Folklore: “One day, I was in a car crash and that was before cell phones. I had to let my person at home know that I had been in a car crash and that I wouldn’t be home but I was perfectly fine. I reached inside a very specific part of my brain and I was sending messages that I was in a car crash but I was perfectly fine. I was in a car crash but I’m perfectly fine. I arrived home probably about five or six hours later and the person said to me, ‘I know you were in a car crash, but I knew you were perfectly fine, so I didn’t worry.’”

Context: This story came from my mother who was 22 when this happened. She was coming back from a skiing trip in Washington State with a friend in an old Volkswagen bus and a drunk driver crashed into them. She tried to mentally send a message home because cell phones didn’t exist then. 

Interpretation: Telepathy appears across the world in many forms and still circulates today. Culturally, this reinforces a belief that emotionally close people can sense each other, especially in moments of crisis. It is similar to how we often view gut feelings and intuition as trustworthy knowledge. Here it was an intentional act that speaks to the folk belief in the power of the mind.