ESP and Amelia Earhart

I've just read a biography discussing Amelia's fascination with ESP. Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray anyone? I find it so odd to think of someone who was innately practical believing that they could communicate with the spirit world. On the other hand, I'm not above making use of it in my novel. What could be more apt, a ghost who believes that she can communicate with ghosts has to discover she, herself, is a ghost. It is, at the very least, ironic.

It seems that it's hard to let the dead go. I find myself thinking of my father at the oddest times. And that was a fraught relationship. I had one particularly vivid dream where he was dying in it, shrinking away and I woke sobbing. I thought, that's it, I've let him go. But then, he returns. I can't quite let him go, I can't forget him, he's part of me, he's why I am the way I am. I wonder if that was part of what Amelia wanted? She'd lost her own father and good friends who were aviators. Did she think it was a way of continuing that connection or was she fascinated by it, imagining there was science involved?

According to the biographer, Mae West was at one of these seances complete with knocking table. When I was growing up the idea was still being investigated, but we settled for Ouija boards. We'd make sure the letters moved to spell out something truly embarrassing.

What was Amelia searching for in this? Was it a way to come back herself? She chose to do dangerous things, knew that she stood a good chance of dying, was this her way of reassuring herself there was something more than the here and now?