ASSESSING THE PARANORMAL:

by Harry Stafford, Ph.D, Director of Haunted St. Augustine – Nighlty Investigations of
the Paranormal

                                           THE ROLE OF THE MIND I

        There’s a familiar saying “it’s all in the mind.”  All of us have experienced the power of suggestion.  We know how rapidly our attention can be riveted to something of appeal or significance to us – such as someone consuming an icy beverage on a blisteringly hot day.  Parapsychology recognizes how easily the power of suggestion can evoke the paranormal experiences that so many strongly desire. This is evident in many supposed sightings, interpretations of what we hear on EVP, or just the feelings evoked by eerie accounts of paranormal events.  What about a decidedly spooky setting such as a cemetery filled with broken and weather-worn monuments?
        On an even more fundamental level, we are learning the potent role mind can play in the very ways we construct reality.  The Placebo Effect has proven how sugar pills can contribute to healings if we believe these pills to be some powerful drug.  Demonstrations of psychokinesis or telekinesis in the laboratory illustrate how the mind may directly affect material objects apart from any ordinary physical contact.  What is most relevant to the paranormal, however, is the view of many physicists today that mind is at the basis of all reality.  Sir James Jeans once remarked that our understanding of quantum physics makes the world look more and more like a great idea (mind) rather than a great “thing” (matter.)  Most of the founders of quantum physics – such as Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, etc. – held similar views, views that are even more commonplace today.
        All of us — and all “things”– are manifestations of a vast, integral field of energy that is more like “mind” than “matter” as it is traditionally understood.  Our observation and interpretation of what we see and experience cannot be neatly separated from what we think of as a world or events existing objectively apart from us. In a real sense, there is no such separately existing world.
        Consider what this means, for example, for encounters with the paranormal. If we do not exist separately from the ordinary world, how much more true is this of the paranormal?  If we in part construct the ordinary world through our senses and our beliefs and interpretations of events, how much more true may this be for the world(s) of the paranormal?  If we project reality outward onto our everyday world (a well-known fact of modern psychology,) how much more may we do so with the paranormal world(s)?  For example, what is an “intelligent haunting,” really? We shall return to these intriguing and perplexing issues . . . Paranormal riddles are also riddles about the nature of reality itself.

©Harry C. Stafford, 2010

Hi, my name is Amy. I am honored to be one of your Haunted St. Augustine tour guides. I have been interested in the paranormal since the age of 4 when i had my first paranormal experience. I have since had many more experiences. The Haunted St. Augustine tour is the perfect tour for me to be a guide on because it is a real investigative tour, not theatrical. I really want to know what the other side is all about and I love investigating with people who share my interest. I also love making believers out of skeptics which tends to happen alot on this tour. So whether you’re a die hard paranormal fan, or a total skeptic, or maybe even somewhere in between, I look for to investigating with you!

From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org

S

SCRYING
A technique for obtaining paranormal impressions by staring into a crystal ball, pool of water, coffee grounds, tea leaves and so on, which causes the practitioner to experience images or exteriorized hallucinations. [Variant of descry]

SEANCE
A meeting of one or more persons, generally, but not always, with a medium, for the purpose of eliciting physical phenomena and/or for receiving communications from the deceased; the term has also been used without Spiritualistic connotations, that is, to refer to the purpose of getting together to observe phenomena, without the intent to communicate with the dead. Also called a “sitting” or “session.” [From the French, derived from the Old French seoir, “to sit,” ultimately derived from the Latin sedere, “to sit”]

SECOND SIGHT
Concept used in the Celtic folklore of the supernatural,
and encompassing what would today be referred to as “psychic ability.” Also sometimes called “deuteroscopy.” [From the Greek deuteros, “second,” + skopia, derived from skopein, “to look at”]

SENDER
Less technical expression than “agent,” used to denote the person or subject designated as the “transmitter” of telepathic information. Compare Receiver.

SENSITIVE
A person who frequently experiences extrasensory perception and who can sometimes induce it at will. Compare Medium.

SHAMAN
A tribal medium, witch-doctor, or priest accredited with supernatural powers as originally exemplified by Siberian tribes. [From the German Schamane, derived from the Russian shaman, derived from Tungusic samân]

SHEEP
Term originally used by Gertrude Schmeidler 1943) to describe a subject who does not reject the possibility that extrasensory perception could occur under the conditions of the given experimental situation; this somewhat narrow mean-ing has been extended to refer also, tentatively, to persons who believe that ESP exists as a genuine phenomenon, or even to persons who obtain high scores on various so-called “projective,” “scalar,” or “checklist” measures of belief in (and/or experience of) different sorts of putative psi phenomena. Compare Goat. See also Sheep-Goat Effect. [Taken from the New Testament simile, Matthew 25: 31-33: “But when the Son of Man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory; and before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and he will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”]
SUPER-SHEEP (OR WHITE SHEEP)
Term introduced by John Beloff and David Bate (1970) to describe a subject who is sure that their score on a test of
extrasensory perception will be high, by virtue of their own psychic ability.

SHEEP-GOAT EFFECT (SGE)
Term first used by Gertrude Schmeidler to describe the relationship between acceptance of the possibility of extrasensory perception occurring under the given experimental conditions, and the level of scoring actually achieved on that ESP test: subjects who do not reject the possibility (“sheep”) tend to score above chance, those rejecting the possibility (“goats”) at or below chance; the terms “sheep” and “goat” are nowadays often used in a more extended sense, and “sheep-goat effect” may thus refer to any significant scoring difference between these two groups as defined by the experimenter.

SITTER
A person who sits with a medium at a seance and who receives a communication through the medium.

SITTER GROUP
As defined by Kenneth Batcheldor (1984, p. 105), “a small, semi-informal group that seeks to develop paranormal physical phenomena by meeting repeatedly under conditions that resemble those of a Victorian seance. No spiritistic assumptions are made, however, and the phenomena — such as rapping noises and levitation of tables — insofar as they may be paranormal are interpreted in terms of the PK abilities of the sitters.”

SITTING
A session or interview with a medium, generally by an individual or a small number of people, and often for the purpose of obtaining communications from the deceased; also termed a “seance.”
ABSENT (OR PROXY) SITTING
A sitting at which the person desiring to receive a communication via a medium absents themselves from the actual sitting and is represented by another person,
called a “proxy sitter.”

SPIRIT
A discarnate entity.

SPIRIT HYPOTHESIS
The theory that individual consciousness survives the death of the body in the form of a spirit, and that it may be communicated with by living persons, especially via a medium. Compare Survival.

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY
The photographing of supposed self-portraits of discarnate entities (called “extras”) upon film or photographic plates. Compare Photography, Paranormal.

SPIRITUALISM
Quasi-religious cult based upon the belief that survival of death is a reality, and upon the practice of communicating with deceased persons, usually via a medium.

SPONTANEOUS CASE
A discrete incident of ostensible spontaneous psi.

STIGMATA
Term used to refer to the marks or hæmorrhages which appear spontaneously on the surface of the body in imitation of the wounds believed to have been received by Jesus Christ at the Crucifixion; sometimes observed on the bodies of certain devout individuals, and may also be induced by auto-suggestion or under hypnosis. [Plural of the Greek stigma, “puncture, mark, spot”]

SUBLIMINAL
Term coined by Frederic Myers to refer to events occurring beneath the “threshold” of conscious awareness. [From the Latin sub, “below, under,” + limen (liminus), “threshold”]

SUPERNATURAL
A theological and folkloristic term for paranormal, generally avoided by parapsychologists because of its implication that psi is somehow “outside of” or “over and above” nature.

SUPERSTITION
A belief that a given action can bring good luck or bad luck when there are no rational or generally acceptable grounds for such a belief.

SURVIVAL
Continued existence of the consciousness of the individual person in some form and for at least some time after the destruction of their physical body; life-after-death; not to be considered synonymous with “immortality,” which implies unending existence. See also Reincarnation; Spirit Hypothesis.

SYNCHRONICITY
Term coined by Carl Jung (with Wolfgang Pauli, 1955) to refer to the occurrence of acausal but meaningful coincidences. [From the Greek synchronos, derived from synchronizein, “to be contemporary with,” derived from syn-, “with,” + chronos, “time”]

From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org

Q-R

QUALITATIVE EXPERIMENT
(i) Any test for extrasensory perception which uses target material and forms of response which do not allow a definite probability-value to be attached to the response items made; examples are most free-response tests, tests of psychometry, mediumistic utterances, and so on; statistical evaluation of such data must therefore proceed in an indirect fashion, by assigning a probability-value to the matching-performance of a judge; (ii) Any attempt to demonstrate qualitative phenomena. Compare Quantitative Experiment. [Ultimately derived from the Latin qualis, “what kind of?”]

QUANTITATIVE EXPERIMENT
Any test for psi which uses targets each of which has a specific prescribed value for the probability of its occurrence; such a test therefore allows for direct statistical evaluation of the results obtained. See also Forced-Choice Test. Compare Qualitative Experiment. [Ultimately derived from the Latin quantus, “how great, how much?”]

RADIONICS
A term which has largely supplanted “radiæsthesia” in English usage.

RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR (RNG)
An apparatus (typically electronic) incorporating an element (based on such processes as radioactive decay or random “noise”) and capable of generating a random sequence of outputs; used in tests of psi for generating target sequences, and in tests of psychokinesis may itself be the target system which the subject is required to influence, that is, by “biasing” the particular number or event output; a binary RNG has two equally-probable outputs; the term “RNG” is increasingly being used to refer to any system which produces naturally random outputs, such as bouncing dice, radioactive decay, or even, perhaps, the brain.

RAPS
Percussive sounds, often tapping out an intelligible message, sometimes said to be produced by paranormal means.

READING
The statements made by a sensitive (or as a result of the process of divination) in the course of an attempt to obtain paranormal information or “messages.”

RECEIVER
An expression which is less technical than “percipient,” used to indicate the subject designated as the “recipient” of telepathic information. Compare Sender.

RECURRENT SPONTANEOUS PSYCHOKINESIS (RSPK)
Expression coined by William G. Roll to refer to paranormal physical effects which occur repeatedly over a period of time, especially used as a neutral description of poltergeist disturbances. See also Psychokinesis.

REINCARNATION
A form of survival in which the human soul, or some aspects of self, is, after the death of the body, reborn into a new body, this process being repeated throughout many lives. See also Rebirth. [From the Latin re-, “again,” + in- “into,” + caro (carnis), “flesh”]

REMOTE VIEWING
A neutral term for general extrasensory perception introduced Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff (1974), especially in the context of an experimental design in which a percipient attempts to describe the surroundings of a geographically distant agent.
ASSOCIATIONAL REMOTE VIEWING (ARV)
As described by Targ (1983), a form of remote viewing in which the area where a desired item might be located is divided up into a finite number of discrete locations; each of the possible locations, or addresses, is associated or
linked with a laboratory-based token object or picture (such as of the Golden Gate Bridge); the viewer is then asked to describe the associated target-object thereby indirectly choosing a particular target-location or address.
RETROACTIVE PK
Psychokinesis occurring in such a way as to be an instance of retroactive causation; to say that event A was caused by retroactive PK is to say that A would not have happened in the way that it did had it not been for a later PK effort exerted so as to influence it. Sometimes abbreviated to “retro-PK;” also referred to as “backward PK” or “time-displaced PK.”

RETROCOGNITION
Term coined by Frederic Myers to refer to a form of extrasensory perception in which the target is some past event which could not have been learned or inferred by normal means. Compare Precognition [From the Latin retro, “backward, behind,” + cognitio, “a getting to know”]

REVENANT
An apparition of a deceased person. [From the French revenir, ultimately derived from the Latin revenire, “to come back”]

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From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org

P

PARANORMAL
Term applied to any phenomenon which in one or more respects exceeds the limits of what is deemed physically possible on current scientific assumptions; often used as a synonym for “psychic,” “parapsychological,” “attibutable to psi,” or even “miraculous” (although shorn of religious overtones). [From the Greek para, “beside, beyond,” + normal]

PARAPHYSICS
Pertaining to paraphysics; synonym for “psychokinetic.”

PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL
Involving or pertaining to parapsychology or paranormal processes.

PARAPSYCHOLOGY
Term coined in German by Max Dessoir (1889) and adopted by J. B. Rhine in English to refer to the scientific study of paranormal or ostensibly paranormal phenomena, that is, psi; except in Britain, the term has largely superseded the older expression “psychical research;” used by some to refer to the experimental approach to the field. [From the Greek para, “beside, beyond,” + psychology, derived from the Greek psyche, “soul, mind,” + logos “rational discussion”]

PAST-LIFE REGRESSION
A process in which a hypnotized person is mentally “taken back” (or “regressed”) by the hypnotist to one or more apparent previous life-times, thus suggesting reincarnation.

PERCIPIENT
Broadly speaking, someone who perceives or who has a perception-like experience, in particular, the person who experiences or “receives” an extrasensory influence or impression; also one who is tested for ESP ability. Compare Agent. [From the Latin percipiens (percipientis), derived from percipere, “to receive, understand”]

PHANTASM
Any hallucinatory sensory impression, whatever sense may happen to be affected. See also Apparition; Hallucination. [From the Greek phantasma, “appearance, image, phantom”] [Nash, 1978]

PHOTOGRAPHY, PARANORMAL
The paranormal production of images on photographic film; also known as “thoughtography,” a term used to describe the experiments of Tomokichi Fukurai (1931) but adopted by Jule Eisenbud to describe the phenomena produced by Ted Serios, as if mental images were “projected” onto the film. See also Thoughtography; Spirit Photography.

PK
See Psychokinesis.

POLTERGEIST
A disturbance characterized by bizarre physical effects of paranormal origin, suggesting mischievous or destructive intent: these phenomena include the unexplained movement or breakage of objects, loud raps, the lighting of fires, and occasionally personal injury to people; in contrast to a haunting, the phenomena often seem to depend upon the presence of a particular living individual, called the “focus,” frequently an adolescent or child; and apparitions are rarely seen. [German: literally, “noisy ghost”]

POSSESSION
The complete control, by an ostensible discarnate entity, of the body of a living person.

POST-MORTEM COMMUNICATION
A communication or message said to be from a deceased to a living person, usually delivered through a medium.

PRECOGNITION
A form of extrasensory perception in which the target is some future event that cannot be deduced from normally known data in the present. Compare Retrocognition. [From the Latin præ-, “prior to,” + cognitio, “a getting to know”]

PREMONITION
A feeling or impression that something is about to happen, especially something ominous or dire, yet about which no normal information is available. See Precognition. [From the Latin præ, “prior to,” + monitio, “warning”]

PSI (?)
A general blanket term, proposed by B. P. Wiesner and seconded by R. H. Thouless (1942), and used either as a noun or adjective to identify paranormal processes and paranormal causation; the two main categories of psi are psi-gamma (paranormal cognition; extrasensory perception)aand psi-kappa (paranormal action; psychokinesis), although the purpose of the term “psi” is to suggest that they might simply be different aspects of a single process, rather than distinct and essentially different processes. Strictly speaking “psi” also applies to survival of death. Some thinkers prefer to use “psi” as a purely descriptive term for anomalous outcomes, as suggested by Palmer (1986, p. l39), who defines it as “a correspondence between the cognitive or physiological activity of an organism and vents in its external environment that is anomalous with respect to generally accepted basic limiting principles of nature such as those articulated by C. D. Broad.” [From the Greek, psi, twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet; from the Greek psyche, “mind, soul”]

PSI-CONDUCIVE
Favorable to, or facilitative of, the occurrence of psi, whether it be manifested as psi-hitting or psi-missing.

PSI-HITTING
The use of psi in such a way that the target at which the subject is aiming is “hit” (that is, correctly responded to, in a test of extrasensory perception; or influenced, in a test of psychokinesis), more frequently than would be expected if only chance were operating; the term is also sometimes used, misleadingly, to refer merely to non-significant positive scoring. Hence, “psi-hitter,” a subject who exhibits a tendency to psi-hit. Compare Psi-Missing. [Abbreviated to ? H by James Carpenter]

PSI-MISSING
The use of psi in such a way that the target at which the subject is aiming is “missed” (that is, responded to incorrectly, in a test of extrasensory perception; or influenced in a direction contrary to aim, in a test of psychokinesis) more frequently than would be expected if only chance were operating; the term is also sometimes used, misleadingly, to refer simply to non-significant negative scoring. Hence, “psi-misser,” a subject who displays a tendency to psi-miss. Compare Psi-Hitting. [Abbreviated to ? M by James Carpenter]

PSI PHENOMENON
Any event which results from, or is an instance of, the operation of psi; examples are the forms of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis.

PSYCHIC(AL)
As a noun, “psychic” refers to an individual who possesses psi ability of some kind and to a relatively high degree; as an adjective, it is nowadays applied to paranormal events, abilities, research, and so on, and thus means “concerning or involving psi,” or “parapsychological.” [From the Greek psychikos, “of the soul, mental,” derived from psyche, “soul, mind”]

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
The original term for “parapsychology,” still widely used, especially in Britain.

PSYCHIC ARCHEOLOGY
Archeological research which is pursued with the assistance of a sensitive or other source of paranormal information.

PSYCHIC SURGERY
A form of psychic healing practiced particularly in the Philippines, in which diseased tissue are said to be removed without the use of surgical instruments, and bleeding, infection, and the like, are inhibited paranormally. The term is also used of surgery in which the surgeon operates while in a trance, as performed by J. Arigo and other Brasilian exponents of this pratice, usu-ally using unsterilized knives as scalpels.

PSYCHOKINESIS
Paranormal action; term coined by Henry Holt and adopted by J. B. Rhine to refer to the direct influence of mind on a physical system that cannot be entirely accounted for by the mediation of any known physical energy. See also Psi-Kappa under Psi; Retroactive PK; Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis. [From the Greek psyche, “mind, soul,” + kinesis, “a moving, disturbance,” derived from kinein, “to set in]

PSYCHOKINETIC METAL-BENDING (PK-MB)
A psychokinetic effect in which metallic objects such as keys, cutlery and so on are subjected to more or less permanent deformation or other structural change.

PSYCHOMETRY
Term coined by Joseph Rodes Buchanan (1893)to refer to the practice in which sensitives hold an object in their hands and obtain paranormal information about the object or its owner; owing to the confusion with a psychological term, “psychometry” has in recent years been superseded by “token-object reading.” [From the Greek psyche, “soul, mind,” + metrein, “to measure”]

PSYCHOTRONICS
Czech term for “parapsychology” (excluding the study of survival), but embracing certain phenomena that are not now generally accepted as parapsychological. According to Larissa Vilenskaya (1983, p. 107), the term was first proposed with the analogy of “bionics” in mind, to refer to “ the field dealing with the construction of devices capable of enhancing and/or reproducing certain psi phenomena (such as psychokinesis in the case of ‘psychotronic generators’ developed by Robert Pavlita) and later embraced some other phenomena.” [Dale & White, 1977]

From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org
M-O

MACRO-PK
See under Psychokinesis.

MATERIALIZATION
A phenomenon of physical mediumship in which living entities or inanimate objects are caused to take form, sometimes from ectoplasm. Compare Dematerialization.

MEDITATION
A broad term embracing a number of techniques for achieving various altered states of awareness, with some of these altered states resulting in the ecstatic qualities of so-called “peak experience;” most meditative techniques are ways of learning to still the agitation of the mind so that more subtle and valuable aspects of self and reality may be perceived; some techniques involve concentration, in which attention is focused on a particular object and restrained from wandering, while others involve giving one’s total attention to whatever spontaneously happens, with no attempt to control or focus attention.

MEDIUM
A predominantly Spiritualistic term applied to a person who regularly, and to a greater or lesser extent at will, is involved in the production of psi in the form mental and/or physical phenomena. See also Communicator; Control; Sensitive; Trance; Apport; Ectoplasm; Levitation.

MENTALISM
The practice of simulating telepathy, performed for the purpose of entertainment.

MESMERISM
The original term for what has since become known as “hypnotism,” named after the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1733-1815), who believed that it involved the transfer from operator to patient of a subtle fluid, force or energy known as “animal magnetism.”

METAL-BENDING
See Psychokinetic Metal-bending.

METAPHYSICS
Anglicization of a French term coined by Charles Richet as an alternative designation for the subject matter of parapsychology. [From the Greek meta, indicating change of condition, + psychikos, “of the soul, mental”]

MICRO-PK
See under Psychokinesis.

MINI-GELLER
A child or young person who can to some extent duplicate by paranormal means the metal-bending feats of Uri Geller. See also Geller Effect.

MUSCLE-READING
A phenomena which mimics telepathy, in which a person is able, for example, to find a hidden object by means of physical contact with the person who knows its whereabouts, probably due to subtle muscular cues that the latter provides unconsciously; also known as “Cumberlandism,” after Stuart Cumberland, a nineteenth century practitioner of this art.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
An experience which, according to Michael A. Thalbourne (1991a, 1991b), consists of a majority of the following features: it tends to be sudden in onset, joyful, and difficult to verbalize; it involves a sense of perceiving the purpose of existence; an insight into “the harmony of things;” a perception of an ultimate unity — of oneness; transcendence of the ego; an utter conviction of immortality; and it tends to be temporary, authoritative and to be attributed supreme value. Some people interpret the mystical experience as an experience of unity with
God.

NDE
See Near-Death Experience.

Even when training a new guide you never know what you will find. Recently while training a new tour guide for our Haunted St. Augustine Tour an apparition was captured near the City Gates. Our manager was on a dress rehearsal snapping photo with our newest guide when she captured a full body apparition, possibly of Elizabeth, near the City Gate. The area is said to be haunted by a young girl who died of Yellow Fever along with her entire family by the Yellow Fever Epidemic that swept the city in the 1830s.

From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org

E-G

ECTOPLASM
Term introduced into parapsychology by Charles Richet to describe the “exteriorized substance” produced out of the bodies of some physical mediums and from which materializations are sometimes formed. [From the Greek ektos, “outside,” + plasma, “something formed or molded”]

ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH (EEG)
The mechanical device employed in the technique which known as electroencephalography.

ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY
A technique for amplifying and recording the fluctuations in electrical voltage in a living brain using electrodes attached to key positions on the person’s head; this technique has proved to be particularly important for sleep-research (and thus also for research on dream-telepathy), where characteristic brain waves have been identified and related to the successive stages of sleep. [From the Greek enkephalos, "the brain," derived from en, "within," + kephale, "the head," + graphein, "to write"]

ELECTRONIC VOICE PHENOMENA (EVP)
Phenomena first reported by Raymond Bayless and popularized by Konstantin Raudive, consisting of sounds said to be the faint voices of deceased individuals, recorded on previously
unused magnetic tapes.

ESP
See Extrasensory Perception.

ESP CARDS
A special deck of cards, developed by perceptual psychologist Karl Zener for use by J. B. Rhine in tests of extrasensory perception: a standard pack contains 25 cards, each portraying one of five symbols — circle, cross, square, star or wavy lines. Also called Zener cards.

EXCEPTIONAL HUMAN EXPERIENCE
Expression coined by Rhea White (see, for example, 1994, p. 5) as “an umbrella term for many types of experience generally considered to be psychic, mystical, encounter-type experiences, death-related experiences, and experiences at the upper end of the normal range, such as creative inspiration, exceptional human performance, as in sports, literary and aesthetic experiences, and the experience of falling in love.”

EXPERIMENTER EFFECT
An experimental outcome which results not from manipulation of the variable of interest per se, but rather from some aspect of the particular experimenter’s behavior, such as unconscious communication to the subjects, or possibly even a psi-mediated effect working in accord with the experimenter’s desire to confirm some hypothesis.

EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION (ESP)
The acquisition of information about, or response to, an external event, object or influence (mental or physical; past, present or future) otherwise than through any of the known sensory channels; used by J. B. Rhine to embrace such phenomena as telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition; there is some difference of opinion as whether the term ought to be attributed to Rhine, or to Gustav Pagenstecher or Rudolph Tischner, who were using the German equivalent aussersinnliche Wahrehmung as early as the 1920s. [From the Latin extra, “outside of,” + sensory]

FAITH HEALING
See Healing, Psychic.

FANTASY-PRONENESS
A personality construct first described by Sheryl Wilson and Theodore Barber (1983, p. 340) to refer to a small percentage of the population “who fantasize a large part of the time, [and] who typically ‘see,’ ‘hear,’ ‘smell,’ ‘touch’ and fully experience what they fantasize”; such persons tend to be able to hallucinate voluntarily, to be excellent hypnotic subjects, to have vivid memories of their life experiences, and to report experiencing parapsychological phenomena.

GANZFELD
Term referring to a special type of environment (or the technique for producing it) consisting of homogenous, unpatterned sensory stimulation: audiovisual ganzfeld may be accomplished by placing translucent hemispheres (for example, halved ping-pong balls) over each eye of the subject, with diffused light (frequently red in hue) projected onto them from an external source, together with the playing of unstructured sounds (such as “white” or “pink” noise) into the ears, and generally with the person in a state of bodily comfort; the consequent deprivation of patterned sensory input is said to be conducive to introspection of inwardly-generated impressions, some of which may be extra-sensory in origin. [From the German for “entire field”]

We have received many questions about the terminology in the paranormal field. We are going to start a ghostly glossary for you.

AGENT
In a test of general extrasensory perception, the individual (human or animal) who looks at the information constituting the target and who is said to “send” or “transmit” that information to a percipient; in a test of telepathy, and in cases of spontaneous extrasensory perception, the individual about whose mental states information is acquired by a percipient; the term is very occasionally used to refer to the subject in a test of psychokinesis or the focus in a poltergeist case. [From the Latin agens (agentis), derived from agere, “to drive, do”]

ALPHA
In the context of brain science: a distinctive brain-rhythm or brain-wave which occurs mainly in the occipital region of the cortex, and which is correlated, on the psychological level, with feelings of drowsiness, relaxation and disengaged attention on the part of the subject; it is of relatively high amplitude, and has a frequency range of between 8 and 13 Hz (cycles per second); of parapsychological interest as a possible physiological indicator of a psi-conducive condition in the subject. [From the Greek alpha, first letter of the Greek alphabet]

ALTERED STATE(S) OF CONSCIOUSNESS (ASC)
Expression popularized by Charles T. Tart which can refer to virtually any mental state differing from that of the normal waking condition; of parapsychological interest as possibly psi-conducive states; they include dreaming, hypnosis, trance, meditation of the yoga or Zen tradition, the hypnagogic-like state induced by the ganzfeld, and drug-induced states.

ANOMALISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
Term first used by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones (1982) to indicate that part of psychology that investigates “anomalistic” psychological phenomena, that is, phenomena which have tended to be explained in terms of the paranormal, the supernatural, magic, or the occult; the term is also meant to include belief in UFOs, in astrology, and in such creatures as the Loch Ness Monster.

ANOMALOUS
Having the quality of an anomaly.

ANOMALY
Neutral term applied to a phenomenon which implies that the phenomenon is unexpected according to conventional scientific knowledge, but which does not commit the user to any particular type of explanation; sometimes sometimes preferred to “paranormal.”

ANPSI
Term coined by J. B. Rhine to refer to psi ability in non-human animals. [Contraction of “animal psi”]

APPARITION
An experience usually visual but sometimes in other sense-modalities in which there appears to be present a person or animal (deceased or living) and even inanimate objects such as carriages and other things, who/which is in fact out of the sensory range of the experient; often associated with spontaneous extrasensory perception, for example, in connection with an agent who is dying or undergoing some other crisis (in which case, it is likely to be termed a “crisis apparition,” or in connection with haunting (in which case, it is likely to be referred to in non-technical contexts as a “ghost”)

APPORT
A physical object which has been paranormally transported into a closed space or container, suggesting the passage of “matter through matter,” that is, through intervening solid material objects. [From the Latin apportare, “to carry to (a place)”]

ASTRAL BODY
An entity said to be an exact, quasi-physical replica or “double” of the individual physical body, which can separate itself from the physical body, either temporarily, as in dreaming or in the out-of-the-body experience, or permanently, at the moment of death. Also known as the “etheric” body. [From the Latin astralis, derived from astrum, “star,” derived from the Greek astron]

ASTRAL TRAVEL
See Astral Projection under Out-of-[the]-Body Experience.

AURA
A field of subtle, multicolored, luminous radiations said to surround living bodies as a halo or cocoon; the term is occasionally used to refer to the normal electromagnetic field forces surrounding the body. [Latin, from the Greek,“breath of air”]

AUTOMATIC WRITING
A motor automatism in which a person’s hand writes meaningful statements, but without the writer consciously premeditating the content of what is produced.

AUTOMATISM
Any complex sensory or motor activity the details of which are carried out by a person without their conscious awareness or volition, thus constituting instances of dissociation; examples of sensory automatisms are certain visual and auditory hallucinations; examples of motor automatisms are sleep-walking, trance-utterances and automatic writing.

BILOCATION
The phenomenon in which a person’s body is seen in two different geographical locations at the same time; also, according to Myers (1903), the sensation of being in two different places at once, namely, where one’s organism is, and a place distant from it, involving some degree of perception (whether veridical or not) of the distant scene.

BIOFEEDBACK
A technique which enables a person to monitor on-going changes in one of their own physiological processes; as a result of such information, the individual may be able to acquire some degree of control in regulating internal processes normally outside the range of voluntary influence; of parapsychological interest mainly in connection with altered states of consciousness and with the possibility of controlling the incidence of the alpha brain-rhythm.

ALLOBIOFEEDBACK
Term used by William G. Braud (1978) to denote the situation in which one subject, A, is attempting to influence, psychokinetically, the physiological processes of another person, B, aided by biofeedback to A concerning those processes in B. [From the Greek allos, “other,” + bios, “life,” + feedback]

BIO-PK
Term used to refer to psychokinetic effects brought about on living systems; examples of such effects would be the paranormal speeding up or slowing down of the sprouting of seeds or of the growth of bacteria, the resuscitation of anæsthetized mice, and so on; may also include psychosomatic effects; symbolized “PK-LT” (“psychokinesis on living targets”) by J. B. Rhine; modern researchers refer to it as DMILS, or direct mental influence on living systems.

BOOK TEST
A test for survival sometimes conducted during a sitting in an attempt to exclude telepathy between medium and sitter as an explanation for the information paranormally acquired by the medium: the communicator is requested to transmit a message referring to topics on specified pages of a book that the medium could not have normally seen. (As a noun), the overt response made by the percipient in guessing the target; in a test of extrasensory perception; (as a verb), to make a response or call.