Mount Washington Valley SPIRIT Paranormal Investigators

Paranormal: Literally, “above normal,” it refers to anything

outside or beyond current scientific explanation.

Psychic Abilities & Human Experiences

Description: Defines reported psychic abilities and human experiences in plain language. Clarifies scope, common variations, and cultural context. Notes limits of evidence and directs readers to related methods and ethics entries.

Apparition: A visual experience of a person or figure perceived as present despite lacking a known physical source, often interpreted as the appearance of the dead or an unknown agent.

Astral Projection: The claimed experience of consciousness operating apart from the body with perception of distant places or events while the body remains at rest.

Attached spirit: Deceased person reported as attached to an object or to a living person.

Banshee: In Irish and Scottish lore, a female spirit whose keening signals an impending death in a family.

Demon: A nonhuman hostile intelligence described in religious and occult sources and invoked to account for harmful or manipulative phenomena.

Disembodied spirit: Spirit of a deceased person perceived without a physical form.

Djinn (Jinn): Supernatural beings from Middle Eastern tradition regarded as sentient agents with free will capable of interaction that may help, deceive, or harm humans.

Doppelganger: An apparent duplicate of a living person perceived by others or the individual and often treated as an ominous sign or unexplained mimicry.

Earthbound spirit: Deceased person believed not to have moved on.

Ectoplasmic Entity: A proposed spirit manifestation that involves a tangible or semi physical substance reported in early seance accounts and later disputed as artifact or fraud.

Eidolon: A phantom double or image of a person interpreted as a visible form of the soul or a ghostly counterpart.

Entity: A neutral label for an observed presence or agent when its nature and origin are unknown.

Fairy: A class of beings in European folklore ranging from small tricksters to powerful otherworldly figures that interact with humans according to local tradition.

Familiar: A spirit ally reputed to aid a practitioner by delivering knowledge, protection, or tasks in exchange for loyalty or ritual attention.

Ghost: The perceived continued presence or agency of a deceased person often tied to specific places events or relationships.

Ghoul: A folkloric being associated with graveyards and the dead and in modern usage a label for reports of predatory or corpse related manifestations.

Guide: A benevolent spirit believed to counsel or protect a person and often framed as a communicator in spiritualist practice.

Imp: A small mischievous spirit in folklore viewed as a prankster that can cause minor trouble without sustained malice.

Incubus: In medieval and early modern lore, a male spirit said to oppress women during sleep and now often linked to sleep paralysis experiences.

Inhuman Entity: A reported presence believed never to have been human and described as alien, elemental, or hostile in character.

Jinn: Alternate spelling of Djinn.

Larva: In Roman belief, a restless or malevolent spirit of the dead that disturbs the living until ritually appeased.

Lemures: In Roman tradition, the uneasy dead whose rites were neglected and who were feared as nocturnal haunters of households.

Phantasm: Ghostly manifestation of a deceased person.

Phantom: A briefly perceived or insubstantial appearance of a person or figure often taken as a ghostly image rather than a full presence.

Poltergeist: A pattern of recurrent disturbances such as knocks object movement or noises associated with a person or location without an observed human cause.

Rephaim: A biblical and ancient Near Eastern term for the dead or shadowy ancestral spirits later treated as ghostly beings.

Restless spirit: Deceased person perceived as unsettled or active.

Revenant: A person or corpse believed to return from death with physical or apparent physical presence usually to trouble the living.

Salamanders: Elemental spirits of fire in occult philosophy used symbolically to denote fiery energy rather than biological creatures.

Shade: Ghost of the dead envisioned as shadow like.

Shadow Person: A perceived dark human shaped figure lacking detail that appears fleetingly and is often experienced as threatening.

Specter: A visible ghost or apparition with emphasis on how it is seen rather than how it interacts.

Spirit: A disembodied intelligence or the continuing essence of a person after death used broadly for nonphysical agents.

Spook: Colloquial English for a ghost.

Succubus: In medieval lore, a female spirit said to visit men during sleep for sexual or draining encounters sometimes linked to sleep paralysis reports.

Sylphs: Elemental spirits of air in occult thought associated with intellect breath and inspiration.

Thoughtform Entity: A putative being produced by sustained human belief attention or emotion that then appears to act with some independence.

Tulpa: A concept from Tibetan traditions describing a being generated through focused mental formation and believed to gain apparent autonomy.

Undead: An umbrella term for beings existing between life and death including ghosts revenants and similar figures that show agency beyond the grave.

Undines: Elemental spirits of water in occult philosophy associated with emotion intuition and fluidity.

Visitant: Old English usage for a ghostly visitor from the dead.

Wraith: A spectral double or apparition of a living or recently deceased person often regarded as a death omen.

Yurei: In Japanese folklore, a restless spirit bound by strong emotion that manifests in traditional funeral garb and lingers near the cause of distress.

Mediumship and Divination

Description: Describes practitioner methods such as mediumship, divination, and ritual practice. Explains what a claim is, what outcomes are asserted, and how such claims are typically documented. Points to verification and replication terms.

Access Consciousness: A branded alternative healing method that claims to unlock awareness and change through verbal prompts and light touch, and lacks credible support in peer-reviewed science.

Aeromancy: divination from air or cloud phenomena.

Akashic Records: claimed access to a nonlocal archive of information by altered awareness.

Alectryomancy: divination using a rooster picking grains on letters or symbols.

Aleuromancy: divination using flour or baked messages such as fortune slips.

Anomalous Cognition: neutral term for information acquisition beyond known senses used in research.

Apantomancy: omens interpreted from chance encounters and events.

Apparitional Experience: A first person perception of a figure presence or form taken as contact with the dead or an unknown agent without a verified physical source.

Apport: A reported sudden appearance disappearance or relocation of an object during seances attributed to spirit agency rather than normal causes.

Asport phenomenon: reported vanishing or passage of objects through barriers.

Associative remote viewing: use of paired targets to predict outcomes by associating choices with future feedback.

Astral Projection: The claimed deliberate separation of consciousness from the body with travel or observation at a distance.

Astrological Forecasting: Prediction of human affairs and events based on the positions and motions of celestial bodies.

Astrology: claims based on celestial positions at birth or event times.

Augury: omens interpreted from bird flight or behavior.

Aura cleansing: ritual or practice to remove unwanted influences from the aura.

Aura paranormal: A proposed subtle energy field around a person described in colors and linked to mood health or spirituality.

Aura photography: color field portraits claimed to visualize auras.

Aura Reading: perception or interpretation of colors or fields around living beings.

Auric Diagnosis: assessment of health or mood based on perceived aura qualities.

Automatic Art: Creative output produced in an altered state that bypasses conscious control and is attributed to the subconscious or to spirits.

Automatic Drawing: images produced without conscious control attributed to a communicator.

Automatic Music: musical performance or composition produced without conscious control.

Automatic Painting: art images produced without conscious control often in trance.

Automatic Speech: spoken output produced without conscious control attributed to a communicator.

Automatic Writing: Writing produced without conscious control and attributed to subconscious processes or to communication from spirits.

Beacon person: a designated person at the target location used in remote viewing trials.

Belomancy: divination by the flight or choice of arrows.

Bibliomancy: random text selection interpreted for guidance.

Bilocation: The reported presence of one person in two places at the same time.

Bioenergy therapy: hands on or near body methods that claim to modulate a human energy field.

Book Test: specific information about a randomly chosen book used as evidence in sittings.

Cabinet phenomena: effects reported to occur when a medium works inside a cabinet.

Capnomancy: divination from smoke patterns.

Card guessing test: forced choice test using card symbols as targets.

Cartomancy: divination using playing cards or tarot.

Catoptromancy: scrying by observing mirrors.

Ceromancy: reading shapes formed by cooling wax.

Chakra balancing: assessment and adjustment practices aimed at aligning chakra centers.

Channeling: Conveying information said to come from spirits higher consciousness or nonhuman intelligences.

Channeling Medium: A practitioner who claims to receive and transmit messages or energies from nonphysical sources.

Clairalience: Perception of odors without a physical source attributed to psychic sensing.

Clairambience: Perception of taste without a physical stimulus taken as psychic input.

Clairaudience: Perception of sounds or voices beyond normal hearing claimed as psychic.

Claircognizance: Direct knowing of information without sensory input or reasoning claimed as psychic.

Clairempathy: felt awareness of emotions or states of others interpreted as psi.

Clairgustance: perceived tastes without an external stimulus interpreted as psi.

Clairsentience: Perception of emotions sensations or energies associated with people places or objects beyond normal cues.

Clairtangency Psychometry: impressions obtained by touching objects associated with people or events.

Clairvoyance: Perception of distant hidden or future events beyond normal sight.

Cleromancy: lot casting divination using marked objects or dice.

Coordinate remote viewing: use of numerical coordinates as tasking prompts for remote viewing.

Coscinomancy: divination using the motion of a suspended sieve often with shears.

Crisis apparition: appearance of a person at the time of their death or crisis.

Crisis telepathy: telepathic impression coincident with another person’s crisis.

Cross Correspondences: related fragments across independent mediums that form a coherent message.

Crystallomancy: scrying using crystals to obtain images or impressions.

Dactylomancy: divination using rings often suspended from a thread.

Deathbed visions: reports by the dying of visitors scenes or places.

Dematerialization: apparent disappearance of objects under observation.

Dermo optic perception: claimed color or text identification by touch with covered eyes.

Dermo optical Perception: The claimed ability to read colors or text through the skin rather than the eyes.

Direct Radio Voice: voice like signals reported to form in live radio circuits without stations.

Direct voice mediumship: voice heard in space not traced to the medium’s mouth.

Direct writing: writing reported to appear without normal contact during sittings.

Distant intentionality: claimed influence on outcomes at a distance by focused intent.

Distant prayer effects: health effects attributed to intercessory prayer.

Dream Telepathy: Alleged exchange of thoughts or information between people during dreaming.

Drop in communicator: unexpected communicator in a sitting who provides verifiable details.

Ectoplasm production: substance reported to emerge from mediums during sittings.

Electronic Voice Phenomena: voices or phrases reported on recordings without heard sources.

Empath: A person who claims heightened sensitivity to the emotions and energies of others.

Energy Healing: Practices that claim to improve health by influencing subtle or bioenergetic fields.

Energy Medicine: An umbrella for healing systems based on manipulating proposed body energy networks.

Evidential mediumship: medium provides specific verifiable details about deceased persons.

Experimenter Effect Parapsychology: psi results vary with characteristics of the investigator.

Extended remote viewing: relaxed open format remote viewing with longer sessions.

Extispicy: general term for divination from entrails related to haruspicy.

Extrasensory Perception ESP: Acquisition of information without known senses including telepathy clairvoyance and precognition.

Faith Healing: recovery attributed to prayer belief or religious ritual.

Forced choice ESP test: participants pick from limited options such as card symbols.

Free response ESP test: participants describe targets in open form scored by matching.

Ganzfeld procedure: method using uniform sensory fields to reduce noise in psi tests.

Ganzfeld telepathy: information transfer reported under Ganzfeld conditions.

Gastromancy: voices or sounds produced from the belly interpreted as spirit messages.

GDV biofield imaging: gas discharge visualization used to map alleged biofields.

Geomancy: interpretation of drawn or cast figures often in sand or on paper.

Haruspicy: interpretation of entrails in ancient ritual divination.

Healing Touch: near body energy practice used in nursing contexts.

Hydromancy: scrying by observing water surfaces.

Hypnosis: A state of focused attention and increased suggestibility used clinically and also linked historically to paranormal reports.

I Ching divination: hexagram casting with coins or yarrow for guidance.

Independent voice mediumship: voice produced through a trumpet or device in the room.

Instrumental Transcommunication: claimed interaction with nonphysical sources using electronic devices.

Intuition: Immediate understanding without explicit reasoning sometimes framed as a psychic sense.

Johrei: Japanese practice of channeling divine light for healing.

Kirlian photography: high voltage images of coronal discharges on film or sensors.

Kundalini awakening: reported rising energy sensations and psychological effects.

Laying on of Hands: touch based blessing or healing practice in religious contexts.

Levitation: The reported rising or floating of people or objects without observable physical cause.

Ley Line Energy: The belief that linear paths of earth energy connect ancient sites and influence phenomena.

Lithomancy: casting and reading stones crystals or gems for guidance.

Locution paranormal: Disembodied speech or voices reported in religious or haunted contexts.

Lucid Dreaming: Awareness during a dream with possible voluntary control of dream content.

Macro PK: large scale physical effects attributed to intention.

Map dowsing: use of dowsing over maps to locate targets.

Materialization: apparent formation of visible shapes or figures in séance conditions.

Mediumistic Phenomenon: Events attributed to spirit communication through a medium such as raps voices or materializations.

Mediumship: Communication with the dead through a human intermediary.

Mental mediumship: information only communications without physical effects.

Metal bending: deformation of metal objects attributed to intention.

Micro PK: intention correlated shifts in random micro systems.

Mind Over Matter: Influence of thought or intention on physical systems often equated with psychokinesis.

Molybdomancy: reading shapes of poured molten metal that has cooled.

Near Birth Experience: Reported consciousness phenomena before or during birth sometimes cited in reincarnation research.

Near Death Experience NDE: Perceptions near clinical death such as tunnels lights life review or encounters.

Numerology: interpretation of numbers and names as meaningful patterns.

Oneirogen induced experiences: dream phenomena produced by dream enhancing herbs or methods.

Oneiromancy: divination from dream content.

Onomancy: divination from names letters or their numerical values.

Onychomancy: divination by observing reflections on fingernails.

Oomancy: divination using the contents of an egg in water.

Ophidiomancy: omens interpreted from the behavior of snakes.

Ornithomancy: omens interpreted from the flight and calls of birds.

Osteomancy: casting and reading bones for guidance.

Out of body experience: perception of leaving the body and viewing from another location.

Out of Body Experience OBE: A sense of consciousness separating from the body with perspective from outside the physical self.

Outbounder experiment: a viewer describes a location visited by a traveling target person.

Palmistry: character and future readings from hand features.

Past life recall: spontaneous memories that are framed as from a prior life.

Past life regression: hypnotic or guided recall framed as prior life memories.

Physical mediumship: observable physical effects during sittings.

Place memory: impressions of past events associated with a location.

Planchette: small board on casters used to produce writing or movement.

PMIR Psi Mediated Instrumental Response: unconscious psi guides choices that satisfy needs.

Pranic healing: system using prana concepts for cleansing and energizing.

Precipitated painting: images appear on prepared surfaces without observed brush contact.

Precognition: Perception of future events before they occur without known causal information.

Precognitive dreams: dreams that later match real events.

Premonition: subjective foreboding about a future event.

Presentiment: reported pre event bodily signals before unpredictable outcomes.

Proxy Sitting: a sitter represents a third party unknown to the medium during a sitting.

Psi Hit: An experimental result that meets criteria for success under a psi hypothesis.

Psi Missing: scoring below chance as if avoiding the target in psi tests.

Psi wheel influence: rotation of a lightweight wheel near hands under intention.

Psionics: A science fiction influenced framing of psychic abilities as mental technologies.

Psychic: A person who claims extrasensory perception or related abilities.

Psychic Attack: The belief that harmful intent or energy can be directed to cause distress or misfortune.

Psychic detection: use of claimed psi to aid investigations or searches.

Psychic Energy Manipulation: The claimed ability to project absorb or alter subtle energies by intention.

Psychic Healing: intentional nonlocal or contact based healing without known mechanisms.

Psychic Projection: Directing thought or energy outward often used loosely or as a synonym for astral projection.

Psychic Reading: A session where a practitioner interprets impressions visions or tools to provide information or guidance.

Psychic surgery: apparent manual removal of pathology without incision.

Psychokinesis: The claimed influence of mind on physical objects or events without physical interaction.

Psychomanteum: mirror chamber used to facilitate afterlife apparitional experiences.

Psychometry: The claimed perception of information about an object or its owner by touching or holding it.

Psychopomp work: ritual guidance of the deceased to the afterlife in shamanic practice.

Pyramid Power: The belief that pyramid shapes focus energy and produce special effects a claim lacking empirical support.

Pyramidology: A fringe study that assigns mystical or energetic properties to pyramids outside mainstream archaeology.

Pyromancy: divination from flame behavior and burn patterns.

Qigong external qi healing: practitioner emits qi toward a recipient.

Radiesthesia: detection claims using rods or pendulums based on sensitivity.

Radio sweep ITC: scanning radios used for rapid fragments interpreted as messages.

Raps and Knocks: percussive sounds reported during sittings taken as communication.

Recurrent spontaneous PK poltergeist: repetitive physical disturbances linked to a person or place.

Reiki: hand based healing method that claims energy transfer.

Reincarnation memories in children: early statements and behaviors that match a deceased person.

Remote Empathy: Reported perception of another persons emotions or sensations at a distance without normal cues.

Remote Healing: Healing attempts performed at a distance through intention prayer or energy projection.

Remote Influencing: The claimed ability to affect another persons thoughts emotions or actions from afar.

Remote viewing: protocol based description of distant or hidden targets.

Retrocognition: Perception of past events without access to conventional sources of information.

Rhabdomancy: divination using rods often for locating water or objects.

Rhine cards: card decks used in early ESP experiments including Zener sets.

Runecasting: divination using runic symbols cast or drawn.

Scopaesthesia: The feeling of being watched in the absence of detectable cues.

Scrying: Seeking visions or information by gazing into reflective or translucent surfaces.

Seance: sitting intended for communication with spirits often with a medium.

Second sight: folklore term for extrasensory foresight.

Shamanic Journeying: Entering an altered state to seek knowledge healing or contact with spirits within a shamanic framework.

Shared death experience: bystanders report perceptions at another person’s death.

Shared Dreaming: two or more people report overlapping dream content or scenes.

Shared dreams: overlapping dream content across people.

Sheep Goat Effect: psi outcomes correlate with believer or skeptic attitudes.

Sixth Sense: A general label for any capacity beyond the five senses often equated with psi.

Slate Writing: writing appears on slates without visible contact during mediumistic sessions.

Sortilege: general term for lot casting methods of divination.

Spirit cabinet: enclosure used in séances to focus or conceal mediumistic effects.

Spirit guide communication: messages attributed to guiding nonphysical entities.

Spirit lights: small luminous points seen near mediums or in séance rooms.

Spirit painting: artworks attributed to discarnates often produced rapidly or in trance.

Spirit photography: anomalous figures or forms appear on photographs attributed to spirits.

Spirit rescue: practice of assisting spirits to move on according to the practitioner.

Spirit trumpet: cone used in séances to project voices or sounds.

Spontaneous after death communication: unbidden contact reports from the bereaved with details.

Stichomancy: divination by random passages from texts.

Stigmata: spontaneous wounds or marks with religious themes reported by witnesses.

Stone Tape Theory: idea that materials record and later release impressions of events.

Table Tipping: table movements during sittings attributed to discarnate influence.

Table Turning seance technique: A seance practice where participants place hands on a 

table that then moves tilts or rotates and is attributed to spirits or to ideomotor action.

Tasseography: interpretation of tea or coffee residues in a cup.

Tasseomancy: alternate term for tasseography reading tea or coffee residues.

Telekinesis: Another term for psychokinesis describing mental causation of movement.

Telepathy: Direct transmission of thoughts or feelings between minds without known sensory channels.

Teleportation claimed: reported transfer of objects or persons without traversing space.

Terminal lucidity: brief return of mental clarity near death after decline.

Terminally Induced After Death Communication: bereaved report contact initiated by the dying near the time of death.

Therapeutic touch: near body hand movements intended to affect a human energy field.

Third eye perception: inner vision or insight associated with the brow center.

Thought Transference: An older term for telepathy describing the exchange of ideas directly between minds.

Thoughtography: The alleged imprinting of mental images onto film or sensors.

Trance Mediumship: Mediumship in which the practitioner enters a trance to allow communication from spirits.

Transfiguration: A reported change in a mediums appearance during a sitting interpreted as a spirit face or form.

Transmutation: An occult or alchemical claim of transforming one form of matter 

energy or essence into another by nonstandard means.

Trumpet Mediumship: voices or sounds projected through a cone used in séances.

Video ITC: camera feedback or noise patterns interpreted as images of communicators.

Xenoglossy: The claimed ability to speak or write in an unlearned language.

Zener cards: set of five symbol cards used in classic ESP tests.

Equipment & Technology

Description: Lists equipment and technology used in cases. States what each device measures, typical operating ranges, calibration needs, and common failure modes. Flags entertainment devices and known misuse.

Accelerometer: A sensor that measures acceleration vibration and tilt to document movement and separate structural vibration from possible anomalies.

Air Ion Counters: Instruments that measure positive and negative air ions to track changes that may correlate with reported experiences.

Ambient Light Sensor: A device that records illumination changes to document flicker shadowing or light leaks.

Ambient Temperature Sensor: A device that measures air temperature to monitor reported cold spots and thermal shifts.

Amplifier: An electronic device that increases signal strength for recording or measurement and can also raise noise.

Analog: A continuous signal or device that represents information with smoothly varying physical quantities.

Anechoic Chamber: A soundproof echo free room used to test equipment and human perception under controlled conditions.

Calibration: Adjustment of instruments to known references to ensure accurate repeatable readings.

Digital: Representation and processing of data as discrete numeric values in modern audio video and sensors.

Decibel: A logarithmic unit that expresses sound pressure level or signal power ratios.

Directional Microphone: A microphone that favors sound from a chosen direction to reduce ambient noise.

Echolocation: Mapping of surroundings by emitting sound and measuring returning echoes sometimes emulated by sensors for ranging.

Electromagnetic Field (EMF): The region of electric and magnetic influence from sources such as wiring appliances and geology measured for environmental mapping.

Electromagnetic Radiation: Energy propagated as oscillating electric and magnetic fields across the spectrum from radio to gamma rays.

Electromagnetic Field Mapper: A device or method that creates a spatial map of EMF strength to locate sources and gradients.

Electronic Signal Detectors: Instruments that sense and characterize electrical or radio emissions to identify interference and anomalies.

Electrostatic Field Meters: Instruments that measure static electric fields and surface charge buildup that can affect sensors.

Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP): Alleged speech like sounds found on recordings and studied with controls for noise pareidolia and radio leakage.

Faraday Cage: A conductive enclosure that blocks external electric fields and radio signals to test whether effects persist without interference.

Frequency: The number of cycles per second of a periodic signal measured in hertz.

Gain: The amount of amplification applied to a signal defined as output over input.

Gaussmeters: Instruments that measure magnetic flux density often in milligauss or microtesla for EMF surveys.

Geiger Counter: A detector of ionizing radiation that counts events from alpha beta or gamma interactions.

GPS Devices (for location data): Receivers that record position elevation and time to 

geotag observations and synchronize logs.

Hertz (Hz): The unit of frequency equal to one cycle per second.

High Quality Digital Audio Recorders: Professional recorders with low noise preamps and uncompressed formats for clear capture and auditing.

High Resolution Digital Cameras: Cameras that capture fine detail for documenting scenes and small visual anomalies.

Hygrometers: Devices that measure relative humidity to explain comfort effects condensation and static.

Infrared: Electromagnetic radiation just beyond visible red used for heat sensing and low light imaging.

Infrared Illuminators: Devices that emit invisible infrared light so night vision cameras can record in darkness.

Infrared Thermal Scanners: Tools that measure surface temperatures and map heat patterns across a scene.

Infrasonic Transducers: Devices that generate or detect sound below 20 hertz which can induce vibration and perceptual effects.

Ion Counter: An instrument that measures atmospheric ion concentration and polarity to track air quality and electrical activity.

Jürgenson Frequency: An informal range associated by EVP enthusiasts with voice like artifacts in radio or audio recordings.

K II Meter (K2 Meter): A handheld unshielded EMF detector with an LED bar display popular in hobby use and susceptible to radio interference from everything.

Laser Grids: Projected dot or line patterns used to reveal motion occlusion or distortion in space.

Laser Grid Projector: A device that emits a structured laser pattern for visual anomaly detection.

LiDAR: A system that uses laser pulses and time of flight to map distances and build three dimensional models.

Light Meters (Lux Meters): Instruments that measure illuminance to document lighting conditions and changes.

Magnetic Field Generators: Devices that produce controlled magnetic fields for sensor checks and exposure experiments.

Magnetometer (High Sensitivity): A precision instrument that detects very small 

magnetic changes for baseline and anomaly mapping.

Megahertz (MHz): A unit of frequency equal to one million hertz.

Microphone: A transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal for recording and analysis.

Motion Activated Cameras: Cameras that trigger automatically when motion is detected for unattended monitoring.

Motion Sensors: Devices that detect movement using passive infrared microwave ultrasound or computer vision.

Night Vision Equipment: Tools that amplify light or use infrared to enable imaging in low light.

Night Vision Monocular: A single eyepiece night vision device for handheld observation.

Ovilus: A commercial device that outputs words from environmental readings and is marketed for spirit communication without scientific validation.

Oscilloscope: An instrument that displays voltage over time as a waveform to inspect frequency amplitude and noise.

Parabolic Microphone: A highly directional microphone that focuses sound with a 

parabolic dish to capture distant audio.

Particle Counters: Devices that count airborne particles by size to assess dust pollen and contaminants that can explain image artifacts.

Piezoelectricity: Electric charge generated in certain crystals by mechanical stress sometimes cited in rock strain theories of luminous or EM effects.

Portable EMF Meter: A handheld instrument for spot checking electromagnetic field strength.

Quantum Entanglement: A nonclassical correlation between particles that does not permit faster than light signaling despite frequent paranormal misuses.

Radio Frequency (RF): The part of the spectrum used for communication which can leak into gear and create artifacts.

Real Time Analyzer: A tool that displays spectra or levels in real time for monitoring audio or RF bands.

Scintillation Detectors: Radiation detectors that convert particle energy into light flashes that are counted by photodetectors.

Seismic Equipment: Instruments that measure ground motion to identify natural vibration sources and building responses.

Sensor: A device that converts a physical quantity into a measurable signal.

Shielded Field Meters: Meters with shielding and filtering to reduce interference and improve measurement accuracy.

SLS Camera: A depth sensing device adapted from Kinect that maps human like stick figures and can misidentify objects as people.

Software Defined Radio (SDR): A reconfigurable radio system that implements receiver and transmitter functions in software for wideband analysis.

Sound Level Meter: An instrument that measures sound pressure level in decibels with defined weighting and time response.

Spectrum Analyzers: Instruments that show signal power versus frequency to locate interference sources and patterns.

Spirit Box: A device that rapidly sweeps radio frequencies and outputs fragments interpreted by users as voices, without any scientific validation.

Tachyon: A hypothetical faster than light particle with no experimental evidence.

Tesla Coils: High voltage resonant transformers that produce visible discharges used for demonstration rather than detection.

Thermal Camera (Calibrated): An imaging device that measures and visualizes temperature with known accuracy for quantitative work.

Time Synchronization Devices: Tools that align clocks across equipment often using GPS or network time to enable precise correlation.

Time Lapse Cameras: Cameras that capture frames at intervals to reveal slow changes and movement patterns.

Transducer: A device that converts one form of energy into another such as sound to voltage.

Tripods and Mounting Equipment: Supports that stabilize and position cameras sensors and recorders to reduce motion artifacts.

Ultrasonic Microphones: Microphones that capture frequencies above 20 kilohertz for wildlife device noise or artifact analysis.

Ultrasound: Sound at frequencies above human hearing used in imaging and structural inspection.

Vibration Sensors: Sensors that detect and log vibration in structures devices or surfaces to link events to physical causes.

Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) Detectors: Instruments that detect airborne chemicals that can affect perception health or camera behavior.

Voltmeter: A device that measures electrical potential difference between two points in a circuit.

Walkie Talkies: Portable two way radios for team communication with known RF emissions.

White Noise: Broadband sound with equal power per hertz often used as a masking or test signal in EVP work.

X ray Machines (for paranormal investigations): Medical imaging devices sometimes repurposed in fringe studies and not suited to field work.

Zener Cards: Symbol cards used in classic ESP testing for forced choice experiments.

Zoetrope: A rotating optical device that produces apparent motion and is useful in studies of perception.

Perception and Cognition

Description: Explains perception and cognition terms that affect testimony. Includes visual and auditory illusions, attention limits, memory effects, and sleep boundary states. Helps readers weigh human factors before drawing conclusions.

Agency and Purpose Attribution

Anthropomorphism Bias: Attributing human intent to ambiguous movements or sounds.

Fundamental Attribution Error: Attributing others actions to character while underweighting situational factors.

Hyperactive Agency Detection: Tendency to infer agents behind ambiguous events.

Psychological Essentialism: Belief that categories have hidden essences that guide behavior.

Teleological Thinking: Preferring purpose based explanations for natural events.

Attention and Arousal

Attentional Bias: Preferential focus on selected stimuli while ignoring others which distorts perception and recall.

Attentional Blink: Brief miss of a target that follows closely after another target.

Attentional Capture Effect: Sudden onsets seize attention and mask other events.

Attentional Repulsion Effect: Cues shift perceived position away from the cue.

Chronostasis: The first moment after a rapid eye movement feels longer than it is making a ticking clock seem to pause.

Filled Duration Illusion: Intervals with more events feel longer.

Illusory Conjunctions: Features from different objects are incorrectly bound.

Inattentional Blindness: Missing visible events because attention is directed elsewhere.

Inattentional Deafness: High visual load causes missed audible events.

Intentional Binding Effect: Actions and outcomes seem closer in time creating false causation.

Kappa Effect: Spatial spacing biases perceived time between events.

Oddball Effect: Unusual stimuli are judged to last longer.

Perceptual Narrowing Under Stress: High arousal reduces field awareness and context processing.

Tachypsychia: Altered time perception during high stress where events seem slowed or sped.

Tau Effect: Longer temporal gaps bias perceived spatial distance.

Vierordt Law: Short intervals are overestimated and long intervals underestimated.

Weapon Focus Effect: When a visible weapon captures attention and narrows focus, witnesses encode and recall fewer details about the perpetrator and scene, which reduces identification accuracy.

Belief and Identity

Belief Bias: Accepting or rejecting arguments based on prior beliefs rather than logical validity.

Belief Perseverance: Maintaining a belief despite clear contradictory evidence through selective reasoning and memory.

Catastrophizing: Expecting worst outcomes which heightens threat detection.

Confirmation Bias: Seeking and recalling evidence that fits prior belief while discounting disconfirming data.

Declinism: Belief that the past was better and the present is worsening which colors interpretation of events.

Emotional Reasoning: Treating feelings as evidence about reality even when facts disagree.

Identity Protective Cognition: Rejecting facts that threaten group identity to preserve status.

Intolerance of Uncertainty: Discomfort with ambiguity that promotes agency attributions.

Just World Fallacy: Assuming outcomes reflect merit which can lead to blaming victims.

Just World Hypothesis: The belief that the world is fair and people get what they deserve.

Naive Realism: Belief that ones perception is objective while others are biased.

Need for Cognitive Closure: Preference for quick definite answers that favors simple causal stories.

Negativity Bias: Negative events weigh more heavily than positive ones of equal magnitude.

Normalcy Bias: Underestimating the likelihood or impact of a looming disaster and failing to prepare.

Optimism Bias: Believing oneself less likely than others to face negative outcomes.

Ostrich Effect: Avoiding negative information by ignoring or delaying attention to it.

Overconfidence Effect: Overestimating accuracy of knowledge predictions or performance.

Pessimism Bias: Overestimating the probability of negative outcomes.

Projection Bias: Assuming others currently share your preferences beliefs or feelings.

Reactance: Motivational pushback against perceived restrictions that increases desire for the limited option.

Restraint Bias: Overestimating ones ability to resist temptation which leads to risky exposure.

Selective Perception: Noticing information that confirms beliefs while overlooking conflicting data.

Clinical and Neurological Conditions

Alice In Wonderland Syndrome: A neurological condition that distorts perception of size time distance or time flow often linked to migraine infection or seizures.

Anosognosia: Lack of awareness of ones own illness or deficits common in certain neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Capgras Delusion: Belief that a familiar person has been replaced by an identical imposter often tied to neurological or psychiatric illness.

Cotard Delusion: Belief that one is dead dying or nonexistent usually occurring in severe depression or psychosis.

Depersonalization: Feeling detached from ones body thoughts or identity as if observing oneself.

Derealization: Experiencing the external world as unreal distant or dreamlike.

Epilepsy Temporal Lobe: Seizures from temporal regions that can produce auras hallucinations déjà vu and numinous feelings.

Fregoli Delusion: Belief that many different people are a single person in disguise.

Migraine with Aura: Migraine attacks with visual sensory or speech disturbances.

Misophonia: Strong negative reactions to specific trigger sounds.

Musical Ear Syndrome: Hearing music without an external source often associated with hearing loss.

Night Terrors: Episodes of intense fear and arousal during sleep with limited recall after waking.

Panic Disorder: Anxiety disorder marked by recurrent unexpected panic attacks and worry about future attacks.

Prosopagnosia: Impaired ability to recognize faces with otherwise intact vision.

Schizophrenia: A psychiatric disorder with disturbances in thought perception and behavior that can include hallucinations and delusions.

Shared Psychotic Disorder Folie a Deux: Transmission of delusional beliefs from one person to another in close association.

Spatial Neglect: Neurological condition causing lack of awareness for one side of space.

Tinnitus: Perception of sound such as ringing without an external source.

Trauma: Deeply distressing experience that can reshape perception memory and health.

Trauma Induced Hallucinations: Perceptual experiences arising after severe psychological or physical trauma.

Visual Agnosia: Inability to recognize objects despite intact basic vision.

Concepts and Labels

Appraisal Theory: Emotions arise from personal evaluations of events which then shape interpretation memory and behavior.

Attribution Theory: How people infer causes for events often misassigning agency to paranormal forces instead of situational factors.

Automation Bias: Overreliance on tools that leads users to accept device outputs while overlooking errors or conflicts.

Cognitive Bias: Systematic deviation from rational judgment that affects perception memory and decision making.

Cognitive Dissonance: Mental discomfort from holding conflicting beliefs which prompts rationalization or belief change.

Curse of Knowledge: Assuming others share your background knowledge which impairs clear explanation.

Near Birth Experience: Reports of perceptions around birth sometimes cited in early memory and survival research.

Singapore Theory: Belief that reenacting events at a site can trigger activity or memory like effects.

Sixth Sense: Colloquial label for extrasensory perception.

Skeptic: A person who withholds belief until claims are supported by reliable evidence.

Decision and Probability

Affect Heuristic: Fast emotion driven judgments that override analysis.

Ambiguity Effect: Unknown probabilities are avoided which skews causal judgments.

Anchoring Bias: Relying too heavily on the first information encountered which skews later judgments and estimates.

Availability Heuristic: Judging likelihood by how easily examples come to mind which media exposure can inflate.

Baader Meinhof Phenomenon: Noticing something more often after first learning of it due to selective attention and confirmation.

Base Rate Fallacy: Ignoring general prevalence information in favor of vivid specifics which degrades probabilistic judgment.

Bias Blind Spot: Noticing others biases more than ones own.

Causal Illusion: Co occurrence is mistaken for causal influence.

Clustering Illusion: Seeing patterns or streaks in random data and inferring nonexisting causes.

Conservatism Bias: Undervaluing new evidence relative to prior beliefs which slows belief updating.

Contrast Effect: Nearby stimuli alter perceived size brightness or weight.

Default Effect: Accepting suggested options without scrutiny.

Denomination Effect: Greater willingness to spend small denominations than large ones despite equal value.

Distinction Bias: Exaggerating differences between options when compared side by side.

Dunning Kruger Effect: Low skill fosters overconfidence while high skill can produce cautious self assessment.

Endowment Effect: Valuing owned items more than identical nonowned items.

Focusing Effect: Overweighting one aspect of a situation while neglecting other relevant factors.

Framing Effect: Choices change depending on whether information is presented as gain or loss.

Gamblers Fallacy: Belief that past random outcomes change the odds of future independent events.

Hindsight Bias: After learning an outcome believing it was predictable and that one knew it all along.

Horn Effect: One negative trait deflates judgments of unrelated traits.

Hot Cold Empathy Gap: Current state blinds prediction of feelings in another state.

Hot Hand Fallacy: Belief that recent success in random sequences predicts continued success.

Hyperbolic Discounting: Strong preference for smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards.

Illusion of Control: Overestimating personal influence over outcomes driven by chance.

Illusory Correlation: Perceiving a relationship between events that are actually unrelated.

Information Bias: Seeking more data even when it does not improve decisions.

Irrational Escalation: Continuing a failing course of action due to sunk costs.

Law of Small Numbers: Over interpreting small samples as representative.

Loss Aversion: Losses loom larger than equal sized gains which skews choices.

Omission Bias: Judging harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions.

Outcome Bias: Judging a decision by its result rather than by the quality of the process and information at the time.

Planning Fallacy: Systematically underestimating time cost or effort needed to complete tasks.

Postdiction: Interpreting events as if they were predicted after the fact.

Pseudocertainty Effect: Risk framing creates false certainty preferences.

Recognition Heuristic: Choosing the recognized option when other knowledge is limited.

Regression Fallacy: Natural reversion is misread as intervention effect.

Risk Compensation: Taking more risks when protected by safety measures.

Subadditivity Effect: Judging the probability of a whole as lower than the sum of its parts.

Sunk Cost Fallacy: Prior investment sustains belief or action.

Survivorship Bias: Focusing on successes while overlooking failures which distorts conclusions.

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: Patterns are claimed after selective grouping.

Time Saving Bias: Misjudging how much time is saved by increasing speed especially at low starting speeds.

Zero Risk Bias: Preference for eliminating a small risk entirely rather than achieving a larger overall risk reduction.

Expectancy and Suggestion

Barnum Effect: Accepting vague general statements as personally accurate a common feature of readings and horoscopes.

Cold Reading Techniques: Illusion of high accuracy from vague claims and feedback cues.

Context Effect: Surrounding cues shift how a stimulus is perceived.

Demand Characteristics: Reports shaped to match perceived investigator aims.

Expectancy Bias: Observations shaped by what one expects to see which increases false positives.

Experimenters Bias: Study outcomes are skewed by investigator expectations unless controlled by blinding.

Golem Effect: Negative expectations impair performance and reports.

Hawthorne Effect: Being observed changes behavior and reports.

Illusory Truth Effect: Repetition increases perceived truth regardless of evidence.

Nocebo Effect: Negative expectations create perceived harm or symptoms.

Observer Effect in Measurement: Measurement context alters what is observed.

Placebo Effect: Improvement caused by belief or expectation rather than by an active treatment.

Power of Suggestion: Perception and behavior shaped by cues framing and expectations.

Priming Effects: Recent cues bias interpretation and memory retrieval.

Pygmalion Effect: Positive expectations improve performance and reports.

Rhyme as Reason Effect: Rhyming statements feel more truthful due to processing fluency.

Rosenthal Effect: Investigator expectations bias participant responses.

Suggestibility: Degree to which perception and memory can be shaped by external cues.

Memory

Bizarreness Effect: Unusual items are remembered better which inflates confidence.

Boundary Extension: Remembering having seen beyond the edges of a scene.

Choice Supportive Bias: Remembering chosen options as better than they were while downplaying flaws.

Consistency Bias: Past beliefs are remembered as closer to current beliefs.

Continued Influence Effect: Debunked claims continue to shape recall and inference.

Cryptomnesia: Mistaking a retrieved memory for a new idea which can be misread as psychic insight.

Deese Roediger McDermott Effect: Lists induce confident false memories of non presented items.

Doorway Effect: Forgetting information after moving to a new room because context change disrupts retrieval.

Déjà Vu: Strong sense that a new situation has been experienced before due to memory misfires.

Eidetic Memory: Rare ability to recall images with high detail after brief exposure especially in children.

Fading Affect Bias: Negative emotions tied to memories fade faster than positive ones over time.

False Fame Effect: Familiar names are misjudged as famous.

False Memory: Recollection of an event that did not occur formed through suggestion imagination or misattribution.

Flashbulb Memory Effect: Vivid crisis memories feel accurate despite errors.

Frequency Bias: Perceiving something as more common after recent exposure similar to frequency illusion.

Frequency Illusion: Perception that something appears more often after noticing it due to attention and memory.

Google Effect Digital Amnesia: Reliance on search reduces later memory for the information.

Illusion of Explanatory Depth: People overestimate how well they understand mechanisms.

Imagination Inflation: Repeated imagination increases confidence that the event occurred.

Jamais Vu: A familiar situation feels unfamiliar often a transient memory anomaly.

Leveling and Sharpening: Memory reshaping where some details are dropped and others are exaggerated.

Memory Conformity: Event details shift toward accounts shared by others.

Misinformation Effect: Post event misleading information alters memory for the event.

Mood Congruent Memory: Current mood biases what is recalled.

Narrative Fallacy: Coherent stories are preferred over accurate uncertainty.

Peak End Rule: Memory weights the peak and the ending over duration.

Presque Vu: Tip of the tongue state where recall feels imminent yet remains inaccessible.

Primacy Effect: Better recall for items presented first in a sequence.

Reality Monitoring: Distinguishing memories of real events from imagined or suggested events.

Recency Bias: Greater weight or recall for the most recent information.

Regression to the Mean Neglect: Extreme values are misread as durable shifts.

Reminiscence Bump: Disproportionate recall of events from adolescence and early adulthood.

Rosy Retrospection: Past events are remembered as better than they were.

Source Amnesia: Remembering information while forgetting its source.

Telescoping Effect: Misplacing when events occurred often pulling distant events closer in time.

Verbal Overshadowing Effect: Verbal description impairs later visual recognition.

Von Restorff Effect: Distinct items are over remembered and over weighted.

Zeigarnik Effect: Unfinished tasks are remembered better than finished ones.

Miscelaneous

Blind Spot Bias: Seeing biases in others more readily than in oneself.

Confabulation: Filling memory gaps with fabricated but believed details.

Functional Fixedness: Difficulty seeing new uses for objects beyond their usual function.

Group Polarization: Group discussion shifts positions toward greater extremes.

Halo Effect: Positive impressions in one area spill over to judgments in other areas.

Hypnosis: Focused attention with increased suggestibility and imagery that does not grant paranormal control.

Identifiable Victim Effect: Stronger response to a single vivid case than to statistics about many cases.

Illusion of Transparency: Overestimating how clearly others can read ones thoughts or feelings.

Illusory Truth Effect: Increased belief in repeated statements regardless of accuracy.

Impact Bias: Overestimating the duration or intensity of future emotions.

Mood Congruent Memory Bias: Current mood increases recall of mood matching memories.

Motivated Reasoning: Goal directed evaluation that defends desired conclusions.

Neglect of Probability: Using vividness over numeric likelihood in judgment.

Own Age Bias in Face Recognition: Better recognition for faces near one’s age.

Own Race Bias in Face Recognition: Reduced accuracy for unfamiliar group faces.

Panic Hyperventilation Misattribution: Internal sensations from rapid breathing misread as external forces.

Semmelweis Reflex: Reflexive rejection of new evidence that contradicts established views.

Sensory Adaptation: Reduced responsiveness to constant stimuli over time.

Stress: Physiological and psychological response to demands that challenge coping resources.

Thought Action Fusion: Belief that having a thought increases the likelihood of the event.

Motor and Ideomotor

Automatism Writing: Unconscious motor output misattributed to external agency.

Chevreul Pendulum Effect: Pendulum motion from subtle expectation driven movements.

Ideomotor Effect: Unconscious muscle activity moves tools such as planchettes or rods.

Multisensory Integration

Cross Modal Capture: One sense dominates another and distorts perception.

Mal de Debarquement Effect: Persistent illusory self motion after travel.

McGurk Effect: Visual speech alters what words are heard.

Rubber Hand Illusion: Synchronous touch creates false ownership of a fake limb.

Rubber Voice Illusion: Voice feedback manipulation induces ownership of a heard voice.

Sound Induced Flash Illusion: Beeps change how many flashes are seen.

Synesthesia: Automatic cross sensory experiences such as seeing colors for sounds.

Vection: Visual motion induces false self motion.

Ventriloquism Effect: Vision captures sound location leading to mislocalization.

Perception Auditory

Auditory Continuity Illusion: Masked segments are heard as continuing smoothly.

Backward Masking Effect: Later sounds obscure earlier ones and change what is heard.

Binaural Beat Percept: Slightly different tones to each ear create a third tone.

Change Deafness: Missed changes in sound streams during attention shifts.

Cocktail Party Effect: Selective attention to one voice creates mishearing of others.

Deutsch Scale Illusion: Alternating tones split by ear form illusory melodies.

Franssen Effect: In reverberant spaces sound location is misattributed to the first source.

Glissando Illusion: Rising tone seems to slide across space.

Missing Fundamental Effect: Brain infers a nonexistent pitch that seems real.

Octave Illusion: Alternating tones to each ear create illusory pitch and location.

Phantom Words Illusion: Repeating speech fragments are heard as meaningful phrases.

Phonemic Restoration Effect: Brain fills in masked speech sounds.

Precedence Effect: First arriving sound dominates location perception.

Risset Rhythm Illusion: Beat seems to accelerate endlessly.

Shepard Tone Illusion: Tone seems to rise endlessly which implies building presence.

Sine Wave Speech Effect: Priming makes noise suddenly sound like clear words.

Speech to Song Effect: Repetition turns spoken phrase into perceived song.

Tritone Paradox: Same tone pair is heard as rising or falling depending on the listener.

Zwicker Tone: After a noise notch the ear hears a phantom tone.

Perception Tactile and Somatic

Aristotle Illusion: Crossed fingers touching one object feel like two.

Cutaneous Rabbit Illusion: Rapid taps feel like hops along the skin.

Force Matching Illusion: Self generated forces feel weaker than external forces.

Formication: Crawling or tingling skin sensations without an external source.

Full Body Ownership Illusion: Synchronous visual and tactile cues induce ownership of a virtual body.

Health Anxiety: Catastrophic interpretation of benign bodily sensations.

Looming Bias: Approaching stimuli are overestimated in speed and threat.

Material Weight Illusion: Objects that look denser feel heavier at equal mass.

Misattribution of Arousal: Internal autonomic changes are attributed to outside causes.

Parchment Skin Illusion: Sound alters perceived roughness and dryness of touched skin.

Phantom Vibration Sensation: false perception that one's mobile phone is vibrating or ringing when it is not. 

Pinocchio Illusion: Vibration and touch create the feeling of a lengthening nose.

Presence Hallucination: Felt nearby being without sensory evidence.

Proprioceptive Drift: Perceived limb location shifts toward a seen fake limb.

Scopaesthesia: Sensation of being watched without clear sensory evidence also called gaze detection.

Size Weight Illusion: Smaller object of equal mass feels heavier.

Somatic Symptom Disorder: Distressing bodily sensations with cognitive focus that amplifies salience.

Thermal Grill Illusion: Interlaced warm and cool bars feel like painful burning.

Thermal Referral Illusion: Alternating warm and cool inputs feel like uniform heat.

Tinnitus: Perception of sound such as ringing without an external source.

Perception Visual

Afterimages: Visual impressions that persist after the stimulus is removed due to retinal and neural adaptation and can mimic faint figures.

Ames Room Illusion: Distorted room makes people appear to grow or shrink.

Ames Window Illusion: Rotating trapezoid appears to oscillate and reverse depth.

Anorthoscopic Illusion: Shape reconstructed from a moving slit view.

Aperture Problem Effect: Local motion seen through a small view gives false global motion.

Apophenia: Perceiving meaningful patterns or connections in random data which drives false positives in anomaly searches.

Autokinetic Effect: Stationary point of light appears to move in darkness.

Autoscopy: Perceiving one’s own body from an external vantage.

Autostereogram Effect: Repeating patterns produce illusory depth and forms.

Backward Visual Masking: A later visual target reduces awareness of an earlier one.

Benham Top Illusion: Spinning black and white patterns evoke illusory color.

Beta Movement Illusion: Rapid sequential lights look like smooth motion distinct from phi.

Bezold Effect: Small colored elements shift the perceived color of larger areas.

Bistable Perception Necker Cube: Wireframe cube flips between two orientations.

Bistable Perception Rubin Vase: Face and vase alternate via figure ground flips.

Blind Spot: Retinal area with no photoreceptors where the optic nerve exits which the brain fills in perceptually.

Cafe Wall Illusion: Checkerboard lines appear sloped despite being parallel.

Caputo Strange Face Illusion: Low light mirror gazing produces grotesque face perceptions.

Change Blindness: Failure to notice substantial changes in a visual scene when attention is disrupted.

Charles Bonnet Syndrome: Complex visual hallucinations in visual impairment with intact insight.

Checker Shadow Illusion: Identical shades look different due to context.

Color Constancy: Perception of stable object colors despite changes in lighting.

Color Phi Phenomenon: Alternating colored flashes create illusory moving color.

Craik OBrien Cornsweet Illusion: Edge gradients make identical areas look different in brightness.

Delboeuf Illusion: Surrounding rings bias perceived size of a central circle.

Ebbinghaus Illusion: Surrounding circles bias perceived size of a target.

Ehrenstein Illusion: Converging line segments create illusory contours and bright centers.

Enigma Illusion: Concentric patterns with segments appear to rotate.

Entoptic Phenomena: Visual effects arising within the eye such as blue field entoptic effect.

Face Pareidolia Bias: Strong tendency to see faces in noise and patterns.

Flash Drag Effect: Motion shifts perceived location of a flashed target.

Flash Lag Effect: Moving objects are seen ahead of a flashed target.

Floaters Muscae Volitantes: Shadows from vitreous debris that mimic small moving forms.

Frame Induced Position Shift: Moving frames displace perceived position of a target.

Fraser Spiral Illusion: Concentric arcs appear as a spiral.

Gestalt Principles of Perception: Rules such as proximity similarity and closure that organize sensory input into coherent forms.

Heautoscopy: Seeing a double of oneself often with presence sensations.

Heider Simmel Effect: Moving shapes are read as intentional agents.

Hering Illusion: Straight lines appear bowed by radial background.

Hermann Grid Illusion: Intersections show illusory gray spots.

Hollow Mask Illusion: Concave face appears normal and seems to follow the viewer.

Illusion: Misperception or misinterpretation of real sensory input.

Irradiation Illusion: Bright areas appear larger than dark areas of the same size.

Jastrow Illusion: Adjacent curved shapes of equal size look unequal.

Kanizsa Contour Illusion: Brain fills in illusory shapes and edges.

Kinetic Depth Effect: Moving points reveal illusory three dimensional form.

Kuleshov Effect: Context images change perceived emotion of an ambiguous face.

Leaning Tower Illusion: Identical receding images appear to diverge due to perspective context.

Lilac Chaser Illusion: Afterimages and motion create a moving gap around a circle.

Mach Bands: Luminance steps create illusory bright and dark bands.

McCollough Effect: Orientation contingent color aftereffect after adaptation.

Michotte Launching Effect: Sequential motion evokes a causal impression.

Moire Pattern Illusion: Overlaid grids produce illusory waves and motion.

Moon Illusion: Horizon moon appears larger than high moon due to context cues.

Motion Aftereffect:  a visual illusion experienced after viewing a moving visual stimulus for a time with stationary eyes, and then fixating a stationary stimulus.

Motion Induced Blindness: Stationary items vanish from awareness amid moving patterns.

Motion Silencing Effect: Changes in moving items are missed when global motion is high.

Muller Lyer Illusion: Line length is misjudged because arrow tips bias size perception.

Munker White Illusion: Context stripes reverse expected lightness judgments.

Neon Color Spreading: Faint color appears to fill between contour lines.

Oppel Kundt Illusion: Filled intervals appear longer than empty ones.

Optical Illusions: Visual stimuli that lead perception away from physical reality.

Orbison Illusion: Background patterns warp perceived shape.

Orbital Anomalies: Photographic artifacts from dust insects moisture or reflections that appear as orbs.

Ouchi Illusion: Overlaid textures produce illusory motion.

Palinopsia: Persistence or recurrence of visual images after the stimulus has gone due to visual system dysfunction.

Pareidolia: Seeing meaningful images such as faces in random patterns.

Peripheral Drift Illusion: Static patterns appear to move due to small eye movements and contrast processing.

Phi Phenomenon: Sequential lights produce apparent motion.

Phosphenes: Light sensations from pressure or spontaneous retinal activity.

Pinna Brelstaff Illusion: Concentric patterns create illusory rotation or deformation.

Poggendorff Illusion: Collinear lines seem misaligned when occluded.

Ponzo Illusion: Converging lines make identical objects seem different in size or distance.

Prior Entry Effect: Attended stimuli are perceived earlier in time.

Prosopometamorphopsia: Faces appear warped while other objects look normal.

Pulfrich Effect: Dimmed eye causes lateral motion to appear in depth.

Purkinje Effect: Shift in brightness and color perception in low light.

Rod and Frame Effect: Tilted frame biases perceived vertical and body orientation.

Roelofs Effect: Surrounding frame shifts perceived position of a target.

Sander Illusion: Arrowed lines bias perceived length in a figure with parallelograms.

Scintillating Grid Illusion: Flickering dark dots appear at grid intersections.

Shepard Tables Illusion: Equal table tops appear different in size and shape.

Simultaneous Contrast Illusion: Adjacent colors alter perceived hue or brightness.

Stereokinetic Effect: Rotating two dimensional forms appear three dimensional.

Thatcher Effect: Difficulty noticing facial distortions when a face is upside down.

Troxler Effect: Peripheral stationary stimuli fade with steady fixation.

Visual Snow Syndrome: Persistent grainy visual static that seeds misinterpretation.

Wagon Wheel Illusion: Under flicker, rotation appears to reverse or stop.

Watercolor Illusion: Light color seems to spread inside a thin contour.

White Illusion: Context reverses expected brightness judgments.

Wundt Illusion: Straight lines appear curved with radiating background lines.

Zollner Illusion: Short crosshatches make long parallel lines look skewed.

Personality and Trait

Absorption: Deep attentional engagement that heightens suggestibility and vividness.

Anxiety Sensitivity: Fear of anxiety sensations that amplifies threat perception.

Dissociation Trait: Detachment of memory or perception that increases anomalous sensations.

Fantasy Proneness: Habitual vivid imagination that blurs reality monitoring.

Schizotypy Trait: Personality dimension linked to unusual perceptual experiences without clinical psychosis.

Transliminality: Ease of threshold crossing between unconscious and conscious that increases anomalous reports.

Sleep and Boundary States

Bereavement Hallucinations: Sensed presence or visions of a deceased loved one within normal grief.

Exploding Head Syndrome: Sudden loud noise perception at sleep transitions.

Ganzfeld Effect: Uniform sensory input evokes vivid imagery and voices.

Hypnagogia: Transitional state at sleep onset with vivid imagery sounds or bodily sensations.

Hypnic Jerk: Startle at sleep onset with vivid snap sensations.

Hypnopompia: Transitional state upon waking that can include vivid imagery and confusion.

Out of Body Experience: Illusory self location outside the physical body.

REM Intrusion: Dream imagery or paralysis elements enter wakefulness.

Sensory Deprivation: Reduced sensory input that can induce hallucinations or altered states.

Sleep Deprivation: Insufficient sleep that impairs cognition mood and perception and can produce hallucinations.

Sleep Paralysis: Brief paralysis at sleep onset or upon waking often with vivid hallucinations and a sensed presence.

Third Man Factor: Felt companion during extreme stress or isolation.

Social Influence

Authority Bias: Overweighting claims from perceived experts.

Availability Cascade: Repetition through networks increases perceived truth.

Bandwagon Effect: Popular claims feel true which lowers scrutiny.

Better Than Average Effect: Self ability is judged above average across domains.

Bystander Effect: Lower likelihood of helping when others are present due to social cues and shared responsibility.

Deindividuation: Reduced self awareness and accountability in groups that increases conformity and impulsive behavior.

Diffusion of Responsibility: Reduced sense of personal duty to act when responsibility is shared with others.

Echo Chamber Effect: Selective exposure amplifies one sided claims.

Emotional Contagion: Spread of emotions between people through expressions voice and posture.

False Consensus Effect: Overestimating how much others share your beliefs or behaviors.

Groupthink: Consensus seeking suppresses doubt and inflates shared narratives.

Hostile Media Effect: Neutral coverage is perceived as biased against ones side.

Information Cascade: Early reports steer group belief independent of evidence.

Ingroup Bias: Favoring members of ones group over outsiders.

Limbic Resonance: Emotional synchronization between people through nonverbal cues and attention.

Mass Hysteria: Spread of symptoms or beliefs through groups without an identifiable organic cause.

Mere Exposure Effect: Repeated exposure increases liking even without conscious recognition.

Outgroup Homogeneity Bias: Viewing members of an outgroup as more similar to one another than they are.

Pluralistic Ignorance: Group privately rejects a norm yet publicly accepts it.

Sleeper Effect: Messages from low credibility sources gain impact over time.

Social Amplification of Risk: Networks magnify fear and incident salience.

Social Contagion: Spread of ideas emotions or behaviors through observation and imitation.

Social Proof: Assuming a behavior is correct because many others do it.

Spiral of Silence: Dissent is withheld to avoid isolation.

Spotlight Effect: Overestimating how much others notice ones actions or appearance.

Stereotyping: Attributing traits to individuals based on group membership.

Third Person Effect: Others are believed more influenced by media than oneself.

Vestibular and Self-motion

Broken Escalator Phenomenon: After adapting to moving escalators, stepping onto static ground feels unstable.

Coriolis Cross Coupling Illusion: Head turns during rotation evoke false tumbling sensations.

Elevator Illusion: Sudden vertical acceleration feels like rising or sinking.

Graveyard Spiral Illusion: A prolonged turn creates a false sense of level and risky correction.

Inversion Illusion: Rapid acceleration creates a false pitch up sensation.

Oculogravic Illusion: Linear acceleration tilts perceived vertical.

Oculogyral Illusion: After sustained rotation, stationary lights seem to drift.

Room Tilt Illusion: Brief global tilt of the visual world.

Somatogravic Illusion: Acceleration is misread as a pitch change.

Somatogyral Illusion: Prolonged rotation causes false turning sensations after stopping.

The Leans Illusion: Aviators feel level during a slow bank and correct the wrong way.

Environmental & External Factors

Description: Defines environmental and external factors that influence people and instruments. Includes building systems, air quality, weather, wildlife, vibration, and electromagnetic sources. Adds basic site documentation language.

Air Pressure: Force from the weight of air measured by barometers and relevant to comfort equipment behavior and environmental stability.

Atmospheric Pressure: Same as air pressure with variations that can influence perception headaches and sensor readings.

Atmospheric Pressure Gradient: Rate of pressure change across distance that drives winds and local airflow in buildings.

Barometric Pressure: Measured atmospheric pressure that tracks weather shifts and can correlate with ear pressure and mood.

Barometric Pressure Spikes: Sudden pressure jumps or drops that can alter airflow doors and human comfort and are sometimes linked to reports.

Cold Front: Leading edge of cooler air that brings abrupt temperature wind and pressure changes.

Cold Spot: Localized temperature drop that must be confirmed against baseline airflow radiant heat loss and HVAC effects.

Convection: Heat transfer by moving air or fluids that creates drafts and temperature gradients often mistaken for anomalies.

Dew Point: Temperature at which air becomes saturated and condensation forms important for fog surface moisture and camera behavior.

Draft: Moving air inside a structure caused by pressure differences openings or HVAC that often explains cold spots.

Earth Energies: Speculative idea of natural subtle forces from the ground with no established physical basis.

Earthquake: Seismic shaking that produces vibration infrasound power disruptions and occasional luminous reports.

Electromagnetic Field (EMF): Electric and magnetic influence from wiring devices and currents measured to map environmental exposure.

Gases: Airborne substances such as carbon monoxide ozone or solvents that can cause symptoms hallucinations or sensor noise.

Geomagnetic Anomalies: Local deviations in Earths magnetic field from geology or infrastructure that can affect instruments.

Geomagnetic Field Reversals: Geologic scale flips of magnetic polarity not relevant to site level investigations.

Geomagnetic Storm: Space weather disturbance that alters magnetometers radio links and sometimes human mood reports.

Geopathic Stress: Claim that underground features harm health or perception a concept not supported by mainstream science.

Humidity: Amount of water vapor in air that affects comfort condensation static and instrument performance.

Infrasound: Sound below 20 hertz that can induce unease chest pressure and visual misperception.

Infrasound Disturbance: Low frequency noise from wind machinery or traffic that creates vibration and discomfort.

Ionization: Gain or loss of electrons that produces charged air common near lightning flames or high voltage gear.

Ionospheric Disturbance: Upper atmosphere changes from solar activity that shift radio paths and magnetometer readings.

Ionospheric Radio Propagation: Reflection and bending of radio waves by the ionosphere that enables long distance reception and interference.

Isochronic Tones: Regular audio pulses used to influence brain activity with mixed evidence for lasting effects.

Lightning: Large electrical discharge that generates strong electromagnetic pulses shock waves and chemical byproducts.

Lunar Cycles: Moon phases with strong folklore links to behavior but limited scientific support for direct effects.

Magnetic Fields: Fields from magnets or currents that can influence sensors and induce currents in loops and wiring.

Meteorology: Science of weather and atmospheric processes essential for ruling out natural causes of reports.

Schumann Resonances: Global electromagnetic resonances in the cavity between ground and ionosphere with unproven biological effects.

Solar Flare: Sudden solar radiation burst that changes ionospheric conditions radio propagation and satellite operations.

Static Electricity: Charge buildup on surfaces that causes small shocks hair movement and potential sensor artifacts.

Subtle Energy Fields: Term for proposed invisible influences on life and mind without measurable physical properties.

Telluric Currents: Natural electric currents in the ground that vary with geology and space weather and can induce voltages.

Telluric Current Fluctuation: Time variation in ground currents that may couple into long cables and instruments.

Temperature Fluctuations: Rapid ambient temperature changes from HVAC cycling airflow or radiation exchange.

Thermal Anomaly: Temperature deviation detected by sensors that requires checks for emissivity reflections and line of sight.

Ultrasonic Frequencies: Sound above 20 kilohertz used in devices and capable of triggering sensors or animal reactions.

Vibroacoustic Phenomenon: Combined vibration and sound that can alter mood balance and perception.

Weather Anomalies: Unusual or extreme weather that can drive electromagnetic interference power issues and structural noises.

Video and Photo Anomalies

Description: Details optics, imaging, and sensor artifacts seen in photos and video. Covers focus, exposure, noise, compression, motion blur, rolling shutter, and infrared contamination. Offers test and replication language for suspected artifacts.

Alignment and Stitching

Panorama Stitching Seams: Frames do not align perfectly so edges or subjects duplicate. The result looks like ghosts or seams across the image.

Parallax: Near and far objects shift differently when the camera moves. Stitching or alignment then leaves double edges or mismatched shapes.

Atmospheric and Scene Effects

Atmospheric Dispersion: Air bends colors differently near the horizon. Edges pick up red or blue fringes.

Black Level Offset: The zero point is wrong. Shadows lift gray or crush to black with color tint.

Breath Vapor or Smoke: Moist air or smoke near the lens catches light. Wisps glow and drift like misty forms.

Camera Profile Mismatch: A wrong raw or picture profile is applied. Colors shift away from reality.

Channel Clipping Hue Shift: One color channel clips first. Highlights take on magenta, yellow, or cyan.

Color Space Mismatch: The file tag or working space is wrong. Images look dull, too saturated, or tinted.

Field Rotation: A non-tracking mount rotates the sky during long exposures. Stars smear around the frame edges.

Gamma Mismatch: The tone curve does not match the display. Midtones look washed or too dark.

Gamut Clipping: Values lie outside the target color space. Saturated areas flatten or change hue.

GPU limited vs full range mismatch: Playback uses the wrong video range setting. Blacks wash out or crush, and whites clip.

Heat Haze Atmospheric Turbulence: Rising hot air bends light. Distant scenes shimmer and distort.

Insect trails near lens: Bugs close to the lens cross the light path. They record as bright streaks or rod-like shapes.

Incorrect HDR Metadata: Mastering info is wrong. HDR to SDR or HDR playback clips or looks flat.

Incorrect LUT Application: A look or technical LUT is used in the wrong order. Contrast or color break.

Levels Mismatch: Full range and limited range are mixed. Blacks lift or whites crush.

Log Conversion Errors: Log footage is mapped with the wrong transform. Skies posterize and skin looks odd.

Metamerism Failure: Different lights produce different apparent color matches. Colors shift when lighting changes.

Mixed Lighting Color Cast: Multiple light sources with different spectra hit the scene. Local areas tint green, blue, or amber.

Obscuration: Fog, foliage, rails, or people block part of the scene. Hidden edges or shapes look anomalous.

Posterization: Smooth gradients quantize into steps. Bands appear in skies and walls.

Precipitation Streaks: Rain or snow crosses the frame during exposure. Streaks and bright dots appear.

QuickTime gamma tag legacy offset: Older QuickTime tags assume a different gamma. Midtones appear too bright or too dark in some software.

Star Trailing: Stars move during long exposures. Points turn into short lines or arcs.

White Balance Error: The neutral point is wrong. The whole image skews warm, cool, or green.

Compression and Codec Artifacts

Bit Error Corruption: Data gets corrupted in storage or transfer. Blocks, colors, or frames glitch.

Bitrate Starvation Pumping: The encoder runs out of bits. Detail and noise breathe with motion.

Chroma Subsampling Artifacts: Color is stored at lower resolution than luma. Colored edges bleed or stair step.

Chroma Upsampling Error: Reconstruction of chroma is wrong. Color shifts or halos appear at edges.

DCT Artifacts: Block transforms leave ringing and blocks. High contrast edges buzz.

Double Compression Artifacts: A compressed image is recompressed. Blocking, ringing, and blur stack up.

Generation Loss: Repeated exports reduce quality. Detail vanishes and artifacts grow.

Mosquito Noise: Small dancing dots appear around edges. They follow text or high contrast lines.

Computational and stacking artifacts

Deconvolution Ringing: Sharpening overshoots around edges. Ripple halos form.

Depth Map Edge Errors: Portrait or cutout edges are wrong. Hair and glass smear or show halos.

Focus Stacking Halos: Misaligned macro stacks leave rims. Borders glow or darken.

HDR Merge Ghosting: Movement between brackets duplicates subjects. Transparent doubles appear.

Night Mode Stack Ghosting: Multi frame low light blends motion. Trails and soft doubles appear on moving subjects.

Noise Reduction Smearing: Strong denoise erases texture. Surfaces look waxy.

OLPF Softening: The optical low pass reduces aliasing. Fine detail loses crispness.

Optical Flow Interpolation Artifacts: Generated frames warp edges. Limbs smear and backgrounds wobble.

Sharpening Halos: Excess sharpening brightens one side and darkens the other. Outlines appear around objects.

Display and Panel Capture

CRT Scan Artifacts: Camera and CRT timing beat. Rolling bars and scan lines appear.

Display Local Dimming Blooming: HDR zones raise halos near bright areas. Light pools around highlights.

Display overdrive inversion trails: LCD overdrive alternates pixel polarity. The camera captures faint dark light trails following motion.

DLP Rainbow: Color wheel separation shows during motion. Red, green, and blue fringes flash.

LED Panel Scan Artifacts: Rolling capture sees the panel scan. Bands or color breakup move through the image.

OLED PWM rolling band: OLED panels modulate brightness with PWM. Rolling shutter sees bands that drift across the screen.

Polarizer LCD Banding: Crossed polarizers create uneven bands. Rainbows or dark strips appear on screens.

Screen door pixel grid: The camera resolves the display pixel matrix. A visible grid or mesh pattern appears.

Screen Refresh Beat Bands: Frame rate and refresh do not match. Bright bars drift across the display.

Temporal Dithering on Displays: Panels change pixels over time to fake tones. Fine shimmer or grain appears on capture.

Film and Scanning

Emulsion Scratches: Film is scratched during handling. Bright or dark lines run across frames.

Gate Weave: Film does not register perfectly. The image jitters slightly between frames.

Light Piping in Film: Light leaks along the film base. Edges fog and lose contrast.

Newton Rings: Thin layers interfere. Concentric rings appear in scans or macro shots through glass.

Scanner Banding: Line sensors or transport drift. Fixed stripes run horizontal or vertical.

Focus and Calibration

Autofocus Hunting: The system oscillates around focus. Brief softness pulses in and out.

Focus Breathing: Framing changes during focus moves. The scene appears to zoom slightly.

Focus Shift With Aperture: Best focus moves when stopping down. A sharp plane slips forward or back.

Front Focus Back Focus: Phase detect calibration is offset. The subject is consistently in front or behind focus.

Thermal Focus Drift: Temperature changes shift focus. Shots soften over time.

Format and Aspect

Orientation tag ignored: The file has rotation metadata but the player ignores it. The image appears sideways or upside down.

Pixel Aspect Ratio Mismatch: Pixel shape tags are wrong. Images stretch or squeeze on playback.

Infrared and Spectral Effects

Infrared Contamination: Near infrared leaks into the image. Blacks and fabrics tint oddly.

Infrared eye shine: Animal eyes reflect IR strongly. Eyes glow bright white or green in IR video.

Infrared Focus Shift: IR focuses at a different plane. Modified cameras show softness unless refocused.

Infrared Hotspot: Some lenses brighten the center in IR. A round hot area appears in long IR shots.

IR window reflections: On camera IR LEDs reflect off glass back into the lens. Floating bright spots or veils show when filming through windows.

Spider webs lit by IR: IR illuminators light up fine web strands. Bright lines or nets appear suddenly in darkness.

Interlace and Field Processing

Blended Deinterlace Ghosts: Fields are blended. Moving edges show duplicates.

Field Dominance Issues: Field order is wrong. Motion jitters and edges comb.

Interlace Comb Effect: Fields are misaligned. Horizontal comb lines fringe moving objects.

Line Twitter: Thin horizontals flicker after deinterlacing or downscaling. Fine textures shimmer.

Lens and Optical Geometry

Astigmatism: Focus differs by direction. Points stretch into lines along one axis.

Balsam Separation: Cemented elements separate. Haze and rainbow fringes grow toward edges.

Barrel Distortion: Lines bow outward near corners. Architecture bulges.

Chromatic Aberration: Colors focus at different points. Green and magenta fringes appear on edges.

Coma: Off axis points smear like comets. Corners show teardrop highlights.

Curvature of Field: The sharp plane is curved. Center or edges are soft at one setting.

Diffraction: Small apertures bend light. Fine detail softens as f number increases.

Keystoning: Camera tilt skews geometry. Verticals converge or diverge.

Lens Decentering: Elements misalign. One side is softer than the other.

Longitudinal Chromatic Aberration: Colors blur in front and behind focus. Bokeh shows green and magenta edges.

Mechanical Vignetting: Aperture and barrel cut off light at edges. Out of focus highlights become cat eye shapes.

Mustache Distortion: Distortion changes sign across the frame. Grids wave in complex curves.

Onion Ring Bokeh: Aspheric tooling leaves rings. Bright bokeh discs show concentric textures.

Pincushion Distortion: Lines bow inward near edges. Frames pull toward the center.

Polarizer Sky Banding: Wide views polarize unevenly. The sky shows a dark band across it.

Spherical Aberration: Rays focus at different radii. Highlights glow and contrast drops wide open.

Starburst Diffraction: Aperture blades create spikes on points. The spike count matches blade count.

Variable ND X Pattern: Crossed polarizers in variable ND form an X. The sky shows a dark X at some angles.

Vignetting: Corners darken relative to the center. Stacks of filters and wide lenses increase it.

Reflections, Glare, and Stray Light

Backscatter orbs: Near lens particles reflect the light. Bright discs or orbs float in the image.

Condensation or Fogging: Moisture on glass diffuses light. Contrast falls and halos grow.

Double Reflection Through Glass: Two panes reflect. A faint offset copy of subjects appears.

Flare: Stray light bounces inside the lens. Haze, streaks, or ghosts appear.

Front Element Smear Veiling: Oil or dirt on the front glass scatters light. The scene looks hazy with bright streaks.

Front filter reflection ghosts: Stacked filters reflect between surfaces. Faint double images or rings appear near bright lights.

Halation: Bright points glow into neighbors. Highlights show a soft ring.

Lens hood internal reflection: Light bounces off the inside of the hood into the lens. Arcs or bands slide as the angle changes.

Light Leaks: Stray light enters the camera body. Streaks or fog patches appear even without bright sources in frame.

Mount Light Leak: Gaps at the mount or ports admit light. A glow or flare appears near the leak side.

Polarizer rainbow on tempered glass: Stress in tempered glass rotates polarization unevenly. With a polarizer you see colored bands and dark zones.

Raindrop on Lens: Water drops act as lenses. Local blur and bright halos appear.

Red Eye: Flash reflects off the retina. Pupils glow red in photos.

Sensor Cover Glass Reflections: The sensor stack reflects point lights. Small rings or ghosts form near bright points.

Sampling and Moire

Aliasing: Sampling misses fine detail. Jagged edges and false patterns appear.

Chroma Aliasing on 4 2 0 Edges: Color resolution is low at edges. Stair steps and bleed appear on saturated borders.

Demosaicing Artifacts: Rebuilding color from a Bayer pattern fails locally. Zippering and maze textures appear.

Halftone Moire: Printed screens beat with the sensor grid. Waves and color crawl appear in photos of print.

Line Skipping Moire: Skipped rows in video create alias. Strong false patterns appear.

Moire: Fine textures beat with the pixel grid. Patterns and false colors move with the camera.

Pixelation: Resolution is too low for the view. Blocks replace detail.

Resampling Aliasing: Poor scaling creates shimmer. Thin lines crawl in motion.

Subpixel Moire on Displays: Display subpixels interact with the sensor. Color fringes crawl on filmed screens.

Sensor and Readout Artifacts

Amp Glow: Sensor electronics warm edges. Corners glow pink or purple in long exposures.

Black Sun Effect: Overbright points invert. The brightest spot turns black on some sensors.

Blooming: Overload spills charge into neighbors. Bright areas bleed and grow.

CCD Image Lag Ghosting: Bright subjects leave faint trails. Afterimages follow highlights.

Color Cross Talk: Adjacent pixels contaminate signals. Colors shift near edges and fine detail.

Color Shading Pixel Vignetting: Microlenses reduce light or skew color at corners. Wide angles show corner tint.

Dark Current: Sensors produce signal without light. Long exposures lift blacks.

Dark Current Noise: Thermal variation adds random speckle. Warm or long exposures get noisier.

Dark Signal Non Uniformity DSNU: Dark current varies by pixel. A fixed pattern appears in dark frames.

Dead Pixel: A pixel never responds. It shows as a tiny dark dot.

Dead Row or Dead Column: A whole line fails. A line remains dark or bright across frames.

Dual Gain ISO Transition Banding: Sensor switches gain at a threshold. A subtle band appears where the mode changes.

Fixed Pattern Noise: Readout pathways repeat a structure. Stripes or grids appear in shadows.

Hot Pixel: A pixel stays bright. It shows as a colored or white dot.

ISO Noise: Higher gain raises noise. Low light looks grainy.

Microlens Patterning: The microlens array leaves subtle texture. A gridlike pattern can appear.

Phase Detect Striping: PDAF rows imprint faint bands. Pushed shadows reveal stripes.

Photo Response Non Uniformity PRNU: Pixels differ in sensitivity. A faint fixed pattern spans the image.

Read Noise: Electronics add baseline noise. Lifting shadows reveals it.

Row Column Banding: Readout channels differ. Horizontal or vertical bands appear.

Sensor Dust Spots: Dust on the cover glass shadows the sensor. Dark soft spots appear at high f numbers.

Sensor Tilt or Mount Misalignment: The sensor plane is not parallel to the lens. One side focuses closer than the other.

Walking Noise: Pattern noise moves between frames. Pushed video shows crawling texture.

Audio Anomalies

Description: Describes audio anomalies and the full signal chain. Includes room acoustics, microphone behavior, gain structure, electrical and radio interference, and editing artifacts. Guides readers toward checks that separate voices and knocks from noise.

Acoustic feedback: A loop between mic and speaker builds into a whine or howl. A tone appears from nowhere and grows fast.

Acoustic leakage: Distant voices or TV from another room enter the mic. Faint speech can seem like whispers.

Adaptive noise reduction artifacts: The denoiser guesses wrong and adds watery tones. These warbles can resemble murmurs.

AGC pumping: Auto gain raises the background between words. The room gets loud then quiet by itself.

Allpass phase rotation coloration: Phase only change smears transients. Speech loses clarity and sounds unnatural.

Auditory pareidolia: The brain finds words in random noise. Hiss or fan noise seems to say phrases.

Boundary interference SBIR: Reflections near walls or tables cancel and boost parts of the sound. Speech turns hollow or phase like.

Breath hits: Air from the mouth strikes the mic. Short puffs can read as soft whispers.

Cable microphonics: A moving cable injects rustle into the signal. Handling the recorder makes crackles and scrapes.

Clipping distortion: Levels exceed headroom and flatten peaks. Harsh crackle makes normal sounds feel violent.

DC offset not removed: The waveform is shifted from zero. Edits click and headroom shrinks.

De clicker artifacts: Click removal leaves tiny chirps. These chirps can be mistaken for coded signals.

De crackle artifacts: Heavy repair removes texture and adds grain. Words become smeared and ghostly.

De noiser musical noise: Strong denoise creates bird like tones. They clus-ter into patterns that seem like speech.

Echo: A delayed reflection arrives after the voice. It can sound like a reply from the room.

FFT processing artifacts: Short analysis windows add granular tones. The result can flutter like faint voices.

File concatenation boundary pop: A hard join between files makes a pop. It can be heard as a knock on the wall.

Flutter echo: Rapid pinging between parallel surfaces. The metallic ping can mimic tiny footfalls.

Gating chatter: A noise gate opens and closes on tails. Ends of words chop into syllables.

Ghost bus routing leak: An unused path still passes low level audio. Distant chatter appears under the track.

Ground loop hum: A steady 50 or 60 hertz tone with harmonics. Constant hum can read as a low chant.

GSM or two way radio buzz: Radios couple into audio as buzz or chirps. Bursty patterns can resemble coded voices.

Handling noise on microphone: Touches and bumps travel into the mic body. Thuds or scrapes sound like knocks.

Headphone bleed: Playback leaks from headphones into a nearby mic. Faint delayed speech appears under the real take.

HVAC rumble: Air handlers add low whoosh and tones. The room seems to breathe or growl.

In ear monitor occlusion effect: A blocked ear canal boosts lows. Your own voice and nearby sounds feel heavy and boomy.

Infrasound interference: Very low frequencies shake objects and mics. You hear rumbles and feel pressure with no obvious source.

Intermodulation distortion: Strong signals mix and create new tones. Extra whistles or growls appear that were not spoken.

Keyboard thump and desk noise: Mechanical hits couple through the table mic. Random taps sound like purposeful knocks.

Lav mic cable slap: The body cable taps clothing. Sharp ticks happen in clusters that feel intentional.

Limiter distortion: Fast limiting flattens peaks and adds grit. The room swells and voices rasp.

Microphone preamp overload: The input stage clips before meters show it. Brief crackles make words break apart.

Microphone proximity effect: Very close miking boosts bass. Speech turns boomy and masks consonants.

Microphone self noise: Every mic and preamp adds hiss. In quiet rooms the hiss forms patterns that seem meaningful.

Microphone windscreen turbulence resonance: The windscreen can reso-nate. Wind becomes a pitched whoosh.

Mouse click pickup by desk mic: Clicks from the mouse leak into the mic. They are often misheard as tiny taps.

Noise floor modulation in perceptual codecs: Compression makes the noise level breathe with speech. Between words the room swirls and whis-pers.

Noise print contamination: A bad denoise print removes parts of the voice. Holes in words sound like hidden phrases.

Off axis coloration: Sound from the side loses highs. Distant voices be-come muffled and spooky.

Phantom power pops: Connecting or switching power adds spikes. Single clicks resemble taps from the room.

Plosive pops on microphone: P and B blasts overload the mic. Low thumps sound like knocks or footsteps.

Plumbing knocks and water hammer: Pressure surges in pipes create sharp bangs. They travel through structure and record as knocks with no visible source.

Power brownout pop: A brief voltage dip makes a click. It can land at ran-dom and seem intentional.

Resonant enclosure chatter: Loose panels rattle at set pitches. These tones can ride under speech.

Reverberation: Long tails build in reflective rooms. Tails mask words and suggest replies.

Room mode ringing: The room sustains certain bass notes. A single note lingers like a hum from nowhere.

Room slapback echo: One short reflection after the voice. It feels like a quick answer.

Room tone mismatch between edits: Ambience jumps across an edit. Lis-teners think something entered or left.

Sample rate mismatch: Playback uses the wrong rate. Pitch and speed shift so voices sound otherworldly.

Scrape flutter: High rate flutter from tape or mechanisms. It suggests breathy whispers.

Spectral repair artifacts: Manual painting removes noise but leaves holes or chirps. Leftovers can be misheard as words.

Stage rumble through mic stands: Floor vibration travels up the stand. Low knocks arrive when someone moves.

Static discharge clicks: Small zaps create sharp ticks. They occur at random and feel like short signals.

Subsonic content overload: Very low energy eats headroom and modulates speech. The track heaves and gulps between words.

Talkback mic latch leak: Control room talk leaks into program. Faint speech appears where none was present.

Time stretch artifacts: Changing length or pitch smears attacks. Voices sound rubbery or layered.

Transport wow and flutter: Slow and fast pitch wobble from mechanisms. Speech wavers in pitch without intent.

Ultrasonic interference: Inaudible devices create tones that fold into audio. You hear whistles with no visible source.

Voice activation clipping: Voice operated recorders cut the start and end of words. Chopped syllables seem like hidden messages.

Wi Fi burst interference: Nearby Wi Fi adds periodic chirps. These repeats can sound intentional.

Wind noise on microphone: Air movement creates rumble and blasts. It masks words and adds false events.

Wireless compander pumping and distortion: Wireless mics breathe level with speech. The room rises and falls around the talker.

XLR pin one problem hum: Shield wiring error routes current into audio. A strong hum appears when touching gear.