18 March: Edgar Cayce

This date in 1877 saw the birth of Edgar Cayce, clairvoyant and psychic healer. Here are 10 things you might not know about him.

1. His surname is pronounced "Kay-Cee".
2. He was born on a farm in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. His parents were farmers and he was one of six children.
3. Even as a child, he had psychic abilities. He could see and communicate with the spirit of his late grandfather and also had imaginary friends, who he claimed were spirits on the other side.
4. He had another strange talent as a child, which was to fall asleep on a book and memorise its contents. As an adult he became known as "The Sleeping Prophet", because he would give his readings while in a deep meditative state.
5. He went to church regularly and was a Sunday School teacher. He also read the Bible every day of his life since childhood. In his early years, he often wondered whether his ability to see auras and talk to dead people was a gift of God, or not.
6. The readings he gave dealt mostly with holistic health and how to treat illnesses, but throughout his life his readings covered around 10,000 different topics, including reincarnation, dream interpretation, diet, Atlantis, spiritual development and prayer.
7. As a young man, he started work as an insurance salesman, but a bout of laryngitis left him unable to speak, so he became a photographer, a profession that involved less talking. He sought help from hypnotists, and in due course, diagnosed what the problem was while in a trance - a psychological paralysis that could be cured by increasing the Blood flow to his voice box, whereupon his face and neck became flushed. 20 minutes later, Cayce declared the treatment was over and he could talk again.
8. It was his hypnotist who first suggested that Cayce should offer trance healing to the public after Cayce's suggestions for the hypnotist's own illnesses proved effective. Cayce wasn't sure at first as he had no idea what he was suggesting while in a trance and whether his remedies were safe. If anyone died after trying them, he reasoned, he'd be a murderer. His fiancee Gertrude was equally concerned. Cayce agonised over it all and eventually agreed so long as he wasn't told anything about the patient that wasn't relevant to the issue in hand, and that all his readings would be given free of charge. He continued to work as a photographer while giving free readings on the side. Later, he invented a card game called Pit, a stock trading game which is still played today, to raise money so he could spend more time doing readings.
9. From time to time, he'd be persuaded to give readings to people who wanted to know how the stock market was going to perform or which Horse to bet on. He was reluctant to do so, wanting to help sick people rather than greedy people wanting Money. However, when he tried to use his ability to predict things like the winners of horse races, he did no better than chance would dictate.
10. Needless to say, Cayce has come in for some harsh criticism from doctors and skeptics who say his suggestions were folk remedies and sometimes dangerous. While Cayce managed to cure his wife of TB after doctors had pronounced her incurable, not all his cures were successful and not all his prophecies came true.

Death and Faxes

Several women have been found murdered - it looks like the work of a ruthless serial killer. Psychic medium Maggie Flynn is one of the resources DI Jamie Swan has come to value in such cases - but Maggie is dead, leaving him with only the telephone number of the woman she saw as her successor, her granddaughter, Tabitha Drake.

Tabitha, grief-stricken by Maggie's death and suffering a crisis of confidence in her ability, wants nothing to do with solving murder cases. She wants to hold on to her job and find Mr Right (not necessarily in that order); so when DI Swan first contacts her, she refuses to get involved.

The ghosts of the victims have other ideas. They are anxious for the killer to be caught and for names to be cleared - and they won't leave Tabitha alone. It isn't long before Tabitha is drawn in so deeply that her own life is on the line.

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