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Natalee Holloway, Part Two (Calling All Spirits)

All big cases attract people who claim to be in touch with the supernatural, and this one was no exception. One of my favorites was the self-proclaimed psychic who traveled to Aruba in the wake of Natalee's vanishing, and, one night, had a dream, or vision, in which Natalee appeared to her with the intent of revealing what had happened the night of May 29-30, 2005. But the psychic was tired, and told Natalee to come back in the morning. As far as I know, Natalee never returned. Would you? The journey from the spirit world must be a tough one (or else many more spirits would make it), and to be told to get lost after you'd just trekked across the entire cosmos would be discouraging, I suppose.

An Internet psychic named Brian had three dreams about Natalee. The second involved her ending up in Colombia after having been sold to someone for 500 dollars. Dream Number Three had Natalee traveling to Columbia to meet a man named J.J. Good times, I guess, were had by all.

And then there was The Coffeepot Ghost. This was actually a website where, if memory serves, you could listen to recordings of various spirits dispensing information about Natalee's fate. I was a bit dubious about the validity of the claims they were making, so I went to my kitchen and consulted my own spirit guide, Toaster Oven. Toaster Oven firmly denied the Coffeepot allegations. Salad Spinner and George Foreman Grill had no light to shed on the matter, either.

And who could forget Shango and Simian? Shango and Simian were two entities who, while not spirits themselves, certainly had much information--possibly obtained via pipeline from the Great Beyond--to divulge concerning Natalee's whereabouts. The trouble was, all the information was disseminated in some sort of quasi-mystical code that was insanely boring to try to decipher, though some people gave it a valiant shot.

There were also two mediums, or "psychic detectives," who claimed that Natalee had staged-managed her own disappearance (in order to escape an abusive home environment), and was aided in this design by some kindly Arubans, but later died of a drug overdose and was buried and then re-buried on the island. The mediums further claimed that Natalee's mother, Beth Twitty, was well aware of Natalee's intent not to return home. That there was absolutely zero evidence that any of this was true seemed not to matter. (Although some Aruban officials, to their eternal discredit, took the mediums' claims seriously, or at least effected to do so.) The whole sordid episode was further enriched when the psychics got into an ugly squabble with an Aruban reporter whom they claimed had also harbored Natalee. A documentary of sorts was made featuring the two psychics, which fetched, on Youtube, a wide audience of those devoted to tinfoil millinery.

None of this ever helped to locate the missing young woman, and despite the entertainment value of some of it, must have caused considerable heartache to her loved ones.
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