Impromptu Missing Person Case

I’m at my post, performing the dreaded task of washing the breakfast dishes when the phone rings. My hands covered in dish soap, I reach for the phone. I’m surprised to hear the voice of Abe, a well-known psychiatrist in Berkeley.

“I’ve got a patient in my office whose mother has been missing for eight days. Would you mind speaking to him?”

I haven’t talked to Abe in six months. He had enjoyed reading a draft of my manuscript, Small Medium at Large. When he asked if he could call me sometime, he seemed to be referring to the psychic thing.

Abe continues. “I know from reading your manuscript, the different psychic abilities you have, and I was hoping you might be able to see where his mother is, and whether she might be dead or alive.”

I take a deep breath and hold it. I feel something tightening in my stomach.

“Well, I don’t know that I could do any of this, it’s not like it’s somebody that I know. I’ve met people at conferences who do this kind of thing. They even assist in difficult cases with the police. I could give you their numbers.”

“Can you speak to this young man in my office right now?”

“OK, put him on.”

The young man introduces himself. His voice is gentle. “My mother’s been missing for the last eight days, and the Colorado police haven’t been able to find her. They went to her house and found all her things there. Nothing had been touched.”

“When was the last time you saw your mother?”

“I went out to spend Christmas with her in Colorado. She was staying on a ranch. We had a great time together.”

“Was she sick? Had she been dealing with any life threatening illnesses? Cancer?”

“No. She’s fifty-seven. In great health. She just moved from Berkeley a year ago to live in Colorado with her boyfriend.”

“Are you close to your mom? Do you have a good relationship?”

“Yes. We had a wonderful Christmas together. A couple of days later, I went home to Berkeley and received $700 she sent me as a New Year’s gift. For her, that’s a lot of money. I’d been calling to thank her, and she never answered the phone.”

“I was wondering if you had any feelings about it?” he asks.

In that moment I see a complete vision. A woman slumped over a steering wheel, dead in a car on the side of the road. Dry brown desert and large boulders around.

This surprises me. I say nothing about it to him.

I ask, “Do you think your mother is alive, or do you think she’s dead? Tell me how you feel inside, because you’re more connected to her than any other person — you’re her son.”

There is a silence. “I feel she’s gone. When I was with her in Colorado, I felt like I was never going to see her again, and I didn’t know why.”

“You should trust your inner feeling.”

I start to feel uncomfortable, not telling him the vision I’ve just seen.

Instead I say, “You really might want to contact the Psi Squad, experienced psychic investigators who work with the police to find missing people. And feel free to call me if you need to talk to me any more. I really hope you find her soon. Would you mind putting Abe back on the line?”

I’m trembling. “Abe, I couldn’t tell him what I just saw. I saw his mother, dead in her car by the side of the road. But I couldn’t tell him. That’s not my job to do. What if I made a mistake? Maybe it’s not true. It’s just what I saw. So I just told him to trust his gut feeling that she had passed on. What was I supposed to do?”

“You did the right thing. I appreciate it very much. We’ll let you know when we hear something.”

Three hours later Abe calls back.
“The Colorado police just found his mother. She was dead in her car on the side of the road. They think it was carbon monoxide poisoning.”

I’m vibrating, as if a tremendous amount of electricity is surging through my body. It’s a familiar feeling. I’ve had it whenever I brush along the edges of death. I made the connection. I was at the scene with the mother.

My mind is racing. Have I done the right thing for this man who just lost his mother?

I try to take slower breaths. Actually, I just prepared this young man for this devastating news, by asking him all these questions. By having him say what he was intuitively feeling and denying.

There are so many places a woman who has been missing for 8 days could be. But I only saw the car scene with her slumped over. It did not look like an accident and there was no blood anywhere. She was not in a hotel or a hospital; she was where I was able to see her by just being asked a question. My body was in California, but my vision expanded out to Colorado to see what was there.

I’m pacing up and down my kitchen, my arms waving around in the typical Jewish New York fashion. I need to talk to someone to calm myself down. Someone to validate me, and to let me know it was all OK.

I had learned over the years not to call someone who would try to dismiss this as a coincidence. I now had a larger network of friends who understood my unusual dreams and visions.

Who better to call than Russell Targ? After all, he was the co-founder of the Stanford Research Institute’s investigation into psychic ability, and he continues to talk and write about Remote Viewing, using me in experiments. He is a friend who would understand what I was feeling.

“I’m not surprised you were able to do this Gail,” he says when I tell him the situation. “It’s Remote Viewing. You went to the place and saw his mother.”

I’m back at my post doing the dinner dishes when the phone rings again. It’s Abe. “I was asked to call you again to see if you had any feelings about whether there was foul play in this woman’s death. The police are concerned about a relationship she had with a boyfriend who might have done her harm. What do you think?”

This time I answer without hesitating. “I see no one else involved in this, not even another car or person. I didn’t feel any negative scary energy surrounding this,” I said. “No! This woman was all alone.”

“Are you sure,” he repeats, “as there may have been foul play?”

“I am very sure.”

A few days later, Abe calls to let me know what happened.

“Gail, the police found a suicide letter written by the woman in Colorado, saying how much she loved her family and friends, and that in Berkeley she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She came out to Colorado and took her life to spare the family and herself all the agonizing pain.”

Anyway, it’s not the psychic thing here that astounded me. Death is my specialty. It was that this was not a friend or family. It was instant, with no thoughts or dreams.

I think there was a part of him that could see that his mother was dead and where she was. Perhaps I was seeing through his eyes. He wasn’t open or aware that he had a psychic side. It was as if he needed me to clean his glasses or something because he couldn’t see, and so I saw for him.

I speak to Abe later to be sure that I said and did all the right things for such a traumatic circumstance.

“You helped this man, Gail. What you said was perfect.”

This is a peek at a larger memoir. The other stories already on Medium can be found here. If you enjoy what you’ve read, clap generously! Feel free to contact me at ghayssen at sonic.net.