Signs You May Be Sensitive to Spirit, and Why Signs Alone Are Not Mediumship

Oct 29

By Dr. Rashhi Sharma and Prabhat SharmaEvidential Practice21 minute read

Some people remember unusual experiences from childhood. Others notice them for the first time in adult life: during meditation, after losing someone close, or while exploring their spiritual awareness.

They may have sensed a presence when nobody was there, seen someone who had died in an unusually vivid dream, or had a sudden impression that felt different from an ordinary thought. If something like this has happened to you, you may have wondered: Am I sensitive to spirit? Could I be a medium?

Within Spiritualist traditions, experiences such as these are sometimes understood as expressions of spiritual or mediumistic sensitivity, and they often lead people to begin learning about mediumship. But there is an important distinction between having an unusual experience and developing the ability to communicate specific, recognisable information attributed to someone in the spirit world.

This article looks at seven experiences commonly associated with spiritual sensitivity, what each may and may not mean, what research has found, and why responsible mediumship development involves far more than recognising signs.

An unusual experience may lead someone to explore mediumship. It is not, by itself, evidence that they are a medium.

1. What Does It Mean to Be Sensitive to Spirit?

In Spiritualist teaching, sensitivity to spirit generally refers to a person's perceived awareness of the spirit world, or their responsiveness to impressions they understand as spiritual. These impressions may be experienced inwardly, as images, words, emotions, physical sensations or an immediate sense of knowing. Mediums often describe them using traditional terms such as clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience, which our guide to the types of mediumship explains.

Spiritual sensitivity is not, however, a scientifically established ability that can be identified through a checklist of personal experiences. One person may feel that an experience has a spiritual source; another may understand a similar experience through memory, emotion, sleep or the ordinary workings of perception. Neither the intensity of an experience nor the certainty with which someone interprets it can, by itself, establish where it came from.

This does not mean the experience lacks personal significance. It means that what someone experiences and what the experience demonstrates are two different questions. For anyone interested in mediumship, learning to hold that distinction is an important beginning.

2. Seven Experiences Often Described as Signs of Sensitivity

The following experiences appear frequently in personal accounts of spiritual awareness and mediumship development. They are not diagnostic signs, and no particular number of them shows that someone has mediumistic ability. We have written them as descriptions, not as a quiz, for that reason.

1. Sensing a presence when nobody is physically there

Some people describe suddenly feeling that someone is beside them, or that a familiar presence has entered the room. The feeling may be peaceful, affectionate, unexpected or occasionally unsettling, and it is often associated with a family member or someone they loved who has died. Within Spiritualist traditions, such an experience may be understood as awareness of a spirit presence.

There are other possible explanations. A sense of presence is widely reported in bereavement, during periods of emotional intensity, and in certain states between sleeping and waking^1,2. Researchers have documented these experiences without assuming they indicate illness, or that they are communication with the deceased. For someone who is grieving, the experience may be deeply comforting, and it deserves to be approached respectfully, whatever meaning the person gives it.

What it does not establishFeeling a presence does not, on its own, identify who or what is present, or show an ability to communicate evidential information.

2. Vivid dreams about people who have died

Dreams are one of the most common reasons people become interested in mediumship. You may dream of a parent, grandparent or friend who has died; the dream feels unusually vivid, the person appears well and at peace, and you wake with a strong sense that it was different from an ordinary dream. Within spiritual traditions, these experiences are sometimes described as dream visitations. In many cultures, including many Indian families, dreams of departed relatives are also understood within existing traditions of remembering ancestors.

From a psychological perspective, dreams also involve memory, attachment, emotional processing and the continuing bonds people keep with those who have died. A dream may be personally meaningful without its source being independently established, and it is wise not to assume that every vivid dream contains a message that needs interpreting or acting on.

What it does not establishA dream involving someone who has died does not, by itself, demonstrate mediumship, even when it feels exceptionally real.

3. Inner images, words or sudden impressions

Some people notice that information occasionally seems to arrive without deliberate thought: a sudden mental image, a word or name appearing in their awareness, a physical sensation, or a feeling of knowing something without being able to explain how. Mediumship traditions describe these experiences with the language of the clairs:

Clairvoyance: inner seeing, such as mental images or visual impressions.
Clairaudience: inner hearing, including words, sounds or phrases experienced within awareness.
Clairsentience: physical sensations, feelings or emotional impressions.
Claircognisance: an apparent sense of knowing without a conscious reasoning process.

These terms describe how an impression is experienced within the tradition. They do not independently establish where it came from. Ordinary human cognition also produces spontaneous imagery, associative memory, intuition and thoughts that arise without effort. The distinction matters most when someone begins to treat every unexpected thought as information from spirit. A responsible student learns first to notice what was actually experienced, without immediately deciding what it means.

What it does not establishAn inner image, word or sudden knowing does not, by itself, identify a spirit communicator.

4. Strong emotional responses around other people

You may notice small changes in another person's mood, feel deeply affected by the atmosphere of a room, or become emotional when someone near you is distressed. Some spiritual teaching traditions associate this with heightened sensitivity, particularly clairsentience.

Emotional responsiveness is also a familiar human capacity. Empathy, attentiveness, personal history, sensitivity to social cues and the strength of one's emotional boundaries all influence how strongly someone responds to others. Being deeply empathetic does not mean a person is receiving spiritual information. Equally, a medium does not need to be emotionally overwhelmed to work sensitively; in responsible development, students learn to distinguish their own feelings from impressions they believe may relate to someone else.

What it does not establishEmpathy or emotional sensitivity is not sufficient evidence of mediumship.

5. Repeated coincidences, symbols or patterns

A particular number appears again and again. A song plays just as you are remembering someone. A bird arrives at a meaningful moment, or an object associated with a loved one unexpectedly catches your attention. These experiences are often called signs, and they can carry great personal meaning, especially when connected with memory, grief or belief.

Human beings are also naturally attentive to patterns. Once something becomes emotionally important, we tend to notice it more often and remember the occasions when it seemed significant, while the many times it meant nothing pass unnoticed. This does not make the personal meaning false. It means that meaning and evidence are not interchangeable. A coincidence may invite reflection; it does not provide information about the identity of a spirit communicator.

What it does not establishRepeated numbers, feathers, songs, animals or other perceived signs are not reliable tests of mediumistic ability.

6. Unusual spiritual experiences in childhood

Some people describe spiritual experiences beginning very young: speaking about someone who had died, describing an unseen companion, or reporting impressions the adults around them found hard to explain. Within mediumship communities, these are sometimes understood as early expressions of sensitivity. Other explanations include imagination, dreams, developing memory, and the beliefs of a child's family and culture.

Remembered childhood experiences also deserve care, because our understanding of an early experience can change as we grow older and encounter new spiritual ideas. Research on Spiritualist mediums who report hearing spirit voices found that about one in five said they had had such experiences for as long as they could remember, but the average age of their first experience was early adulthood, about 22⁴.

A childhood experience may be an important part of someone's personal journey, but it is not a qualification to offer sittings. The reverse matters just as much: people who remember no childhood experiences at all can still become interested in studying mediumship as adults.

What it does not establishEarly experiences do not guarantee later mediumistic ability, and their absence does not prevent anyone from beginning mediumship education.

7. Giving an impression that someone else recognises

This experience is the most directly relevant to evidential mediumship. Imagine you unexpectedly describe a detail about a person who has died, and someone present recognises it as meaningful. Within the Spiritualist tradition, an experience like this may encourage someone to explore whether they have mediumistic sensitivity. But the circumstances matter:

Was the information specific, or general enough to fit many people?
Could it have been known through conversation, observation, social media or another ordinary source?
Did the other person recognise it independently, or were they guided towards an interpretation?
Was the information noted down before any feedback was given?

One apparently accurate impression may be intriguing. It does not establish a consistent ability, and other explanations still need to be considered.

What it does not establishEven a recognised detail does not scientifically demonstrate communication with the deceased, or show that someone is ready to practise mediumship.

3. Why Signs of Sensitivity Are Not the Same as Evidential Mediumship

This distinction is at the heart of responsible mediumship education. In evidential mediumship, the practitioner seeks to communicate information attributed to a spirit communicator: a person understood, within the tradition, to be in the spirit world. The person receiving the sitting is the sitter. Rather than relying on a feeling that someone is present, the medium works towards information that may allow the sitter to recognise a particular individual, such as their personality, relationships, memories, habits and shared experiences. The Spiritualists' National Union describes the purpose of mediumship as offering evidence of survival, not predicting the future or giving advice³.

It helps to see that a personal experience and an evidential sitting raise four different questions. They are not stages that follow automatically from one another.

The experienceWhat did I actually perceive, and in what circumstances?
The interpretationWhat meaning do I, or my tradition, give it?
The practiceCan I communicate specific, connected information to another person, with care?
The recognitionWhat does the sitter independently recognise, and what remains uncertain?

Consider three different situations:

A personal experience

Someone dreams of their grandmother who has died and wakes feeling they have been together. It may be deeply meaningful, but no evidential communication with a sitter has taken place.

A psychic impression

Someone has a strong impression about a friend's present circumstances, and the friend confirms it. Some traditions call this psychic awareness. It does not concern a person who has died.

An evidential sitting

A student, with a consenting sitter, describes a person who has died through their character, relationships and life. The sitter assesses what is accurate, uncertain or incorrect.

The third situation is what evidential mediumship training seeks to develop. Even here, recognition is not the same as scientific proof of where the information came from. The central difference is that mediumship development asks a person to move beyond private experience into a disciplined practice involving another human being, with all the responsibility that brings.

4. What Does Research Tell Us About These Experiences?

Unusual experiences are not limited to people who identify as mediums. Researchers in psychology, psychiatry, anthropology and bereavement studies have examined them for decades, and several findings are useful for anyone trying to understand their own experiences.

Experiences of the deceased are common in grief. A major interdisciplinary review in Schizophrenia Bulletin found that, across several studies, between 47% and 82% of bereaved people reported at least one experience of a person who had died, most often a sense of their presence. The authors described these experiences as common, usually comforting, and in the great majority of cases benign, while noting that a minority find them distressing, and that culture shapes how they are understood¹.

Some experiences have recognised sleep-related explanations. In sleep paralysis, a person feels awake but unable to move while falling asleep or waking, and may sense that someone is in the room. Hallucinations can also occur just as people fall asleep or wake up^2,6. These experiences can be vivid and frightening, and they are one reason not to interpret every unusual sensation as spirit contact.

Mediums tend to be deeply absorbed, not unwell. A Durham University study of Spiritualist mediums who report hearing spirit voices found they scored much higher than the general population on absorption, the tendency to become fully immersed in thoughts, imagery or experience. Most had not encountered Spiritualism before their first experiences⁴. A UK survey found mediums reported higher psychological wellbeing and lower distress than non-medium Spiritualists⁵, and a large US study found that people reporting mediumship experiences had somewhat higher dissociation scores, with group averages below the threshold associated with pathology, though some individuals in both groups scored above it⁷.

Research on mediumship itself remains debated. Some controlled studies report information rated as more accurate than chance would predict^8,9. Others have found no such effect, and critics have raised questions about design, scoring and blinding¹⁰. Whether communication with people who have died occurs remains scientifically unresolved.

None of this research shows that these experiences come from spirits, and none of it shows they do not. Nor does it show that the people reporting them have mediumistic ability. What it does show is important: experiences that people interpret spiritually are a recognisable part of human life, they are usually not a sign of illness, and they deserve careful, respectful consideration.

There is value in keeping three things separate: the experience itself, the spiritual meaning given to it, and the evidence available for a particular explanation. Respecting personal experience does not require abandoning critical judgement.

5. Can Someone Be Sensitive Without Being a Medium?

Yes. Within the language of Spiritualist teaching, someone may describe themselves as spiritually or psychically sensitive without practising mediumship. They may be drawn to meditation, dreams, intuitive awareness or symbolism without any wish to communicate with people who have died.

Psychic awareness and mediumship are related in many teaching traditions, but they are not identical. A psychic impression usually concerns a living person or their circumstances. Mediumship, in the Spiritualist sense, concerns communication attributed to someone who has died. Our guide What Is Mediumship? explores this difference further. Someone may explore both, or may find their interest belongs more naturally to one.

There is no requirement for every spiritually curious person to become a medium. Nor should anyone feel pressured to develop an ability simply because they have had experiences they cannot explain.

6. Do You Need to See or Hear Spirits to Become a Medium?

No. One of the most common misconceptions about mediumship is that a medium must see spirits standing in a room, or hear voices as clearly as ordinary conversation. In mental mediumship, practitioners commonly describe impressions occurring inwardly: mental images, words, sensations, feelings or intuitive knowing. In the Durham study, most mediums described hearing spirit voices mainly inside their head rather than outside it⁴.

For a student, the important question is not whether an impression feels dramatic. It is whether they can learn to notice it carefully, distinguish perception from interpretation, and communicate responsibly. A subtle impression is not less useful because it is quiet, and a dramatic experience is not more accurate because it is intense.

The work is not about collecting extraordinary sensations. It is about developing understanding and discernment.

7. How Can You Explore Your Experiences Responsibly?

If you have had unusual experiences and would like to understand them, there is no need to decide straight away that they are spiritual communications. A thoughtful beginning is to become more familiar with what you actually experience.

Keep an honest record

A private notebook of dreams, impressions and moments that feel significant can be valuable, if it is kept carefully:

Write down what occurred before interpreting it, and before learning whether anything turned out to be accurate.
Note the circumstances: were you awake, falling asleep or just waking? Grieving, tired, unwell or emotionally overwhelmed?
Note whether you had recently been thinking about the person or subject involved.
Record the impressions that went nowhere as well as the ones that seemed meaningful.

These observations do not invalidate an experience. They preserve its context, and over time they show you far more than memory alone can.

Choose structured practice over forcing experiences

If you choose to explore the teachings of mediumship, practices such as sitting in the power, meditation, guided development exercises and discussion with experienced teachers offer a more structured starting point. Within Spiritualist development, sitting in the power is traditionally used to cultivate stillness, spiritual awareness and familiarity with one's own inner state. It is not an exercise in forcing unusual experiences, and not every sensation during practice should be read as spirit contact.

Be careful who interprets your experiences for you

A good signA teacher who listens to your experiences with respect, offers more than one way of understanding them, asks about your wellbeing, and teaches you to test impressions through careful practice and feedback.

Be cautiousAnyone who tells you that you are definitely a medium on the strength of signs alone, warns that something bad will happen if you do not develop your “gift”, or sells paid “activations” and quick certification.

Responsible exploration also means being comfortable with uncertainty. An experience does not need an immediate explanation, and there is real value in observing something without rushing to name it.

8. When Should You Speak to a Health Professional?

Not every unusual experience indicates a health problem. As bereavement research shows, experiences involving a loved one who has died are common and often comforting¹. Some experiences, however, deserve appropriate attention. Consider speaking to a doctor or qualified mental-health professional if:

experiences are frightening, persistent, or increasingly hard to distinguish from everyday reality;
you repeatedly hear voices that are distressing, critical or tell you what to do;
your sleep, work, relationships or daily life are being affected;
experiences began suddenly, follow an illness, injury or new medication, or come with confusion;
grief feels unbearable or is not easing over time.

Seek urgent help if you, or someone with you, hears voices urging harm to themselves or others, or becomes suddenly confused or very agitated⁶. In India, Tele-MANAS offers free 24-hour mental-health support on 14416, in many Indian languages¹¹; elsewhere, contact your local emergency services or doctor.

Seeking support does not require anyone to abandon their spiritual beliefs. A responsible spiritual teacher respects the limits of their role, and should never encourage a student to avoid healthcare because an experience has been labelled a spiritual awakening or a sign of mediumship. Our Ethics & Safety page sets out how we approach this.

9. What Actually Matters in Mediumship Development?

A person's early experiences may explain why they become interested in mediumship. They do not tell us how that person will develop as a student. Within evidential mediumship training, several qualities matter far more than whether someone has experienced a particular sign:

DiscernmentCan the student recognise the difference between an impression and their interpretation of it?

ClarityCan they describe information without adding details that were not perceived?

Evidential responsibilityCan they work towards specific, connected information, and accept it when the sitter does not recognise something?

Openness to feedbackCan they acknowledge mistakes and uncertainty without pressuring the sitter to agree?

Ethical awarenessDo they understand consent, confidentiality, grief and the responsibility of speaking to another person about someone they loved?

CommitmentAre they prepared to practise, reflect and keep learning, knowing that progress varies from person to person?

These are not tests of whether communication with spirit has been scientifically established. They are qualities that can be taught, observed and discussed in a responsible learning environment, and our article Can Mediumship Be Learned? looks at how. They remind us that, in its evidential form, mediumship is not simply an experience someone has. It is a practice that carries responsibility towards another person.

10. How We Approach Sensitivity and Development at The School of Mediumship

People arrive at The School of Mediumship, established by Soul Consciousness Lab®, with very different experiences. Some have explored spiritual awareness for years. Others have encountered something unexpected and are trying to understand it. Many arrive with genuine curiosity and no unusual experiences at all.

No signs required: we do not expect students to arrive with a history of unusual experiences, or to demonstrate a particular ability before beginning foundational study.
A conversation first: every applicant has a clarity conversation before enrolment, about their experiences, expectations and readiness.
Structured practice: Evidential Mediumship Level 1 introduces the discipline through teaching, practical exercises, supervised sittings and constructive feedback, over six residential days near Bengaluru.
What students learn: to explore their impressions, understand the difference between psychic and mediumistic awareness, develop recognisable evidence, and communicate with sensitivity and responsibility.
Close guidance: Dr. Rashhi Sharma and Prabhat Sharma teach throughout, with no more than twelve students, so each person can be observed and guided individually.

Our emphasis is not on convincing students that every experience is communication from spirit. It is on providing a responsible environment in which they can explore the practice, ask questions, receive honest feedback, and understand both its possibilities and its limits. Training provides a foundation for continued development; it cannot promise mediumistic experiences, evidential results or readiness to practise professionally.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the first signs that you might be a medium?

People often associate vivid dreams, a sense of presence, sudden inner impressions or experiences involving loved ones who have died with mediumistic sensitivity. None of these is a reliable sign of mediumship. They may inspire an interest in learning, but evidential mediumship is a practice developed through training, supervised sittings and honest feedback.

Is sensing a deceased loved one a sign of mediumship?

It may be understood spiritually by the person who experiences it, but it does not by itself demonstrate mediumistic ability. Research shows that sensing a loved one who has died is common in bereavement, reported by around half or more of bereaved people in several studies, most of whom do not identify as mediums.

Does having prophetic dreams mean I am a medium?

Not necessarily. Dreams that seem to anticipate later events can be striking, but they do not establish communication with people who have died. Predicting events is not the purpose of evidential mediumship, which focuses on recognisable information about a person who has died.

Can I be a medium if I have never seen a spirit?

In mental mediumship, communication is usually described as inward impressions, such as images, words, feelings or knowing, rather than visible apparitions. Seeing a spirit is not a requirement for beginning mediumship education, and no course can guarantee a particular ability or outcome.

Is being an empath the same as being a medium?

No. Empathy is sensitivity to other people's emotions and experiences. Mediumship, in the Spiritualist sense, concerns information attributed to a person who has died. Someone may describe both capacities, but they are not interchangeable.

Can I learn mediumship without having had any unusual experiences?

Yes. You can begin studying mediumship without childhood experiences, visions or a sense of presence. How a student develops varies from person to person, and training cannot guarantee a particular result.

Can a test or quiz tell me whether I am a medium?

No. There is no scientifically validated checklist or online quiz that can establish mediumistic ability. Within training, teachers observe practical work: how specific the information is, how sitters respond, and how responsibly the student communicates. That concerns the student's practice, not scientific proof of spirit communication.

Will my sensitivity become a problem if I do not develop it?

There is no evidence that leaving experiences undeveloped causes harm, and you are under no obligation to train. Be cautious of anyone who uses fear to encourage you to pay for development. If experiences are distressing or disrupting your life, speak to a doctor or mental-health professional.

Does mediumship run in families?

Some families and traditions believe it does, and people often grow up hearing stories of a grandparent who “knew things”. There is no established scientific evidence that mediumship is inherited. A family's beliefs do shape how children understand and talk about their experiences.

What should I do if my experiences frighten me?

Try to stay grounded: keep regular sleep, talk to someone you trust, and avoid exercises intended to open or intensify experiences. If experiences are persistent, distressing or affecting daily life, speak to a doctor or mental-health professional. In India, Tele-MANAS offers free 24-hour support on 14416.

A More Useful Question Than “Am I a Medium?”

If you have experienced something unusual, you do not have to dismiss it simply because its explanation is uncertain. You can value a dream, a sense of presence or a moment of deep connection without needing it to prove anything. Equally, you do not have to call yourself a medium because an experience seems to match something you have read online.

Personal experiences may awaken curiosity, encourage deeper spiritual inquiry, or lead someone to study mediumship seriously. But the discipline of evidential mediumship asks for more: attention to what is perceived, care in how it is communicated, respect for what the sitter recognises, and honesty about what remains unknown.

Perhaps the more useful question is not “Am I a medium?” but “What have I experienced, how do I understand it, and what would responsible exploration involve?”

That question leaves room for spiritual understanding, personal meaning and thoughtful inquiry, without requiring certainty where certainty has not been established.

About the authors

Dr. Rashhi Sharma, PhD
Founder and Lead Trainer of The School of Mediumship. She studied mediumship with Suzanne Giesemann in the United States and in person at Arthur Findlay College and The College of Psychic Studies in the United Kingdom. Full profile
Prabhat Sharma
Trainer at The School of Mediumship. He studied mediumship in person at Arthur Findlay College and The College of Psychic Studies in the United Kingdom, and co-teaches every day of Level 1. Full profile

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References

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Spiritualists' National Union. Mediumship: the traditional understanding and purpose of mediumship.
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NHS. Hallucinations and hearing voices: causes, and when to get urgent help.
Wahbeh, H. and Radin, D. (2018). People reporting experiences of mediumship have higher dissociation symptom scores than non-mediums, but below thresholds for pathological dissociation. F1000Research, 6, 1416. doi:10.12688/f1000research.12019.3
Kelly, E. W. and Arcangel, D. (2011). An investigation of mediums who claim to give information about deceased persons. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 199(1), 11–17.
Beischel, J., Boccuzzi, M., Biuso, M. and Rock, A. J. (2015). Anomalous information reception by research mediums under blinded conditions II: replication and extension. EXPLORE, 11(2), 136–142.
O'Keeffe, C. and Wiseman, R. (2005). Testing alleged mediumship: methods and results. British Journal of Psychology, 96(2), 165–179.
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Signs of MediumshipSpiritual SensitivityEvidential MediumshipMediumship DevelopmentPsychic Awareness

The School of Mediumship™

The School of Mediumship™ is a dedicated educational initiative of Soul Consciousness Lab®, founded by Dr. Rashhi Sharma. Led by Dr. Rashhi Sharma and Prabhat Sharma, the School offers structured training in evidential mediumship, with an emphasis on practice, observation, evidence and ethical responsibility.