The time was early last year. My wife was teaching at a school. Her friend -- another teacher at the same school -- had been talking about her brother who was more or less a psychic healer.

He had been curing people suffering from weird diseases. Some of his patients lived overseas. The strange thing about him was that he could cure people without having to see them in person. All that was needed was communication through the telephone.

How did he do it? I don't know. But I will tell you how he didn't do it. He did not prescribe medicine -- not even placebos. He did not prescribe any exercise. He did not prescribe any diet.

After contact with him through the telephone he would start healing. After 30 minutes he would call back to see if there was any improvement.

You could say he cured people through intention. Most patients saw improvement after 30 minutes.

Some took longer. Usually a healing session would take one hour a day -- for three consecutive days. For chronic diseases the usual period was one month. Still others like one HIV patient I have met took one year to heal.

The patient or interested party would contact him through his mobile phone. He would first provide a short briefing about his method -- perhaps to build confidence and trust. Then he would describe his fees.

I guess fees are important to filter patients. If his service were free of charge, people would be swarming unnecessarily. He wanted to heal chronic patients only -- especially those who have tried various treatments in modern or alternative medicine but still were not healed.

If the other party agreed on the payment then he would go to work -- healing the person -- right away -- even before he saw the money.

Among his patients was a local young man who used to be HIV positive. I have met the guy -- but only knew about his ailment much later. He is a normal healthy person now. He is confirmed free from HIV -- by a laboratory blood test. It took one year of healing for him to completely cured.

Patients with diabetes and high blood pressure would usually be able to get off their medicine after seven days.

After patients were healed they would be advised to take a course on his techniques. The purpose was so that the patients would be able to heal themselves had the disease recur.

Many graduates from his course moved one step higher. They did not limit themselves to self-healing. They started opening practices to heal others as well -- and they did it for money.

They started small -- by healing friends at the office. But soon word of mouth brought more and more patients.

I was one of the skeptics. But after listening to testimonials by people who had been healed by him, I figured I should be fair and investigate further. It could not have been pure coincidences. There had to be a link.

Among the people I talked to was a medical doctor.

This doctor had been suffering from a strange disease. It was a combination of what appeared to modern medicine as lack of focus -- combined with hormonal imbalance and perhaps stress.

After lengthy and unsuccessful treatments using modern medicine, he put his skepticism aside and decided to pay the healer a visit. He was cured shortly afterwards -- without any means -- no medicine, no diet, nothing.

Do you believe in such an unseen healing power?