Revised September 2026

This paranormal glossary explains commonly used terms in psychic work, mediumship, paranormal investigation and supernatural phenomena. Whether you’re trying to understand the difference between a psychic and a medium or looking for the meaning of a paranormal term, this guide provides clear, practical definitions. If you’re exploring these subjects or developing your own intuitive abilities, understanding the vocabulary is an important place to begin.

What Is the Difference Between a Psychic and a Medium?

A psychic and a medium are not exactly the same thing. A psychic receives intuitive information about living people, situations, relationships, places or potential future events. A medium specifically communicates with spirits or people who have died.

Mediums generally use psychic abilities such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience and claircognizance as part of spirit communication. For that reason, a medium may also be psychic, while someone who is psychic is not necessarily a medium. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably in everyday conversation, but within psychic and mediumship practice they describe different abilities.

Paranormal, Psychic & Mediumship Definitions

Use this glossary to explore common terminology related to psychic abilities, mediumship, paranormal investigation, metaphysics and spiritual practices.

Active Energy / Residual Energy

Active or intelligent energy is a term used in paranormal investigation to describe a reported presence that appears responsive or interactive. Unlike residual activity, intelligent activity is said to react to people, change its behavior, communicate, or demonstrate awareness of its surroundings.

Residual energy refers to the belief that emotional or energetic impressions from past people or events can remain associated with a location. It is often described as an energetic “recording” that repeats without awareness or interaction.

For example, witnesses might report seeing the same figure walking down the same hallway at approximately the same time or repeatedly experiencing the same sounds or sensations in a particular location.

The distinction is important in paranormal investigation: intelligent activity appears responsive; residual activity simply repeats.

Akashic Records

The Akashic Records are a metaphysical concept describing a universal library or repository believed to contain the energetic record of souls, experiences, thoughts, emotions, and actions across lifetimes.

Sometimes called the Book of Life, the records are believed by some spiritual practitioners to be accessible through meditation, prayer, intention, or other spiritual practices.

Astrology

Astrology is a belief system that interprets the positions and movements of celestial bodies as corresponding with human personality, behavior, relationships, and life events.

Astrology has considerable historical and cultural significance and remains widely practiced. Its predictive claims, however, have not been established by scientific evidence.

Aura

An aura is believed in many metaphysical and spiritual traditions to be an energetic field surrounding a living being.

Some psychics and sensitives report perceiving auras visually, intuitively, or through sensation and believe that changes in an aura may correspond with a person’s emotional, physical, or spiritual state.

Black Magic

Black magic is a term commonly used to describe magical practices believed to be intended to harm, manipulate, control, or negatively influence another person.

The label is subjective and culturally dependent. Historically, the term has sometimes been applied to unfamiliar or marginalized spiritual traditions, so it should be used carefully rather than as a blanket description of practices outside one’s own belief system.

Chaos Magic

Chaos Magic is a modern magical philosophy that treats belief as a flexible tool rather than requiring adherence to one fixed spiritual or magical system.

Practitioners may borrow, combine, modify, or discard beliefs and techniques depending on the desired purpose. The emphasis is generally on experimentation, personal experience, and results rather than strict tradition or doctrine.

Chakras

Chakras are energy centers described in several South Asian spiritual traditions. In the widely used modern seven-chakra system, they are positioned from the base of the spine to the crown of the head and associated with different physical, emotional, and spiritual qualities.

The seven commonly described chakras are:

Root (Muladhara) — grounding and security
Sacral (Svadhisthana) — creativity and emotion
Solar Plexus (Manipura) — confidence and personal power
Heart (Anahata) — love and compassion
Throat (Vishuddha) — communication and expression
Third Eye (Ajna) — intuition and perception
Crown (Sahasrara) — spiritual awareness and connection

Clairaudient / Clairaudience

Clairaudience, meaning “clear hearing,” describes the claimed ability to receive psychic or mediumistic information through auditory impressions.

Subjective clairaudience occurs internally and may resemble words, sounds, music, or messages perceived within one’s thoughts.

Objective clairaudience describes the much rarer reported experience of hearing a voice or sound as though it originates outside the person’s body.

A person who experiences this ability may be described as clairaudient.

Claircognizant / Claircognizance

Claircognizance, or “clear knowing,” describes receiving information intuitively without consciously knowing how the information was obtained.

A claircognizant person may describe an answer, fact, or message as suddenly “dropping” into their awareness without deliberate reasoning.

Clairgustant / Clairgustance

Clairgustance, or “clear taste,” describes the claimed ability to experience a taste without physically placing the corresponding substance in the mouth.

For example, a medium might report suddenly experiencing the taste of a particular food associated with the person they believe they are communicating with.

It is one of the less commonly reported intuitive sensory experiences.

Clairolfactant / Clairalience

Clairalience, sometimes called clairolfaction, means “clear smelling.” It describes the claimed perception of a scent without an identifiable physical source.

Examples may include suddenly smelling perfume, tobacco smoke, flowers, food, or another distinctive scent associated with a person or memory.

Clairsentient / Clairsentience

Clairsentience, meaning “clear feeling” or “clear sensing,” describes receiving intuitive information through physical sensations, emotions, or an awareness of energy.

Psychics and mediums who identify as clairsentient may report sensing another person’s emotional state, physical characteristics, or the perceived presence of a spirit.

Clairvoyant / Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance, meaning “clear seeing,” describes receiving psychic or mediumistic information through visual impressions.

Subjective clairvoyance occurs internally, similar to seeing a mental image or scene in the imagination.

Objective clairvoyance describes the much rarer reported experience of seeing a spirit, apparition, or image as though it were physically present in the external environment.

A person who regularly receives information in this way may be described as clairvoyant.

Cord Cutting

Cord cutting is a symbolic spiritual or intentional practice intended to release emotional, psychological, or perceived energetic attachments between people, experiences, or situations.

Practices vary and may include visualization, meditation, ritual, prayer, or other symbolic actions.

Empath

An empath is a person who reports being unusually sensitive to the emotions or emotional states of other people.

Within psychic and metaphysical traditions, the term may also describe someone with heightened clairsentience who experiences another person’s emotions almost as though they were their own.

Because highly empathic people can sometimes have difficulty distinguishing their own feelings from those they perceive in others, grounding, boundaries, and self-awareness can be particularly important.

Ghost

A ghost generally refers to the reported presence or apparition of a deceased person believed to remain associated with the physical world.

In paranormal and spiritual traditions, ghosts may be described as earthbound spirits, apparitions, or manifestations associated with a particular person, event, or location.

The term is also sometimes applied to residual phenomena—repetitive activity that appears to have no awareness of or interaction with observers.

Haunted Object

A haunted object is an object believed to be associated with unusual paranormal activity, a spirit, or a strong emotional or energetic imprint.

Some psychics believe they can obtain information about an object’s history or previous owners by holding or touching it, a claimed ability known as psychometry.

Claims that objects themselves are haunted or retain energy remain matters of paranormal and spiritual belief rather than established scientific fact.

Hoodoo

Hoodoo is a system of African American folk spirituality and folk magic that developed in the United States, particularly in the American South.

Its practices draw heavily from African traditions while also incorporating elements influenced by Christianity, Indigenous practices, and European folk traditions. Hoodoo commonly focuses on practical concerns such as protection, healing, prosperity, justice, and luck.

Hoodoo is distinct from Vodou and should not be treated as another name for Voodoo.

Magic / Magick

Magic or Magick refers to spiritual, ritual, or esoteric practices intended to influence consciousness, circumstances, or perceived energetic forces through intention, symbolism, ritual, or other practices.

The spelling magick is commonly used in some occult traditions to distinguish spiritual or ritual practices from theatrical magic.

Stage magic, by contrast, is a performance art involving illusion, misdirection, sleight of hand, and other techniques used to create seemingly impossible effects for entertainment.

Medium

A medium is a person who reports an ability to communicate with deceased people or other spirits.

Mediums may receive information through clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance, or a combination of intuitive abilities.

The most familiar form of mediumship involves communicating information from a deceased person to a living recipient, often called the sitter. Mediums may also report spirit communication during paranormal investigations or in locations where they believe spiritual activity is present.

See Types of Mediumship below for a more detailed explanation.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with fundamental questions about reality and existence.

It examines concepts such as being, consciousness, identity, space, time, causality, and the nature of reality. In contemporary spiritual usage, the word metaphysical is also frequently applied more broadly to spiritual, psychic, and esoteric subjects.

Occult

Occult refers broadly to esoteric knowledge, practices, and traditions concerned with hidden, symbolic, or mystical aspects of reality.

The category can include subjects such as alchemy, ceremonial magic, divination, astrology, and mystical philosophies.

The word does not inherently mean evil or demonic, despite the negative associations it sometimes carries in popular culture.

Paranormal

Paranormal refers to reported experiences, events, or phenomena that appear to fall outside conventional scientific explanation.

Examples can include reported hauntings, apparitions, psychic phenomena, unexplained physical disturbances, and other anomalous experiences.

Calling something paranormal does not establish that it has a supernatural cause. It means the reported experience is perceived as unusual or has not been satisfactorily explained within the circumstances in which it occurred.

Pareidolia

Pareidolia is a well-established psychological phenomenon in which the brain perceives a familiar or meaningful pattern in ambiguous or random sensory information.

Common examples include seeing faces in clouds, shadows, textured walls, or photographs.

Pareidolia is especially important in paranormal investigation because an apparently human face or figure in a photograph may have a completely natural explanation.

PK / Psychokinesis

Psychokinesis (PK) refers to the claimed ability of the mind to influence physical objects or systems without direct physical interaction.

In parapsychology, reported PK phenomena have sometimes been associated with emotionally charged circumstances and with certain poltergeist cases.

The existence of psychokinesis has not been established by mainstream scientific evidence, and reported incidents may have psychological, environmental, physical, or other explanations.

Poltergeist

A poltergeist is a term used to describe unexplained physical disturbances such as knocking or banging sounds, objects moving or being thrown, electrical disturbances, and other disruptive phenomena.

Although popular culture often portrays a poltergeist as a type of ghost, investigators and researchers have proposed several different explanations. Some cases have been interpreted as spirit activity, while others have been associated with environmental causes, human behavior, fraud, psychological factors, or a combination of influences.

One long-standing parapsychological theory proposes that some poltergeist activity may involve unconscious psychokinetic energy associated with a living person experiencing significant emotional or psychological stress.

The phenomenon remains controversial, and individual cases may have very different explanations.

Want to go deeper? I explore the history, evidence, psychology, and competing explanations behind poltergeist activity—including eight landmark historical cases and two cases I investigated firsthand—in my book Poltergeists: A Grounded Investigation into Real Cases, Psychology, and the Forces Behind the Phenomenon.

Psychic

A psychic is a person who reports receiving intuitive or extrasensory information about living people, situations, places, relationships, or potential future events.

Psychics may describe receiving information through abilities such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, or claircognizance.

A psychic primarily works with information concerning the living. A medium, by comparison, specifically communicates with spirits or deceased people.

A medium generally uses psychic abilities as part of mediumship, but a psychic is not necessarily a medium.

Psychic Knower

Psychic knower is an informal term sometimes used for a person who receives information through claircognizance, or “clear knowing.”

Because the term does not have a universally accepted definition, claircognizant is generally the more precise term when referring specifically to intuitive knowing.

Psychometry

Psychometry is the claimed psychic ability to obtain information about a person, place, or event by touching or holding an associated physical object.

Jewelry, photographs, clothing, and personal possessions are frequently used in psychometry exercises.

Psychometry is studied or discussed within parapsychology and psychic practice, but its existence has not been established by mainstream scientific evidence.

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience describes claims, methods, or practices presented as scientific despite lacking the empirical evidence, rigorous testing, reproducibility, or methodology expected of established science.

Pseudoscientific claims may rely heavily on anecdotal evidence, confirmation bias, or claims that cannot be adequately tested or falsified.

The term is particularly relevant to paranormal research because investigators should distinguish between personal belief, anecdotal evidence, scientific evidence, and hypotheses that remain unproven.

Sensitive

A sensitive is a broad term sometimes used for a person who reports heightened intuitive, psychic, empathic, mediumistic, or energetic awareness.

A sensitive might identify more specifically as a psychic, medium, empath, clairvoyant, clairsentient, healer, or another type of intuitive practitioner.

Because the term covers many different experiences, identifying the specific way someone receives information can be useful when developing intuitive abilities.

Shadow Person / Shadow Figure

A shadow person or shadow figure is a reported visual phenomenon described as a dark, human-like form, often seen briefly or in peripheral vision.

Possible natural explanations include low-light visual effects, sleep-related experiences, expectation, peripheral-vision limitations, and other psychological or environmental factors.

Within paranormal belief systems, some people interpret shadow figures as spirits or non-human entities. Their nature has not been scientifically established.

Shamanic Journeying

Shamanic journeying is a spiritual practice intended to produce an altered state of consciousness, often through repetitive drumming, chanting, visualization, or meditation.

Practitioners may describe journeying to symbolic or spiritual realms—sometimes called the lower, middle, and upper worlds—to seek guidance, healing, knowledge, spirit helpers, or other forms of insight.

Shamanism

Shamanism is a broad term applied to spiritual practices in which a practitioner enters altered states of consciousness to interact with what is understood within that tradition as a spirit world.

Shamanic traditions vary considerably among cultures and should not be viewed as a single universal religion. Many emphasize healing, community, ancestors, nature, and relationships with the spiritual world.

Sleep Paralysis

Sleep paralysis is a recognized sleep phenomenon in which a person temporarily cannot move or speak while falling asleep or waking.

It can be accompanied by extremely vivid hallucinations, pressure sensations, fear, or a powerful sense that another presence is in the room.

Because these experiences can feel remarkably real, they have sometimes been interpreted as ghosts, spirits, demons, or other supernatural encounters. Sleep science provides a neurological explanation for sleep paralysis itself.

Soul

Soul generally refers in religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions to the essential or non-physical aspect of an individual.

Different traditions have very different ideas about whether the soul is eternal, reincarnates, enters an afterlife, or relates to consciousness and personal identity.

Within many spiritual traditions, terms such as ghost and spirit describe ways in which the continued existence or presence of a deceased person’s soul may be perceived.

Spirit

Spirit commonly refers in spiritual and paranormal traditions to a non-physical consciousness or entity.

The word is frequently used for the consciousness of a deceased person believed to continue after physical death. Depending upon the spiritual or cultural tradition, spirit can also refer to ancestors, nature spirits, guides, deities, or other forms of non-physical consciousness.

Spirit Guide

A spirit guide is a spiritual concept describing a non-physical being believed to provide guidance, protection, teaching, or assistance to a living person.

Some people understand guides as deceased humans or ancestors, while other traditions describe them as non-human spiritual beings or forms of consciousness.

Beliefs about who or what spirit guides are vary widely among spiritual traditions.

Spiritual

Spiritual generally describes matters relating to the human spirit, soul, meaning, consciousness, or a perceived connection with something beyond purely material existence.

Spirituality may be practiced within an organized religion, but it does not necessarily require religious affiliation.

Spiritual Parasites

Spiritual parasites is a term used in some metaphysical traditions for people, behaviors, or perceived non-physical energies believed to drain a person’s emotional or spiritual energy.

There is no scientific evidence establishing the existence of literal non-physical parasites. Some experiences described this way may also be understood psychologically as unhealthy relationships, emotional exhaustion, chronic stress, or poor personal boundaries.

Supernatural

Supernatural refers to beings, forces, or phenomena believed to exist beyond the known laws of nature or conventional scientific explanation.

The term is commonly applied to ideas involving ghosts, spirits, miracles, magical forces, and other phenomena believed to transcend ordinary physical processes.

Unlike paranormal, which can simply describe something anomalous or unexplained, supernatural generally implies an explanation beyond natural processes.

Tulpa, Egregore & Servitor

These are related but distinct concepts found in various occult, esoteric, and modern magical traditions.

A tulpa is commonly described in modern Western esoteric usage as a thought-form or seemingly autonomous entity created or strengthened through sustained mental attention.

An egregore generally refers to a collective thought-form or symbolic entity believed to develop through the shared beliefs, emotions, or intentions of a group.

A servitor is a deliberately constructed symbolic or thought-form entity created by some magical practitioners to perform a particular purpose.

Interpretations vary considerably, and psychological explanations regard such phenomena as mental or symbolic constructs rather than independently existing beings.

Vodou / Voodoo

Vodou is a religion with roots in West and Central African spiritual traditions that developed particularly in Haiti through interaction with Catholicism and other cultural influences.

It includes community worship, ritual, ancestor reverence, and relationships with spirits known as lwa.

Louisiana Voodoo developed through a related but distinct cultural history in Louisiana.

Popular movies and television have frequently portrayed Vodou or Voodoo as sinister or harmful. Those portrayals do not accurately represent the complexity of the religious traditions.

---

Types of Mediumship

There are two broad categories commonly discussed in mediumship: Mental Mediumship and Physical Mediumship.

Mental Mediumship

Mental mediumship is the most commonly practiced form of mediumship today. In mental mediumship, information, impressions, images, sensations, or other perceived communications from spirit are experienced internally by the medium.

Other people present do not directly experience the medium’s internal impressions; instead, the medium interprets and communicates that information to the recipient.

Evidential Mediumship

Evidential mediumship is a form of mental mediumship in which the medium attempts to provide specific information about a deceased person that the recipient can recognize and verify.

Evidence might include details about the person’s appearance, personality (very important evidence), age, occupation, relationships, manner of death, home, hobbies, shared memories, or other distinctive information.

The goal is to provide sufficiently specific information to help the recipient identify the person believed to be communicating before moving on to a message from that person.

Clairvoyance in Mediumship

Clairvoyance is the ability to receive visual information.

In subjective clairvoyance, the medium perceives mental images internally.

Objective clairvoyance describes the much rarer reported experience of seeing a spirit as though that person were physically present.

In mental mediumship, only the medium perceives the image and then describes what is seen to the sitter.

Clairaudience in Mediumship

Clairaudience is the ability to receive information through perceived sound or words.

In subjective clairaudience, words or sounds are perceived internally, similar to thoughts.

Objective clairaudience describes the rarer reported experience of hearing a spirit voice as though it originates externally.

In mental mediumship, the medium receives and interprets the communication for the sitter.

Clairsentience in Mediumship

Clairsentience involves receiving information through feelings, sensations, emotions, or an awareness of energy.

A medium may report sensing characteristics of a spirit communicator, such as stature, personality, emotions, physical conditions, or circumstances surrounding death.

These impressions can become part of the evidence used to identify the person believed to be communicating.

Inspired or Spirit Writing

Inspired writing, sometimes called spirit writing, occurs when a medium consciously writes while believing that thoughts, ideas, or inspiration are being received from spirit.

The medium remains aware of the writing process and typically uses their normal handwriting.

This differs from traditional descriptions of automatic writing, in which the writer is said to exercise less conscious control over what is being written.

Trance Mediumship

Trance mediumship occurs when a medium enters an altered state of consciousness and allows a perceived spirit communicator to influence or work through the medium’s consciousness.

The depth of trance can vary considerably. In lighter trance states, the medium remains substantially aware of the process. Deeper trance states are traditionally associated with philosophical teaching, spiritual discourse, or extended communication.

---

Physical Mediumship

Physical mediumship differs from mental mediumship because the claimed phenomena are said to be observable by people other than the medium.

Historical accounts describe unexplained sounds or voices, movement of objects, raps or knocks, unusual lights, changes in temperature, air movement, scents, apparitions, and other physical effects.

Some historical accounts also describe more extraordinary phenomena such as levitation, materialization, transfiguration, and the appearance or movement of objects.

Important: Claims of physical mediumship are extremely controversial. Throughout its history, alleged demonstrations have been investigated skeptically, and some prominent cases have involved misinterpretation, inadequate controls, or deliberate fraud.

For that reason, careful observation, appropriate controls, documentation, and critical evaluation are essential when assessing claims of physical mediumship.

Forms of Physical Mediumship

Automatic Writing

Automatic writing is traditionally described as writing produced with little or no conscious direction from the writer, with the content attributed by practitioners to a spirit or other external source.

Descriptions vary: some practitioners report remaining conscious while allowing the hand to move freely, while others describe reduced awareness of what is being written.

Alternative psychological explanations include unconscious ideomotor movement and other cognitive processes.

Table Tipping

Table tipping is a séance practice in which participants lightly place their hands on a table and interpret movements, tilting, vibrations, or knocks as possible spirit communication.

The ideomotor effect—unconscious muscular movement—is an important natural explanation that should be considered when evaluating table movement.

Transfiguration

Transfiguration is described in some accounts as a rare form of physical mediumship in which the appearance of a medium’s face reportedly changes or appears to take on characteristics of a deceased person.

Historical descriptions sometimes attribute this to a substance called ectoplasm.

Claims of transfiguration and ectoplasm remain highly controversial and lack consistent, independently verified scientific evidence. Historical demonstrations have also included documented cases of deception.

Direct Voice

Direct voice describes reports of a voice apparently originating from somewhere other than the medium and being audible to multiple people present. A séance trumpet, or spirit trumpet, is a cone-shaped megaphone used during 19th- and 20th-century Spiritualist gatherings to amplify the whispered voices of the dead. A séance trumpet, or spirit trumpet, is a cone-shaped device historically used in some Spiritualist séances. In accounts of physical mediumship, the trumpet was reported to move or levitate and amplify voices attributed to spirit communicators. Such claims remain controversial and require careful controls to rule out ordinary explanations

In traditional physical-mediumship accounts, the voice is attributed to a spirit communicator.

Because such claims involve an externally audible phenomenon, controlled observation and elimination of ordinary sound sources are especially important.

Rapping

Rapping refers to knocking or tapping sounds interpreted as communication during a séance or paranormal investigation.

A simple code may be established—for example, one knock for “yes” and two for “no.”

Investigators should first consider ordinary structural, environmental, mechanical, and human sources for unexplained sounds.

Apports and Materialization

An apport is the claimed paranormal appearance or movement of a physical object from one location to another without an observable conventional means of transport.

Materialization refers to the claimed formation or appearance of a physical object, substance, body part, or spirit form without an identifiable ordinary source.

Both phenomena have appeared frequently in the history of Spiritualism and physical mediumship but remain highly controversial and have not been established by reproducible scientific evidence.

---

Continue Exploring

If you’re interested in developing your psychic or mediumship abilities, investigating paranormal phenomena, or learning more about unexplained experiences, you can continue exploring these subjects through my work.

Private Psychic & Mediumship Services — Readings and consultations for those seeking personal guidance, spirit communication, or help understanding their own abilities.

Abilities Consultation — Individual guidance to help identify and better understand your intuitive, psychic, or mediumistic abilities.

Academy of Real Majick™ — Individual instruction and development for those interested in strengthening their intuitive and spiritual abilities.

Paranormal Investigations — Explore investigations, cases, and my approach to examining unusual phenomena.

Poltergeists — My book Poltergeists: A Grounded Investigation into Real Cases, Psychology, and the Forces Behind the Phenomenon examines eight landmark historical cases and two investigations I conducted firsthand.

---

References

Nohavec, Janet, and Suzanne Giesemann. Where Two Worlds Meet: How to Develop Evidential Mediumship. Aventine Press, 2010. Chapter 2, “What Is Mediumship?” pp. 20–26.

Holland, John. “Seeing Is Believing: Witnessing the Many Faces of Spirit.” September 30, 2010.