glossary

Glossary


Continuance	Referred to as life-after-death.
Demonologist	A person, usually a member of the clergy, who studies and catalogs demons.
Dowsing Rod	A Y-shaped rod or two L-shaped rods; used locating ghosts.
Electromagnetic Field (EMF)	A force given off by electric charges, found in anything that uses electricity. The higher the spikes in the electromagnetic field are, the more potential there is for paranormal activity.
Entity	A referred to as a ghost, spirit or demon.
EVP	Electronic Voice Phenomena: disembodied "voices" and sounds imprinted on audio recording devices.
Exorcism	Ceremonial expulsion of invading spiritual/demonic entities from a person or dwelling.
Orb	Spherical image, usually translucent white though sometimes of a reddish or bluish hue, which inexplicably registers on film and videotape.
Ghost	Image of a person witnessed after his/her death, reflecting the appearance of the living.
Haunting	Ghostly presence.
Intelligent Haunting	A haunting that knows you're there and interacts with you. It tries to get you to help it, or it gets a kick out of scaring you.
K-2 meter	A machine that measures magnetic fields and is specially calibrated for paranormal investigators. In theory, it can be used to train a spirit to intensify its magnetic field as a form of interaction.

Medium	A person who can sense the emotions of persons either alive or dead and is sensitive to the electrical fields around personalities.
Psychic Cleansing	A less ritualized form of exorcism, where a site is purified and malevolent influences banished through prayers.
Residual Haunting	Psychic imprint of a scene that is repeatedly played out, and in which the witness of the phenomenon essentially is peering into the past. The ghostly participants of these time-displacements often seem unaware of their living observers.
Vortex	A gateway that opens from the spirit world, like a rip in our dimension, and lets entities from the other side enter our world.
35mm Camera	Preferred by some ghost hunters over digital cameras for such reasons of digital flash imagery to exaggerate light-dispersion and create false images from airborne particles.
Digital Audio Recorder	Not prone to the "noise and hiss" of analog tape, nor to the compression needed for MiniDisc, which removes those parts of an audio signal above and below the range of human hearing. Spirits are said to be generally audible below this level, at 50dB or less.
Digital Infrared Camera	Used to capture images invisible to the human eye. Feeds to a computer where the infrared images are stored on a hard drive.
Digital Video Camera	Offers better quality than videotape camcorders.
Digital Thermometer	Witnesses often report "cold spots" and "hot spots" during an apparent paranormal event. Some digital thermometers record temperatures second-by-second.
Electromagnetic Field Recorder	Controversial among ghost hunters: EMFs from power lines, TVs, etc., surround us constantly, and it is undetermined that ghosts emit EM energy. Some researchers say ghosts do disrupt EMFs.
Thermal-Imaging Digital Camera	Records images of long-wavelength infrared radiation (heat), which is invisible to the human eye.