Time and again, I have been asked by well-meaning people why I believe individuals who claim to have special psychic and supernatural powers—like psychokinesis, telepathy, remote viewing, astral projection and precognition—when there is no scientific proof.
My answer is simple. Not only have I read about the extraordinary abilities of these people, as demonstrated before skeptical scientists and investigators and reported in reputable journals, but I have actually and personally witnessed many of these myself.
Among the most highly documented of these psychics was the Russian psychic Nelya Mikhailova (who changed her name to Nina Kulagina). She showed baffled scientists her telekinetic ability to move small objects, like cigarettes and matchboxes, with her mind, and without touching them.
These objects were under a glass cover to prevent hidden strings or magnets which she could manipulate from the outside.
I have seen video tapes of Israeli psychic Uri Geller bending metallic spoons with his mind, and without using physical force, and have read the results of scientific experiments done on him at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California.
Laying of hands
Extraordinary spiritual healer Estebani has demonstrated before scientists his ability to accelerate the healing process of wounds by simply placing his hands on top of the affected area for a few minutes.
I also saw a healer remove the eyeballs of patients, wash them in a basin of water and return the eyes to their sockets without any harm done.
Among those I had personally witnessed both locally and abroad are the following:
In the Philippines, I have seen Filipino faith healers and psychic surgeons pull out broken pieces of glass, plastic, human hair and even a dead cockroach from the bodies of witchcraft victims.
I also saw a healer remove the eyeballs of patients, wash them in a basin of water and return the eyes to their sockets without any harm done.
In Urdaneta, Pangasinan, I saw a well-known female psychic surgeon, Josephine Sison, pull out various veins from the legs of a foreign patient without removing her stockings. When the healer wiped the blood off the patient’s legs, I saw her stockings to be intact.
Rosita Agaid, another healer from Villasis, Pangasinan, could dip her hand into boiling oil and rub it on a patient’s body without getting hurt or burned. I saw this myself many years ago.
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, I saw the mediumistic painter, Luis Gasparetto, paint on canvas the works of the great masters in less than 10 minutes while in a trance and without using a brush.
He uses his hands and sometimes his feet to paint, and he even signs the paintings in the name of the masters. He claims it is not he who paints them, but the dead masters themselves using his hands.
Brazilian journalist Elsie Dubugras, whom I met in Brazil, told me she showed the signatures on the paintings to a forgery expert and said they were genuine signatures of the masters.
Cory Quirino was also in Buenos Aires at the time and I invited her to witness Gasparetto demonstrate his incredible ability.
In Dusseldorf, Germany, I witnessed Israeli psychic Uri Geller demonstrate the germination of radish seeds in his palm by mental power. He held out his hand with the radish seeds without moving it, while he asked everybody in the audience to mentally command the seeds to grow. One of them did grow to about an inch in less than two minutes.
It is, of course, possible that I have been deceived, that these demonstrations of so-called psychic powers were nothing more than clever tricks or sleight-of-hand. Of course, this is possible. But given the circumstances under which these took place, trickery is an unlikely explanation.
It is difficult for the average person to accept such facts because they cannot be explained by orthodox and materialist science. They are not supposed to happen, but they obviously do. Saying that there’s no such thing as psychic and paranormal phenomena does not mean they do not exist. The evidence is just too much to be ignored.
E-mail the author at jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com; tel. 09989886292