When the Ghost Screams(19)

As for the children, Catherine suffered the most. “We believe that she woke up during the attack,” said Brenda. The little girl, the psychics felt, hid in a closet but was yanked out and slaughtered on her bed. The investigators got an audio tape recording of a young girl’s voice saying, “I’m dying.”

It is a devastating scenario, one that seems to have no hope. Yet, amidst the cruelty and violence, a single powerful message shines through. “It is why we were there,” said Brenda, who feels that the spirits of the tragedy called upon them so they might speak on their behalf.

“The Moores were a very spiritual family,” explained Brenda.

Sarah, in particular, took the teachings of her church to heart. The loving mother and devout Christian carried her values with her to her death. From the other side, she spoke one word so loudly and clearly that the Miller Paranormal team was able to capture it on audio tape.

“Forgiveness.”

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In the early 1990s, while I was writing regularly for Woman’s World magazine, my editors assigned me a story about psychics who work with detectives to solve crimes.

I talked extensively with Dorothy Allison, a Nutley, New Jersey, psychic, and featured her in the article. Since her death in 1999 at age 74, Dorothy has alternately been called the most famous psychic in the twentieth century and a fraud.

Critics gather data about all the times that Dorothy was wrong. I doubt there has ever been a psychic who was 100 percent correct.

Psychics are simply people, as flawed as all other human beings, who happen to have minds that tune into information to which the rest of the population may not be privy. Some of it comes through clearly, while some of it is disjointed and pointless.

Dorothy Allison’s landmark case was in 1967. She awoke from a horrible dream with a pounding headache. In her nightmare, she had seen a little boy. His shoes were on the wrong feet, and a note was pinned to his shirt. The child was stuck in a pipe.

Unable to shake the vision, she went to the police with the information. She had never met five-year-old Michael Kurcsics and had no way of knowing that the motherless boy’s shoes were indeed on the wrong feet.

Temperatures had been freezing in New Jersey, but when it warmed up, the pipe where the drowned child had been stuck thawed, and he popped out. He was just as Dorothy had described, right down to the note (for his teacher) that had been pinned to his shirt.

After Dorothy’s dream, the ordinary housewife soon became a well-known psychic.

When I spoke with her, she was exhausted. “The mothers keep calling me,” she told me, explaining how it tore at her heart to hear from so many desperate mothers with missing children.

After three decades of working with detectives, she did not want to work on murder cases any longer. Yet, she could not turn away cases that involved children. She vowed to continue helping the little ones but had no energy left to work on cases that involved adults. She had to draw the line somewhere.

I felt sorry for her. She sounded so unhappy and so tired. But, as she pointed out, if she turned her back, killers would walk free, and more children would be hurt.

I suspect that one of the reasons that Dorothy has been so criticized is that though she was extremely psychic, she was basically an ordinary woman of average intelligence who was not particularly media savvy. She was passionate about helping to solve crimes, but because she was rough around the edges, she sometimes offended people.

As directed by my Woman’s World editors, I interviewed a detective who had worked with Dorothy, and he was pleased to offer his praise. He told me of the time that the psychic had dropped by the office to chat. Though they had not publicized a homicide case they were working on, Dorothy suddenly said, “Tell me about the black woman on the railroad tracks.”

They had not mentioned the case to her, he said, and Dorothy had no way of knowing about it—except through her sixth sense.

“She told us that the killer had a metal plate in his head. She also said that he would be arrested for an unrelated crime and kill himself in jail, and that he would be wearing army boots.”

Everything Dorothy told them came to be.

For my readers who may be seeking advice from a psychic, remember that few will have the abilities that Dorothy Allison had. And remember, that she, too, was limited.

The fact that a psychic is featured regularly on television does not necessarily mean that they are particularly gifted. One famous psychic, who will remain unnamed, charges hundreds per hour and has so many fans that they have to wait over a year to give her their hard-earned cash. Yet, her predictions have rarely been validated.