There’s a form of ESP called clairalience—the ability to acquire psychic information through the physical sense of smell, usually by picking up the scent of something that isn’t physically present. Sounds very arcane, but I’ve experienced it myself. I have a pretty keen sense of smell, and for me a “psychic scent” is unmistakable, because it appears so suddenly and stands out sharply from any of the other smells around me.
When an unseen presence is around, I’ll sometimes see blue sparkles and white flashes of light in the air. On a few occasions, I’ve picked up a sudden, unfamiliar whiff of cologne along with the visual cues, and I knew the fragrance was associated with my visitor. Another time, on a night when I was having an especially hard time staying asleep, I felt like there might be a disruptive presence around. And then I picked up a whiff of a strong, sulfurous smell that was totally unlike anything in my house—really creepy. But the strangest episode occurred when I was home alone one evening while the man I was dating was out with his friends.
I was hanging out in the living room, feeling a little spooked—in those days, my life was pretty strange, with a lot of psychic occurrences, and I felt uneasy often. Suddenly I noticed a strong, distinct smell of brewing coffee—which struck me as odd, since I wasn’t brewing any, and I wasn’t even sure we had any coffee in the house. The room was closed up, too, so the smell didn’t seem to be coming from outside. Now I felt even more uneasy, and I wondered if the scent might be a psychic signal of some kind.
A little later I found out that my boyfriend and his two friends crashed their car right around the time I noticed the coffee scent. To this day, I’m not sure why the warning smell turned out to be coffee, but I feel it really was a warning. And, according to what I’ve read about clairalience, this form of ESP does sometimes occur as a signal that a loved one is in danger. Fascinating.
As for my seeing sparkles and flashes when an unseen visitor is around—there’s a name for that, too: clairvoyance, the ability to see what’s usually hidden from physical sight. I’ve also sometimes seen, with my peripheral vision, glowing spheres of light or dark, solid-looking human figures that quickly disappear: also clairvoyance. And if, like me, you’ve ever had a hunch or a feeling about something you couldn’t possibly know, and it turned out to be right—that just might be clairsentience. And there are still other forms of ESP, some related to the physical senses, some not.
To me, all of this proves once again just how amazing we humans are. I really do believe that we’re all born with the capacity for extrasensory perception, and that it does serve a purpose: it’s part of our birthright as humans, just one more tool for acquiring information we might want or need to know. What do you think?
Ann Young
Author—Fantasy, Mysticism, Paranormal Fiction … and Fact
Author—Fantasy, Mysticism, Paranormal Fiction … and Fact
