How I Knew that I was Psychic

It seems like a lifetime ago. I was a 26-year-old blonde who wore a chocolate-colored deputy sheriff’s uniform and a 9-millimeter on my right hip. I seemed fearless. Being a female in law enforcement in the 1990s challenged me in many ways. I developed the physical strength and stamina to hold my own, the cool wit to deflect sexual harassment when the term had not yet been coined, and the humility to genuinely try to help.  I walked a tightrope to prove I could work in a male-dominated profession while maintaining my femininity.

The only woman in a platoon of twelve, I knew that I had good instincts. This was demonstrated by the sudden “who did it” insights. My nearest backup could be up to 45 minutes away, so it was prudent to rely on what we called the “gut instinct” to read situations and people. These days, in the new age lingo, we call it “reading energy.”  Having a good cop’s instinct, the ability to talk to people with candor and respect, holding one’s ground, using common sense, and unapologetically practicing “discretion as the better part of valor” saved lives.   It saved my life, and I am certain that it saved some lives with whom mine collided. 

I received a call on a hot summer day to investigate a domestic disturbance. The dispatcher said that a man brandishing a butcher knife was threatening suicide.  My heart pounded with the anticipation of danger; I was minutes away. Rotating blue lights, the high scream of my siren, and the knowledge that this would be a life-threatening situation activated my adrenaline. My stomach trembled, my body shivered, and I wasted no time.  The call was at a trailer park near the city limits of Raleigh, North Carolina. Luckily, my backup arrived within moments.  

We found the trailer home where the original complaint was made. A woman made it clear that her ex-husband was in a desperate state of mind. He had taken a large knife from her kitchen and was now roaming the trailer park threatening suicide.  My partner, John, and I walked an eternally short distance when a highly distressed man rushed toward us and stopped, the large kitchen knife directed straight toward his chest. We moved in.  “Don’t come any closer!” he screamed. He would surely plunge the knife straight into his heart.  My partner drew his weapon and took command of the scene.  I knew that we were in a hair-trigger situation, and this man was dangerously close to being shot.    

A civilian typically does not understand why a deputy would kill a man who had a butcher knife pointed toward himself. The questions are real and the skepticism is understandable. But what the questioning mind may not know is the science behind how quickly a switch can flip and the amount of ground a person can cover in two seconds. Before the exhale of a breath, the knife is piercing your own jugular.  The danger of this type of stand-off is one in which we were trained hands-on.  There is no question, John would have been justified to do as we had been trained. If the anguished soul did not drop the knife within seconds, my partner would fire.

We are all psychic.  We all read human energy.  This fact can become quite apparent in a life-threatening situation. It’s more subtle and blended into everyday life when the stakes aren’t so high. I believe that we inherited this ability from our ancestors. Through natural selection, those who could read true danger had a bead on survivability.  Those psychic genes dominated, and we are the product of our ancestors who survived the most dangerous predators, villains, and battles.  As a man, John was blessed with an abundance of the “aggressive hormone,” testosterone, and the instinct to defend.  This too, he inherited. As a result, he was quite poised to end the threat.

For me, clairsentience is pierced like a rocket through neural networks wired by training and impacted by the rhythms of the amygdala, or the brain’s almond-shaped structure that responds to threat. Clairsentience cooled down the rush of adrenaline and cortisol flooding my blood. It was many years later before I knew what this word meant, or that it has been strong with me since I was a toddler.  Clairsentience is the natural and inherited ability to feel another person’s energy, feelings, pain, or intention. Neuroscientists may normalize this one day with the findings from research on mirror neurons.

Regardless, clairsentience is critical navigation in the social world. To the bewilderment of my partner, I moved quickly, silently, and unnoticed by the man focused on the gun that stood between him and his next breath.  I stepped in, behind and close. He should have heard my heart pounding.  Without logic, without thought, I reached around his body and took the knife out of his hand. It was like taking candy from a baby. The energy changed in an instant. A salient pause left the three of us looking at each other in one of the most human encounters I have ever witnessed.  I nodded to John. He grimaced knowing that he was about to hurt his already damaged back. Mind you, this was before pepper spray and tasers were in our toolkits. The only weapons we had were our hands, bodies, batons, and guns. John took the man down in a typical 1990’s style body slam.  It happened so fast, there was no time or opportunity for him to resist or fight. John secured the handcuffs and took him to the magistrate for charges, and eventually a mental health facility.

My partner and I received “letters of accommodation” praising our level-headed and quick thinking, bravery, and discretion. It was a good call. Had clairsentience not saved the day, a man’s life would have been lost, a family would have grieved, and two deputies would have lived with the trauma of having taken a life. Some said that I made a risky move. I placed myself in the line of fire. “Why did you do it?” they asked.  I did it because I knew that I could.  I did it because I knew that he really didn’t want to die that day. I did it because I knew that he was no danger to us. The men I worked with came to trust my instincts. Clairsentience had become my primary weapon of choice.  

It was during my nine-year sojourn as a deputy sheriff that my mind was opened to the idea that there is more to my experiences than simple gut instinct. These were the days that Art Bell hosted the famous midnight talk radio show “Coast to Coast A.M.”  We deputies liked to listen because hearing about UFOs, Bigfoot, government coverups, and psychic phenomena was pretty good entertainment at 2 a.m. on a slow Sunday night. It kept us awake.  After listening to a psychic give short readings on the show one night, I decided to get my own reading.  What the psychic knew astounded me.  He told me that I was psychic and that I needed to develop my abilities. He told me that when I reached my 50s (an eternity away) I would become a practicing psychic.  I considered the idea ludicrous. But the reading planted a seed, and I began to explore. 

Soon after this psychic reading, danger knocked again.  My first clairvoyant vision played tag team with clairsentience, and the life saved was my own.  A more seasoned patrol deputy with eight years of experience, I had approached a crossroads in life. Swing shifts, too many adrenaline surges, a disastrous marriage, bad relationships, and constant exposure to others’ traumas and dark energies sent me into a clinical depression. Like any law enforcement officer would at the time, I hid it.  I took unnecessary risks; the stakes were high that I’d make a critical mistake and meet my end.  

The incident occurred during a busy night shift. I had been patrolling a sparsely populated, rural part of the county when I received a BOLO (an acronym for “be on the lookout”) for a teenage boy who had escaped from a home for SED (severely emotionally disturbed) adolescents. On instinct, I drove up to a house under construction near the facility.  I stopped my car in the driveway and turned off the engine. The traffic on my two-way radio didn’t cease, so I opted not to check out with the dispatcher. I stepped out on the gravel of the newly laid driveway. The sound of my boots crunching through the rocks hailed my presence in a deafeningly silent night. The moon was dark; without my flashlight, I could only see a dim image of the house and subtle reflections from ambient light. I began my normal routine, checking doors and windows for illegal entry. I moved toward the back of the house and took about ten steps forward. Fear gripped my chest, froze my knees, and I could not take another step.  I turned off my flashlight and listened to the darkness.  A little movie dropped like a rock into my mind’s eye and I saw myself being shot in the face. I argued with the fear surely responsible for such a vision, promptly turned around, and walked back to my patrol car.  I got in, started the engine, and drove away. I did not check “10-8” in service, because I had not checked out. No one knew I was ever there. No one knew that I was too afraid to finish checking the house. I felt embarrassed; it was hard enough to prove myself capable to the men who had come to trust me.

The night dragged on and as butter yellow light began to peek over the tops of the tree line, the dispatcher sent another deputy to meet with two male employees from the home for SED adolescents. They had found the boy and were en route to the mental health facility; they requested law enforcement assistance.  “Good,” I thought. “All is well.”  I met my relief when the shift changed at 6:30 a.m., passed on information from the night, and drove home.  My experience of cowardice would never be known. As I walked in the door, my telephone rang.

“Hello.”  I heard a friendly and familiar voice on the other end of the line.  “Julie, you don’t know how close you came to being shot last night.”  “What are you talking, about, Mike?” “You remember the BOLO we had for the boy who escaped from that home?” “Yes.”  “I just left him with two counselors and a juvenile detective.  The counselors found him walking down the road with a gun.  They talked him out of it and transported him to mental health. He told us he had been hiding behind the heating unit at a house under construction. A female deputy walked straight toward him. He said he was about to shoot her when she turned around and left.”   

I acknowledged to myself that this was a real psychic experience. I was not a coward, and I was not making this up. I had objective proof that this boy’s intention and fear penetrated my mind and body, motivating me to make “discretion the better part of valor.”

My life changed dramatically that year. I took the business of intuition more seriously by enrolling in a workshop and paying for more psychic readings.  I left law enforcement shortly before my 30^th birthday, cashed in my retirement, and sold my house and everything I owned. The west coast called me, and my guardian German Shepherd and I hit the road and began the next chapter of life. A new world opened, and I went back to school, earning a master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology and a Ph.D. in Psychology. I met new people who helped me take a deeper dive into psychic studies.

The path shifted and changed again. I moved back to the east coast and entered a new career teaching psychology to undergraduate students. Being a new academic, I didn’t speak of paranormal phenomena or psychic abilities; however, clairsentience continued to be my rudder, particularly in the classroom. My teaching style was near equal parts information and intuitive application specific to students in the class. By the time my fifty-second birthday rolled around; the spirits came knocking clearly and loudly, showing me that I am also a medium. I could hide my abilities no longer. I eventually enrolled in the International School of Clairvoyance to develop my psychic skills and mediumship. My new path is set and the psychic prediction from 26 years ago affirmed. 

This is how I came to know that I had psychic abilities and that they are just as natural as feeling emotions, breathing air, or talking to your best friend. We are all psychic. But to realize it, some of us need at least one undeniable experience that changes everything.