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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”]
MANUAL GANZFELD
The use of the word
"manual" refers to the fact that the target selection is
carried out by manual access to computer or random number tables as
well as the fact that all the important events in the experiment are
recorded by hand. Consequently, the technique has limited safeguards
against fraud or data selection compared with the
autoganzfeld.
AUTOGANZFELD
An
implementation of the ganzfeld technique in which many of the
key procedural details, such as selection and presentation of the
target and the recording of the evaluation of the
target-response similarity given by the percipient are fully
automated and computerized, the goal being to reduce as far as
possible errors and sensory communication on the part of the human
participants.
GELLER
EFFECT
The ability to bend metal by paranormal means;
named after the Israeli stage performer Uri Geller, who was the first
person to claim publicly the metal-bending ability; the term has
been largely superseded by “PK-MB,” or, more simply, “metal-bending.”
See also Mini-Geller; Psychokinesis.
GENERAL EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION
(GESP)
A non-committal technical term used to refer to
instances of extrasensory perception in which the information
paranormally acquired may have been derived either from another person’s
mind (that is, as telepathy), or from a physical event or state
of affairs (that is, as clairvoyance), or even from both sources;
experimental parapsychologists rarely use the term “telepathy” because
of the difficulty, in tests of so-called telepathy, of excluding the
possible operation of clairvoyance.
GHOST
As popularly
used, this term denotes only the apparition of a deceased person,
and is not sufficiently precise for use in psychical research.
[Ashby, 1972]
GOAT
Term originally
used by Gertrude Schmeidler (1943) to describe a subject who rejects the
possibility that extrasensory perception could occur under the
conditions of the given experimental situation; this somewhat narrow
meaning has been extended to refer also, or alternatively, to persons
who do not believe in the existence of ESP in general (that is, under
any conditions!), or even to persons who obtain low scores on various
so-called “projective,” “scalar” or “checklist” measures of belief in
(and/or experience of) different sorts of putative psi phenomena.
Compare Sheep. See Sheep-Goat Effect.
HALLUCINATION
An experience having the same
phenomenological characteristics as a sense-perception, and which may
lead the experient to suppose the presence of an external physical
object as the cause of that experience, but in which, in fact, there is
no such object present.
HAUNTING
The more or
less regular occurrence of paranormal phenomena associated with a
particular locality (especially a building) and usually attributed to
the activities of a discarnate entity; the phenomena may include
apparitions, poltergeist disturbances, cold drafts, sounds
of steps and voices, and various odors.
HEALING,
PSYCHIC
Healing apparently brought about by such non-medical
means as prayer, the “laying on of hands,” Psychic healing; immersion at
a religious shrine, and so on, and inexplicable according to
contemporary medical science; not to be confused with merely
unconventional medicine.
HYPNAGOGIC STATE
Term
referring to the transitional state of consciousness experienced while
falling asleep, sometimes characterized by vivid hallucinations
or imagery of varying degrees of bizarreness; sometimes used to refer
also to the similar state of awareness experienced during the process of
waking up. Compare Hypnopompic State. [From the Greek
hypnos, “sleep,” + agogos, “leading”]
HYPNOPOMPIC STATE
Term
coined by Frederic Myers to refer to the transitional state of
consciousness experienced while waking from sleep; the term “hypnagogic”
is sometimes used to refer to this state also. [From the Greek
hypnos, “sleep,” + pompos, “escort, guide”]
HYPNOSIS
A condition
or state, commonly resembling sleep, which is accompanied by narrowing
of the range of attention, is characterized by marked susceptibility to
suggestion, and can be artificially induced.
INTUITION
Somewhat ill-defined term referring to
the faculty of coming to an idea directly, by means other than those of
reasoning and intellect, and indeed often outside of all conscious
processes; the source of these messages is often said to be in the
normal, mundane, unconscious, but it is often also said to be the result
of mystical or paranormal processes. The word sometimes
refers to the process, sometimes to the product of intuition. [From the
Latin intueri, “to look at, contemplate”]
JUDGING
The process whereby a rating or a
rank-score (that is, “1st,” “2nd,” “3rd,” and so on) is awarded to one
or more responses produced (or targets used) in a free-response
test of extrasensory perception, in accordance with the degree of
correspondence obtaining between them or one or more targets (or
responses); also, the attempt to match, under blind conditions, a set of
targets with a set of responses.
KIRLIAN
PHOTOGRAPHY
A type of high-voltage, high-frequency
photography, developed in the Soviet Union by Semyon Davidovich Kirlian,
which records on photographic film the so-called “corona discharge” of
an object caused by ionization of the field surrounding that object; it
is claimed by some that this process indicates the existence of hitherto
unknown radiations or energy fields such as “bioplasma” or the “psychic
aura.” |
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