Plot
This is a story of 13-year-old Cassie Palmer who lives with her mother, older brother, and sister. Cassie's mother is an eccentric "psychic" (medium). After some of her clients are incensed to discover her mother has tricked a woman into thinking that she is communicating with her deceased husband by brushing her face with a feather, the clients threaten to prosecute her. Mrs. Palmer pleads with them not to as such an action would render her homeless.
Mrs. Palmer explains to Cassie that her powers are only intermittent, and as result she sometimes has to embellish the reading to produce results her clients will be happy with. Mrs. Palmer explains that Cassie, being seventh child of a seventh child, would develop great psychic powers as she reached maturity. However, Cassie has no wish to be a psychic. Unfortunately, these abilities have already manifested and Cassie is simply unaware of them.
Desperate to protect her mother from charges of fraud, Cassie goes to a cemetery to try to call up a spirit Charlotte Webb who died as a small child. Instead a dark figure appears from behind a tombstone. He tells her his name is Deverill and wants to know why she's summoned him. Cassie runs away.
Cassie eventually tells her mother, who soon is gravely concerned for their safety. Deverill appears to Cassie several more times, but aside from Cassie and her mother, no one can see or hear him. Unsure of Deverill's intent, she invites him to her house so that her mother can find out what his motives are. He complies but vanishes before her mother can discern if he is a sinister or benevolent entity.
Eventually the Palmers have to sell their house and move to another town as a result of poor business and the bad reputation acquired from the clients who accused Mrs. Palmer of fraud. Deverill reveals to Cassie that when he was alive he buried a small treasure in the floorboards of a house in town. Cassie finds the treasure and is able to use it to purchase a new home for herself, and her mother and two older siblings to start a new life. In exchange for this good deed, Mr. Deverill is able to leave this plane of existence for the great beyond. Cassie had freed his restless spirit of an eternity of darkness and torment. Her psychic powers apparently were burned out during the struggle thus enabling her to lead a normal life, free from the influence of the supernatural.
A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, such as psychokinesis or teleportation. Although many people believe in psychic abilities, the scientific consensus is that there is no proof of the existence of such powers, and describes the practice as pseudoscience. The word "psychic" is also used as an adjective to describe such abilities.
A séance or seance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word séance comes from the French word for "session", from the Old French seoir, "to sit". In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma". In English, however, the word came to be used specifically for a meeting of people who are gathered to receive messages from ghosts or to listen to a spirit medium discourse with or relay messages from spirits. In modern English usage, participants need not be seated while engaged in a séance.
Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735 for fraudulent claims. She was famous for producing ectoplasm which was proved to be made from cheesecloth.
Harry Price was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. He is best known for his well-publicised investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England.
Hex is a British television programme developed by Shine TV and aired on Sky One. The story is set in a remote English boarding school with a mysterious past. Series one explores the supernatural relationship between a Fallen Angel named Azazeal and a student called Cassie who is also a witch. In the second series the story centres on 500-year-old anointed one Ella Dee, and Azazeal's son Malachi. Both series of the show are available on Region 2 DVD, with the first series released on Region 1 DVD in June 2007.
Nina Kulagina, Ninel Sergeyevna Kulagina was a Russian woman who claimed to have psychic powers, particularly in psychokinesis. Academic research of her phenomenon was conducted in the USSR for the last 20 years of her life.
The xana is a character found in Asturian mythology. Always female, she is a creature of extraordinary beauty believed to live in fountains, rivers, waterfalls, or forested regions with pure water. The origin of the Asturian word xana is unclear, though some scholars see it as a derivation from the Latin name for the goddess Diana. References to where the mythological xanas lived are still common in Asturian toponyms. They also appear in Eastern Galician and Cantabrian mythology (Anjanas).
The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been made into two feature films and a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series.
Patience Worth was allegedly a spirit contacted by Pearl Lenore Curran. This symbiotic relationship produced several novels, poetry and prose which Pearl Curran claimed were delivered to her through channelling the spirit of Patience Worth.
Sadako Yamamura, reimagined as Park Eun-suh (Korean: 박은서) and Samara Morgan for their respective adaptations, is the main antagonist of Koji Suzuki's Ring novel series and the film franchise of the same name. Sadako's fictional history alternates between continuities, but all depict her as the vengeful ghost of a psychic who was murdered and thrown into a well. As a ghost, she uses nensha, her most distinctive power and weapon, to create a cursed video tape. Whoever watches the tape will die exactly one week later unless the tape is copied and shown to another person, who must then repeat the same process.
Mediumship is the pseudoscientific practice of mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija. The practice is associated with Spiritualism and Spiritism. A similar New Age practice is known as channeling.
Eusapia Palladino was an Italian Spiritualist physical medium. She claimed extraordinary powers such as the ability to levitate tables, communicate with the dead through her spirit guide John King, and to produce other supernatural phenomena.
Morris Lamar Keene, was a spirit medium in Tampa, Florida and at Camp Chesterfield Indiana, where he was known as the "Prince of the Spiritualists". He was also the trustee of Universal Spiritualist Association. He is best known for his 1976 book The Psychic Mafia, in which he coined the term "true-believer syndrome".
The Third Eye is an American anthology series on Nickelodeon. It consisted of several English-language science fiction serials from the United Kingdom and New Zealand. All of the program's featurettes focused on characters with psychic abilities.
A theatrical séance is an aspect of mentalism that purports to give its audiences the feeling of contacting the spirits of the dead, as might be experienced in a successful Spiritualist séance.
Leonora Piper was a famous American trance medium in the area of Spiritualism. Piper was the subject of intense interest and investigation by American and British psychic research associations during the early 20th century, most notably William James and the Society for Psychical Research.
Midnight DJ is a Philippine reality drama-horror-action-thriller television series about DJ who works at night and at the same time, together with his team, they work to find solutions to the paranormal problems of his listeners. The series aired on TV5 from August 11, 2008 to May 14, 2011, replacing Impact: Stories of Survival. One of the original Midnight DJ played by Paolo Contis, Oyo Boy replaced him after Paolo's character died on the last episode of Season 1. The show ended on Season 11 in a different format than the previous seasons.
The Cassandra Palmer series is a set of fantasy novels written by Karen Chance. The series tells the story of a young woman named Cassie Palmer, a powerful clairvoyant who has the ability to communicate with the spirit realm.
The Haunting of Sunshine Girl is an ongoing supernatural horror web series that is currently broadcast on YouTube. The series was created by Paige McKenzie, Nick Hagen, and Mercedes Rose, and is produced by Coat Tale Productions. The series first launched in 2010 and its premiere episode was uploaded on December 10, 2010. The Haunting of Sunshine Girl quickly rose in popularity and between December 2010 to October 2011 the show received more than 4.3 million total hits. The average length of the episodes is about two minutes but can run less depending on the episode and content.
Gladys Osborne Leonard was a British trance medium, renowned for her work with the Society for Psychical Research. Although psychical researchers such as Oliver Lodge were convinced she had communicated with spirits, skeptical researchers were convinced that Leonard's trance control was a case of dissociative identity disorder.
