According to the editor of the Infomercial Marketing Report, the Psychic Friends Network brings in about $100 million per year. Its two top competitors gross $50 million and $40 million respectively. The business of being a psychic is a very profitable one - all the more reason, say skeptics, to doubt the reality of ESP and psychic phenomenon. And yet, people continue to believe - perhaps because their own experiences confirm the existence of powers beyond those of the "normal" senses. The problem is that many of these experiences are not the type that can be replicated in a laboratory. So many cases of psychic phenomenon are what is called "crisis telepathy", where a person who has never shown any history of psychic ability 'hears' a loved one calling to them, or sees them in a dream, then discovers that the person was actually in danger at the time. The following is one such experience.

In December, 1985, Cara Powers of Worcester, Massachusetts was just shy of 2 years old. Her mother reports that she was a precocious child who spoke early and was using complete sentence and carrying on regular conversations. One afternoon in late December, Cara suddenly started giggling for no apparent reason. Her mother asked what was so funny, and Cara responded that "Uncle Phil fell down in the snow." Since Uncle Phil lived about 40 miles away and hadn't seen the family in some months, Cara's mother dismissed the statement as one of those somewhat odd things that children come up with.

At home, however, she related the story to her husband who decided to check in with his brother, just in case. The news he received was startling. His older brother had uncharacteristically decided to take a few days off from work and head out to Vail, Colorado for a skiing holiday. The family had just received a phone call from a hospital in Vail. Forty-five year old Philip, who had appeared to be in excellent health, had suffered a heart attack while skiing. Phil himself stated that he'd felt the chest pains on his way up on the ski lift, but had decided that he'd be darned if he wasted the ski lift ticket. He'd collapsed at the bottom of the ski run - falling down in the snow, just as two year old Cara had seen.