The Psychic Detectives

The Psychic Detectives examines psychometry, the claimed ability to obtain impressions from objects linked with people, places or events. Colin Wilson places this practice within the broader history of psychical research, considering how psychic perception has been associated with clairvoyance, telepathy and other forms of paranormal enquiry.

The book also considers reported attempts to apply such abilities to crime detection, including investigations involving missing people and unsolved offences. Wilson discusses the evidence and interpretations surrounding these accounts rather than presenting psychic methods as an established police science. The result is a study of how psychometry and related claims have been used, debated and connected with the idea of paranormal assistance in criminal investigations.