# Psychometry

Source: https://spiritfold.com/Psychometry  
Published by the Australian Spiritual Alliance on Spiritfold, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

**Psychometry**, also called **object reading**, is the practice of receiving facts or impressions about a person or thing through contact with an object connected with them.[1] The reader usually holds the object in their hand.[2] Spiritualists class it as a form of mental [mediumship](https://spiritfold.com/Mediumship),[3] and it is a familiar exercise in Spiritualist development classes and beginners' courses.[4][5]

## Description

Rings, photographs and similar personal items are often used.[1] Mediums who practise it usually hold a small object, such as a letter, a watch or a piece of clothing, in the hand or against the forehead, and describe the pictures or sensations that follow.[6] Sometimes the presence of the person themselves is said to bring images or visions to the psychometrist's mind. A lowered state of consciousness, sometimes close to trance, is thought to improve a reading.[1]

The *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology* lists psychometry among the forms that clairvoyance may take.[7]

### How readings are described

Mary Rose Barrington, writing in the *Psi Encyclopedia* of the Society for Psychical Research (London), calls the item a "link object": something connected with the person, place or event the reader wants to learn about. She describes several ways of working. Some psychometrists talk mainly about the object itself and the places it has been, while others concentrate on the people who owned it, their characters and the main events of their lives. Some start with the last person who handled the object and work back through earlier owners; others go straight to the most significant event connected with it. In a face-to-face reading the reader may first hold the client's hand. Barrington adds that mediums often use link objects, especially in "proxy" sittings held for someone who is not present.[8]

In Barrington's view psychometry is best understood as a technique that helps a psychic focus, in the same way that crystal balls, cards or pendulums are used, rather than as a separate kind of psychic ability.[8]

## Scope

### What it includes

- Holding or touching an object to receive impressions about its owner or history[1][2]
- Impressions said to arise from the presence of a person[1]

### What it is not

- Britannica describes psychometric visions as usually too haphazard to be of much practical use.[1]
- Psychometry is counted as a form of clairvoyance, and Britannica says parapsychology research has yet to give conclusive support for clairvoyance.[7][9]

### Research

The parapsychology institute of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands was one of the first to experiment with psychometry for finding lost people or objects and for solving crimes.[1] Britannica notes more generally that people who claim extrasensory abilities are sometimes used by teams searching for missing people or things, although many scientists continue to doubt that such abilities exist.[10]

A 2024 online survey by Christine Simmonds-Moore of the University of West Georgia, in the United States, explored how reported psychometry experiences relate to synaesthesia and to autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), the tingling some people feel in response to sounds such as whispering. Of 164 adults who completed it, people reporting psychometry experiences had higher ASMR scores than people who did not report them, but synaesthesia was not significantly linked with psychometry. Participants described their experiences as flashes of imagery and intense feelings, often felt as if from another person's point of view. The author noted that participants chose to take part online, so the sample was not random.[11]

## Traditions and lineage

### Joseph Rhodes Buchanan

The word *psychometry*, "measuring of the soul", was coined in 1842 by Joseph Rhodes Buchanan (1814–1899), an American professor of psychology and medical science who became dean of the Eclectic Medical Institute in Covington, Kentucky. According to the *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology*, his experiments began after Bishop Leonidas Polk told him he could recognise brass by touch in the dark. Buchanan then found that medical students could register distinct impressions from medicines held in their hands; to rule out thought transference, the substances were wrapped in paper parcels and mixed up.[12]

Buchanan came to believe that all things, including the human body, give off emanations that some sensitive people can feel and interpret. He regarded psychometry as a human faculty that did not involve spirits, although he was himself a Spiritualist. His *Manual of Psychometry* was published in Boston in 1889.[12]

### William Denton

William Denton (1823–1883), an English-born professor of geology in Boston, began researching psychometry to test Buchanan's experiments. His sister, Anna Denton Cridge, was said to describe the character and appearance of letter-writers from letters she held, and Denton applied her readings to geological specimens. He set out his findings in *The Soul of Things* (1863).[13] Barrington's account adds that it was Denton's wife, Elizabeth, who first drew his attention to Buchanan's writings, and that he experimented with her as well as with his sister. Like Buchanan, Denton came to think that every particle of matter carries a record of its past surroundings.[8]

### Eugène Osty and the Institut Métapsychique International

In France, the physician Eugène Osty studied professional psychometrists over many years, working most often with a woman named Jeanne Morel, and later left medical practice to direct the Institut Métapsychique International (IMI). His book on this research was published in English in 1923 as *Supernormal Faculties in Man*. Barrington reports that the Polish clairvoyant Stefan Ossowiecki was among the psychics tested by IMI researchers using objects whose history was known to the experimenters. She also notes that the French psychometrists Osty studied would say when the person linked to an object had died, but, unlike many English and American mediums, did not try to contact them.[8]

### Later research

The word comes from the Greek *psyche* (soul) and *metron* (measure). Leading figures in the Society for Psychical Research and its American counterpart, among them Edmund Gurney and William James, later took up the subject. Early psychical researchers mostly tested the claims of self-described mediums, and studies using "token" objects in psychic research continued through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Simmonds-Moore notes that the subject was then relatively neglected until a recent revival of academic interest.[11]

## Context

### Within Spiritualism

Psychometry is practised in Spiritualism as a form of mediumship, although not every psychometrist treats it as spirit contact. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States lists it among the "phenomena of Spiritualism"[14] and classes it as mental mediumship.[3] The *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology* says Buchanan's term passed into Spiritualist vocabulary; many Spiritualist psychometrists have said spirits do the reading through them, while other psychics have seen it as a personal gift, and it remains popular in both psychic and Spiritualist circles.[6] Gillen treated it as a kind of clairvoyance and counted [flower reading](https://spiritfold.com/Flower_readings) as psychometry.[4]

Spiritualist teachers draw a clear line between psychic work and mediumship, and psychometry sits on that line. The anthropologist Matt Tomlinson, who studied Spiritualists in Canberra, reports that they describe psychic work as two minds communicating by telepathy, while mediumship needs contact with people in the spirit world; a lesson he heard again and again was that "all mediums are psychic but not all psychics are mediums". A British medium teaching a Canberra workshop told students to learn to sense whether an impression was coming from the spirit world or from the person sitting in front of them.[15] The Spiritualists' National Union in Britain says mediumship exists to show that people survive death; it is not meant for forecasting, advising or counselling.[16]

### In Australian Spiritualism

Psychometry has a long history in Australian Spiritualist churches, in Ipswich and Sydney (described in the next section) and in other states. A history of St John's Spiritual Church in Adelaide says two of its founders began a psychometry class in about 1915;[17] the Brisbane Spiritual Church advertised a psychometry evening in 1933;[18] and Perth's Spiritualist churches of the 1930s offered talks on psychometry.[19] Today the Victorian Spiritualists' Union's beginners' course includes psychometry,[5] and the Spiritual Mission of Noarlunga includes it in its Friday development programme.[20]

### A Spiritualist perspective

Psychometry is often one of the first exercises students meet in a Spiritualist circle, and it has real value as a way of learning to notice and describe impressions. A Spiritualist teacher would be clear, though, about what it can and cannot show. Impressions about an object or its living owner are psychic rather than mediumistic: they may be interesting, even accurate, but they are not evidence of survival unless they lead to someone in the spirit world whom the recipient can recognise. In a class, the object is best taken from someone the reader does not know, and the owner should feel free to say plainly what fits and what does not; that is how students learn to tell a real impression from a guess.

That honesty matters for students and for the public alike. A psychometry reading should be offered for what it is, without exaggerated claims, predictions or advice about health, money or relationships. Personal belongings such as rings and photographs often carry deep feeling, especially when they once belonged to someone who has died, so they should be handled with respect and returned with care. If a fee is charged for a private reading, it should be stated plainly at the start.

## Psychometry in Australia

### In the colonial and early 20th-century press

Australian newspapers digitised by the National Library of Australia's Trove service show the word in use from at least the late 1870s, though not always in the sense used today. In December 1879 *The Sydney Morning Herald* headed its reports of a visiting American performer, A. E. Rice, "Exhibition of psychometry". Rice found objects that members of the audience were thinking about, after pressing the person's hand against his forehead, and the paper treated the display as mind reading.[21]

By the early 20th century psychometry was being presented at Spiritualist meetings. In January 1910 the *Queensland Times* reported a lecture on psychometry given in Ipswich under the auspices of a local Spiritualist society, at which tests were also given. According to the report, the lecturer said psychometry was not clairvoyance but a sense conveyed by feeling, or "magnetism", when an object was held in the hand.[22]

Newspapers also carried claims that psychometry could find underground water for pastoralists. In 1911 a reader of the Perth *Western Mail* asked about a report in the *Pastoralists' Review* that a psychometrist had been used to locate water on a property near Isisford. The paper's answer said it had no further information and cautioned that, while a few people may have unexplained abilities, many more are skilled at fooling others.[23] In 1922 a New South Wales paper reprinted a Queensland landholder's account of a psychometrist, working from an office in Brisbane, who had marked bore sites on maps of his property near Isisford and predicted the depths at which water would be found; the landholder said the predictions proved correct.[24]

### In Spiritualist churches

Psychometry readings were a regular part of Spiritualist practice in Sydney in the late 1970s, according to Paul Gillen's study of a Sydney church. Each meeting of an open development class he attended ended with a psychometry test: members tried to "read" an object, more often a personal item such as jewellery or keys than a flower, and care was taken that the reader didn't know whose it was.[4] Gillen also counted the church's flower readings, its central form of divination, as psychometry. Spiritualists explained that only the person wanting the reading should touch the flower, because another person's "vibrations" could interfere with it.[4] See [Flower readings](https://spiritfold.com/Flower_readings).

### Law

Section 40 of South Australia's *Summary Offences Act 1953* makes it an offence for a person, intending to defraud, to claim to act as a spiritualist or medium, or to claim to use telepathy, clairvoyance or similar powers. The maximum penalty is a $10,000 fine or two years' imprisonment.[25] The section does not name psychometry, which the *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology* counts as a form of clairvoyance, and the offence requires an intent to defraud.[25][7]

## Safety and good practice

Scamwatch, the scam information website of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), warns that scammers posing as psychics or clairvoyants may contact people by post, email, phone or in person, predicting good fortune or claiming the person is in trouble, and then offering a solution. It advises never to send money, credit card details or other personal details to such people. If you choose to use a psychic or clairvoyant, it advises finding out the total cost and exactly what you'll receive, and asking about any conditions and ongoing or hidden costs before going ahead.[26] Spiritualist codes of conduct set similar standards from the practitioner's side. The NSAC Code of Ethics, which applies to its mediums and teachers, asks them to discuss fees and financial arrangements at the outset, to represent facts truthfully, to make only realistic statements about what mediumship can do, not to exploit the trust or dependency of others, and to avoid statements likely to play on people's fears or emotions. It also asks that advertisements for development classes state their purpose and describe clearly what students will experience.[27]

## Related modalities

- [Clairvoyance](https://spiritfold.com/Clairvoyance)
- [Psychic reading](https://spiritfold.com/Psychic_reading)

## References

1. Britannica Editors. ["Psychometry"](https://www.britannica.com/topic/psychometry). *Encyclopaedia Britannica*. Most recently revised and updated by Laura Etheredge. Read from the Internet Archive copy of 9 November 2025 (accessed 11 October 2026).
2. ["Object Reading"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/object-reading). *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology* (Gale), via Encyclopedia.com (accessed 11 October 2026).
3. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. ["Mediumship"](https://nsac.org/mediumship/). NSAC, © 2026 (accessed 12 October 2026).
4. Gillen, Paul. *[The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology](https://figshare.mq.edu.au/articles/thesis/The_spiritualists_gnosis_and_ideology/19431146/1)*. PhD thesis, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, November 1981 (accessed 11 October 2026).
5. Victorian Spiritualists' Union. ["Courses"](https://www.vsu.org.au/courses) (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
6. ["Psychometry"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/psychometry). *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology*, 5th ed. (Gale, 2001), via Encyclopedia.com (accessed 12 October 2026).
7. ["Clairvoyance"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/clairvoyance). *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology* (Gale), via Encyclopedia.com (accessed 11 October 2026).
8. Barrington, Mary Rose. ["Psychometry"](https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/psychometry). *Psi Encyclopedia*. London: Society for Psychical Research, 2016; last updated 9 July 2026 (accessed 11 October 2026).
9. Britannica Editors. ["Clairvoyance"](https://www.britannica.com/topic/clairvoyance). *Encyclopaedia Britannica*. Read from the Internet Archive copy of 11 December 2025 (accessed 11 October 2026).
10. Britannica Editors. ["Extrasensory perception"](https://www.britannica.com/topic/extrasensory-perception). *Encyclopaedia Britannica*. Read from the Internet Archive copy of 27 December 2025 (accessed 11 October 2026).
11. Simmonds-Moore, Christine A. "Exploring the correlates and nature of subjective anomalous interactions with objects (psychometry): a mixed methods survey". *Frontiers in Psychology* 15 (2024): 1365144. [doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1365144](https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1365144). Full text read via [Europe PMC](https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC11404038) (accessed 11 October 2026).
12. ["Buchanan, Joseph Rhodes (1814–1899)"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/buchanan-joseph-rhodes-1814-1899). *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology* (Gale), via Encyclopedia.com (accessed 11 October 2026).
13. ["Denton, William (1823–1883)"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/denton-william-1823-1883). *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology* (Gale), via Encyclopedia.com (accessed 11 October 2026).
14. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. ["Spiritualism Explained"](https://nsac.org/spiritualism-explained/). NSAC, © 2026 (accessed 12 October 2026).
15. Tomlinson, Matt. *[Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience](https://doi.org/10.53288/0465.1.00)*. Earth: punctum books, 2024, pp. 40–41. Open access under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (accessed 12 October 2026).
16. Spiritualists' National Union. ["Mediumship"](https://snu.org.uk/about-us/about-spiritualism/mediumship/) (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
17. Clinch-Jones, Kate. [*If the Walls Could Talk: A Brief History of the Founders of St Johns Spiritual Church*](https://stjohnsspiritualchurch.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/St-Johns-History-Booklet-copy.pdf). Adelaide: St John's Spiritual Church Inc, May 2024, p. 7 (accessed 12 October 2026).
18. Classified Advertising. *The Courier-Mail* (Brisbane), 16 September 1933, p. 3. [Trove](https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article1119858), National Library of Australia (accessed 12 October 2026).
19. Museum of Perth. ["Isabella Jane Bell (1863–1950)"](https://museumofperth.com.au/isabella-jane-bell). Perth People (no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
20. Spiritual Mission of Noarlunga. ["Spiritual Development"](https://spiritualmissionofnoarlunga.org.au/spiritual-development/) (Friday programme; no date shown; accessed 12 October 2026).
21. "Exhibition of psychometry". *The Sydney Morning Herald*, 5 December 1879, p. 6. [Trove](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/28390591), National Library of Australia (accessed 11 October 2026).
22. "Lecture on psychometry". *Queensland Times* (Ipswich), 27 January 1910, p. 5. [Trove](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/112024234), National Library of Australia (accessed 11 October 2026). The digitised text is an uncorrected and partly garbled scan.
23. "Psychometry". *Western Mail* (Perth), 28 January 1911, p. 8. [Trove](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/38365986), National Library of Australia (accessed 11 October 2026).
24. "Water-finding by psychometry". *The Richmond River Express and Casino Kyogle Advertiser*, 27 October 1922, p. 4. [Trove](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/122598007), National Library of Australia (accessed 11 October 2026).
25. *Summary Offences Act 1953* (SA), section 40, "Acting as a spiritualist, medium etc with intent to defraud". Authorised version current from 1 July 2026. [South Australian Legislation](https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/lz?path=%2Fc%2Fa%2Fsummary%20offences%20act%201953) (accessed 11 October 2026).
26. ["Buying and selling scams"](https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/buying-and-selling-scams). Scamwatch, National Anti-Scam Centre, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Read from the Internet Archive copy of 8 September 2026 (accessed 11 October 2026).
27. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. [*NSAC Code of Ethics*](https://nsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/NSAC_Code_of_Ethics_18.pdf). Approved April 2018, adopted October 2018 (accessed 12 October 2026).

## Further reading

- Barrington, Mary Rose. ["Psychometry"](https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/psychometry). *Psi Encyclopedia*. Society for Psychical Research, 2016. Written from within psychical research.
- Britannica Editors. ["Psychometry"](https://www.britannica.com/topic/psychometry). *Encyclopaedia Britannica*.
- Simmonds-Moore, Christine A. ["Exploring the correlates and nature of subjective anomalous interactions with objects (psychometry): a mixed methods survey"](https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1365144). *Frontiers in Psychology*, 2024.
- ["Buchanan, Joseph Rhodes (1814–1899)"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/buchanan-joseph-rhodes-1814-1899). *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology*. Gale, via Encyclopedia.com.
- ["Denton, William (1823–1883)"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/denton-william-1823-1883). *Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology*. Gale, via Encyclopedia.com.