Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts or just the plain unexplainable.

This week: The Plain Unexplainable

Right now in our pocket, hecklerspray's got two suckers, a half-eaten hamburger and four or five food stamps. Unless we were to put our contents on the table, there's really no way you could know that. Unless you were Natasha Demkina, a 19-year-old Russian girl who can reportedly see through things.

Now when we say 'see through things,' it's important to note we're not talking about useless info like the pocket contents we just splurbed on about – we're talking about a girl that seem pretty darn proficient at seeing your actual innards – intestines, skeletal structure, your beating heart… get the picture?

Natasha Demkina's mother claims her daughter seemed quite ordinary growing up. At the age of ten, however, all that changed. Natasha herself puts it best:

"I was at home with my mother and suddenly I had a vision. I could see inside my mother's body and I started telling her about the organs I could see. Now, I have to switch from my regular vision to what I call medical vision. For a fraction of a second, I see a colorful picture inside the person and then I start to analyse it."

Natasha started out as anyone with such an ability might – charging money for it. She began giving medical diagnosis for as much as half an average local worker's weekly pay, or 400 roubles. Word spread of her ability, and soon people around the world wanted to see for themselves.

The Discovery Channel, for instance, flew the girl to NY for a documentary on her. In it she was asked to diagnose several people who already knew their ailments. Those people generally claimed Natasha gave a valid reading. The test didn't convince many of the researchers working with the documentary. One such researcher said:

"[w]hen I saw her do her usual readings, I couldn't believe the discrepancy between what I was hearing and how impressed the individuals were… I thought they were going to walk away saying it was embarrassing, but time and again, they said it was amazing. Before each reading, I asked the people what was the main medical problem and Natasha never got one of those right."

The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) was also called in by the Discovery Channel to investigate. Now before you roll your eyes, you should know that the aforementioned committee's goal is to debunk strange paranormal claims, if the debunking doesn't happen right off, then they'd merely state the subject deserves further research. They're a hard-nosed bunch from the sound of it.

Wikipedia describes this test thusly:

"In the test, Demkina was required to correctly match six specified anatomical anomalies to seven volunteer subjects. The cases in question included six specified anatomical anomalies resulting from surgery and one "normal" control subject."

And how'd she do you might ask? Four of the seven people were correctly diagnosed. Leaving three incorrectly diagnosed. As skepticalinvestigations.org sees it:

"After a series of somewhat perfunctory tests the scientists announced that Demkina's claims were negated."

That's pretty point blank, huh? Natasha's supporters pretty much hate those researchers. Here are a few of their comments about them:

"Natasha Demkina did not fail. Given the unfamiliar and highly stressful surroundings and the demand to do something she had not done before, she did remarkably well. It is CSICOP's reputation, not hers. that has crumbled into ruins."

"What those so-called "scientists" did to that girl was terrible. If they had tested her on the five out of six she had accurately diagnosed and added those to the four out of seven of their test, and then taken a percentage of "hits" the results might have been very different."

X-Ray eyes or no X-Ray eyes – who knows? The people correctly diagnosed would clearly have one opinion, while those incorrectly diagnosed – well, other than the tests given, we really haven't found much from them.

One thing's for certain – if we ever find ourselves in the girl's company, we are totally wearing clean underwear. The floral ones.

Read More:

Natasha Demkina, the Girl with the "x-ray Eyes" from Russia – Netscape.com