Claimed techniques and abilities have included postcognition (paranormal perception of the past), psychometry (information psychically gained from objects), telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, and remote viewing.
In November 2004, purported psychic Sylvia Browne told the mother of kidnapping victim Amanda Berry, who had disappeared 19 months earlier: "She's not alive, honey."
Shawn Hornbeck's father, Craig Akers, has stated that Browne's declaration was "one of the hardest things that we've ever had to hear", and that her misinformation diverted investigators wasting precious police time.
[4][5] When Washington, D.C. intern Chandra Levy went missing on 1 May 2001, psychics from around the world provided tips suggesting that her body would be found in places such as the basement of a Smithsonian storage building, in the Potomac River, and buried in the Nevada desert among many other possible locations.
A little more than a year after her disappearance, Levy's body was accidentally discovered by a man walking his dog in a remote section of Rock Creek Park.
[7] Following the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart on 5 June 2002, the police received as many as 9,000 tips from psychics (and others crediting visions and dreams as their source).
In the case of the Long Island serial killer, the psychic said the body would be found in a shallow grave, near water and a sign with a G in it would be nearby.
Despite the vagueness of this claim (the body was not in a shallow grave, water is everywhere in Long Island, and no sign with a G was nearby) the New York Post stated that the "Psychic Nailed it!".
With no further leads, the chief investigating officer, Fernando Realyvasquez, a sergeant with the Pacifica (California) Police, contacted psychic detective Annette Martin.
[11][12] However, when Joe Nickell, a columnist for Skeptical Inquirer magazine, was shown tapes of Martin at work, he stated he was "underwhelmed".
[13] In August 2010, Aboriginal elder Cheryl Carroll-Lagerwey claimed to have seen the location of a missing child, Kiesha Abrahams, in her dream.
Renier gave the police three interviews which were recorded and years later obtained for review by Tampa Bay Skeptics founder Gary P. Posner.
[24][25] But decades later it has yet to be located, and as of 2024[update] the Government of the Province of Nova Scotia is still offering rewards of up to $150,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for Kimberly's disappearance.
In the segment, journalist Dan Levy claimed that Seebold-Walrath was in touch with the New York State Police and the victim's family during the ordeal, implying she helped with the investigation.
However, skeptic Kenny Biddle, chief investigator at the Center For Inquiry, contacted the Saratoga office of the New York State Police and spoke to Officer Stephanie O'Neil who explained whenever information pertaining to a kidnapping, missing person, or homicide is released, they always receive many calls from alleged psychics and that police must follow up on every tip.
[31] An unnamed Australian federal police officer was suspended following his seeking the aid of a clairvoyant in regard to death threats made against Prime Minister John Howard.
[49][50] In 2008, while being interviewed for the Skeptiko podcast, managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer, Ben Radford challenged the host, Alex Tsakiris, to give him the best case for evidence of a psychic solving a crime.
Weber claimed to have helped the New Jersey police solve the 1982 serial murders of Amie Hoffman and Dierdre O'Brien.
[54][55] In 2023, the podcast, Worldwide: The Disappearance of the Thai Silk King, released an episode featuring a professional skeptic discussing the dangers of psychic detectives getting involved in missing person cases.
ABC's Nightline Beyond Belief program for 17 August 2011 featured psychic detectives and their involvement with the case of Ali Lowitzer.
[56] JREF investigator and mentalist Banachek feels that psychic detectives take advantage of families, "... because of fame and money, [they] step in and try to act like an authority".
When asked by ABC's JuJu Chang how can she tell parents this kind of information when she might be wrong, O'Conner replies "I can't let my ego get in the way of what I see".
[59][60] The Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia's official crime research agency, advises parents of missing children not to resort to using psychics who approach them.
"[63] Psychologists, researchers and other authors have posited a number of possible explanations for the belief that some can provide valuable crime information from psychic abilities.
[67][68] Finally, the use of psychics may simply reduce anxiety and fill the emotional needs of individuals who must be experiencing great stress.
One of the earliest forms of the genre was the character Flaxman Low, created in 1897 by mother and son Kate and Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard under the pseudonyms H. Heron and E.
The popular TV show, Psych features Shawn Spencer (James Roday Rodriguez), a charlatan paranormal detective helping the Santa Barbara police with crimes that range from robberies to kidnappings to murders.
However, the man actually uses an acute sense of observation that he acquired as a child; an eidetic memory; excellent vision; and deduction and reasoning to solve cases, making a running gag of his claim to be a psychic.
In the series, Greg was a retired special forces soldier created as part of an elite spec-ops unit, the Mindstar Brigade, in the 'English Army', having fought a vicious war in Turkey and helped a rebellion overthrow the People's Socialist Party at home.
The manga and anime series YuYu Hakusho depicts a teenage boy working as a Spirit Detective: a human who hunts down demons using psychic abilities.