Danita Minnis

Behind THE DELPHI BLOODLINE: Questions about ESP

                                                By
Donna Del Oro

            Sixty
percent of Americans, according to parapsychology studies cited in the book,
Psychic Awareness, claim to have had experiences they would call psychic. Those
experiences might be: Hunches about your or someone else’s future; physical
clues that alert you to danger or wrong decisions; intuitive feelings that
guide you correctly through life; and/or receiving information through physical
sensations, thoughts, visions or emotions. It could be a prickly sensation at
the back of your neck about a particular person, place or thing. Or a warm
feeling at the thought of a good decision. If you’ve experienced any of the
above, then you’re in touch with your psychic abilities.

            My heroine,
Athena Butler in THE DELPHI BLOODLINE, has already moved from “I know but I
don’t know how I know” psychic awareness, where most of us are at. Through her
gifted mother’s instruction and guidance, Athena—the modern-day descendant of
an ancient, psychically powerful bloodline of women—knows HOW and WHY she
knows. She’s a talented clairvoyant who sees visions and is able to access
information simply by touching a person. This clairvoyance might take the form
of reading that person’s thoughts or by seeing into that person’s past.

            While this
ability of hers has caused her to lose boyfriends—who resent her intrusion into
their privacy—her clairvoyance also alerts her to danger. When a handsome
stranger approaches her in a Reno hotel gallery, where she is painting dead
celebrities like Elvis and Frank Sinatra, Athena shakes his hand. Immediately,
visions of his dark, violent past assail her, warning her that he is an
impostor and even worse, that he means her harm.

            Thus begins
a threat that forces Athena to flee for her life. With the help of Kas Skoros,
a tall, dark-haired man who claims to be a Guardian of the Delphi bloodline,
they begin a journey of running, hiding and finally fighting back. As more
psychics all over the country continue to disappear, the FBI is stymied. What’s
happening to these psychics?  Why are
they disappearing?  Who’s kidnapping
them?  Athena’s mother believes the
mastermind has something to do with a White House dinner she attended months
before.

            The three
remaining descendants of the bloodline—Athena, her mother and Kas’s mother—are
the only ones who can uncover the truth behind these kidnappings.

            So what’s
the origin of such psychic abilities? Are these talents truly genetic, do they
run in families, as I suggest in my novel? 
Do they originate from an all-seeing God, as Athena’s mother believes?
Do they come from an omniscient spirit world? Another dimension as yet
unexplored by man, as Athena believes? Or are they simply physical, biochemical
reactions in the brain, as some neuroscientists suggest? Do brain waves play a
role, as some parapsychologists have studied?

            Sorry to
disappoint you, but experts have no definitive answers to those questions.
Theories abound and what I put forth in THE DELPHI BLOODLINE is just one
theory. There are many theories about psychic abilities, but no scientific
proof.  Not yet, anyway.

What the scientific experiments (and I include some of
these experiments in my novel) do prove is that these abilities exist in
varying degrees among all of us.  These
are human abilities, like innate skills in art and music. Some of us can strum
a few chords on a ukelele; others among us can write symphonies, like Beethoven
and Gershwin. Some of us can paint by numbers; others become Titian,
Michaelangelo and Da Vinci.