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Inside the Strange, Psychic World of Indigo Children

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A British journalist flies to New York to find out if some people really are born with psychic auras.

Gavin Haynes, a British journalist fronting VICE’s Chosen Ones documentary series, spends a week in New York chasing down grown adults who identify as “Indigo Children” — a New Age label for people said to be born with indigo-colored auras, elevated psychic gifts, and a spiritual mission tied to human evolution. The April 2016 short traces the concept back to the 1970s and Nancy Ann Tappe, a self-described synesthete and parapsychologist who claimed she could see the auras in question. Haynes treats the belief system with genuine curiosity rather than mockery, letting believers and skeptics both make their case on camera.

• The Indigo Children concept originated in the 1970s with parapsychologist Nancy Ann Tappe, who said she could visually detect indigo-colored auras signaling heightened intelligence and psychic ability.
• Haynes has his own aura photographed and analyzed at a New York studio, then undergoes an oral exam from a mother-daughter holistic dentistry team that blends alternative medicine with Indigo spiritual philosophy.
• Flatbush rap duo The Underachievers, made up of Issa Gold and AK the Savior, actively preach “Indigoism” to their fans as a lifestyle and empowerment philosophy through their music.

Origins of the Indigo Concept

Tappe’s original claim wasn’t metaphorical — she said she could physically perceive a distinct indigo hue radiating from certain children’s bodies, and interpreted that color as evidence of a more evolved nervous system. The idea caught on through New Age publishing and parenting circles in the decades that followed, eventually detaching from Tappe herself and becoming a self-identifying label that adults now claim for themselves. By the time Haynes shows up in New York, Indigoism has grown well past aura-reading into a full subculture with its own dentists, photographers, and musicians.

The Aura Photo and the Holistic Exam

Haynes submits himself to the subculture’s rituals rather than just observing them from the outside. At an aura photography studio, a camera rig captures and color-codes the energy field around his body, with a reading delivered back to him as if it were a diagnostic result. He follows that with a dental visit unlike any ordinary checkup — a mother-and-daughter team who run their practice as holistic dentistry, folding spiritual tenets and alternative health philosophy into the exam chair alongside the usual instruments.

The Underachievers and Indigoism as Lifestyle

The film’s most vivid stretch centers on The Underachievers, the Flatbush rap duo of Issa Gold and AK the Savior, who’ve built Indigoism directly into their music and message. For their fans, the philosophy functions less like a diagnosis and more like a badge — a way of framing sensitivity, restlessness, or nonconformity as a gift rather than a disorder that needs managing.

Believers argue these youth operate on higher vibrational planes rather than possessing neurobehavioral disorders.

The Clash With Clinical Medicine

Haynes doesn’t let the documentary settle into pure New Age travelogue. He puts the Indigo framework directly against the view held by most medical and psychological professionals, who see the traits described — impulsivity, distractibility, emotional intensity — as classic markers of ADD or ADHD rather than signs of psychic evolution. That tension is the spine of the whole piece: is calling a child “Indigo” a form of validation, or is it a way of avoiding a diagnosis that would actually get them help? The film doesn’t resolve it, but it lays out both sides plainly, the same even-handed approach Haynes brings to other entries in the Chosen Ones series exploring belief systems most outsiders never get close to.

Haynes leaves New York without declaring Indigo Children real or fake — he lets the aura photo, the dental chair, and The Underachievers’ lyrics speak for themselves, and lets the mental health professionals’ warnings sit right alongside them. For anyone curious how far a fringe belief can travel once it has its own musicians, dentists, and photographers backing it, the twenty-minute short is the whole case study in one sitting.