The Paranormal ABC's

This is an incomplete list of common terms used in the paranormal field. I will be adding more terms continuously and if you have any suggestions please feel free to comment.


Agent- 1) a person who attempts to communicate information to another in an ESP experiment 2) The subject in a psychokenesis experiment 3) Person who is the focus of poltergeist activity

Aura – a field that some psychic see surrounding the living body, often thought to reflect a person’s personality

Apparition – the visual appearance of a person whose physical body is not present

Asport – a physical object that a spirit teleports to another location or makes disappear

Automatic writing – writing without being aware of the contents, as when a medium apparently transcribes written messages from disembodied spirits

Channeling – the process by which a medium apparently allows a spirit to communicate through his or her person

Clairaudience – the paranormal obtaining of information by hearing sounds or voices

Clairsentience – an archaic term that refers to the paranormal obtaining of information using faculties other than vision or hearing

Clairvoyance – a subset of esp. the viewing of distant scenes not apparent to the eye, may appear externally – either replacing the normal visual scene or being incorporated into it or internally in the form of mental imagery and intuition

Collective apparition - an unusual type of ghost sighting in which more than one person sees the same phenomenon

Déjà vu - is the feeling of having experienced something before.

Demon - evil entity often talked about in the religious text said to be about nothing but pure evil and wrong doing

Doppelganger - a mirror image or double of a person

Empathy - low level form of telepathy wherein the empathy appears to be aware of the emotional state of a distant person. An empath may also be able to broadcast emotions to others

ESP -  (extrasensory perceptions) the ability to gain knowledge through means other than the five physical senses or logical inference

EVP - (electronic voice phenomenon) the capture of spirit voices on magnetic tape as an audio recording many times the sound isn’t heard during recording

Exorcism - the expulsion of ghost demons or any entity thought  to be inhabiting a living being body

Ganzfield Experiment - an experiment where input from the outside world is reduced by placing halved ping pong balls over the eyes and by masking external sounds a state of mild sensory deprivation

Ghost - a form of apparition usually the visual appearance of a deceased humans spirit soul

Haunting - recurrent sounds of human activity sightings of apparitions and other psychic phenomena, in a location when no one is there physically

EMF - (electo-magnetic field detectors) are  a device to measure the presence of a magnetic field as well as its strength, direction, and fluctuation.

Medium - a person who professes to be able to communicate with spirits

Orb - a photographed anomaly that in theory represents an ongoing spirit of a deceased person it appears as a ball of light and may occasionally seem to be moving

Paranormal - above or outside the natural order of things as presently understood

Parapsychology - the branch of science that studies psychic phenomena

Phantom - another name for a ghost

Phenomenology – an approach to research that aims to describe and clarify a person’s own experience and understanding of an event or phenomenon

Phenomena –  an occurrence, circumstance, or fact that is perceptible by the senses

Phenomenon – something that is impressive, extraordinary,  unusual, significant, or unaccountable

Poltergeist  - a German word meaning “noisy or troublesome spirit”. Poltergeist activity may include unexplained noises, movements of objects, outbreak of fire, floods, pricks or scrathes to a persons body. Unlike hauntings, which are associated with specific locations, poltergeist typically focus on a person (the focal person or poltergeist agent).

Possession – refers to cases in which a person’s body is apparently taken over by another personality or entity

Precognition - the ability to predict things beyond present knowledge

Premonition – an experience believed to foretell future events

Presence - a subjective feeling that a person, animal or discarnate entity is present

Psychic - a person with above average esp abilities

Response - an action made by a subject in an experiment

Sixth Sense – popular term for ESP

Skeptic - a person inclined to discount the reality of the paranormal and to be critical of Para psychological research generally seeks rational or scientific explanations for the phenomenon studies by parapsychologist

Sleep Paralysis - an (often frightening) state of seeming to being awake but unable to more

Spirit Photography – photographs of figures or faces, believed by some to be those of deceased persons

White Noise – a hiss-like sound, formed by combining all audible frequencies