One month before I graduated college, everything changed.

My partner at the time had lost his brother, Spencer, to suicide six months earlier. One evening, while he sat in the living room, I was lying in my bedroom when I saw Spencer clearly in my mind, sitting in a hospital bed, blinking at me. I heard his voice, not with my physical ears but as a clear inner dialogue, say three times: ask him about the picture my mom sent.

I sat up. Looked toward my closet. Spencer was standing there, a full apparition, visible to my own eyes. I walked into the living room and asked my partner: “Hey, do you have a picture of your brother in a hospital bed?”

He stared at me. His mom had sent him that exact photo moments before I walked in. That week, it felt like the floodgates opened. I started having nightly visions. I started sensing the dead — hearing, feeling, seeing, knowing how they died. Vivid faces would flash before my eyes, people I'd never met, gone as quickly as they came. If I'm being honest, I thought I was losing my mind a little. Whatever this was, it wasn't going away.

At seven years old, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. My answer was Detective Olivia Benson from Law & Order: SVU. I remember saying I didn't want to be a police officer — I just wanted to be a detective. They told me you have to be a police officer first to become one. Turns out I didn't need the badge. I found my own way into the room.

In high school, I was drawn to a forensic science class taught by a retired law enforcement officer. When he asked if I wanted to go on undercover compliance checks with detectives, I said yes without hesitation. At sixteen, I was walking into gas stations alongside detectives, fascinated by a world I couldn't explain my pull toward.

By college, everyone expected me to go into marketing and business. I went into criminal justice instead. It was the first time I chose the pull over the plan.

Then Spencer happened. I couldn't explain what I'd seen, and I couldn't unsee it either. After graduating, I didn't do anything with the degree. I went the entrepreneurial route instead. I sold shampoo from my Instagram. I sold life insurance. I got into solar. Everything but what I went to school for. More than once, I questioned why I'd spent four years studying criminal justice at all. Then I moved to Florida, and the visions turned toward crime — not vague flashes, but crimes playing out in detail like film: the motive, the victim, the emotions of everyone involved. That's when the dots I couldn't have connected on my own connected themselves.

I've come to think of what I sense as breadcrumbs: specific, detailed, and directional. Information for your investigative team to follow, not a replacement for your instincts, training, or process, but another angle. Another set of senses working alongside yours.