"On this episode of"Strange Science,"" "can a human body suddenly burst into flames?" "This man has the IQ of a child, yet his paintings sell for thousands." "Stigmata - a woman who bleeds from the same type of wounds as Christ." "Can this man really heat objects with a wave of his hand?" "Can these amazing people communicate with the dead?" "Fire - it can be beautifully serene or fiercely intense." "No two fires are alike, yet science can explain them all." "All except, perhaps, this." "Spontaneous human combustion." "It is a phenomenon so bizarre and devastating it causes the body to burst into flames and burn to ashes." "The notion of spontaneous human combustion dates back as far as the late 1 5th Century." "The world's earliest known photo is of Mr. Albert Minster, who reportedly spontaneously combusted in a hayloft in 1 888." "The question is - is it real?" "We've identified in excess of 400 cases spanning the last several hundred years that fit the definition of spontaneous human combustion." "Larry Arnold is an author and researcher who has spent more than 20 years uncovering cases of SHC." "We define spontaneous human combustion as the ability, the phenomenon of the body to blister, smoke, or otherwise burn itself, without contact to a known, identifiable, commonplace external source of ignition." "In Arnold's book "Ablaze," case after case of alleged spontaneous human combustion is described in gruesome detail." "There's Helen Conway, the disabled grandmother who burned to death while relaxing in her sitting room." "Though the fire completely consumed her upper body, her legs were left virtually untouched." "And there's Dr. John Bentley, who mysteriously ignited and fell to the ground, burning clear through the floor of his bathroom." "According to Arnold, there was no outside ignition to explain how any of these fires started." "People don't invoke the notion of spontaneous human combustion out of a knowledge of the facts, but out of an ignorance of the facts." "Joe Nickell, a researcher for the Committee for the Scientific" "Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, has also investigated cases of alleged SHC." "So far, he is not convinced." "No one was there." "We don't know how it got started." "We don't know how it progressed." "We don't know all these myriad little hundreds of factors that would make the difference in the fire going out or continuing or burning this way versus that way." "One of the most mysterious cases is that of George Mott, a retired fireman in upstate New York." "On a spring evening in 1986, local firefighters were called out to his home." "Inside the heat-distorted bedroom, they found a strange and bizarre scene." "I've seen people in house fires that burnt up, that the house burnt down, and we dug them out, and there was still torsos and limbs and things like that." "This man didn't have anything left." "Mott had somehow caught fire and burned in his bed, his body so destroyed firefighters had trouble finding his remains." "This guy was powder and three and a half pounds of bone." "Period." "Bob Purdy, now retired, was the county's emergency fire coordinator and one of the first people to inspect the scene at the Mott home." "Oh, there was a lot of unusual things about the fire." "The drapes in the other room burnt." "The television sitting on a dresser on the end of his bed had melted." "But the house didn't burn down." "That's the most amazing part." "New York State Police pointed to a charred electrical outlet as the cause of the fire, but Purdy disagreed." "We checked every utility - electric, gas, kerosene." "Nothing added up." "Phenomena is all I can say." "George Mott was a 58-year-old retired fireman who we told was fanatical about eliminating fire hazards in his small wood-framed home." "Unfortunately for Mr. Mott, the one fire hazard that he could not eliminate from his home was himself." "But could investigators have overlooked something?" "Mott suffered from a lung ailment and used an oxygen machine to help him breathe at night." "Skeptic Joe Nickell thinks this is significant." "One of the things that you find, as soon as you get into the Mott case, is sitting on the oxygen-enricher unit, of all places, is a big canister of matches." "Now, am I jumping to any conclusion?" "I'm just saying wait a minute." "Just wait a minute here." "I want to know what those matches are doing on the oxygen-enricher unit." "I bet he was using them for some reason." "But what about the strange burning pattern in Mott's home?" "Why did plastic objects melt, but the matches and other flammable objects not ignite?" "According to fire experts, it's simply a matter of physics." "When a fire erupts in an enclosed space, flames and gases rise and spread out." "This hot cloud of smoke then radiates downward, causing plastic and other material to melt or decompose." "Near the floor, where the air is still relatively cool, objects don't immediately ignite, because the heat is less intense." "What happened to George Mott is something very different, something quite atypical than the normal fire fatal scene." "George Mott burned himself to powder, which normally can be accomplished only in a crematorium operating in excess of 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit." "In crematoriums, it takes temperatures as high as 800 degrees Centigrade, or thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, to incinerate a corpse and reduce it to ash." "In a house fire, temperatures are much lower." "A process called the "wick effect" could account for what happened to George Mott and other suspected victims of SHC." "We asked Jim Shandley, at John A. Kennedy and Associates Laboratories, to demonstrate the wick effect." "This piece of meat wrapped in cloth represents a clothed body." "When the cloth is ignited, the fat in the meat melts and fuels the flame, in the same way hot wax fuels the wick on the candle." "With the body feeding the fire, scientists say it can burn for hours." "Until it finally turns to powder." "Few people have experienced spontaneous human combustion and lived to tell about it." "I felt the heat, and that's when the smoke started to come out of me, and that's when I said "Mike, I think I'm on fire,"" "and that's when we kind ofjust all, we kind of went frantic." "I could feel the heat moving up my back." "Okay, well, I saw the smoke coming from right here, and it was pouring out of her sweater." "I took her sweater off, and there was still smoke coming from her undershirt." "I took her undershirt off and there was a big red splotch, with smoke just pouring from it, and I had no clue how it was happening, without a flame." "Kate threw out the sweater she was wearing because of the strong odor, but she kept the undershirt." "On it, there is no sign of any burning or scorching." "There was no place that fire come..." "There was no flames." "There was no flames." "No." "They came from nowhere but me." "It's unexplained." "And it's, to this day, unexplained." "I know it happened." "My husband knows it happened." "We were here." "And I don't really care who believes us." "If you talk to fire researchers, they will tell you what happens in the nanosecond when you strike a match and it bursts into flame, that process is still not fully understood." "So fire itself remains, to this day, a mystery." "As is, we believe, spontaneous human combustion." "What we should do is we should carefully investigate, not with a prior conviction either way, and let that, in the way science does, lead open-endedly wherever it will." "Coming up, savants - flashes of genius in an otherwise dark world, on "Strange Science."" "A master musician, a masterful artist - strangers to one another, yet they share something precious." "Both are savants - mentally impaired, but incredibly talented." "These are people who have sometimes massive disabilities, but they have some island of ability or talent or genius that sort ofjust leaps out at you, because it is so extraordinary." "And there are fewer than probably 20 prodigious savants living worldwide at the present time." "Thank you." "So these are islands of genius in a sea of disability, frankly." "Come on, horses." "Come on." "Here, horsey." "At first glance, one would never suspect the incredible genius that lives inside of Tony Deblois, of Waltham, Massachusetts." "Oh, his hair." "Blind and autistic, he is a scientific mystery." "He's very much a man-child." "There's some things that he can do that he's very adult at." "Yet, on the other hand, he's back in kindergarten." "At 24, Tony depends on his mother Janice for simple things like buttoning his shirt and tying his shoes." "But when he sits at a piano, magic flows from his finger." "He has a repertoire of over 7,000 songs." "And we stopped counting about eight years ago." "Born three months premature after eight failed pregnancies, the doctors didn't think Tony would survive." "And I was given the choice to let Tony live or die." "And I made the choice that Tony should live." "You know, God doesn't give you a gift for you to throw it away." "Despite his handicaps, Tony displayed an exceptional talent for music." "At two, I had bought a little Magnus chord organ at a garage sale." "I took the legs off from it and put it down on the floor, where he was at." "One day, I heard him put the first three notes of" ""Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" together." "When he was two and a half, we had watched "Lawrence of Arabia" on television, and I heard the strains from the theme song of"Lawrence of Arabia"" "coming from his room." "What was even more surprising than that was when he was three, he used to play harmony to Lawrence Welk as it came off the air." "Tony doesn't read music, but he can pick up the most intricate and complicated melodies just by listening." "To test Tony's abilities, we brought him a recording he had never heard before - "Steeplechase Rag,"" "a virtuoso performance from a 191 7 player piano roll." "Could Tony replicate on the spot a piece that has challenged pianists for decades?" "Oh, it's easy to remember the songs." "I think about the melody on the right hand and the chords on the left hand." "It comes to me real fast and I just jazz it up." "What the savants have is a habit memory." "It's extraordinarily narrow, but it's also extraordinarily deep." "Dr. Daryl Treffert is a psychiatrist who has studied savants for 30 years." "He considers Tony's musical skills extraordinary, even for a savant." "Most of the savants tend to be very literal in what they repeat and they don't go beyond the boundaries very much." "But he was improvising, which is a form of creativity, as far as I'm concerned." "I got it pretty good." "The startling brilliance of the savant syndrome also finds expression in the visual arts." "Hi, Richard." "Hi." "How are you?" "Come on in." "On exhibit at this Austin, Texas art gallery are oil crayon paintings by Richard Wawro, a native of Scotland." "Saturated with rich colors and shimmering with light," "Wawro's work is exceptional by any standard." "But these paintings aren't merely exceptional, they are extraordinary." "Their creator is considered severely retarded and legally blind." "Richard, a lot of people really love this picture." "Now, where is it?" "... Christmas Eve and "Silent Night."" "Oh, Christmas Eve." "Christmas Eve, and they're singing "Silent Night."" "When did you draw this picture?" "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday." "Oh, it took a whole week?" "December, 197 4." "197 4." "Thanks, Richard." "Laurence Becker is Richard's friend, mentor, and biggest supporter." "The experts, see, advised his parents to put him away and forget him." "Well, that happens with a lot of creative people." "I mean, these crayons have been his way of speaking eloquently about what he sees and the beauty of the world." "As far as I know, and I've made this statement to art critics, to art therapists, to art historians, there's no one in history that's using this medium the way he has." "He is unique." "Plagued since birth by a host of developmental and physical problems, including cataracts in both eyes, Richard's worldview is far from normal." "Working with his face pressed against his canvas, never stepping back to gain perspective," "Richard paints from memory." "... a lovely cuddly." "Yes, Richard." "Oh, a little cuddly, yes." "Like her husband, Rosanne Becker is one of Richard's biggest fans." "That's really part of the mystery, to me, of Richard's inner vision, that he can be that close to the paper, put down marks on the paper that, close up, look like marks, and from a distance," "look like an absolutely beautiful painting." "... Cincinnati." "Cincinnati." "Cincinnati." "Cincinnati." "Oh, Cincinnati." "Cincinnati." "Yes." "Ah." "Richard has digested thousands of picture books and travel shows to gain inspiration for his work." "He has also created exacting depictions of real locations which he has visited and captured in his mind and through the use of high-powered binoculars." "Like Tony Deblois, Richard Wawro is a savant, whose brain functions in a way that science has yet to decipher." "The ones that we've studied, there's damage to the left hemisphere of the brain, with a right brain compensation." "The right brain takes over the work of the left brain." "In fact, the exceptional skills that savants display are almost exclusively right-brained functions." "They include art, music, calendar calculations, and certain math skills." "While their left brain functions, such as abstraction and logical reasoning, are often seriously impaired." "Because science has not studied savants seriously, little is known about their syndrome." "We can't continue to look at the savant as sort of"Gee whiz, look at that,"" "because until we can explain it, we can't explain brain function, because until we can explain the savant, we can't explain ourselves." "While science ponders their curious conditions," "Deblois and Wawro's accomplishments continue to amaze." "Blind, autistic, and with an IQ of 89, Tony Deblois graduated from one of the most prestigious music schools in the country " "Boston's Berklee College of Music." "That's right, magna cum laude, with high honors." "And you know how I feel?" "Proud." "Definitely proud when I graduated." "Anthony T. Deblois." "Tony, congratulations." "Congratulations, Tony." "Thanks." "Richard Wawro exhibits throughout the United States and Europe." "His paintings sell for thousands of dollars." "This is my favorite." "I love this one." "But that's, that one, that one, and I love your birds." "Unable to take care of themselves or function in society, these amazing individuals each possess one outstanding skill - a skill whose manifestation in an otherwise dark world of retardation and autism continues to baffle science and, for the rest of the world, is a joyful gift." "Next up, stigmata - the mysterious phenomena of spontaneous bleeding, on "Strange Science."" ""I love you, Lord."" "Sunday morning in El Prado, New Mexico." "Hundreds crowd the tiny Mount Zion Tabernacle." "They come for the weekly Sunday service, but hope to witness a once in a lifetime miracle from an extraordinary evangelist." "We're going to decree that God is going to perform a miracle." "Do you believe that?" "Will you join your faith with my faith?" "Lucy Rael is a traveling stigmatic evangelist - someone who bleeds spontaneously from wounds resembling those of the crucified Christ." "Oh, the blood's coming." "Stay in the spirit, the blood is beginning to happen." "Stay in the spirit." "Stay in the spirit." "Lift up your hands and praise him." "There are certain people who have visions of the sufferings of Jesus." "Ian Wilson is an author and expert on stigmata." "But not only the visions, what they also go through is such a vivid experience that their body actually breaks out in what appear to be those same wounds." "The first known stigmatic was Saint Francis of Assisi." "In 1223, after prolonged fasting and praying," "Jesus Christ appeared in a vision." "Laser-like rays emanated from the deity's crucifixion wounds and sliced similar lesions into Saint Francis' hands, feet, and torso." "These wounds remained until the monk died, two years later." "Over 300 people have since displayed the stigmata." "The most famous recent stigmatic was a Roman Catholic priest named Padre Pio." "Although millions made pilgrimages to Pio's church in southern Italy to seek his blessing, the priest was deeply embarrassed by his stigmata." "He concealed his wounds with gloves and prayed constantly for his bleeding to cease." "The stigmatics have so many different wounds, generally corresponding to the particular type of Crucifix before which they have worshipped." "Padro Pio was praying before this crucifix when he suddenly screamed and fell unconscious." "He awoke, bleeding from wounds on his hands and feet." "The wounds never healed, and Padre Pio bled continuously for the remaining 50 years of his life." ""I get joy when I think about what he's done for me." "I get joy when I think about what he's done for me." "I get joy when I think about what he's done... "" "This is the place where it all started, back in 1972, and I was sitting right around this area, right here." "I remember it, just clapping my hands to the praise and worship music." "All of a sudden, I began to see these holes in my hands and they started getting deeper, and I never thought that it would be stigmata." "Never even heard of it." "I gladly submitted to the medical doctors." "They were almost to the conclusion that this is like mind power." "Like, I would sit and meditate on my wounds opening and the stigmata coming." "And I was hooked up to a machine, because they were checking my brain waves." "All of a sudden, the nurse called for the medical doctors and said" ""Can you come out here and see this?"" "Anjelica, our daughter, she was like eight months old." "Right before the eyes of the medical doctors, she started to get the imprint of the crown of thorns on her forehead, stripes on her back." "It was such a strange phenomenon, for her to get the stigmata right there, where the doctors are at." "The reports came back that it was supernatural phenomenon that cannot be explained." "Anjelica no longer exhibits the sign of stigmata." "But one has to wonder if her daughter Shayla, seen here, might one day." "I don't know if Shayla will have the signs." "I've never even thought about whether she would." "She's just a happy baby." "She loves church and loves to play her tambourine in the services." "Hello." "Hello, everyone." "How are you?" "Good to see you." "It's been awhile." "Good to see you." "Lucy wasn't always a traveling evangelist." "Before the stigmata occurred, she worked as a cashier in her family's store." "Lucy tried to keep the job after the unusual phenomena started, but her sister-in-law Betty remembers, things became complicated." "The police couldn't even get in." "It was just so jam-packed, the parking lot." "We would have a lot of people just get down on their knees, and they'd run and get their family, bring them back in here to the grocery store, and Betty, my sister-in-law, would have to take over at the cash register." "The stigmata did not only come in the form of blood." "In a peculiar phenomenon," "Lucy's blood would also secrete large amounts of oil." "Sometimes I didn't even have enough time to grab anything, a towel or anything." "And sometimes, I would just find a bowl or something and just hang my head down and just let it flow." "Lucy doesn't really understand why the stigmata sometimes come to her in the form of oil, but she has a theory." "The Bible says "I shall be anointed with fresh oil."" "Its' the only thing that I can relate to in the Word of God that talks about oil." "Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, has a different view." "The stigmata are probably psychogenic, or a hoax." "That happens a lot in the fanatically religious." "Why?" "Because there is a need to prove your faith." "Faith is supposed to be separate from proof, but for most people, it isn't." "They want to convince you that it's real, and they need to show something to do that, and that's why they fake." "Unsatisfied with religious explanations, researchers have focused on psychological causes for stigmata." "This is one very interesting study that was done by Dr. Leckler in the 1930's, who had a servant girl." "He tried to induce stigmata by hypnotic suggestion." "He hypnotized her, he talked her through the crucifixion of Jesus." "As he did so, then stigmata-type blood flows began to appear." "In 1962, psychologist Gordon Paul did a landmark study linking psychosomatic reaction induced under hypnosis to certain personality types." "Paul used a device called the hot metal test to analyze his subjects." "After inducing hypnosis, therapists told subjects that they were about to be touched by red hot metal." "An iron object was then pressed against their body." "In several instances, blisters erupted on the subject's skin, even though the metal was actually cold." "Paul found that the subjects who developed blisters usually had a history of childhood trauma or a predisposition toward hysteric illness." "The mechanism that governs such mind-body interactions has yet to be pinpointed." "But these experiments show one possible link between a stigmatic's unusual physical manifestations and certain personality dysfunctions." "I decree right now, from the top of their head to the soles of their feet, that these people be made whole right now." "I am quite satisfied that, in the majority of the cases, there is no fraudulence on the part of the stigmatic, in the sense that they haven't penetrated themselves with some sharp instrument to create the wounds." "These are created by the mind." "It seemed like maybe they started to open right here." "I can see, right in that area right there." "No, there was no pain tonight when the stigmata happened, and there never is." "Jesus was the one that suffered and died for us, so he's already paid the price." "I don't have to do it." "Why did the stigmata phenomena begin in the 13th Century but not sooner?" "Medieval religious art suggests an answer." "Prior to the Middle Ages, Christ's crucifixion was often depicted without wounds or blood." "Artists even went so far as to provide Jesus with a small step to support his weight while hanging on the cross." "Then, as the Medieval population was enduring horrible plagues, poverty, and oppression, Christ's depiction changed." "Punctured with spikes, ravaged by glory, bleeding wounds, he expresses pure agony - an agony to which many Medieval worshippers could probably relate." "They have to be hoaxes." "I can't see a mechanism, even for a placebo, a true believer, to get himself to bleed on your feet and hands." "Their body is actually producing an effect corresponding to that which is in their mind." "Is stigmata a miracle from God, a simple hoax, or a mysterious mechanism of the human mind?" "Are you ready for your miracle, sweetheart?" "You're ready for God to touch you?" "All right." "Give me a hug." "In the face of hundreds of hurting people receiving comfort and healing, it hardly seems to matter." "Coming up on "Strange Science," we'll meet Master Zhou, whose amazing abilities seem to defy physics." "These hands are lethal weapons, trained in kung fu." "But do these hands also possess the power of an ancient Chinese mystery?" "Do they possess the mysterious energy of Qi Gong?" "What is Qi Gong, and how does it work?" "Master Zhou, Ting-Jue has been studying and practicing Qi Gong for almost 50 years." "When I was seven years old," "I began to study martial arts - Shaolin Kung Fu." "And when I was 1 6, I studied with my uncle, a Taoist priest, who taught me Qi Gong techniques." "I also went to Shanghai to study with various Qi Gong specialists." "It was there that I first started to feel my power of Qi." "Master Zhou has trained for decades and is able to perform incredible feats of strength." "But be warned - these dangerous demonstrations should not be attempted at home." "I consider my powers nothing special." "Through practice, I have gained energy." "Through good methods of practice and practice of kung fu," "I have reached this level." "Hey!" "Kung fu, and the harnessing of Qi energy, seems to give Master Zhou a veneer of superhuman protection that makes him practically impervious to pain." "Master Zhou claims that these feats of strength are routine for him, having toned and trained his body to case-hardened perfection with years of intense study and dedication." "In fact, feats of human strength and the ability to withstand pain have been popular sideshow and novelty acts for decades." "The human body is supported by a web of armor called muscle." "The musculature can be honed and strengthened to allow the body to perform seemingly impossible tasks, and to protect the internal organs from harm." "In Chinese, we have two kinds of martial arts." "One is called an external martial art, one is internal" " Wu-Tang and Taoism." "The external is more in keeping with kung fu, like boxing." "Qi is internal." "While the external feats are amazing, it is the internal power of Qi Gong that has scientists and Western doctors confused and intrigued." "Master Zhou and other Qi Gong practitioners claim that they can directly focus Qi Gong energy and produce intense heat that can be used as a healing tool." "I experienced excruciating pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week." "So I came to him to get rid of my pain." "Western doctors can do absolutely nothing for it." "I've had every test known to mankind, every blood tests, MRIs, sonograms, every possible test that they know of." "They could not find the reason for my excruciating constant pain." "I've found that Chinese medicine is the only thing that gives me any relief whatsoever." "Master Zhou uses a compress in his massage that he is able to heat to an almost unbearable degree by merely focusing his Qi." "When he does the heat, it gets so hot it feels like there's an iron, a steam iron, on high, right up against your skin." "And the thing that's amazing is it doesn't leave a welt." "It doesn't burn your skin." "It gets that hot, like as if you were on a burner, on an electric stove that's red hot." "You can actually see steam." "Is this possible?" "Can Qi Gong heat a compress to unbearable temperatures with focused concentration?" "We asked Dr. Barry Beyerstein of the Brain Behavior Laboratory at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University about these claims." "There's no evidence that I've ever seen that any scientific instrument has ever detected it, that as far as modern physics is concerned, there are only four kinds of energy." "There are the weak and strong nuclear forces, there's electromagnetism, and there's gravity, and if there is yet another form of energy, we don't see it anywhere else in the universe." "We see no evidence of its existence or its effects on other things or its interaction with other kinds of energy." "And I think it's more a philosophical concept." "It goes back thousands of years, long before we had our modern understanding of the physics and construction of the physical world." "Most believers in Qi Gong dismiss, you know, scientific instrumentation, because they say it's something totally different." "With this in mind, we invited an infrared photography expert," "Peter Blivin, to bring his state-of-the-art" "Inframetrics equipment to Master Zhou's clinic and see if we can capture the elusive Qi on infrared film." "Master Zhou uses only aluminum foil, paper towels, and tap water to make a compress." "Within moments, Blivin is stunned by the soaring temperatures his equipment registers." "This is an infrared camera manufactured by Inframetrics, and we're looking at temperatures from under 49 degrees F to over 1 62 degrees F." "he had his aluminum foil and paper up to about 1 50, 1 60 degrees F." "I never would have believed it, unless I saw it." "His hand is down in the normal hand temperature, which would be about 85 to 90 degrees." "He's obviously heating up the towel, as we can see from the hot spots." "Hot, hot." "In this spot now, we've added to the image reports that the hot spot that we see is about 131 degrees." "But his hand is not hot." "I don't know." "I don't even know what it is." "The energy from the Earth coming into the person's body through Master Zhou." "The camera doesn't lie." "The camera's giving us the right temperature." "The question is how do those temperatures get there?" "And I didn't see anything off-camera that would lead me to believe that we're seeing anything except Qi." "That certainly is the question, a question which, up to this point, has never been answered." "Is there a way to make this kind of heat occur using science?" "We asked scientist Ira Katz of Tri-Ess Sciences in Burbank, California, if he could produce the magic of Qi Gong with chemicals and compounds." "Katz has been creating special effects for motion pictures for almost 50 years." "To demonstrate this illusion, we'll began by taking a chloride compound and placing a small amount of this chloride compound on the watch glass and distributing it over the surface of the glass." "If this is done one a white plate, you are not aware that it's even there." "I will now take a piece of aluminum foil, which I will immerse in water." "I will smooth that out on the plate." "Yo!" "And immediately, we have heat created." "Let me place a drop more water on that and fold that up." "And this, in turn, will be folded into the compress pad, which is placed on the person's body." "We have an extreme amount of heat generated here." "Very, very hot." "How does Master Zhou respond to disbelievers and those who wants to know the secrets of his amazing strength and his ability to generate heat from the palms of his hands?" "They're scared in the Western world and have a misconception of Qi Gong." "I'm not surprised that in this country, where there's freedom to believe, and if they don't believe, that's okay with me." "Next up, these artists claim to communicate with the dead by drawing their portraits from the beyond." "On "Strange Science."" "If a picture is worth a thousand words, what would these drawings say?" "England's Coral Polge is the world's most renowned psychic artist - an artist with the mysterious ability to draw the faces of people whom she has never met and never will." "These are the faces of people who are dead." "And I honestly don't quite know how I do it." "I just sense them." "Somebody takes over my hand and gives me a certain amount of help in getting the drawings accurate." "Coral has been drawing pictures of the dead for over 40 years, but her ability was a gift she was unaware of, until a spiritualist medium pointed it out to her." "I must admit I nearly died of fright on the spot, because the medium came to me and said" ""Do you know you're a psychic artist?"" "Which I didn't." "I didn't even know what she meant." "After more than 1 00,000 drawings, Coral Polge has come to accept the fact that the spirits of the dead are somehow channeled through her." "Another British psychic artist whose abilities seem to defy the laws of science is John Brett, who strangely found out about his gift in exactly the same way as Coral Polge." "When I was 20 years old, I was told by another medium that I was going to be a psychic artist." "And I didn't know what a psychic artist was, so I tried to find out." "But it never happened when I tried, so I left it." "And then about 1 5 months later on, I started to sketch little faces, and it just grew from there, really." "We asked Dr. Richard Wiseman, senior lecturer on paranormal phenomena at the University at Hertfordshire, if psychic portraiture is a reality." "I'm pretty skeptical about the paranormal." "I've been investigating various psychic claims for about ten years now, and in each instance, I've always found a normal explanation for phenomena which, on the face of it, appear to be paranormal." "Psychic drawing requires no special parlor or suance room." "Only the artist, a willing client, and the presence of the deceased." "Today, we're going to be doing a sitting for psychic drawing with Anne." "We do seem to have a lady here at the moment." "She actually is a very strong personality." "She actually looked much older than she was." "You were very close to this lady, though." "She's not too happy with the nose." "We've got to alter that slightly." "And is the lady's face that's taking shape beginning to be recognized by you?" "Yes, the eyes are perfect." "Where do these faces come from?" "John claims to receive mental images that he transcribes to paper." "Would the month of May relate to a birthday or an anniversary for the family as well?" "Yes, it does." "She was talking about the fact that your daughter is expecting a baby in May." "Mm hmm." "Are there plans for some kind of celebration?" "Yep." "Because she wants to let everybody know that she's actually going to be there." "She's very excited about it." "Now, she is saying that she's had her hair set especially for the occasion, and I am feeling as though this lady does actually connect to your mother's side of the family." "Mm hmm." "Would we actually be going back as far as grandmother with this?" "Yes, we would." "Is this actually Grandmom?" "It is." "Let me add my signature to that." "As Anne looks at the picture John has conjured, even more amazing details come into focus." "He provides intimate information about Anne's grandmother, known only to the family." "John mentioned to me, well, it was my granny's birthday in May and it was also her name." "this is a photograph of my Gran that I brought with me today, and this is the lady that John's just drawn." "It's quite possible that over time, the psychic artists learn to produce faces which actually match a lot of people." "So in fact, this is a fairly general face of an elderly woman." "It's a comforting feeling, with something like this." "It can't come from memory, because John has no memories of my Gran." "To be able to bring her face to John, she can't be buried under six foot of Earth somewhere." "She does live on." "I think lots of people would like to think there's life after death, and so the idea that somehow you can contact the dead, they're still living, they're still out there in spirit, is a very attractive notion." "If you look at life simply as being a form of energy in a different way, energy can't die." "It cannot just disappear." "It has to move into something else, another way of expressing itself." "There was just too many coincidences for me to sort of say, well, it doesn't exist." "Because it does." "If you go to a medium and they say" ""Oh, there's your grandfather in spirit here, and he's got this message for you," and it's all very anecdotal." "It's very, very difficult to assess whether there's anything psychic going on." "Maybe this is a logical explanation for Anne's experience, but how do we explain a drawing that doesn't have the obvious connection of family resemblance?" "Monica and Paul came for a sitting, hoping to contact her dead brother, but were shocked at who appeared." "I don't really want to do much more to it, because it would make him look older, and I don't really want to do that." "I'll give you a quick look at this, just in case." "Is it the person you're thinking of?" "." "No, it's not, I think." "No, I don't think it is, but I..." "Please keep going." "Right." "Do you know someone else it might be?" "Mm hmm." "Yeah." "Oh, right." "Yes, I do." "His hair looks as though it's Bryl-creamed or something like that, as though it's swept away and it's kept away with something to fix it there." "You were close, but then you drifted apart." "Does that make sense to you, Monica?" "Absolutely." "Just keep going." "You're doing fine." "Are we connecting with church with this?" "My goodness me." "Something has really just clicked here, because he..." "He was a deacon." "He was a deacon in the Baptist Church, which is why it was," "I though that's pretty good." "So he wasn't actually family, but he felt like family." "Paul knows very well, until I met him, this man was the love of my life." "So, yes, hence, my jaw hitting the floor." "The responsibility that this work brings is quite heavy, because I am aware that anything I say or do in a private sitting can affect somebody very, very, very profoundly." "One person who came to John as a disbeliever and had that profound change is Phil Churton, whose wife Evelyn convinced him to sit for a drawing session." "John sat down and started doing what turned out to be my dad's picture." "And he was talking of Dad and describing him verbally very well." "The more in-depth he described Dad's characteristics, his love of gambling and his involvement in working in gambling, the more features came through in the picture." "This is the drawing John did of my dad, and this is a photo of my Dad, as near as we can get to Dad at that age." "Pretty pleased with the similarities." "Even though these three drawings have distinct similarities, they don't seem to diminish the emotional impact felt by the recipients." "Does all of this striking visual evidence from John Brett and Coral Polge prove that contact with the dead is possible?" "Is this scientific proof, or are they simply fooling us?" "I don't think that most psychics are charlatans." "They're not sitting there like magicians, actually tricking you." "I think over time, they learn that if they say certain things, they phrase themselves in certain ways, people are very impressed with their performance." "These people aren't lying." "I do think they're kidding themselves, but they're not lying to us." "Science and technology wants everything to fit into neat little boxes." "Being totally honest, it doesn't interest me one way or the other." "All I really ant to do is work with people." "And if I can help somebody come to terms with losing a child or their father or their mother to the spirit world, then that, to me, is more real than whether or not the scientist will accept that it's real."