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From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org P PARANORMAL Term applied to any phenomenon which in one or more respects exceeds the limits of what is deemed physically possible on current scientific assumptions; often used as a synonym for “psychic,” “parapsychological,” “attibutable to psi,” or even “miraculous” (although shorn of religious overtones). [From the Greek para, “beside, beyond,” + normal] PARAPHYSICS Pertaining to paraphysics; synonym for “psychokinetic.” PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL Involving or pertaining to parapsychology or paranormal processes. PARAPSYCHOLOGY Term coined in German by Max Dessoir (1889) and adopted by J. B. Rhine in English to refer to the scientific study of paranormal or ostensibly paranormal phenomena, that is, psi; except in Britain, the term has largely superseded the older expression “psychical research;” used by some to refer to the experimental approach to the field. [From the Greek para, “beside, beyond,” + psychology, derived…

From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org M-O MACRO-PK See under Psychokinesis. MATERIALIZATION A phenomenon of physical mediumship in which living entities or inanimate objects are caused to take form, sometimes from ectoplasm. Compare Dematerialization. MEDITATION A broad term embracing a number of techniques for achieving various altered states of awareness, with some of these altered states resulting in the ecstatic qualities of so-called “peak experience;” most meditative techniques are ways of learning to still the agitation of the mind so that more subtle and valuable aspects of self and reality may be perceived; some techniques involve concentration, in which attention is focused on a particular object and restrained from wandering, while others involve giving one’s total attention to whatever spontaneously happens, with no attempt to control or focus attention. MEDIUM A predominantly Spiritualistic term applied to a person who regularly, and…

Even when training a new guide you never know what you will find. Recently while training a new tour guide for our Haunted St. Augustine Tour an apparition was captured near the City Gates. Our manager was on a dress rehearsal snapping photo with our newest guide when she captured a full body apparition, possibly of Elizabeth, near the City Gate. The area is said to be haunted by a young girl who died of Yellow Fever along with her entire family by the Yellow Fever Epidemic that swept the city in the 1830s.

From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org 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…

From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org E-G 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…

From The Parapsychology Foundation www.parapsychology.org C-D CHAIR TEST A test for precognition, associated especially with the Dutch sensitive Gerard Croiset but first demonstrated by Pascal Forthuny, a French psychic, in which a chair is randomly selected from all those set up for a later public meeting, and the percipient describes the appearance, characteristics and events in the life of a person, unknown to them, who will later attend that meeting and occupy that chair. CHANCE The constellation of undefined causal factors which are considered to be irrelevant to the causal relationship under investigation; often spoken of as if it were a single, independent agency; the expression “pure chance” is sometimes used to describe a state characterized by complete unpredictability, that is, an absence of any cause-effect relationships. The term “chance” is frequently a short-hand expression for “mean chance expectation” as…

We have received many questions about the terminology in the paranormal field. We are going to start a ghostly glossary for you. AGENT In a test of general extrasensory perception, the individual (human or animal) who looks at the information constituting the target and who is said to “send” or “transmit” that information to a percipient; in a test of telepathy, and in cases of spontaneous extrasensory perception, the individual about whose mental states information is acquired by a percipient; the term is very occasionally used to refer to the subject in a test of psychokinesis or the focus in a poltergeist case. [From the Latin agens (agentis), derived from agere, “to drive, do”] ALPHA In the context of brain science: a distinctive brain-rhythm or brain-wave which occurs mainly in the occipital region of the cortex, and which is correlated,…

A few years ago I was hanging out with my friend walking around downtown St. Augustine. She knew I worked for GhoSt Augustine and asked me to take her to a haunted spot that was included on one of our tours. We just happened to be near Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille, a normal stop on the Haunted Pub Tour, so I brought her inside. She follwed me up the stair case to the second floor asking, “Where the heck are we going!?” “Almost there”, I said as we walked down an ‘L’ shaped hallway before I pushed open the paint peeling door to the ladies restroom. “Oh, you have to go the restroom,” she said chuckling. I responded, “Actually, I don’t.” She looked confused. I continued, “this is where Katalina’s bedroom was hundreds of years ago before the building…

The most direct means of encountering the paranormal is through the use of the five senses. Ordinarily, because of the physical orientation of the senses, they block out far more signals than they bring to awareness. The senses are often quite acute when danger is present, linking us to the instinctual world of our primal ancestors. Sensory data then seems intensified or heightened, even riveting. It’s probable that at one time in human evolution what we think of as paranormal encounters were far more commonplace. The boundary between life and death, between the ordinary physical and the realms of spirit would have been far more permeable. This seems to be the case even now with psychically gifted people.  As our species chose more and more to literalize physical experience, granting it an independence that it does not possess (for all…

Hi Everyone! My name is Celynda. I grew up in Albuquerque, NM and visited St. Augustine for the first time when I was 17. Yes, I had a bit of a ghostly experience on that first trip. When I turned 20 I had the opportunity to move here and attend Flagler College and I recently graduated with a BA in English, and hope to become a writer in the fields of film and theater. After spending almost two years giving tours at the college I thought it would be well worth it to get my tour guide license with the city and was lucky enough to get a job with GhoSt Augustine. I’ve been having a blast with my tours and experiencing things around town that I never thought possible. See you on the tours!

A hearse is a funeral vehicle, a conveyance for the casket from e.g. a church to a cemetery, a similar burial site, or a crematorium. In the funeral trade, they are often called funeral coaches. Hearses were originally horse-drawn, but silent electric motorised examples that were used in Paris were reported in the pages of Scientific American May 1907 and petrol-driven hearses began to be produced from 1909 in the United States. Motorised hearses became more widely accepted in the 1920s. The vast majority of hearses since then have been based on larger, more powerful car chassis, generally retaining the front end up to and possibly including the front doors but with custom bodywork to the rear to contain the coffin. Some early hearses also served as ambulances. A few cities experimented with funeral trolley cars and/or subway cars to…