Paranormal Glossary – 60 Terms Every Ghost Hunter Should Know

A glossary of ghost hunting terminology including 60 paranormal, occult and supernatural terms that every paranormal investigator should know.

Although the paranormal terms listed in this glossary are commonly used, their inclusion in this list is not an endorsement of that particular method, piece of equipment or branch of the paranormal, neither is it a reflection on its credibility. The list is purely intended to help you understand these common words and phrases.

Astral projection is the claim that a person can intentional induce an out-of-body experience allowing their “astral body” to travel elsewhere in the universe leaving their physical body behind.

It’s believed that unexplained cold spots and sudden significant temperature drops are a sign a spirit being present. You should be aware of not only cold spots in a haunted location, but also unexplained hot or warm areas as this too might indicate a supernatural presence.

Direct voice phenomenon is the experience of hearing audible, disembodied voices that are heard during paranormal investigations, séances or at a haunted location. These voices are spoken directly to the witnesses and heard without electronic equipment.

Dowsing is a technique which is usually used to locate ground water, but is also used in an attempt to communicate with the dead. Paranormal investigators generally use a pair of simple L-shaped metal rods, one is held in each hand, with the short arm of the L held upright, and the long arm pointing forward. You need to hold your arms as still as possible and ask the spirits questions. You could ask them to indicating an answer by moving the tips of the rods closer together, further apart or two point the rods in a specific direction.

A dybbuk box is said to be a box which contains an evil or malevolent spirit, or even a demon. A genuine dybbuk is usually very old, often an antique wooden box which is sealed using melted wax to keep whatever’s inside from getting out.

Ectoplasm has been immortalised as a slimy substance of supernatural origin in popular culture, but the phenomenon dates back to the Victorian era when mediums would produce reams of ectoplasm as part of their elaborate shows. The ectoplasm started off transparent or even invisible, but as it was charged with psychic energy by the medium it would become visible and more of a physical substance, which was white in colour. Ghosts would then drape this over their ethereal bodies to give them a corporeal form.

An elemental is a non-human entity that originates from occult and alchemical works that date back as far as the time of the European Renaissance. They are often associated with nature and the four classical elements, for example a gnome which is associated with earth, with other elementals being linked to water, air and fire.

An entity is an umbrella or catch-all term for any kind of supernatural or paranormal being, this could countless things including ghosts, spirit, poltergeist, elemental, imps, fae and demon.

The Estes Method is a type of sensory deprivation experiment named after Estes Park in Colorado, the location of the infamous Stanley Hotel, where the method was first used. It is designed to eliminate the subjectivity of the investigator by cutting them off from all external stimuli. This usually involves placing a blindfold and noise-cancelling headphones on one member of an investigation team to cut off their senses, then the audio output of a ghost hunting devices is played through the headphones. The rest of the team then call out to the spirits and ask questions. If any responses are heard through the ghost hunting device the team will not be able to hear it, however the blindfolded participant will, but since they won’t be able to hear their fellow investigators their perception of these responses won’t be influenced by the questions being asked.

Exorcisms are an ancient religious or spiritual ritual which are performed across many different religions and cultures in order to evict demons and other malevolent entities from a person or to end a spiritual attachment or possession.

In folklore a fae refers to a fairy, a type of supernatural entity.

A full spectrum camera is just like an ordinary camera, but as the name suggests it can see the full light spectrum, including light in the infrared and ultraviolet frequencies that the human eye can’t see. There are obvious advantages to having a camera that can see more than the naked eye when ghost hunting, not to mention the fact that when paired with an infrared light source the camera acts as a night vision camera.

For this method of spirit communication, one person is picked to stand in the middle of the room and close their eyes. The rest of the group then ask any spirits that night be present to push or move the person, you’ll often find that the person starts to sway. You can ask the spirits to make them sway left and right for yes, or back and forth for no – or variations on this.

Hydromancy is a method of divination by means of water, it is sometimes used by ghost hunters in a similar way to mirror scrying, which involves looking for shapes and patterns on the surface of the water and the ripples.

Infrasound is very low frequency sound below the human range of hearing. It’s not paranormal in nature, but these low frequency vibrations can cause people to have experiences similar to those associated with the paranormal. This can include feeling discomfort, disorientation, or panicked, as well as having an increased heart rate and blood pressure. In extreme cases infrasound has been linked to feelings of depression, a general feeling of unease, as well as visions like apparitions.

The type of characteristics associated with intelligent haunting, also known as interactive hauntings, includes entities being self aware and aware of their surroundings. They are also aware of the living and responsive to communication attempts, this can include intelligible communication in the form of EVPs, through ghost hunting gadgets such as spirit boxes or Ouija boards, or by leaving messages. Intelligent haunting may also manifest in the form of audible voices, intelligent and responsive knocking, physical experiences such as being touched, pushed or scratched, and objects being moved with intent.

A lone vigil involves one investigator being sent to haunted location or a specific part of a haunted location on their own in order to embark on an investigation, often this involves sitting and waiting for paranormal activity to occur.

When a spirit or ghost manifests it becomes a physical in some way producing the tactile, auditory, olfactory or visual signs of a haunting. When a manifestation is visual the entity often takes human-like form.

A near-death experience occurs when someone returns from being close to death. It often involves feelings of detachment from the body, levitation or floating towards the ceiling and away from the body, and the sensation of moving towards a bright light.

A night vision camera uses an active source of illumination in the near infrared band, often in the form of an external top light mounted on the camera. This type of light is just outside of the visible spectrum of the human eye, but it can be picked up by the camera’s sensor. It will produce a bright monochrome image, either with a greenish-tint or black and white, despite the fact the scene appears dark to the naked eye.

Some believe that these floating ghost lights which glow in the dark are evidence of spirit presence, or even the early stages of a ghostly manifestation. However, orbs are actually nothing more than the result of the camera’s flash or light illuminating dust particles that are drifting close to the lens. The compact design of modern camera means that the lens is much closer to the flash and this is to blame from orbs. The photography experts at Fujifilm describes the artefacts as a “common photographic problem”.

An out-of-body experience is when a person voluntarily attempts to leave their body or feels that they have left their body through involuntary means allowing them to perceives the world from a point of view outside of their physical body.

Pareidolia is our subconscious tendency to perceive a familiar or meaningful vision or sound in random patterns or noise. This could be seeing the image of a man on the surface of the moon, shapes in cloud formations, and even the image of Jesus on a piece of toast or the Shroud of Turin. This quirk of the brain explains many ghost sightings in which the witnesses incorrectly perceives a face or figure that simply doesn’t exist. Pareidolia isn’t contained to just vision, the brain also deals with sounds in the same way causing us to hear human voices in random noise, this explains away many EVPs and voices heard through spirit boxes.

In order to contact spirits using a pendulum, you need to allow the pendulum to hang while holding the other end between two fingers. Then call out to the spirits and encourage them to interact with the pendulum. You can suggest that the spirit tries moving the pendulum in order to answer your questions. Encourage it to swinging the pendulum back and forth to indicate “yes,” or left to right to indicate “no.” You can also ask for the pendulum to be moved in either a clockwise or anticlockwise motion.

A planchette is the wooden or plastic pointer that is used with a Ouija board, it is this flat object that participants place thier fingers on in the hopes it will slide around the board. Alternatively an upturned glass can be used as a planchette. Other variants of planchettes include the option to attach a pen to facilitate automatic writing.

Poltergeist hauntings are often described as being violent, threatening, and malevolent. This type of haunting is characterised by physical movement as well as the manipulation of the environment around the spirit. The word poltergeist means “noisy ghost” from the German “poltern geist.” Poltergeists activity can include objects being thrown or moved, foul smells, turning lights or appliances on or off, and producing growls, screams and other loud noises. On rare occasions it’s been reported that poltergeists have intentionally attacked people by pushing, hitting, biting or scratching them.

A paranormal portal, sometimes referred to as an energy vortex or simply vortex, is believed to be a gateway to another plane of existence through which our physical realm and the spirit realm meet allowing spirits and other supernatural entities to pass through into our world. Probably the most common belief surround portals is that mirrors can act as a windows to the spirit realm.

A demonic or spirit possession is a concept that exists in many cultures and religions, it’s believed to happen when a person is either voluntary or involuntary invaded by a supernatural entity which takes them over, meaning the person is no longer in complete control their own thoughts, actions and speech. A less severe or temporary form of possession is referred to as a “spirit walk-in” whereas in extreme cases a possession can lead to an exorcism being performed.

A psychic is a person who claims to be gifted with extrasensory perception enabling them to obtain information that shouldn’t ordinarily be available to them. Not all psychics are mediums, those who are have fined-tuned their ability to allow them to talk to the spirit world. Mediumship can be broken to into further subsets:

Clairaudience – the ability to hear spirit voices

Clairvoyance – the ability to see spirits or insight from the spirit world

Clairsentience – an awareness of emotions from the spirit world

Claircognizance – the ability to acquire knowledge from the spirit world

Psychokinesis or telekinesis is alleged supernatural ability allowing a person to move or otherwise influence a physical object without physical interaction.

A type of haunting said to be caused by residual energy. This is where the witness is seeing, sensing or experiencing the imprint of the lingering psychic or emotional energy of a person or an event that took place at that location in the past. For this reason, residual hauntings are sometimes called place memories. Often this is said to be someone who suffered a tragic traumatic premature death, a murder, suicide or execution. As residual hauntings represent nothing more than a reflection of the past, you can’t communicate with them.

Scrying can be performed with any mirror, but often a purpose-made black scrying mirror is used or even the reflection in the surface of a bowl of water. The technique involves gazing into the mirror, it’s said that if a paranormal entity is present they can affect what you see and the vision of your face in the mirror will change or transform into theirs.

In a séance the participants, or sitters, attempt to contact the dead, it became popular in the late 17th century during the rise of the spiritualism movement. Séances often involve sitting around a table in the darkness and sometimes involve the use of a psychic medium.

The experience of seeing a dark shadowy figure or shadow person. It is often described as a dark silhouette of a humanoid figure that flickers in and out of peripheral vision and is usually seen out of the corner of the eye.

SLS cameras work by projecting an invisible infrared laser grid over a wide field of view. The grid is made up of over one million tiny dots. This structured grid of laser dots is what gives the device its name SLS, or Structured Light Sensor. The camera’s sensor is able to calculate the distance between these dots in order to build a three dimensional model of its view. The camera’s software has the ability to recognise and highlight human figures by detecting limbs and movement, a technology developed by the gaming industry called “skeletal movement tracking”. Any figures it detects are highlighted by overlaying a bright green stickman, which is why the device is sometimes called an SLS Stickman Camera.

Unlike ghosts, spirits aren’t visible to the living. The term is usually used to describe the non-physical consciousness or soul of a dead person. It is this disembodied intelligence that investigators believe they are usually communicating with as part of a paranormal investigation or when using tools such as Ouija boards, EVP recorders and various other ghost hunting gadgets.

Stone tape theory, or atmospheric photograph theory, is said to be responsible for hauntings in which witnesses report seeing replays of past events and is closely linked to the idea of residual energy. It is speculated that a human’s energy or emotions are captured and recorded in the stone of a building. It is then said to replay to those who are sensitive to it, when the atmospheric conditions are the same, or on the anniversary of the event.

Table tipping, also known as table turning or table tilting, dates back to Victorian times. The technique generally involves the uses of a light and rickety table which is easy to rotate or tilt. Participants then sit or stand around the table, place their fingers on the surface and wait for it to move. These movement is said to be the spirit communicating.

Trigger objects are items that can be placed down on an investigation in the hopes that a ghost or spirit will interact with it. A trigger object can be anything from balls, a bunch of keys, a child’s toy, a marble or just about anything else. It’s common to select a trigger object which is relevant to the location for example a teddy bear in an old orphanage or a bunch of keys in a prison.

In ghost hunting a vigil refers to a period of time spent on an active investigation focussed on one particular area, often this involves sitting and waiting for paranormal activity to occur. A ghost hunt is often made up of multiple vigils, this could be vigils at different locations in the buildings, vigils involving different team members, or even lone vigils in which one investigator spends time in an area alone.

Communicating with spirits using apps and devices that are pre-loaded with word banks has become commonplace in recent years. Many of the devices use electronic speech synthesis to speak out, or simply display, words or phrases from a list stored within its software. Others randomly output the phonics that make up words. Supposedly spirits can affect the random nature of these devices using its atmospheric sensors to produce or form the words they are trying to communicate. Some common tools based on this technology include the Ovilus range of devices, EchoVox, ParaTek, and Portal