ABSTRACT
1 Within paranormal discourse, psychometry is the ability to perceive through touch what are reputedly magnetic, energetic or even ‘ethereal’ signatures imprinted in an object thereby providing details about the histories and affects connected with it (Roll 2003: 78). Coinciding with the rise of Spiritualism in mid-nineteenth-century America, a physician named James Rhodes Buchannan theorised that psychometry operated as the nerves that both send and receive electrical vibrations, which he identified as the ‘nerve aura’. This normally invisible aura imprints on things that it comes in contact with. Psychometry by clairsentient mediums – those whom he termed ‘psychometers’ – could discern the ‘soul of objects’ or their ethereal counterparts ( Denton 1988 [1863]). 2
