Clairvoyance is the claimed ability to acquire information that would be considered impossible to get through scientifically proven sensations, thus classified as extrasensory perception, or "sixth sense". Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant.
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it. Parapsychology has also been criticized by mainstream critics for claims by many of its practitioners that their studies are plausible despite a lack of convincing evidence after more than a century of research for the existence of any psychic phenomena.
In German folklore and ghostlore, a poltergeist is a type of ghost or spirit that is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. Most claims or fictional descriptions of poltergeists show them as being capable of pinching, biting, hitting, and tripping people. They are also depicted as capable of the movement or levitation of objects such as furniture and cutlery, or noises such as knocking on doors. Foul smells are also associated with poltergeist occurrences, as well as spontaneous fires and different electrical issues such as flickering lights.
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia), gravesites, malign "earth vibrations" and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus. It is also known as divining, doodlebugging or water finding, or water witching.
Crystal gazing or crystallomancy is a method for seeing visions achieved through trance induction by means of gazing at a crystal. Traditionally, it has been seen as a form of divination or scrying, with visions of the future and of the divine, though research into the content of crystal-visions suggest the visions are related to the expectations and thoughts of the seer.
Hélène Smith was a famous late-19th century French medium. She was known as "the Muse of Automatic Writing" by the Surrealists, who viewed Smith as evidence of the power of the surreal, and a symbol of surrealist knowledge. Late in life, Smith claimed to communicate with Martians, and to be a reincarnation of a Hindu princess and Marie Antoinette.
In American science fiction of the 1950s and '60s, psionics was a proposed discipline that applied principles of engineering to the study of paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy and psychokinesis. The term is a blend word of psi and the -onics from electronics. The word "psionics" began as, and always remained, a term of art within the science fiction community and—despite the promotional efforts of editor John W. Campbell, Jr.—it never achieved general currency, even among academic parapsychologists. In the years after the term was coined in 1951, it became increasingly evident that no scientific evidence supports the existence of "psionic" abilities.
Sir William Fletcher Barrett was an English physicist and parapsychologist.
Willi Schneider, brother of Rudi Schneider, was an Austrian medium exposed as a fraud.
Rudi Schneider, son of Josef Schneider and brother of Willi Schneider, was an Austrian Spiritualist and physical medium. His career was covered extensively by the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, and he took part in a number of notable experiments conducted by paranormal researchers/debunkers, including Harry Price, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Eric Dingwall. Some of these researchers declared him to be a fraud while others were unable to find evidence of trickery.
Nandor Fodor was a British and American parapsychologist, psychoanalyst, author and journalist of Hungarian origin.
Theodore Deodatus Nathaniel Besterman was a Polish-born British psychical researcher, bibliographer, biographer, and translator. In 1945 he became the first editor of the Journal of Documentation. From the 1950s he devoted himself to studies of the works of Voltaire.
The International Institute for Psychical Research (IIPR) was a short-lived psychical organization based in London that was formed in 1934. It was criticized by scientists for its spiritualist leanings and non-scientific approach to the subject.
Eugène Osty was a French physician and psychical researcher.
Solco Walle Tromp was a Dutch geologist and biometeorologist.
Henry Gross (1895–1979) was an American game warden and dowser.
William Wortley Baggally, most well known as W. W. Baggally, was a British psychical researcher who investigated spiritualist mediums.
Oliver Gatty was a British chemist and psychical researcher.
The Psychology of the Occult is a 1952 skeptical book on the paranormal by psychologist D. H. Rawcliffe. It was later published as Illusions and Delusions of the Supernatural and the Occult (1959) and Occult and Supernatural Phenomena (1988) by Dover Publications. Biologist Julian Huxley wrote a foreword to the book.
Radiesthesia describes a physical ability to detect radiation emitted by a person, animal, object or geographical feature. One of its practitioners, J. Cecil Maby, defined it as "The faculty and study of certain reflexive physical responses of living tissue to various radiations ... resulting in displacement currents and other inductive effects in living tissues." He distinguished it critically from the psychic facility of divination. Despite this distinction, there is no scientific evidence for the existence of the phenomenon and it is classed by the mainstream as pseudoscience.
