Not everyone believes in ESP, but
I wondered about it when I was young. I
wondered how my parents could tell what I had just done that I shouldn't have done. All they had to do was look
at me and they knew what my crime had been. 
I figured they must have ESP-- extra-sensory
perception, which might enable them to read my mind. When
I was older, I spent time researching the possibilities of ESP...and wrote a book about it entitled How to Read Your Mother's Mind. I have my doubts about ESP, too--it
just doesn't work the way we want it to (and don't ever waste the money to call a
telephone psychic, no matter how nice and friendly he or she is).
Still, I have had a number of interesting
ESP experiences in my life. One involves my book The
Very Real Ghost Book of Christina Rose. The novel is set in a fictional
California town called North Klondike. In the book, Christina and her family move to a
haunted pink Victorian house in North Klondike. After I finished the book in February
1994, I went to California and visited some small towns in the vicinity of "North
Klondike"--mostly because I had never been to that part of California before. In one
really small town very near where I had set the imaginary N. Klondike, I discovered a
restaurant named the Klondike Cafe. I also discovered that this particular town had a
Victorian house said to be haunted--of course, the house was painted pink! How could I
have imagined these coincidences? I don't know. Maybe a little ESP was involved (and if it
wasn't, it's still fun to think so!).
Another happened when my children were young. I was awakened around 4 a.m. when I heard (I was certain) the cabinet in
the hall bathroom slamming shut. Next I heard noises that sounded like the Big Bird
footstool (also in the bathroom) being dragged across the floor. I thought it was one of
my children (it wasn't unusual to hear them in the middle of the night), so I kept
listening.
But I didn't hear any more noises and that worried
me: maybe someone was sick. So I went to check to make sure that my kids were okay. To my
surprise, they were all sound asleep in bed. But what had made those noises? I knew there
wasn't a burglar, because the alarm hadn't gone off. Then I thought: Maybe it was a ghost
(after all, I wrote a few books about the subject).
So I walked through the house to check
everything--and found nothing unusual. I went back to bed and fell asleep. In the morning
I discovered that raccoons had gotten into the garbage cans next to the house. But at 4
a.m., when I had been awakened from a sound sleep, my ears thought that the noises were
coming from the bathroom. This just shows that it's hard to tell what the truth is--even
for adults! (If you've read The
Very Real Ghost Book of Christina Rose, compare the story I just told to one that
Professor Barrymore tells about the toilet-flushing ghost!)
