Abductee: A person that has allegedly been abducted by aliens multiple times.
After-death Communication (ADC): Also called post-mortem communication; literally communication with the deceased.
Induced After-death Communication (IADC): Images of the deceased produced through suggestion while a person is hypnotized.
Agency: The imaginary ghost created for group psychokinesis experiments in a séance-type setting.
Agent: A person who is usually unaware they are the cause of poltergeist phenomena.
Altered States of Consciousness (ASC): Also called altered states of awareness; a state of mental relaxation where people become more susceptible to impressions.
Anomalistic Psychology: An area of psychology pioneered by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones in 1982 that deals with seemingly paranormal experiences.
Anomalistics: Formerly known as Fortean phenomena; the study of unusual phenomena.
Apparition: A term used somewhat incorrectly to describe the appearance of a discarnate personality.
Apparition of the Dead: The image of someone who is deceased.
o Deathbed Apparition: Also called take-away apparition;
believed that a deceased family member has come to escort a
gravely ill or generally unresponsive person to the afterlife.
o Haunting Apparition: Also called continual apparition; Images
that appear repeatedly and to various percipients in the same
location.
o Postmortem Apparition: This is an apparition of a deceased
person that appears within twelve hours of death. If there is a
longer timeframe, the image is called a delayed postmortem
apparition.
Apparition of the Living: The image of someone who is not deceased.
o Bystander Apparition: This apparition is puzzling in that it
appears to the wrong person or a complete stranger in order to
let its presence be known to the person whom it should have
appeared to.
o Crisis Apparition: This is the sudden appearance of a person
who at that very moment is going through a crisis or has just
died. Though it is rare, there have been instances of delayed
crisis apparitions where a person’s image appears 48 hours after
crisis.
o Double: The image of a living person. It is different from astral
projection because the person is unaware of what their image is
doing at the time it appears. In Germany, this phenomenon is
labeled a doppelganger; in Norway it is called vardoger; in
Greece it is called larva; in Wales it is called fye or waft; in
England it is called fetch; in Tibet it is called delok; in Scotland
it is called taslach.
o Experimental Apparition: This is the intentional projection of
ones image. Such experiences are considered a strong
argument for out-of-body experiences.
Additional apparitions noted in parapsychology:
Premonitory Haunting: Premonitions of death sometimes appear as an apparition. The most common are so-called familial apparitions. Some old families may have a portent of impending disaster in the form of a phantom. For instance, corpse candles are mysterious balls of light that are viewed as harbingers of death for a family member when seen in family cemeteries.
Soulless Apparition: This is a seldom-used phrase that described the ghostly appearance of inanimate objects.
Apparitional Experience: Encountering a ghost.
Apport: French for “to bring;” an object that appears and is accredited to spirits and occasionally poltergeists.
Area Focusing:When the same area is the focus of poltergeist activity continuously.
Arrival Case: A situation where someone dreams or has a hunch they will meet someone and soon does.
Asport: French for “to send;” an object that disappears and is accredited to spirits and occasionally poltergeists.
Astral Projection: The alleged ability to separate the consciousness from the physical body. Reported most often when while undergoing crisis, extreme pain or anesthetized. Most detractors believe it is simply a dissociative process of the brain to protect the mind from stress.
Aura: Multicolored luminescence that radiates from all objects. People who suffer migraine headaches and epilepsy often report seeing a halo around living people. However, W. E. Butler was one of the first to assign seeing auras to clairvoyant facilities. He believed that the colors that appear to hover around people are a direct indication of their physical and emotional well being.
Automatism:Automatic behavior without conscious self-control.
Autoscope: An instrument that facilitates undetectable automatism of the wrist to facilitate clearer movements. The most popular autoscope is the planchette, an object used on the modern-day Ouija board.
Autosuggestion: Influence on the senses by belief and expectation.
Automatic Drawing: Automatism that creates drawings that are allegedly influenced by the deceased.
Automatic Painting: Automatism that creates paintings that are allegedly influenced by the deceased.
Automatic Speech: Also called spirit messages; automatism in the form of speech that is allegedly influenced by the deceased.
Automatic Typing:Automatism that creates messages through a typewriter or computer keyboard.
Automatic Writing: Also called psychography; automatism that creates written messages that is allegedly influenced by the deceased.
Direct Psychography: Communication written on paper.
o Mechanical Psychography: Messages received with
unconscious control of practitioner’s hand, while the
practitioner’s attention is elsewhere.
o Semi-mechanical Psychography: Messages received with
conscious control of practitioner’s hand, allowing them to stop
communication at any time, turn pages, etc.
Indirect Psychography: The use of an Ouija board to receive so-called spirit messages.
Inspirational Psychography: Messages that are written down when someone feels inspired while in contact with a spirit.
Intuitive Psychography: Messages that are contained in regular text.
Presentient Psychography: Communication that is in another language unknown to the practitioner.
Automatism: Uncontrolled muscular twitches all over the body that many Spiritualists attribute to the inspiration of spiritual entities.
Autophany: Also called heautoscopy: seeing your double.
Autoscopy: An experience where someone who is having an out-of-body experience sees his or her physical body.
B
Billet Reading:A form of cryptoscopy; the alleged ability to perceive information sealed in an envelope. Crafty fraudulent mediums were once able to perpetrate this trick by soaking the envelope in rubbing alcohol when given an opportunity. The alcohol will make the envelope temporarily translucent, but dried quickly enough not to signify any mischief.
Bilocation: Also called multiplication; the alleged ability to appear in two places at one time.
Book Test: A test once proposed to mediums where they were required to prove their clairvoyant abilities by reading a certain pre-selected passage in a chosen book.
Brutch: An area of psychic disturbance.
C
Card Test: Also called card-guessing experiment; a standard test parapsychologists once used to assess potential extrasensory perception with special cards. There are several techniques used by different institutions:
Basic Technique (BT): Parapsychologists take a card from the deck and without looking at it, place it facedown on the table and wait for the subject to guess the symbol.
Before Technique: Test subject calls out their impressions of what symbol is on a card before the parapsychologist pulls it out of the deck.
Blind Matching Technique: Subject is seated across from five sealed envelopes, each with a card with a different symbol on it. The subject is then asked to place the cards with corresponding symbols onto the envelopes.
Down Through (DT) Technique: Trying to guess cards from the top to the bottom of the deck.
Open Deck Test: An ESP test where the cards are chosen at random.
Up Through (UT) Technique: Trying to guess cards from the bottom to the top of the deck.
Testing for extrasensory perception with cards have shown some interesting effects:
Cancellation Effect: Low scores in one section of a test bring down the average of the high scores of another test.
Change Effect: Also called differential effect; a term used to describe the temporary drop in a test subjects scores when rules were changed halfway through the run.
Decline Effect: Subjects score lower the longer the test runs, leading some researchers to suggest boredom plays an important role in failure.
Displacement Effect: Instances when a test subject picks the next card in the deck, not the one the sender is concentrating on.
Incline Effect: Subjects seem to score higher when they know the end of a test is forthcoming.
Call Case: The phenomena when someone mysteriously hears their name being called.
Chair Test: A once-popular test for precognitive abilities where the test subject would be asked to predict what chair a certain individual would sit in once in the room.
Channeling: The alleged ability to receive messages from the deceased.
Circle: In Spiritualism, a group of individuals gathered for a séance.
Development Circle: A group of people that gather in hopes of attaining the spiritual gift of mediumship.
Home Circle: An informal group that gathers without a medium in hopes of communicating with the deceased in a home-like setting.
Clairaudience: French for “clear hearing;” the alleged ability to actually hear voices of discarnate beings, conversations going on over long distances, etc.
Claircognizance: French for “clear knowing;” the phenomena when someone “just knows” something.
Clairhambience: French for “clear tasting;” the alleged ability to literally taste foods being eaten by someone else.
Clairkinesthesia: Also called bio-perception; French for “clear touching;” the alleged ability to literally feel physical contact with discarnate entities, experience physical sensations of someone else, etc.
Clairolefactor: French for “clear smelling;” the alleged ability to literally smell scents that are associated with spirits or past experiences, scents being experienced over long distances, etc.
Clairsentience: French for “clear feeling;” the supposed ability to sense the presence of a spirit.
Clairvoyance: French for “clear seeing;” also called telaesthesiaI, introscopy and telopsis; the alleged ability to see spirits, events taking place over long distances, the location of a missing object, what others are doing outside of the field of vision, etc.
Medical Clairvoyance: The alleged ability to psychically diagnose diseases.
Platform Clairvoyance: The alleged ability to see the dead.
Precognitive Clairvoyance: Also called prevision; quite literally seeing the future.
Traveling Clairvoyance: Now called remote viewing.
Waking Clairvoyance: Alleged clairvoyant facilities that can be accessed without slipping into a trance.
X-ray Clairvoyance: Allegedly reading letters in envelopes and closed books.
Cognitive Error Hypothesis: An error in judgment where someone should have went with his or her instincts but did not for some reason or another.
Cold Reading: A process fraudulent psychics and mediums use where they offer vague evidence that can relate to anyone’s life and interpreting the reaction.
Cold Spot: A localized column of cold air that are believed to signal the presence of a discarnate being.
Collective Apparition Case: A case where two or more percipients accurately describe the same ghostly image they experienced together.
Collective Phenomena: A paranormal event experienced by more than one person.
Communicator: A spirit that speaks through a medium.
Drop-in Communicator: A spirit who appears unbidden to a séance.
Community of Sensation: The alleged physical link between a materialization medium and the image produced.
Confabulation: Confusing imagination and experiences stories for personal memories. Some skeptics believe this plays a large part in alleged past-life experiences.
Conjurer: A term once used to describe a fraudulent medium.
Contactee: A person who allegedly has frequent contact with aliens.
Control: Also called a gatekeeper, spirit operator, communicator or guardian; allegedly a discarnate personality that communicates with sitters through a trance medium and acts as intermediary between the medium and the spirit world.
Cotard's Delusion: Also called the Cotard syndrome or walking corpse syndrome; a rare psychological disorder in which a person believes they are dead, rotting, has no blood or has lost one or more major organs.
Crosstalk: A term used by mediums when they allegedly receive information from more than one communicator at the same time, leading to confusion and mixed messages.
Crypto-conscious Mind: Also called psychic dissociation; an area of the subconscious that seems to have a will of its own, frequently considered during poltergeist outbreaks.
Cryptomnesia: Greek for “concealed recollection;” An event where something has already been learned or experienced but has been forgotten. When someone is confronted with the information again, they seem to inherently already know it and think they are experiencing déjà vu.
Cryptoscopy: Receiving words in a sealed envelope, book or in another location via extrasensory perception.
Cryptozoology: Greek for “hidden animals;” the study of animals thought to be extinct or non-existent by zoology.
D
Dazzle Shot: Gary E. Schwartz uses this to describe a piece of information that a psychic or medium supplies that is amazingly accurate and could not conveniently fit into just anyone’s life.
Death Compact: A deal between two individuals that the first one to die will try to contact the other to prove survival of the soul.
Deathbed Vision: Also called a deathbed apparition; a fairly common occurrence where someone who is deathly ill will begin staring into a corner or suddenly begin holding conversations with people no one else can see or hear.
Déjà vu: Also called paramnesia; French for “already seen;” it describes the eerie feeling that you have already experienced things before when you are confronted with them for the first time. French psychical researcher Émile Boirac divided the experience into four classifications:
Déjà rêvé: French for “already dreamed;” belief that a dream has been seen before.
Déjà senti: French for “already felt;” believing you remember something being talked about.
Déjà vécu: French for “already lived;” this is actually what most people consider to be Déjà vu.
Déjà visité: French for “already visited;” the belief that a new landscape before.
Delusion: False belief that is usually an apperception: reflecting the inner turmoil of the mind of the percipient.
Dematerialization: The disappearance of an object or spirit form.
Depossession: The release of an earthbound, obsessing spirit from the human host.
Derma-optical Perception (DOP): Also called skin sight, eyeless sight, cutaneous vision, extra-retinal vision, paroptic vision and bio-introscopy; the alleged ability to touch colors and guess them accurately or read words while blindfolded.
Dermography: Scratches and even writing that inexplicably appears on someone’s skin.
Dice Test: Also called dice-throwing experiment; a standard test parapsychologists used to test for potential psychokinesis where dice were used.
Around-the-die Technique: A test where subjects are asked to influence dice to land on the same number again and again.
Singles Test: A test where subjects are asked to influence dice to land with a specified face up.
Direct Drawing: A drawing allegedly done by a spirit.
Direct Painting: A painting allegedly done by a spirit.
Direct Typing: Messages from a typewriter or computer keyboard allegedly done by a spirit.
Direct Voice: A voice that seemingly issues from thin air and is attributed to the deceased.
Direct Writing: Written messages allegedly done by a spirit.
Discarnate: Without a body.
Divination: Also called fortune telling.
Doorway Test: A cunning test some parapsychologists use to verify whether or not someone can actually see auras. The subject is asked behind which unattached door a person is standing.
Dowsing: Also called biolocation; using a forked stick or two L-shaped metal rods to facilitate automatism to discover underground water or ore.
Map Dowsing: Also called teleradiesthesia; holding a pendulum over a map to try to locate out-of-sight objects. This method became very popular during the Vietnam War, where it was useful in discovering secret tunnels and landmines.
Dracontology: the "study of lake monsters and sea serpents."
Ducting Effect: Pockets in the earth’s electronic layers of the ionosphere that can allow radio and CB signals to travel impossible distances for a short time. Detractors of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) believe that dictaphones pick up these anomalous signals which are mistaken for spirit communication.
E
Effluviography: More commonly known as “aura photography.”
Ectomist: A unexplainable fog or mist in pictures or on video.
Ectoplasm: Also called teleplasm and psychode; Greek for “externalized substance;” once used to describe an odd substance mediums allegedly produced that would take the form of disembodied spirits.
Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP): Also called Raudive voices and psychophonia; alleged voices of discarnate souls caught on an audio recorder.
Electrophotography: A word used to describe so-called Kirilian photography.
Empath: Also called telempath; a person with the alleged ability to perceive the emotions of others far beyond what is capable by empathy alone. Most detractors, however, believe a person who claims this facility is simply projecting their own emotions.
Ethereal: “Of Heaven.”
Etherialization: The partial physical manifestation of an apparition.
Extra: An anomalous image that appears in photographs.
Extrasensorimotor Phenomena: Information received outside of the normal scenes or muscular capabilities.
Extrasensory Perception (ESP): Also called anomalous cognition cryptaesthesia, supernormal cognition, extraordinary knowing, anomalous communication, anomalous knowing, receptive psi and bioinformation; the alleged ability to receive information outside of the five senses.
General Extrasensory Perception (GESP): Also called exceptional fluctuations of the human body; the alleged ability to use telepathy and clairvoyance in combination.
Experience-inducing Field (EIF): Naturally occurring emanations that are somehow conducive to paranormal experiences, such as electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation, infrasound, solar flares and geomagnetic fields, radon emissions, etc.
Experient: A person who is the agent of psychokinesis.
Extrachance: Not due to chance alone.
Externalization of Motricity: Psychokinesis in synch with hand movements.
Externalization of Sensitivity: Expansion of senses outside of the body.
Extraterrestrial (ET): Another name for aliens.
F
Falsidical: Parapsychologists use this to indicate a false or mistaken statement or experience.
Fishing: A procedure used by fraudulent psychics and mediums where they ask subtle but leading questions.
Focus: Spiritualists who believe poltergeist phenomena are actual spirit communications use this to designate a natural medium whose latent psychokinetic talents are exploited by the earthbound entity.
Forced-choice Experiment: A test where the subject must chose from a small number of choices.
Free Response Test: Method of testing clairvoyance where subjects are welcome to draw any impression from a huge number of possible targets has many times come under fire, since it is quite possible for any abstract drawing to be considered a hit to any number of particular pieces.
G
Ganzfeld Experiment: Initiated by Charles Honorton’s Psychophysical Research Laboratories in Princeton, New York. Subjects are tested lying down with eye coverings and white noise hissing through headphones to put them in a sort of altered state of consciousness that is believed to leave one open to telepathic suggestion.
Gestalt Impression: Drawing a picture that matches up with a picture previously sealed in an envelope of which the subject had not seen.
Glossolalia: “Speaking in tongues” during ecstatic trances.
Glottologues: Mediums who speak in tongues.
Gravity Hill: Also called gravity road and magnetic hill; a convincing optical illusion where a road looks like it is sloping one way when it is actually gently sloping the other.
H
Haint: A Southern Appalachian term for a ghost, derived from the word “haunt.”
Hallucination: Perception of stimuli that aren’t actually present, but are believed to be genuine.
Place-related Hallucinations: Hallucinations that occur over a period of time and in a specific place to different persons independently.
Haunted: A place that is allegedly plagued by frequent supernatural occurrences.
Haunting: Also called place memory haunting and place residue haunting; frequent visitation by seeming paranormal phenomena.
Object-centered Haunting: Paranormal events that seem to surround a particular object.
Person-centered Haunting: Once used to describe poltergeist phenomena.
Place-centered Haunting: Used to describe a location where alleged paranormal events frequently take place.
Parapsychologists separate hauntings into two distinct categories:
Intelligent Haunting: The strongest argument for the survival of the human personality or soul after death besides out-of-body and near-death experiences come from encounters with disembodied entities that retain memories, personality traits and faults in death as in life. Unlike the play-like antics of a residual memory, a spirit is not confined to a certain location, but may stay there of their own volition.
Residual Haunting: Also called place memory haunting, place residue haunting or stone tape theory; memories that somehow engage certain people under different circumstances, especially when they enter an altered state of consciousness from fatigue or boredom. These images do not acknowledge the living, but repeat the same patterns continually.
Heteraesthesia: A sensitivity that is seemingly outside of the normal means.
Hit: In parapsychology, this word is used to indicate a correct response.
Hot Reading: A process used by a fraudulent psychic or medium who has foreknowledge of someone’s history but claims the knowledge comes from otherworldly communications.
Hot Spot: An area of seemingly paranormal activity.
Human-machine Interaction: The presence of a person inhibits or helps electronic equipment.
Hypermnesia: An uncanny ability to vividly or completely recall information filtered by the conscious mind but still contained in the subconscious. In parapsychology, this could account for seemingly psychic information when a person isn’t aware that their subconscious has retained bits and pieces of information and pieced them together.
Hypnagogia: A fairly common hallucination that occurs while falling asleep. This condition can create auditory and visual hallucinations, feelings of impending disaster or doom, perception of a malevolent presence, the inability to breath or move, etc. People who suffer a severe episode cannot be convinced that it wasn’t real.
Hypnopompic Hallucination: Hallucinations that occur while waking up.
