There are many cases of people claiming to have psychic powers after accidents or shocks. Could the sudden trauma cause an un-used area of the brain to 'wake up'?

I found one interesting story about this phenomena. The fact that the woman wasn't ill or involved in an accident makes it more interesting I think.

'In the 1990s, a 29-year-old Liverpool woman named Donna was lying in bed one night, about to fall asleep, when she heard familiar voices. It was Mike and Liz, the couple next door, but their voices seemed amplified and unnaturally clear. Donna sat up in her bed and listened. Donna suddenly discovered that she was not 'hearing' the couple next door - she was tuning in to their very thoughts. She telepathically heard Liz ask her husband if he'd like a coffee, and then Donna read his mind, and distinctly heard him say, 'Yeah'. She then picked up a curious train of his inner thought dialogue. Mike pondered to himself: 'I wonder if Liz knows about Michelle and me?'
Donna then perceived the mental image Mike had in his mind of Michelle lying naked on a bed. Michelle was a 22-year-old woman who lived across the street.
Donna went downstairs, feeling very uneasy about the strange telepathic ability she was suddenly developing. She wondered if someone had spiked her drink at the pub earlier in the evening. As Donna made herself a coffee in her kitchen, she sensed someone was outside, and that the person was full of desperation. When she gazed through the blinds, she saw a youth in a tracksuit hurrying past. Donna knew the young man was a heroin addict, out to steal to get his next fix.
The telepathic state of mind vanished as mysteriously as it had arrived, and Donna went to bed, wondering if her experience had merely been caused by an over-tired brain. However, on the following morning, Donna boarded a bus to take her to an office job in the city centre, and during the journey, as the vehicle travelled down Leece Street, the telepathic faculty suddenly returned. Glancing at a schoolgirl, Donna inadvertently read her mind, and felt intense turmoil and anguish because the boy the girl had a crush on was in love with her best friend. Donna next turned her attention to the back of the old woman's head in front of her, and immediately probed the pensioner's nostalgic reminiscences about the Leece Street of many decades ago. Donna beheld misty images of trams passing St Luke's Church.
A man suddenly boarded the bus, and he sat next to Donna. The telepathically cursed woman instantly saw a horrific sight in her mind's eye of a murder being committed. A woman was being killed in cold blood. The man sitting next to Donna was a murderer! Donna was almost sick as she read his murderous thoughts, and she yelled: 'Get away from me,' then ran to the front of the bus. She got off the vehicle in Renshaw Street - and so did the paranoid murderer. He chased her into a shop, where Donna pleaded for an assistant to call the police because of her 'visions'. As Donna was escorted out the store, she sensed that the killer was lurking nearby, and that he was desperate to silence her because she obviously knew about his evil deed. Donna hailed a cab, got into it, then went to direct the driver to take her to work - when the killer rushed to the taxi and yanked open the door. Donna screamed, but the cabby surmised it was just a domestic incident between a couple. The steely-eyed murderer reached for Donna, when a huge man suddenly grabbed the killer from behind by the collar of his coat. It was Andy, a friend of Donna who worked nearby. Andy had seen the stranger pursue Donna to the cab. The killer pushed Andy to the ground and ran off. Donna burst into tears, and Andy got in the taxi and told the driver to take himself and his friend to his house. During the journey, Donna accidentally read Andy's mind and discovered a shocking secret. He had once raped a woman, many years ago, and had served a prison sentence as a result. Donna felt sick. She ordered the cabby to stop, and she walked home. When she got home, Donna broke down and cried. She thought she was going mad. Not long afterwards, she saw the photograph of the man who had chased her in the Liverpool Echo - he'd been arrested for the murder of his wife. Donna received psychiatric treatment, and gradually, the eerie mind-reading capability faded away.'

Thoughts and ideas please

Hammy x x x

Hate to be a sceptic, but we only have the woman's word for most of this. Having said that, I do believe that ESP does exist, so who knows?

Scary thought, though, having your mind read.

You can't read mine, can you, Hammy?

Can you?

Yes I can Cuffy ~ go and wash your mouth out!!!!

Seriously, I believe we all have this latent ability.....as I mentioned in other threads! As a race we all have an in-built 'instinct' but we are conditioned not to use our 'intuition'..........

Hammy x x x

I know someone with psychic powers. She's witnessed ghostly phenomenon before (mostly orbs, ectoplasm, and a few full-body appearitions) and she is extremely sensitive/tuned in to the emotions and experiences of others. She can anticipate what a person is going to say before they say it, but I wouldn't call this "mind reading". I'll call her "Liz", and she's amazingly well-adusted considering the difficult life she's led (this fits in with the "trauma leading to psychic abilities" theory). She was the second girl in a set of triplets. There was a brother who was stillborn. She and her identical sister survived, only to be struck down by extreme fevers almost immediately after being born. Liz's sister lost some of her hearing, and she lost almost all of hers. Liz was also a lot weaker than her sister, and she remains frail to this day. About half of Liz's hearing was restored through operations when she got older, but you can still sneek up on her pretty easily...And that's exactly what happened when she was gang-raped in highschool. Her attackers were never caught. Despite that, she now has a boyfriend and they're very close. AND the Irish side of her family has a curse on it! Liz doesn't remember when her abilities first surfaced. She doesn't like to make a big deal about them and doesn't question them, either. But my take on her abilities is that her brain was compensating for its own weaknesses (something along the lines of "Dare Devil", I suppose).

Wandering slightly off topic (which I would NEVER do), I've heard cases of UFO abductees who later report ESP and other psychic abilities. Author John Spencer, who writes on both ghosts and UFO's, lists several examples of this in his books.

I've read that too Cuffy...........so it seems that severe shocks to the system can kick-start this faculty........

This sudden aquisition of psychic or mediumistc abilities is also common amongst NDE experiencers too. Sometimes though these 'talents' arise after a simple blow to the head.

Hmmm, so to sum things up here...get a blow to the head and either become a psychic or a serial killer. Someone ought to write a movie script about twins who were in an accident as children and hit their heads and one becomes a psychic and one becomes a killer. Ooooh! OOOOH! I like it! Green-light it!

I like this story. What can you do tho? I mean when this poor lady had them call the police, they escorted her out of the store. Who do you tell? I only had one really relevant experience, and several trival ones. The big one was regarding
9-11, and my channeling class kinda blew me off. After 9-11 hit, they did not blow me off so easily. At that point, I kinda had no desire to be with them, and left the group. Soon after, the group stopped meeting all together.