Welcome to the Psi Encyclopedia! We aspire to provide a comprehensive introduction to academic parapsychology, which studies the range of psychic experiences collectively termed ‘psi’. The existence of psi phenomena – and the related idea that consciousness is independent of the physical body and so may survive death – is strongly disputed by materialist scientists, yet parapsychologists are convinced they have evidence for these things. The Psi Encyclopedia presents this evidence in nearly 750 signed articles by over 80 authors, many of them senior academics, arranged in categories and subcategories that highlight the major interests of the field.
Mark Boccuzzi created this short video that explains what we are about.
Featured
Stephen E Braude
American philosopher and parapsychologist (1945–2026) remembered for his field investigations of apparent psychokinesis.
Meditation and Psi
Traditional Yogic teachings state that a person who attains a higher state of consciousness will manifest psychic powers.
Psychedelics and Psi
A gradual easing of restrictions means that psi research with psychedelics, once prevalent, could soon resume.
Psi Research in China
Recent experimental and theoretical work in China includes successful attempts to train ESP abilities in blind children.
Clinical Parapsychology
Therapeutic approach that aims to provide support for people disturbed by anomalous event experiences.
Psi for Financial Gain
Anecdotal accounts and lab tests suggest that psi can at times be used to advantage in gambling and financial speculation.
Coover Telepathy Experiments
Early telepathy experiments, once thought a failure, now considered statistically significant.
Key Topics
Psychology and Parapsychology
Explores the overlap between psychology and parapsychology, such as personality and other variables linked to psi.
Remote Viewing
An experimental form of clairvoyance, in which a suitably trained person attempts to visualise the topography of a distant scene.
Near-Death Experience (Overview)
This article describes anomalous mental events reported by people who have survived a near-fatal accident or illness.
Animals in Psi Research
The psi abilities of animals have been reported in informal observations and tests, including modern lab experiments.
Mediumship and Multiple Personality
The personalities of mediumistic communicators are similar to dissociative identity disorder.
Society for Psychical Research (SPR)
Membership organization founded in London in 1882 for the scientific investigation of claims of psychic phenomena.
European Children with Past-Life Memories
European children speak of past lives less often than Asian children do, yet the cases are very similar.
Anthropology and Psi Research
Anthropologists have long been fascinated by belief in psi, a near universal aspect of human culture.
Recent Additions
Boston Society for Psychic Research
Organisation formed from the American Society for Psychical Research in 1925, reuniting with it in 1941.
Marcello Truzzi
American sociologist known for distinguishing open-minded scepticism of psi phenomena from simple debunking.
Ada Goodrich Freer
Clairvoyant who contributed to studies of crystal-gazing, second sight and hauntings in the 1890s.
Placement Effects in Psychokinesis Tests
Haakon Forwald tested whether his willed psychokinesis could deflect thrown dice and other cubes.
Haakon Forwald
Norwegian-born Swedish engineer and inventor who conducted innovative placement PK experiments with dice and cubes.
Visualizing the Supernatural
This 2025–26 museum exhibition traced 250 years of visual culture surrounding apparitions, mediumship and the occult.
René Peoc’h
French researcher whose studies with imprinted chicks suggested they can bias the movement of a robot through PK.
Antony Flew
British analytic philosopher known for his influential critiques of theism, postmortem survival and parapsychology.
Coin Apports: The Mexico City Case
A variety of coins appeared without an obvious normal source or cause.
Robert McLuhan
British journalist, a prominent interpreter of parapsychology for general readers and the principal architect of the Psi Encyclopedia.
Annekatrin Angelika Puhle
German researcher whose work touches on cultural history, dreams, apparitions, magic and anomalous light experiences.
Ouija Board
Ouija boards have sometimes allowed for veridical communications from apparent spirit entities and for automatic writing in creative productions.
Susan Gerbic
American studio photographer who exposes what she believes to be pseudoscience through a special brand of 'guerilla skepticism'.
Julian Ochorowicz
Polish philosopher, psychologist and inventor (1850–1917), who made notable investigations of physical mediumship.
Minot Judson Savage
Savage (1841–1918) was a Unitarian minister who sat with Leonora Piper and was involved with the early American Society for Psychical Research.
Noah’s Ark Society for Physical Mediumship
The NAS originated in a home circle in 1990 and indirectly fostered the later Scole Circle.
Martin Johnson
As a major European experimental parapsychologist, Johnson (1930–2011) helped build the programme at the University of Utrecht.
Milan Ryzl
Milan Ryzl (1928–2011) was a pioneer in exploring hypnosis as a facilitator of ESP, best known for his extensive work with Pavel Stepanek.
Cold Spots
Sudden sensations or measurements of temperature variations recur in reports of apparitions, séances and hauntings.
Dieter Vaitl
German consciousness researcher who directed the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (IGPP) for two decades.
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ESP & Psychokinesis
Extra-sensory perception (ESP) comprises telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition. Psychokinesis (PK) is the direct influence on matter by mind alone. Both ESP and PK have been tested in the laboratory and studied in real life situations. Together they constitute psi, in the strict sense of the term. Subcategories group together overviews and general topics in psi studies, tests of ESP and PK, and researcher biographies.
Mina Stinson Crandon (Margery)
Controversial American physical medium who caused a split in the ASPR in the 1930s.
The Scole Circle
This Norfolk-based group held séances during the 1990s, claiming to have communicated with spirits and observed other phenomena.
Vienna Workshop Poltergeist
A Viennese member of the Society for Psychical Research describes poltergeist distrurbances he witnessed.
Mind & Body
This category contains articles that treat consciousness in relation to the body. Subcategories focus on consciousness and psi; dreams and psi; and distant healing and psychotherapy. Also included are sitter groups and macro-psychokinesis as well as poltergeists, often assumed to relate to discarnate entities but now known more often to have living agents. A final subgroup is concerned with out-of-body and near-death experiences and events reported on the threshold of death.
William Braud
American experimental parapsychologist (1942–2012), pioneer of study of distant mental influence on living systems (DMILS).
Maimonides Dream Telepathy Research
This article describes ESP dreaming experiments carried out in a New York sleep laboratory.
Dream ESP Reports (list)
Summaries of reports, surveys and analyses of dream ESP in the SPR archives from 1889 to 1998.
Survival of Death
Life continued in a spiritual or purely mental form after bodily death is a staple of religious beliefs worldwide, and likely is as old as humanity. The question of evidence for it has been central to the Society for Psychical Research since its founding in 1882. Subcategories focus on hauntings and apparitions and on psychic (also called mental) mediumship.
The Super-Psi Hypothesis
Claim that psychic functioning is more extensive than supposed, able to explain most evidence for survival.
Collective Apparitions (Theories)
Apparitions perceived by more than one person provide some theoretical challenges.
William Stainton Moses
British Anglican priest and teacher who described experiences with mediumship in a private circle.
Reincarnation
Reincarnation beliefs are widespread in the world and in recent decades researchers have found what they believe is evidence of them through the study of people (mainly children) who claim to have lived before. Subcategories highlight case studies, past life regression, and biographies of major researchers.
Past-Life Memories Research with Adults
Reincarnation research has focussed on young children, but adults also may report having past-life memories.
Cameron Macauley (reincarnation case)
Glaswegian who as a young child claimed to remember living on a remote Scottish island.
Ramoo and Rajoo Sharma (reincarnation case)
In this Indian reincarnation case, twin boys recalled the lives of two murdered men, also twins.
Researchers & Authors
Here can be found more than 300 biographical profiles of key figures who have been involved in psi research and parapsychology as field investigators, experimentalists, theorists and commentators. The biographies are grouped in subcategories by 30-year age cohorts, highlighting contemporaries.
Alexander Moreira-Almeida
Brazilian psychiatrist who has carried out empirical studies of mediumship and spiritual experiences.
Gustave Geley
French investigator of mediums (1865–1924) remembered for his controversial attempts to provide proof of ectoplasm in the form of plaster moulds.
Gary Schwartz
American psychology professor at the University of Arizona who has engaged in mediumship and psi healing research.
Organizations
The oldest organizations devoted to parapsychology were member organizations like the Society for Psychical Research, established in London in 1882. Since JB Rhine founded the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in 1930, there have been university-based units as well. This category comprises both historical and contemporary bodies concerned with research and education in parapsychology.
Lay Paranormal Research in the UK
Overview of non-university organizations that carry out psi research in the United Kingdom.
Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP)
Under Etzel Cardeña at Lund University.
International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS)
US-based outfit founded in 1981 to study NDEs and provide support and educational resources.
Sceptical Views
Sceptics argue that psychics and mediums achieve their effects by trickery, that psychic experience is an illusory effect caused by a combination of brain misperceptions and confirmation bias, and that evidence of psi in laboratory tests can be attributed to poor methodology. This category includes biographies of leading sceptics as well as general articles discussing their allegations.
Richard Wiseman
British psychology professor, media personality and bestselling author who is a high-profile critic of parapsychology.
Fraud in Parapsychology and Other Sciences
Psi researchers have sometimes been caught in fraud but so have scientists in other fields.
General Topics
This category contains articles on a variety of topics that do not fit well in any of the main categories, from dowsing to crop circles and other anomalistic phenomena, the Miscellaneous Anomalistic subcategory. Other subcategories list articles on psychics and mystic and on important articles, books and journals in the field of parapsychology.
Forteana
Collective term for anomalous or paranormal-seeming phenomena, as exemplified in the writings of Charles Fort (1874–1932).
Kirlian Photography
Photographic technique pioneered in Russia that reveals light radiating from living organisms and other objects.
Witchcraft
Traces the development of witchcraft as the socially proscribed practice of magic, from Antiquity to the present day.