[Haley Joel Osment: "I see dead
people."]

They say there are just five senses, but
that’s not true. There are six: sight,
sound, smell, touch, taste, and seeing
dead people.

But wait: isn’t seeing still seeing, even
if it’s seeing what nobody else can
see? And why couldn’t Bruce Willis
apply his own five senses and realize
he was a ghost when he couldn’t see,
hear, smell, taste or touch himself?
Wouldn’t that be a form of blindness,
rather than seeing?

Okay, it’s only a movie (The Sixth
Sense, 1999). And I should say that I
really enjoy all stories about psychic
phenomena to some degree. But I’m
pretty skeptical of real world ESP.
Folks who claim to have some “power”
that the rest of us don’t have seem oh
so 15th century.

As a teacher, I’ve encountered
students who claim to be psychic who
still raise their hands and ask
questions or who still somehow
manage to fail final exams. Uncanny!

I do believe in intuition and I recognize
that some folks are more tuned into
their senses than others. But if there
were a sixth sense, everyone would
know about it and there would be no
debating whatsoever. There would be
schools in refining it. The government
would have a branch of ESP warriors
that would put Phillip K. Dick novels to
shame. And the sense would already
be widely exploited by pornographers,
prostitutes, and movie moguls, whose
business it is to turn human sensations
into cheap thrills for profit.

[Horny Joel Osment: "I see >sexy<
people!"]

Also, given the likelihood of handicaps
in any given population, we would have
our share of notorious blind seers, deaf
hearers, noseless smellers, tasteless
tasters and insensitive feelers. Do you
know any? Do they have their own 900
line?

“Sensing” is a matter of interpretation.
Have you ever eaten a meal that
tasted like cardboard to you and like
manna to someone else? Same thing
goes with any sixth sense. One
person’s ghost is another person’s
imaginary friend. This is how working
psychics make their bread and butter:
on uncertainty and the degree to which
phenomena are open to interpretation.

While I will agree that there is always
more than meets the eye and that the
human sensorium only gives us a
partial view of “reality,” psychic
phenomena usually isn’t some scary
power, but a wish-fulfillment. I guess
this is obvious. Maybe you even
>knew< that I was going to say that....

Nevertheless, there >are< two
psychological definitions of a sixth
sense that I accept: proprioception
and synesthesia.

"Proprioception" is actually discussed
in the poetry textbook I use in my
classes, as an example of the "sixth
sense." It's actually scientific.
Proprioception is a sort of peripheral
"vision" of the body. It's all about body
orientation; a sense of balance and
movement that you don't always
consciously recognize or respond to.
It's the autonomic sense, the one
responsible for "feeling" things like, say
the knucklebones popping in your
fingers or the muscles tightening in
their sleeves of flesh. Proprioception is
what state troopers test when they
make drunks close their eyes and
touch their nose with their fingers.

Think of phantom limb phenomena --
that sensation we all get after we lose
our leg in a freak boating accident.
We've all been there. We feel our legs
moving even when they're no longer
attached at the hip! That's
proprioception at work.

Or how about when your arm "falls
asleep" as if it had a mind of its own? It
buzzes like crazy, sure, but did you
ever stop to consider all those
nightmares that sleeping arm has
about barbells and immunization
shots? Proprioception again. You can't
pronounce it but you've got it.

Some scientists claim the sixth sense
is not so much an "extra" sense as it is
a combination of what we already
have: a "synesthesia." Like anesthesia
(which means a lack of sensation) this
refers to an anomalous brain disorder
where the lobes gets their wires
crossed and the senses seemingly
synthesize, or fuse together. You smell
numbers. Rock songs taste like
barbecue sandwiches. You can
actually feel your lover's voice in your
eardrum, gentle as a fleshy cotton
swab....

Wait. That's the sickth sense.

[Staley Joke Osment: "I hear dead
people...and they're groaning!"]

In any case, these extra sensory
perceptions are really what fiction
writers and poets are after: ways of
describing unreal phenomena that both
feel as natural as the muscles under
your skin and yet also bring your
senses to life in a new way. You don't
need six of them to experience it.
Writers use metaphoric language,
"synthesizing" sensory adjectives with
nouns they don't rightfully belong with,
like "sharp cheese" or "bitter memory."
The sixth sense, whether it exists as a
mental power or not, is always already
housed in the imagination. And the
imagination often doesn't need to
make >any< sense at all.

[Scaley Joe Osmental: "I see living
dead people. And they taste like
chicken!"]