From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org

T-Z

TABLE-TILTING
A form of motor automatism in which several persons place their finger-tips on a table top, causing it to move and rap out messages by means of a code. Also called “table tipping” or “table turning.” [Dale & White, 1977]

TAROT
A set of playing-cards first used in Italy in the fourteenth century, consisting of a series of 22 cards bearing figures (21 of them being numbered) and referred to as the “Major Arcanum,” together with a set of 56 cards (in four suits)constituting the “Minor Arcanum,” forming a pack of 78 cards.

TELEKINESIS
Older term for “psychokinesis,” coined by Alexander Aksakof (1895/1890), and still preferred in the former USSR; Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. [From the Greek tele, “far away,” + kinesis, “a moving, disturbance,” derived from kinein, “to set in motion”]

TELEPATHY
Term coined by Frederic Myers to refer to the paranormal acquisition of information concerning the thoughts, feelings or activity of another conscious being; the word has superseded earlier expressions such as “thought-transference.” See also General Extrasensory Perception. [From the Greek ele, “far away,” + pathein, “to have suffered, been affected by something”]
LATENT TELEPATHY
An instance of telepathy in which there seems to be a time lag between the agent’s attempt to transmit the target, and the percipient’s awareness of that target.

PRECOGNITIVE TELEPATHY
The paranormal acquisition of information concerning the future mental state of another conscious being.

THEOSOPHY
In general, any school of thought claiming to have special insight into the nature of God; specifically, the religious and philosophical doctrines of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875 in New York by Madame Helene Petrova
Blavatsky based on Hindu and Buddhist notions, it taught the conscious development of paranormal abilities, and belief in reincarnation. [From the Greek theos, “God,” + sophia, “wisdom”]
TRANCE
A state of dissociation in which the individual is oblivious to their situation and surroundings, and in which various forms of automatism may be expressed; usually exhibited under hypnotic, mediumistic or shamanistic conditions. [From the Old French transe, “passage,” ultimately derived from the Latin transire, “to go across”]

TRANSLIMINALITY
Term introduced by Michael A. Thalbourne (1991a), meaning literally “the tendency to cross the threshold into awareness.” Persons exhibiting a high degree of transliminality are more likely to believe in, and claim experience of, paranormal phenomena, as well as to report more magical ideation, a more creative personality, more mystical experience, greater religiosity and more fantasy-proneness, as well as a history of experience resembling clinical depression and mania. Therefore, transliminality is defined as “susceptibility to, and awareness of, large volumes of imagery, ideation and emotion — these phenomena being stimulated by subliminal, supraliminal and/or external inputs.” [From the Latin trans, “across, beyond,” + limen (liminis), “threshold”]

VERIDICAL
Truthful; corresponding to, or conveying fact. [From the Latin veridicus, derived from verum, “truth” + dicere, “to say”]

XENOGLOSSY
Term coined by Charles Richet (1905) to denote the act of speaking in a language ostensibly unknown to the speaker. To be distinguished from glossolalia. [From the Greek xenos, “foreign, alien,” + glossa, “language”]

ZENER CARDS
The original name given to the ESP cards; named after the perceptual psychologist Karl Zener, a colleague of Rhine’s, who apparently suggested the symbols to be used on the cards (circle, cross, square, star, and wavy lines).

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

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”]