This is the ability to touch an object and "read" from it.
Say you find a ring at the beach. You pick it up and immediately get a picture in your head of a fair-haired woman wearing a long, old-fashioned bathing suit. She's smiling, holding a little boy on her lap.
Her hair is bleached by the sun and the beach is completely different than it is currently. Umbrellas are canvas as are the chairs. People are wearing a lot more cover than they do now. People are smoking and stubbing out the cigarettes in the sand for other people to step on and there are blimps hovering along the coast, looking for nazi submarines.

That's a great deal to "get" from holding this ring, but you're seeing not only the wearer, but more than likely how she lost it.

A good psychometrist can get more or less than this detail...as in the case of all psychic talents, it cannot be controlled or forced and the individual can't "get" more than what they get initially. Usually, the whole story runs through their heads like a fast motion movie and they have to divine or remember what they can. They might miss salient information, but they just can't control this stuff.

I do believe that this talent can be useful in crime fighting. But it does take a toll on the individual. All this use of psi talent is extremely draining. Holding a murder weapon would probably wipe the psychometrist out for days. Violence plays through the brain and can actually hurt. In the case of an empathic individual (one who actually feels the same pain as the person being read) it can...hurt!

What you "get" from the object is weird, too. You might see a face, or a place. You might see an event. You might see a name or part of an address or nothing. Rarely nothing, because you usually feel something...but it could be as insignificant as where the object was purchased to why it was purchased to why the individual who last held it had it that particular day.
It is not good to hold religious objects...crosses, crucifixes, religious medals, Bibles, prayer books, that sort of stuff. There is far too much symbolism involved and faith is so strong that the psychometrist picks up information that is totally irrelevant. There's just too much involved in these objects to get a clear reading on an individual. Faith is extensive.

There is an offshoot of psychometry that I think fits here and is worth discussing...healing. Hands of certain individuals can take away pain or ease it. Methods involving touch with newborn babies are being utilized in hospitals for preemies and have even gone on to the elderly.
Certain people can help someone's suffering with their touch.
Actually, sometimes they don't even have to lay their hands on the sufferer. Instead, the talented person can merely run their hands about an inch over the person's body and bring about relief. This may or may not have something to do with auras and chakras and chi, but I don't know.
Nobody knows.
Sometimes certain people can take away the pain or ease the pain of others.
Sometimes they can't.

Psi talent is a crapshoot at best. If it could be channeled, if it could be tamed and made to work all the time, and register in laboratories, more people would believe in it.

Maybe there is a reason for this. Perhaps if talents could be turned on and off, or always be "on", the people with the talent would go crazy.

There are ways of directing talents, of turning them off, but I've yet to meet anyone who could turn it on at will all the time.

If they say they can, they're lying.