and we do not presume that they involve the work of disembodied entities. ESP and PK might be only energy transfers on this earthly plane. They do, though, suggest some immaterial component to the human organism and to material life in general, which is what makes it all go around, speculation about God, angels, afterlife, and Heaven. I wouldn’t rule out anything at this point.