Paranormal Terminology
ANGEL: A supernatural being who mediates between God and mortals. Angels are held to minister over all living things and natural world, as well as all things in the cosmos. The term "angel" comes from the Greek anglos, which means "messenger."
ANOMALY: Any occurrence that is strange, unusual, or unique. It can also mean a discrepancy or deviation from an established rule or trend.
APPARITION: The appearance of deceased person or animals or of a living person or animal and even inanimate objects such as carriages, trains, and motorcycles. Apparitions can sometimes seem real with definable form and features, and if human, with clothing. Other apparitions are luminous, transparent, and ill defined; some are little more than streaks, blobs or patches of light. However, there are apparitions based on senses. Usually sounds, smells, and sensations of cold.
COLLECTIVE APPARITIONS: An ghost or spirit sighting simultaneously by more than one person.
CRISIS APPARITIONS: An apparition that appear during a moment of extreme crisis like death. The apparition usually appears to loved ones or others with close emotional ties. The crisis apparitions seems to try to communicate to the living in waking visions and in dreams.
DEATHBED APPARITIONS: The appearance of angelic beings, religious figures, and dead loved ones are sometimes reported by the dying shortly before death.
TRANSPORTATION APPARITIONS: The appearance of ghostly cars, ships, motorcycles, carriages, trains, and airplanes. They haunt their old routes.
ASTRAL BODY:The soul of an individual projected outside of their bodies.
ASTRAL PROJECTION: An out-of-body experience. Term was to describe the temporary sensation of the so called "astral body" from the physical body.
AURA: Energy or life force surrounding all living individuals. The color of an aura can determine the mood or physical condition of an individual. Spirits can sometimes use physical aura for energy, thereby depleting the person whose energy was taken.
AUTOMATIC WRITING: A type of communication with ghosts or spirits where they take control over the writer's hand and write out message.
BANSHEE: Omen spirits of Scotland and Ireland.
BAROMETER: Any device that measures air pressure.
BLACK SHUCK: A large spectral dog in British folklore.
CHANNELING: A phenomenon in which a person allows themselves to transmit or messages directly from a personality or consciousness other than his or her own, usually through automatic writing or trance speaking; this other personality usually claims to be nonphysical spirit or being.
CLAIRVOYANCE: Paranormal vision of objects, events, places and people that are not visible through normal sight.
COLLECTIVE APPARITION: See apparition
CRISIS APPARITION: See apparition
CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES: Interrelated bits of information received from the spirit world by different mediums at different times and locations. The communications must be joined together to form a complete message from the spirits.
DAY OF THE DEAD: A special holiday each year to honor the dead, involving parties, feasts, special foods, songs and parades. The most elaborate ceremonies for the dead occur in Mexico.
DEATHBED APPARITION: See apparition
DEJA VU: The feeling of having experienced something before.
DEMON: A type of spirit that may be either good or evil and that allegedly has the ability to intervene in the affairs of humankind. The term "demon" means "replete with wisdom" and is derived from Greek term Daimon, which means "divine power," "fate" or "god."
DIRECT VOICE PHENOMENON: (DVP) A spirit voice, spoken directly to sitters at a seance. The sound usually seems to come from a point near the medium, or through a spirit horn or trumpet, but not from the mouth of the medium.
DOWSING: The paranormal detection of underground water or mineral deposits ( or lost persons and objects) using a divining rod.
DOPPELGANGER: An apparition double or counterpart of a living person.
EARTH LIGHTS: Luminous phenomena typically shaped in ball form or irregular patches of light appearing randomly and defying explanation. Have been reported all around the world.
ECTOPLASM: A substance, solid, or vaporous, in nature, which allegedly extrudes from the body of a medium and can materialize into limbs, faces, or entire bodies of spirits.
ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD DETECTOR: (EMF, Gaussmeter, or magnetometer) A device which measures electric, magnetic, radio or microwave fields.
ELECTRONIC VOICE PHENOMENON: (EVP) The capture of spirit voices on magnetic tape or digital media as an audio recording. Many times, no sound is heard while the tape is recording. It's only upon playback that the voices can be heard.
ENTITY: Something that has a distinct, seprate existence, though it need not to be material existence. A general sense of a being, whether or not referent has material existence. It is often used to refer to ghosts and spirits.
EXORCISM: The expulsion of ghosts, spirits, demons, or other entities believed to be possessing a persons body or particular location.
EXORCISTS: A religious holy man who conducts a exorcism.
EXTRASENSORY: Occurring, operating, outside of the normal senses.
EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION: (ESP) Paranormal sensing of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. ESP is divided into three categories, telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, which deliver information relevant to the present, past, or future that cannot be obtained through normal senses.
FALSE AWAKENING: An experience in which a person believes he or she has woken up, but actually is still dreaming.
FLYING DUTCHMAN: Phantom ship legend involving a rash oath or punishment for sins or evil. Through out the world the legend has different versions.
GHOSTS: The visual appearance of a spirit or soul of deceased being, human or animal.
GHOST LIGHTS: See Earth lights
GHOUL: Evil spirit in Islamic lore that robs graves and feeds off of the flesh of the dead.
GOBLIN: A small hideous evil spirit. They have an unpredictable, mischievous nature.
GRATEFUL DEAD: Ghosts of the dead return to the living to reward deserving people.
GRAY LADIES: The ghosts of women who reportedly died violently for the sake of love. Get their name from appearing to be dressed in gray. However, some have appeared to be clothed in white, black, or brown.
GREMLINS: A small pesky spirit that first appeared in British military aircraft during World War I. Pilots reported seeing misty, goblin like spirits in their aircraft.
HALLOWEEN: All Hallows Eve, is the night of October 31st when the spirit and normal world allegedly become one.
HARBINGER: A person sent ahead to provide lodgings. One that pioneers in or initiates a major change. One that presages or foreshadows what is to come.
HAUNT: A location where ghosts frequently return.
HAUNTING: The occurrences of paranormal phenomena associated with a particular locality (especially a house) and usually attributed to the activities of a discarnate entity; the phenomena may include apparitions, poltergeist disturbances, cold spots, sounds of steps, tapping, and voices, and various odors.
HITCHHIKERS: Spirits that attach themselves to people, objects or other supernatural entities for the purpose of moving from one place to another.
MAGNETOMETER: (EMF Detector, guassmeter) A device to measure the presence of a magnetic field as well as its strength, direction, and fluctuation.
MATERIALIZATION: A phenomenon of physical objects, animals, or people are caused to take form.
MEDIUM: A person that claims they can communicate with spirits.
TYPES OF MEDIUMS-
MENTAL MEDIUM: A person who receives impressions purporting to be communications from the dead, and who transmits to the living, in oral or written form.
MIXED MEDIUM: A person who at times produces genuine psi phenomena but also at times engages in simulation of those phenomena.
PHYSICAL MEDIUM: A person who is the center of moving objects and other physical incidents supposedly caused by spirits.
MEDIUMSHIP: The practice of skills associated with mediums.
MENTAL MEDIUM: See medium
MIST: A photographed anomaly (usually not seen at the time of photo) that appears as a blanket of light. It is believed to be an appearance of a ghost or spirit.
MIXED MEDIUM: See medium
NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE: (NDE) A phenomenon in which person dies or comes very close to death only to be revived and then can recall in great detail stories of spiritual worlds and other supernatural events.
NECROMANCY: The conjuring of the dead or spirits of the for magical purposes.
OLD HAG: A nocturnal phenomenon involving suffocation, paralysis, and supernatural smells, sounds, and apparitions, blamed on night terror, demons or witches.
OLD SHUCK: See Black Shuck
OMEM: A foretelling of a future event.
ORBS: Energy anomalies recorded at haunted sites. Orbs are not visible to the naked eye but can be seen through infrared monitors or photos. They appear to be luminosities that are round and even rectangular in shape. They appear to be a form of energy of unknown origin.
OUIJA BOARD: A board with letters and numbers used by people who are attempting to communicate with ghosts or spirits.
OUT-OF-BODY: (OBE) Also called Astral projection. The phenomenon in which a living person's spirit can exit their body, travel the earth and other spiritual worlds and then return back to their bodies.
PARANORMAL: Anything not normal. Term is used in conjunction with hauntings, UFOs, and other phenomena that cannot be explained.
PARAPSYCHOLOGY: The branch of science that studies psychic phenomena.
PERCIPIENT: The person who experiences or receives an extrasensory influence or impression.
PHANTOM: See ghost
PHENOMENON: Is any observable occurrence. Often refers to extraordinary event.
PHYSICAL MEDIUM: See medium
PLANCHETTE: A pointer used with the ouija board to communicate with spirits.
POLTERGEIST: German word meaning "noisy ghost." Spirit energy that may or may not be connected to a living human agent. Some of the most common poltergeist activities include loud unexplained noise, levitations, and the moving of objects.
POLTERGEIST AGENT: A person, usually a teenage girl, who unknowingly directs poltergeist energy.
POSSESSION: When a persons mind and body are taken over by spirits or supernatural entities such as demons.
PRECOGNITION: A form of extrasensory perception in which there is an awareness of future events.
PSI: A letter in the Greek alphabet that denotes the unknown factors responsible for variety of paranormal phenomena.
PSYCHIC: A term used to denote a person who uses, or who appears to be especially gifted with psi abilities.
PSYCHOKINESIS: (PK) The mind's ability to effect the external world including levitation, rapping, and movement of objects.
RAPPING: Spirit communication including any knocking, thumping, or tapping.
RETROCOGNITION: A person that can see into past events.
SCRYING: Where a person can see future events by staring into a pool of water, mirrors, tea leaves, coffee grounds, or crystal ball.
SEANCE: The gathering of a group of individuals for the purpose of communicating with the dead.
SENSITIVE: Someone who is aware or can detect paranormal events beyond range of their five human senses.
SHAMAN: A tribal medium, witchdoctor or medicine man who communicates with spirits.
SIXTH SENSE: Popular term for ESP.
SOUL: The spiritual lifeforce or essence, carrying an individual's personality and consciousness.
SPIRIT: Often used to define the soul of a person, supernatural force of nature. May represent places such as mountains, lakes, tree, and any site considered to be sacred.
SPIRIT ATTACHMENT: A type of possession in which an entity becomes attached to a person, like a parasite.
SPIRITUALISM: Quasi-religious cult based upon belief that survival of death is a reality, and the practice of communicating with deceased persons.
SPOOK LIGHTS: See Earth lights
STIGMATA: Term used to refer to the marks or haemorrhages 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.
SUPERNATURAL: Something that exists occurs through some means other than any known force in nature or science.
TELEPATHY: Mind-to-mind communication.
TRANSPORTATION APPARITIONS: See apparition
WILD HUNT: A group of ghost horsemen or packs of ghostly dogs seen at night.
WITCHING HOUR: According to superstition, the time of night when ghosts and other supernatural beings are about on Earth. It is the hour on the night of a full moon,the apex of the powers of witches, who are said to draw their magical strength from the moon. Haunting phenomena occur often at night, especially between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m.
WRAITH: A ghost that comes back to avenge its own death. Considered an omen spirit.
ANOMALY: Any occurrence that is strange, unusual, or unique. It can also mean a discrepancy or deviation from an established rule or trend.
APPARITION: The appearance of deceased person or animals or of a living person or animal and even inanimate objects such as carriages, trains, and motorcycles. Apparitions can sometimes seem real with definable form and features, and if human, with clothing. Other apparitions are luminous, transparent, and ill defined; some are little more than streaks, blobs or patches of light. However, there are apparitions based on senses. Usually sounds, smells, and sensations of cold.
COLLECTIVE APPARITIONS: An ghost or spirit sighting simultaneously by more than one person.
CRISIS APPARITIONS: An apparition that appear during a moment of extreme crisis like death. The apparition usually appears to loved ones or others with close emotional ties. The crisis apparitions seems to try to communicate to the living in waking visions and in dreams.
DEATHBED APPARITIONS: The appearance of angelic beings, religious figures, and dead loved ones are sometimes reported by the dying shortly before death.
TRANSPORTATION APPARITIONS: The appearance of ghostly cars, ships, motorcycles, carriages, trains, and airplanes. They haunt their old routes.
ASTRAL BODY:The soul of an individual projected outside of their bodies.
ASTRAL PROJECTION: An out-of-body experience. Term was to describe the temporary sensation of the so called "astral body" from the physical body.
AURA: Energy or life force surrounding all living individuals. The color of an aura can determine the mood or physical condition of an individual. Spirits can sometimes use physical aura for energy, thereby depleting the person whose energy was taken.
AUTOMATIC WRITING: A type of communication with ghosts or spirits where they take control over the writer's hand and write out message.
BANSHEE: Omen spirits of Scotland and Ireland.
BAROMETER: Any device that measures air pressure.
BLACK SHUCK: A large spectral dog in British folklore.
CHANNELING: A phenomenon in which a person allows themselves to transmit or messages directly from a personality or consciousness other than his or her own, usually through automatic writing or trance speaking; this other personality usually claims to be nonphysical spirit or being.
CLAIRVOYANCE: Paranormal vision of objects, events, places and people that are not visible through normal sight.
COLLECTIVE APPARITION: See apparition
CRISIS APPARITION: See apparition
CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES: Interrelated bits of information received from the spirit world by different mediums at different times and locations. The communications must be joined together to form a complete message from the spirits.
DAY OF THE DEAD: A special holiday each year to honor the dead, involving parties, feasts, special foods, songs and parades. The most elaborate ceremonies for the dead occur in Mexico.
DEATHBED APPARITION: See apparition
DEJA VU: The feeling of having experienced something before.
DEMON: A type of spirit that may be either good or evil and that allegedly has the ability to intervene in the affairs of humankind. The term "demon" means "replete with wisdom" and is derived from Greek term Daimon, which means "divine power," "fate" or "god."
DIRECT VOICE PHENOMENON: (DVP) A spirit voice, spoken directly to sitters at a seance. The sound usually seems to come from a point near the medium, or through a spirit horn or trumpet, but not from the mouth of the medium.
DOWSING: The paranormal detection of underground water or mineral deposits ( or lost persons and objects) using a divining rod.
DOPPELGANGER: An apparition double or counterpart of a living person.
EARTH LIGHTS: Luminous phenomena typically shaped in ball form or irregular patches of light appearing randomly and defying explanation. Have been reported all around the world.
ECTOPLASM: A substance, solid, or vaporous, in nature, which allegedly extrudes from the body of a medium and can materialize into limbs, faces, or entire bodies of spirits.
ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD DETECTOR: (EMF, Gaussmeter, or magnetometer) A device which measures electric, magnetic, radio or microwave fields.
ELECTRONIC VOICE PHENOMENON: (EVP) The capture of spirit voices on magnetic tape or digital media as an audio recording. Many times, no sound is heard while the tape is recording. It's only upon playback that the voices can be heard.
ENTITY: Something that has a distinct, seprate existence, though it need not to be material existence. A general sense of a being, whether or not referent has material existence. It is often used to refer to ghosts and spirits.
EXORCISM: The expulsion of ghosts, spirits, demons, or other entities believed to be possessing a persons body or particular location.
EXORCISTS: A religious holy man who conducts a exorcism.
EXTRASENSORY: Occurring, operating, outside of the normal senses.
EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION: (ESP) Paranormal sensing of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. ESP is divided into three categories, telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, which deliver information relevant to the present, past, or future that cannot be obtained through normal senses.
FALSE AWAKENING: An experience in which a person believes he or she has woken up, but actually is still dreaming.
FLYING DUTCHMAN: Phantom ship legend involving a rash oath or punishment for sins or evil. Through out the world the legend has different versions.
GHOSTS: The visual appearance of a spirit or soul of deceased being, human or animal.
GHOST LIGHTS: See Earth lights
GHOUL: Evil spirit in Islamic lore that robs graves and feeds off of the flesh of the dead.
GOBLIN: A small hideous evil spirit. They have an unpredictable, mischievous nature.
GRATEFUL DEAD: Ghosts of the dead return to the living to reward deserving people.
GRAY LADIES: The ghosts of women who reportedly died violently for the sake of love. Get their name from appearing to be dressed in gray. However, some have appeared to be clothed in white, black, or brown.
GREMLINS: A small pesky spirit that first appeared in British military aircraft during World War I. Pilots reported seeing misty, goblin like spirits in their aircraft.
HALLOWEEN: All Hallows Eve, is the night of October 31st when the spirit and normal world allegedly become one.
HARBINGER: A person sent ahead to provide lodgings. One that pioneers in or initiates a major change. One that presages or foreshadows what is to come.
HAUNT: A location where ghosts frequently return.
HAUNTING: The occurrences of paranormal phenomena associated with a particular locality (especially a house) and usually attributed to the activities of a discarnate entity; the phenomena may include apparitions, poltergeist disturbances, cold spots, sounds of steps, tapping, and voices, and various odors.
HITCHHIKERS: Spirits that attach themselves to people, objects or other supernatural entities for the purpose of moving from one place to another.
MAGNETOMETER: (EMF Detector, guassmeter) A device to measure the presence of a magnetic field as well as its strength, direction, and fluctuation.
MATERIALIZATION: A phenomenon of physical objects, animals, or people are caused to take form.
MEDIUM: A person that claims they can communicate with spirits.
TYPES OF MEDIUMS-
MENTAL MEDIUM: A person who receives impressions purporting to be communications from the dead, and who transmits to the living, in oral or written form.
MIXED MEDIUM: A person who at times produces genuine psi phenomena but also at times engages in simulation of those phenomena.
PHYSICAL MEDIUM: A person who is the center of moving objects and other physical incidents supposedly caused by spirits.
MEDIUMSHIP: The practice of skills associated with mediums.
MENTAL MEDIUM: See medium
MIST: A photographed anomaly (usually not seen at the time of photo) that appears as a blanket of light. It is believed to be an appearance of a ghost or spirit.
MIXED MEDIUM: See medium
NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE: (NDE) A phenomenon in which person dies or comes very close to death only to be revived and then can recall in great detail stories of spiritual worlds and other supernatural events.
NECROMANCY: The conjuring of the dead or spirits of the for magical purposes.
OLD HAG: A nocturnal phenomenon involving suffocation, paralysis, and supernatural smells, sounds, and apparitions, blamed on night terror, demons or witches.
OLD SHUCK: See Black Shuck
OMEM: A foretelling of a future event.
ORBS: Energy anomalies recorded at haunted sites. Orbs are not visible to the naked eye but can be seen through infrared monitors or photos. They appear to be luminosities that are round and even rectangular in shape. They appear to be a form of energy of unknown origin.
OUIJA BOARD: A board with letters and numbers used by people who are attempting to communicate with ghosts or spirits.
OUT-OF-BODY: (OBE) Also called Astral projection. The phenomenon in which a living person's spirit can exit their body, travel the earth and other spiritual worlds and then return back to their bodies.
PARANORMAL: Anything not normal. Term is used in conjunction with hauntings, UFOs, and other phenomena that cannot be explained.
PARAPSYCHOLOGY: The branch of science that studies psychic phenomena.
PERCIPIENT: The person who experiences or receives an extrasensory influence or impression.
PHANTOM: See ghost
PHENOMENON: Is any observable occurrence. Often refers to extraordinary event.
PHYSICAL MEDIUM: See medium
PLANCHETTE: A pointer used with the ouija board to communicate with spirits.
POLTERGEIST: German word meaning "noisy ghost." Spirit energy that may or may not be connected to a living human agent. Some of the most common poltergeist activities include loud unexplained noise, levitations, and the moving of objects.
POLTERGEIST AGENT: A person, usually a teenage girl, who unknowingly directs poltergeist energy.
POSSESSION: When a persons mind and body are taken over by spirits or supernatural entities such as demons.
PRECOGNITION: A form of extrasensory perception in which there is an awareness of future events.
PSI: A letter in the Greek alphabet that denotes the unknown factors responsible for variety of paranormal phenomena.
PSYCHIC: A term used to denote a person who uses, or who appears to be especially gifted with psi abilities.
PSYCHOKINESIS: (PK) The mind's ability to effect the external world including levitation, rapping, and movement of objects.
RAPPING: Spirit communication including any knocking, thumping, or tapping.
RETROCOGNITION: A person that can see into past events.
SCRYING: Where a person can see future events by staring into a pool of water, mirrors, tea leaves, coffee grounds, or crystal ball.
SEANCE: The gathering of a group of individuals for the purpose of communicating with the dead.
SENSITIVE: Someone who is aware or can detect paranormal events beyond range of their five human senses.
SHAMAN: A tribal medium, witchdoctor or medicine man who communicates with spirits.
SIXTH SENSE: Popular term for ESP.
SOUL: The spiritual lifeforce or essence, carrying an individual's personality and consciousness.
SPIRIT: Often used to define the soul of a person, supernatural force of nature. May represent places such as mountains, lakes, tree, and any site considered to be sacred.
SPIRIT ATTACHMENT: A type of possession in which an entity becomes attached to a person, like a parasite.
SPIRITUALISM: Quasi-religious cult based upon belief that survival of death is a reality, and the practice of communicating with deceased persons.
SPOOK LIGHTS: See Earth lights
STIGMATA: Term used to refer to the marks or haemorrhages 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.
SUPERNATURAL: Something that exists occurs through some means other than any known force in nature or science.
TELEPATHY: Mind-to-mind communication.
TRANSPORTATION APPARITIONS: See apparition
WILD HUNT: A group of ghost horsemen or packs of ghostly dogs seen at night.
WITCHING HOUR: According to superstition, the time of night when ghosts and other supernatural beings are about on Earth. It is the hour on the night of a full moon,the apex of the powers of witches, who are said to draw their magical strength from the moon. Haunting phenomena occur often at night, especially between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m.
WRAITH: A ghost that comes back to avenge its own death. Considered an omen spirit.