How A Former Law Enforcement Officer Became A Top Psychic Investigator

Jeff Ginter learned from an early age to keep his visions to himself. The first time he told his mother he saw dead people, it landed him at the child psychologist.

He was 8, and this was the deep south. One does not talk about seeing ghosts in a religious home 25 miles outside Savannah, Georgia, which notably is full of stragglers from the spiritual world in general. 

His mother, however, did not appreciate it when Ginter fashioned a noose around his neck to demonstrate how a Black man had been hanged from a tree down the block from their house years before.

“My mother was not very happy about that,” Ginter said. "She figured I ought to see somebody about it.”

So, he said it was a good thing he hadn’t told her about the dead woman he saw at the bottom of the stairs at his neighbor’s house, which was later validated to be true. The woman, in fact, had died by falling down the stairs.

What they didn’t know is that she’d been pushed by one of the soldiers from a nearby military base who she’d rented a room to in the early 1930s.

Ginter could see it all — the push, the fall and the woman lying in a heap at the bottom of the stair — but was wise enough not to tell his mother.

Nor did he attempt to explain to the psychologist, who luckily for Ginter, didn’t commit him to a sanatorium, but rather deemed him a child with an active imagination.

‘Strange Child’

It didn’t make sense to him either.

His visions came in waves, and he couldn’t control the flash of images that came at random or seeing glowing outlines of angels in church or knowing personal things about people that he had never met but were later deemed to be true.

Often his glimpses into the past and future were uncomfortable, like the time he foresaw his grandmother’s death months before it happened.

Other times it saved his life, such as the time he and his cousin had been out soda bottle collecting and Ginter’s sixth sense saved them from a would-be abductor. Ginter’s Spidey sense triggered when he saw the man’s pickup heading on the street toward them and warned his cousin to be on alert.

When the man stopped to speak to the boys, he pretended to be a security guard who threatened to haul them in for supposedly stealing other people’s bottles.

Ginter and his cousin were ready to throw the bottles at him and run, but something spooked the guy, and he sped off on his own.

All Ginter knew was that something dark had just approached them, and luckily his intuition overrode his southern manners. 

As a child it was all very confusing, he said, and he had no explanation for the visions and random thoughts that popped into his head, though he understood it was real. These intuitive abilities made it hard to socialize, he said, so he tended to play alone in the swamps with his dog Walter.

“I was a very strange child,” Ginter said, noting that most psychics in general are not normal people.

Wyoming’s Top Psychic

He has many such stories over the course of his childhood and life, and it took him decades to accept his abilities and put them to use. 

Today, at 65 after a long career in law enforcement, Ginter works as a self-employed spiritual medium offering intuitive readings, conveying messages from spirits to the living, doing spiritual cleansings and other services.

It’s taken him years to get to the point where he’s open about his psychic abilities that he tempers with his strong Christian faith.

Continually ranked in the top tier of Wyoming psychics, including as the No.1 medium in Cheyenne by the Psychic Savior website, Ginter said he’s driven by a passion for helping others and using his gift for good.

For years, Ginter and a partner worked their High Plains Psychics business out of an office in downtown Cheyenne, but after Ginter relocated to Loveland, Colorado, he now works remotely or by appointment only. He can also be found at any number of psychic fairs and other events throughout Wyoming and Colorado.

Ginter understands there are a lot of skeptics when it comes to intuitive mediums and that many people think he’s a quack. Heck, he used to believe that himself but has learned over the years that there are many others like him.

After retiring from his last job as a federal air marshal for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Ginter decided to embrace his intuitive gifts by attending classes at the world-renowned Arthur Findlay College in Essex, England, for spiritual, religious and psychic sciences, where he learned from the masters.

“It’s the Hogwarts for adults,” Ginter said, referencing the fictional school for witches and wizards from the Harry Potter book series.

Ghostbusting

And though his career in law enforcement might seem at odds with his current profession, Ginter said that both paths are similar in that law enforcement officers in general rely on their gut and instincts, and he just takes that one step further by delving into "the other side."

He's found his talents can be useful on helping to investigate cold cases, which he does free of charge and only if invited in by families or law enforcement.

He sees himself and other intuitives as one more tool in the toolbox that police can use when they've expended all of their leads and are looking for other options.

Many don't like to admit they've brought in a psychic because of the negative connotations and skepticism associated with those in his field, he said, though others are open to any option that might provide any additional clues to help solve a case. 

Ginter makes it clear that he does not solve cold cases; rather, he provides clues to police when asked and that it's the police who do the solving. 

"A lot of people don't way to say they've brought a psychic in," he said, which he understands. 

Sometimes he's successful in helping and other times he's come up short.

Dynamic Duo

Within the last year, Ginter has teamed up with fellow psychic, Shane Smith, to work on cold cases in the United States and abroad. Smith is also known as the “lightning psychic” after being struck by a bolt in Colorado while climbing.

The two work very well together in putting together the pieces, Smith told Cowboy State Daily.

"Jeff has amazing skills," Smith said, "and is really good at specifics."

Smith referenced their recent work on an unsolved case 1959 murder case in Maryland that they'd been asked to look into by a woman who planned to write a book. The case had long since been cold, and all the police knew at that point was that the woman had been raped and murdered.

Smith had been able to go into a meditation, otherwise known as "automatic writing," to enter the woman's body. He felt strangulation but couldn't feel the rape, which was documented by the medical examiner's report that she had been strangled and then sexually assaulted after she was dead.

In his meditation, Smith could also see the man who murdered her drinking soda out of one of two glasses on a table, and could also see the sheriff later washing those two glasses without taking prints.

"Why is he so ignorant?" Smith wondered only to find out that the sheriff was in fact illiterate to the point where his wife had to write his reports.

This is why the case was never solved. 

Smith wrongly sensed the murderer was the boss with whom the woman had been intimately involved, but he was wrong.

Ginter was able to fill in the missing pieces by visualizing what the actual murderer looked like, and determined it was a truck driver who had been watching the woman who was also a singer in a band, and later fled town.

By then, all of the suspects were dead, so the case remained technically unsolved, but the writer had her ending.

Smith credits Ginter's ability to drill into the fine details that help them put the "whole picture together."

"He can see the height, the hair color and the tattoos," Smith said. "All of the really fine details."

Smith envisions the pair doing many more cases together. In fact, the two recently flew to Europe to work undercover on a cold case, which Smith said he's not at liberty to discuss because it's very much an active investigation. 

Wyoming cases

Ginter has also worked on a cold case in Wyoming after the family called him to see if he had any insights into a missing woman.

Ginter said he was able to clairvoyantly visualize a clue he was surprised to later learn helped police identify a person of interest in the woman's disappearance. He hadn't known that what he provided had any relevance to the case, but was gratified to read about it later in a news article. 

Ginter’s abilities are not perfect, he said, and sometimes all he can provide are glimpses and small pieces in a larger puzzle.

He also acknowledges that many people are skeptical of psychics, which is compounded by  phonies who tarnish the profession. In Wyoming, however, Ginter said those people are quickly weeded out because word travels fast if you try to scam someone.

Still, though, it’s a weird thing to try to explain.

Called Out

Ginter didn’t set out to become a psychic medium, he said, and it took him a while to embrace his abilities for what they are.

He grew up in a religious household, and after high school decided to attend a Bible college in Pensacola, Florida, after seeing an advertisement for it in the back of a Christian magazine.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do only that he felt a true calling to help people. The psychic abilities were still there, but he learned to tamp them down, which didn’t always work.

One night while out with two buddies from college, they were approached by a guy and his friend who was introduced as a famous psychic with his own radio show. The psychic predicted the future of the three boys, telling one he’d go on to be a youth pastor in Indiana — which he later did — and predicted the other would do missionary work in Brazil.

When he came to Ginter, he told him, “You’re a psychic just like me, and you’re going to be doing readings and be on the radio someday.”

Ginter did go on to have one radio appearance.

The experience was unnerving to Ginter, who said he felt a shock go through his body after being publicly called out by a complete stranger.

“I was really dumbfounded,” he said. “He just kind of blew me out of my closet.”

Facing Down Serial Killers

After about two years in school, Ginter decided to leave Bible college because it wasn’t clicking for him.

Around this same time, he had another calling when he happened upon a guy who was harassing a college girl. Though there were other bigger guys who saw what was going down, it was Ginter, a little guy at about 130 pounds, who swept in and tackled the guy and held him down until the police arrived.

“So I said, ‘Well, God can use me in law enforcement,’” he recalled.

He attended the police academy and signed on as a sheriff’s deputy in a small town in rural Georgia. He also took a side job with the National Guard to make a living.

His intuitive skills came in handy when it came to busting drug dealers running cocaine down the interstate corridors along I-95. He made a name for himself catching criminals but sometimes struggled to find a cause for pulling them over other than just sensing they had drugs. 

He was so proficient, he said, that one day the FBI contacted his office to tell his bosses that someone had taken a contract out on Ginter and another deputy for $25,000.

He said that wasn’t enough to make him quit, but ultimately it was the corruption he saw on behalf of his superiors dipping into the drugs who were later indicted.

It was too much for Ginter, who feared his knowledge of the crimes would eventually lead to his being killed or set up, so he took a job as a corrections officer in a federal Florida prison. Everyone in his life questioned the decision, but it was more money, and he didn’t mind the work.

Eventually, he transferred to the super max federal prison in Florence, Colorado, where he came face-to-face with America’s more notorious serial murderers like Ted Kaczynski and Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, among others.

After 9/11, he applied for a job as a federal air marshal, where he worked for about five years until a hip injury forced him to retire, after which he moved in with his brother in Cheyenne to heal and find his bearings.

After attending classes at "Hogwarts" in England, Ginter embraced his abilities as a professional intuitive and spiritual medium.

People come to see Ginter for any number of reasons, whether it be to ask whether they should marry a particular person, take a new job or speak to someone in their life who has died among other reasons.

The most frustrating calls for Ginter are those when people asks whether or not they should join a certain gym or go on a vacation, to which Ginter defers to their common sense.

He never gives advice about what they should or should not do, Ginter said, but instead tells them what he sees.

Almost always they first ask for evidence that he’s a legitimate psychic, challenging him to tell them something about their lives not found by a simple Google search.

People Haunted, Not Houses

One thing that has surprised him throughout his years of working as a medium is the way that a person’s own grief or past tragedies can manifest as hauntings. Many times, when he’s called by someone to investigate weird sounds or sightings in their home, he finds it’s often the person who is haunted, not the house.

In fact, once when called by a woman in her 60s to investigate the supposed evil spirits lurking in her house, Ginter was immediately struck by an image of a young girl being led down a staircase by her uncle. He even knew the uncle's name. When Ginter asked her what that image might mean, she screamed.

She told him she'd been molested by her uncle, who had taken her into the basement as a young girl. She was projecting her own shadowy ghosts in her mind’s eye because the truth was too painful to confront.

She’d carried that with her all those years, Ginter noted, which manifested outwardly.

Seeing people in pain takes a toll on Ginter, who does his best to alleviate their suffering and give them some sense of closure. This is especially true when he serves as a spiritual conduit between loved ones who have passed and the living. He doesn’t always have the answers, but he does his best to try to bring them some sense of relief.

He believes that many people share these same gifts and it’s a matter of tapping into the spiritual realm. It’s not a life he’d ever envisioned for himself, he said, but he's grateful for what he now considers to be his gifts from God. 

“My journey has been nothing short of extraordinary,” he said, “and I’m committed to bringing comfort and healing to those in need.”

And hopefully, help police solve a few cold cases along the way.

Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.