Two questions that I have often been asked by friends and curious individuals are:

What led you to study and research on psychic and paranormal phenomena?

What is the most incredible phenomenon you have witnessed or experienced? Why?

The first question is easy to answer. The second question, however, is quite difficult, because there are so many incredible things I have experienced.

What led me to the study of what science calls "anomalous phenomena" was really intellectual curiosity. I have a very inquisitive and analytical mind. I want to know why or how certain things exist or happen.

It was several years after my graduation from the Asian Institute of Management in 1972, where I obtained my Master in Business Management degree, that I got interested in the growing but controversial practice of faith healing in the Philippines. It was faith healers' reputed ability or skill to treat and operate on the bodies of patients using only their bare hands.

The Philippine medical establishment considered the practice completely fraudulent and a product of sleight-of-hand. The government at one time even arrested and jailed its most prominent practitioner, Tony Agpaoa, for practicing medicine without a license. The Catholic Church also condemned the practice as the work of the devil.

Yet the sensational phenomenon continued to gain popularity in the 1980s, even attracting busloads of patients from the Western countries, especially from the United States and Europe.

A number of so-called medical "investigators" and researchers from the West came over to observe them and declared them completely fraudulent and merely doing trickery and deception. Some even wrote books denouncing the practice.

So, I got curious and did my own investigation. I carefully observed and interviewed a total of 15 or so faith healers and psychic surgeons in their clinics and even accompanied three of them in their healing abroad.

I did not find any of them to be cheating. I concluded that some psychic surgeries were real. How to prove this to a highly skeptical audience is, however, a difficult task. Despite the fact that I had medical proof of their reality, such as x-rays, ultrasound, pathological examination, and laboratory tests from a reputable hospital, no one believed me, except one, namely, President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.

I kept my long conversation in 1982 with President Marcos in Malacañang confidential at his request until he died in 1989. After his death, I felt I was no longer bound by the confidentiality request.
Besides, I felt there was nothing wrong about revealing the President's very enlightened views and curiosity about faith healing in particular and psychic phenomena in general. He told me about his personal experiences in clairvoyance and precognition. He had a photographic memory. He was quoting from my books after reading them only once.

My conclusion after long years of investigation of the subject is that psychic surgery is not completely fraudulent in at least the four or five cases where I have medical proof. The rest I cannot tell. I did not find any healer to be faking the operations, except one faith healer in Cotabato. His "psychic" surgery was painful and left an ugly one-inch scar on my left chest.

I also found that most skeptics of psychic surgery have never bothered to study or observe the healers in action. They just concluded these healers are fake because what they are doing defies scientific explanation are against all laws of physics, biology, and physiology. So, they must be fakes.

From faith healing and psychic surgery, my interest expanded to studying other phenomena like ghosts, spirit communication, nature spirits, near death experiences, and even U.F.O.s.
Next week, I shall answer the more difficult question of what I consider the most incredible paranormal or supernatural phenomena I have either witnessed or experienced.

Note: For inquiries about online seminars, available books, consultancy, and suggestions, text 0998-988-6292 or email jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com.