Psychometry was the ability to sense the impression ofpastevents,thoughts or emotions: the stronger theemotion, the clearer the psychic impression. Any object was imprinted with itshistory, particularly with strong emotions, (TV:The Rings of Akhaten^[+]Loading...["The Rings of Akhaten (TV story)"]) so that simply by touching it, a person could divine an object's past, seen in images and memories. (TV:Planet of the Spiders^[+]Loading...["Planet of the Spiders (TV story)"]) According toTarron, thescience of psychometry allowed expects to "divine" the characteristics of the last person who'd been in contact with an object, such as amurderweapon.Barbara Wright described this as "an improvement onfingerprints." (TV:"Sentence of Death"^[+]Part ofThe Keys of Marinus,Loading...{"namedep":"Sentence of Death (5)","1":"The Keys of Marinus (TV story)"})

Thecourt of Millenius performed psychometric tests on the weapon thatkilledAydan to find his killer. They believed it wasIan Chesterton. (TV:"Sentence of Death"^[+]Part ofThe Keys of Marinus,Loading...{"namedep":"Sentence of Death (5)","1":"The Keys of Marinus (TV story)"})

ProfessorHerbert Clegg demonstrated hispsychic powers for theThird Doctor by using psychometry (called psycholotry by the Doctor) on thesonic screwdriver and a crystal taken fromMetebelis III. In the former instance he sawDrashigs. With the latter, the images of theEight Legs frightened Clegg so much that he died of heart failure. He showed the Doctor these images through use of anImage Reproduction Integrating System. (TV:Planet of the Spiders^[+]Loading...["Planet of the Spiders (TV story)"])

Silverman was a psychometrist.Bart Addison tookMykloz to Silverman to find out who he was by the objects in his pocket. Although the objects seemed to indicate that Mykloz was theSeventh Doctor, Addisondeduced that he was not. (PROSE:Playback^[+]Loading...["Playback (short story)"])

Most of the commerce onTiaanamat was done using psychometric objects. For example,Clara bought amoped fromDor'een using aring from her mother, since she had strong memories of her. Psychometric offerings were also given to theOld God during theFestival of Offerings. (TV:The Rings of Akhaten^[+]Loading...["The Rings of Akhaten (TV story)"])