Tales of a telepath

"From day one I have felt she is in the water but further out than where they are searching. Recently, I felt like I was standing on the shore looking at an island across from me. Behind me was a white house or building, with a porch. It is more of a private residence. On my right is a rock formation. The rocks look dark, almost volcanic in nature, yet, it may be they are wet. The water is calm, almost as if it is somewhat sheltered or it may have been low tide. What attracted me is an empty row boat. Just sitting there ..." - Indian Hills resident Patricia Murphy on missing Alabama teen Natalie Holloway.

When a certain female Hollywood producer moved into the swank but rustic San Fernando Valley estate belonging to the late Steve McQueen, a string of strange, paranormal problems followed.

Patricia Murphy was called in to clean up.

The strange occurrences seemed to be centered on the hangar where McQueen had kept his collection of antique cars, a small room where he kept his movie memorabilia and a corral where he had kept some pet donkeys.

The new owner felt something was wrong, but it wasn't until she came home from the studio and found her poodle's mouth full of blood that she decided to act.

Murphy and a team of clairvoyants came into the house armed with holy water, candles and salt.

"You could feel this very heavy energy passing through the house," remembers Murphy.

"We had to go through every single room and under the cupboards to clear the place."

But Murphy's career as a clairvoyant and para-psychologist began long before scouring out the negative energy left over from the tragically short life of the quizzically tanned movie star.

"Everyone has these powers," insists Murphy, an Indian Hills resident who holds a doctorate in complementary medicine. "It isn't anyone's special privilege."

It started back in Massachusetts when she was 4 years old at a traditional Irish-Catholic wake.

"I decided I was going to go upstairs and see the woman who had died," she remembers.

When Murphy got upstairs, she found it a little odd that the woman who was supposedly dead was standing up and smelling the flowers around her casket.

"Then she began talking to me," says Murphy. "But it was kind of slowed down, like a broken tape recorder."

She was more curious than scared.

"I asked my mother about it," she says. "My mother knelt down, said a prayer and told me I had her gift.

"We never spoke about it again."

As her abilities defined themselves, she found herself seeing pictures - images in her mind around certain people.

She began to see images of illness.

"Cancer in the lungs looks like oatmeal to me, emphysema like tiny mothballs," she says.

Her visions started to become all too coincidental when a woman she had seen a vision of imminent death around died two days later after slipping into a diabetic coma.

"It shocked me so much I refused to do anything for a year," she says.

After coming to terms with her abilities, Murphy's spent the last 30 years splitting her time communicating with people and animals.

She helped teach Los Angeles police detectives to communicate with their dogs at crime scenes, worked with the FBI on missing persons cases and spoken to college classes on death and dying.

Now 77, Murphy is still active and is working on a series of novels.

"It's been an interesting career," she says, with a smile as sincere as it is disarming.

n Contact reporter Peter Thompson at pthompson@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1215.