Acclaimed psychic Chip Coffey will be visiting NMU on Saturday, March 16 in Jamrich 102.

Coffey is known for his appearances on the A&E channel programs, “Paranormal State” and “Psychic Kids,” according to Alysa Spivak, a freshman theater and entertainment arts major. Coffey also had his first book, “Growing up Psychic,” published in 2012.

“He’s a psychic, which means that he has the ability to see the past, present and future,” Spivak said. “Also, he can identify what is a ghost and what isn’t.”

Coffey will be giving a lecture from noon to 1 p.m. on the day of the event, and will also hold an autograph signing from 1 to 2 p.m. following his lecture.

He will later have a gallery reading from 2 to 3 p.m., in which he will offer a couple of private readers to attendees.

The lecture and associated events are being presented by the NMU Paranormal Research Team (PRT).

According to Spivak, Coffey is considered a medium as well as a psychic, and can find and speak to the dead relatives of a particular individual to convey possible messages from lost loved ones.

Limited quantities of tickets are available for the reading gallery after Coffey’s lecture, and can be reserved by emailing [email protected], according to the NMU PRT Facebook page.

Those who participate in the gallery reading might have a chance to have a reading performed by Coffey during the event.

According to the PRT website, the student organization was founded in 2004 and is dedicated not only to the documentation and study of paranormal phenomena, but also to the education of the public about the subject of the paranormal.

The organization strives to employ a purely scientific approach to studying the paranormal, and they do not advocate the use of occult methods and tools.

The PRT is willing to talk to anyone who may be looking for more information on what they do or on joining the organization, and are available at events such as the upcoming lecture with Coffey.

According to Naysa Anderson, vice president of PRT and a senior majoring in pre-law and philosophy, PRT investigations often do find evidence of the presence of spirits, and one particular investigation involved a personal experience.

“During an investigation we were in an old building and the group had been experiencing some odd readings and noises,” she said. “Some in the group became unsettled by a corner of the room. I approached the corner and stood there for a while taking readings. After a bit, I got the sensation of something squeezing very hard on my sternum. Despite my best efforts to regroup myself I had to leave the building completely before the sensation ceased.”

Anderson also said that joining PRT was motivated primarily by the words and actions of skeptics towards the paranormal.

“I was motivated to join because I found it annoying how people would talk about the paranormal as a joke,” Anderson said. “I think that passing off centuries of the unexplained and behaving as though human knowledge has reached its limits in that extent is an amazing display of arrogance.”

The NMU Paranormal Research Team can be reached by email at [email protected], or on their website, http://myweb.nmu.edu/~prt/index.html. They also have a Facebook page, which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/NMUPRT.

More info about Chip Coffey and his upcoming appearance can be found on his website, http://www.chipcoffey.com/.