So you think you're psychic? Déjà vu, ESP and premonitions: Experts break down how to tell the difference.

Do you believe you can predict the future, read people’s minds or talk to the dead? You're not alone.

A growing number of young people are fascinated with the supernatural — including celebrities like Raven-Symoné and Busy Philipps, who claim to possess such abilities. It's why 25% of millennials (those between 25 and 40) routinely consult with fortune tellers for financial advice, according to the financial firm Empower, despite a regular stream of reports about psychic scammers.

Whether you believe in the supernatural or not, psychic experiences are surprisingly common, claims Scott Allan, a sought-after medium and podcaster who travels the world to help audiences connect with the afterlife.

"We're all psychic in some way," the former funeral director tells Yahoo Life, noting that criticism is par for the course in his line of work. “We all have our beliefs, and I'm not trying to change anyone else's.”

Hannah Carroll, a 19-year-old psychic famous for predicting pop culture events in 2022 (including Queen Elizabeth’s death, Harry Styles's and Beyonce’s respective albums and Rihanna’s baby) says we all have the power to fine-tune such gifts.

“Everyone has an intuition, whether it’s strong or not,” she tells Yahoo Life.

Indeed, it's impossible to deny the supernatural's impact on popular culture. But what does science say? Here’s what you need to know.

What are psychic and medium abilities?

Psychics are individuals who claim to perceive information outside of the known human senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch) with a sixth sense, commonly referred to as ESP (extra-sensory perception). Mediums, however, don't rely solely on knowing the past, present or future. Rather, their ability is to act as a conduit between this world and the spiritual.

More broadly, psychics claim to have varying levels of ESP that manifest through abilities like:

• Telepathy: Reading someone’s mind

• Clairvoyance: Seeing things that are hidden or far away

• Precognition: Knowing future events through gut feelings or with visions

• Retrocognition: Seeing past events

• Psychometry: Obtaining information about a person/object through physical contact

• Aura reading: Seeing fields of energy/light, called auras, around a person to gain information about their health, emotions or character.

Is there science behind any of it?

While numerous tests have attempted to prove the existence of the paranormal — the Ganzfeld experiment, triple-blind tests and those chronicled by Gary E. Schwartz in The AfterLife Experiments — none have pleased the scientific community, due to vague results.

“After 140 years of attempts, parapsychologists [those who study the paranormal] have never produced a demonstration a neutral scientist can reproduce,” James Alcock, professor of psychology at York University in Canada and a well-known skeptic of the paranormal, tells Yahoo Life. He says psychic abilities aren’t magical but rather our minds at work.

“Our brains automatically look for causal connections: 'What caused what?' It’s an important survival mechanism,” he says. This process begins in infancy, as we develop our sense of the world. “But when something happens and we can’t understand its cause, it produces an emotional response and we look for explanations, often after the fact.”

That can lead some to believe something supernatural occurred. Chris French, head of the anomalistic psychology research unit at the University of London, spent decades researching psychics. He's skeptical of their claims due to the “numerous ways we can be fooled by our own minds.”

“If psychics really could do the things they say they can do, it ought to be very easy to demonstrate their powers under controlled conditions," he says.

Intuition and 'gut instincts'

Intuition, commonly referred to as “gut instinct,” is knowledge that’s gained for the purpose of decision-making without any substantial evidence other than one's instinct.

French says intuition isn’t magic but rather our brains using past experiences, subconscious observations and learned patterns to make a quick judgment.

There are two types of intuitive thinking, he notes: System 1, which is fast and driven by emotions with no real conscious effort to compartmentalize (“gut feeling” decisions), and System 2, which is slower, unemotional and requires more effort (otherwise known as “reasoning,” he says).

In today's impulsive, fast-paced world, French says more people have relied heavily System 1 thinking to make spontaneous decisions, which isn't necessarily the smartest. “Sometimes we should trust our intuition, and sometimes we most definitely should not," he says.

Premonitions and predictions

Premonitions are strong feelings, or visions, that something is about to happen, even though the cause of the apprehension is unknown. Many examples have been reported throughout history, as some claimed they dreamed about 9/11 before it happened.

Though French says these situations are "purely coincidental," Carroll, who’s had several of her 2023 predictions come true already (Paris Hilton’s baby, for example) insists her abilities are genuine.

“I can understand how some people are skeptical,” she says. “Not everybody is going to believe in this.”

Alcock says it's common to connect feelings we have about real-life tragedies to those collected in our dreams, even if both scenarios are different, saying, "Our feelings get interpreted differently after the fact.”

What about déjà vu?

Déjà vu, a French term meaning “already seen,” describes an unsettling feeling of familiarity in a situation that you know is new. Some interpret it as a sign that they've predicted it before, or lived it in a past life.

A more plausible explanation, says Alcock, is that our subconscious recognizes something from our past through subtle triggers (sounds, smells, language or faces of strangers, etc.) and our brain mistakenly associates with to the present. "It's a big mystery to psychologists why this happens," he admits.

Adds French: “Under certain conditions, that sense of familiarity is triggered even though we do not consciously recognize the stimulus, resulting in déjà vu. It may be that, in fact, we have been exposed to the stimulus before, but the memory of it is very faint.”

Can you have ESP with family and friends?

There are many examples, Allan says, of people sensing a loved one is hurt even though they’re miles away, or that an uncle or aunt in another state is close to death. "We all have that to some level," he says.

Carroll, who at 9 says she predicted her grandmother’s death, says the vast majority of intuitive experiences begin with family and friends, mainly because they’re the ones we trust most.

“A lot of it starts with the things in your family — at least it did for me,” she says.

French has a more controversial take, arguing that most "tend to be associated with retrospective reports of childhood trauma — either emotional, physical or sexual — or perhaps simply a long period of childhood illness," which could create an emotional bond between parents and children that might feel like ESP.

“It has been argued that children who experience such trauma become fantasy prone, providing them with an escape from harsh reality,” he continues. “As adults, highly fantasy-prone people are more susceptible to hallucinations and false memories that might lead them to sincerely believe that they have had paranormal experiences when, in fact, they have not.”

Bottom line, says Allan, the most important thing is for skeptics to keep an open mind. "I don't know why I can do what I do, and there's no way for me to validate it," he says. "I think we need to stay humble about it. I don't need you to believe me. The ones who come to me appreciate it and I'm very grateful for that."

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