Heard some terminology or acronym on a show or read it in a forum and have no idea what it means?
- Apophenia
- The experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
- Electromagnetic Field (EMF)
- A physical field produced by electrically charged objects. It affects the behavior of charged objects in the vicinity of the field. The electromagnetic field extends indefinitely throughout space and describes the electromagnetic interaction. The field can be viewed as the combination of an electric field and a magnetic field. The electric field is produced by stationary charges, and the magnetic field by moving charges (currents); these two are often described as the sources of the field.
- Elecronic Voice Phenomenom (EVP)
- Electronically generated noises that resemble speech, but are not the result of intentional voice recordings or renderings. These can be captured using both digital and analog recording devices, but require the recording mechanism to magnetic. It is believed spirits can imprint their voices onto these devices through psychokineses or manipulation of the EM field.
- Instrumental Trans-Communication (ITC)
- Communication through any sort of electronic device such as tape recorders, fax machines, television sets or computers between spirits or other discarnate entities and the living.
- Intelligent Haunting
- A haunting in which a spiritual entity is aware of the living world and interacts with or responds to it.
- Materialization
- The creation or appearance of matter from unknown sources. It is the transformation of something abstract or virtual into something concrete and tangible.
- Psychokinesis (aka Telekinesis)
- Refers to the direct influence of mind on a physical system that cannot be entirely accounted for by the mediation of any known physical energy (i.e. moving objects with the mind).[5] Examples of psychokinesis could include distorting or moving an object,[6] and influencing the output of a random number generator.
- Pareidolia
- A psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
- Restligeists (Residual Haunting)
- Repeated playbacks of auditory, visual, olfactory, and other sensory phenomena that are attributed to a traumatic event, life-altering event, or a routine event of a person or place, like an echo or a replay of a videotape of past events. Ghost hunters and related paranormal television programs say that a residual haunting, unlike an intelligent haunting, does not directly involve a spiritual entity aware of the living world and interacting with or responding to it.
- Stone Tape
- A paranormal hypothesis that was proposed in the 1970s as a possible explanation for ghosts. It speculates that inanimate materials can absorb some form of energy from living beings; the hypothesis speculates that this "recording" happens especially during moments of high tension, such as murder, or during intense moments of someone's life. This stored energy can be released at any given moment, resulting in a display of the occurred activity. According to this hypothesis, ghosts are not spirits at all, but simply non-interactive recordings similar to a movie.
- Time Slip
- An alleged paranormal phenomenon in which a person, or group of people, travel through time via unknown means. As with all paranormal phenomena, the objective reality of such experiences is disputed. Often, this is used to explain how a spirit can exhibit both residual behavior while also being able to respond to and interact with someone or something in the present.
- White Noise
- A random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency. The bandwidth of white noise is limited in practice by the mechanism of noise generation, by the transmission medium and by finite observation capabilities. A random signal is considered "white noise" if it is observed to have a flat spectrum over a medium's widest possible bandwidth.