New Orleans Ghosts, Voodoo, & Vampires (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Organizations edit see section history

• Haunted History Tours: Tour company in New Orleans, Louisiana

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Altered State of Consciousness (ASC): A term used to refer to any state of consciousness that is different from "normal" states of waking or sleeping. ASCs include hypnosis, trance, ecstasy, psychedelic and meditative experience. ASCs do not necessarily have paranormal features.
• Apparition: The visual appearance of an entity whose physical body is not present. Generally, an apparition applies to any form of entity where it is distinguishable as a person or animal. The apparition can appear in partial or full-bodied.
• Astral Body: The body of a person seems to occupy during an out-of-body experience.
• Astral Plane: A world some people believe exists above the physical world.
• Astral Projection: An out-of-body experience.
• Astrology: A theory and practice which attempts to identify the ways in which astronomical events are correlated with events on earth.
• Aura: A field that some psychics are surrounding the living body.
• Automatic Writing: Writing without being aware of the contents, as when a medium apparently transcribes written messages from disembodied spirits.
• Automatism: Any unconscious and spontaneous muscular movement caused by "the spirits". (Automatic Writing)
• Bilocation: Being (or appearing to be) in two different places at the same time.
• Card Guessing: Experimental tests for ESP in which subjects guess the identity of a set of cards.
• Cerebral Anoxia: Lack of oxygen to the brain, often causing sensory distortions and hallucinations. Sometimes used to explain features of the near-death experience.
• Chakra: An energy center in the human body, which processes psychic energies and abilities.
• Channeling: The process by which a medium apparently allows a spirit to communicate through his or her person.
• Clairaudience: Auditory form of ESP (compare with clairvoyance)
• Clairsentience: Physical sensations (or smell) form of ESP. Sometimes used as a general term for clairvoyance and clairaudience.
• Clairvoyance: A subset of ESP. The viewing of distant scenes not apparent to the eye, may appear externally - either replacing the normal visual scene (visions) or being incorporated into it (as could be the case with apparitions) - or internally, in the form of mental imagery and intuition.
• Closed Deck: A set of cards used in a card-guessing test where each card appears a fixed number of times. Statistical analysis of research data using a closed deck differs from statistical analysis of data using an open deck.
• Cold Reading: A technique using a series of general statements, questions, and answers that allows fake mediums, mind-readers, and magicians to obtain previously unknown information about a person. (In a Cold Reading, the reader has no prior knowledge.)
• Collective Apparition: An unusual type of "ghost" sighting in which more than one person sees the same phenomenon.
• Control: In experimental parapsychology a procedure undertaken in order to ensure that the experiment is conducted in a standard fashion and so that results are not to unduly influenced by extraneous factors.
• Crisis Apparition: An apparition is seen when the subject is at the point of death or is the victim of a serious illness or injury.
• Curse: To speak a wish of evil against someone or call down forces to hurt someone.
• Demon: An evil spirit that was never human
• Discarnate: Spirits that exist without a physical body.
• Ectoplasm: A substance which emanates from the body of a medium during a trance. This often appears as a mist-like substance.
• Electromagnetic Field: A field propagated by a combination of electric and magnetic energy, which radiates from radio and light waves to gamma and cosmic rays. It is believed that when spirits manifest, they create an electromagnetic field.
• EMF Detector: An instrument that measures electromagnetic energy. Also known as a Gauss Meter or magnetometer.
• ESP: ESP or extrasensory perception is considered what scientists refer to as a receptive psi. This type of experience usually involves the transfer of information.
• EVP: Electronic Voice Phenomena. Voices captured on audiotape when no one is present. It is believed that these voices are from spirits attempting to communicate with living people.
• Experiment: A test carried out under controlled conditions.
• Experimental Group: A group of subjects who undergo a specific experimental procedure. Often results from this group are compared with those of a control group.
• Experimental Parapsychology: Parapsychology research involving experimental methods rather than survey techniques or the investigation of spontaneous cases.
• Experimenter: The person who conducts the experiment.
• Experimenter Effect: Influence that the experimenter's personality or behavior may have on the results of an experiment.
• False Awakening: An experience in which a person believes he or she has woken up, but actually is still dreaming.
• Forced Choice Experiment: An experiment in which the subject is forced to choose among an assortment of possible targets, such as the five ESP cards.
• Free Choice Experiment: An experiment in which the subject knows only the general nature of the target.
• Ganzfield Experiment: An experiment where input from the outside world is reduced by placing halved ping-pong balls over the eyes and by masking external sounds. A state of mild sensory deprivation.
• Ghost: A form of apparition, usually the visual appearance of a deceased human's 'spirit soul' or that of a crisis apparition.
• Ghost Hunt/ Ghost Investigation: A ghost hunt is an informal attempt to simply sight or record a "ghost" in a location similar to others known to be haunted. A ghost investigation, on the other hand, is a carefully controlled research project, set up to record paranormal activity, usually at a location known, or presumed to be haunted.
• Goat: A subject in an experiment who does not believe in the ability for which he or she is being tested.
• Hallucination: Perception of sights, sounds, etc., that are not actually present. Ghosts, as we define them, are not hallucinations, because they have a real, external cause.
• Haunting: Recurrent sounds of human activity, sightings of apparitions, and other psychic phenomena, in a location when no one is there physically.
• Hypnosis: Sleeplike state in which the subject acts only on external suggestion.
• Illusion: A distorted perception of objects or events causing a discrepancy between what is perceived and what is reality.
• Incline Effect: An increase in performance on a psi test when the test is repeated.
• Intuition: The non-paranormal ability to grasp the elements of a situation or to draw conclusions about complex events in ways that go beyond a purely rational or intellectual analysis.
• Judge: Person who compares targets and responses in a psi experiment.
• Kirlian Photography: A photographic method involving high frequency electric current, discovered by S. D. & V. Kirlian in the Soviet Union. Kirlian photographs often show colored halos or auras surrounding objects.
• Laying on of Hands: A process by which certain healers profess to be able to heal patients by touch.
• Levitation: The lifting of physical objects by psychokinesis (PK).
• Life Review: Flashback memories of the whole of a person's life often associated with the near-death experience.
• Longbody: A web of living connections among people, places and objects.
• Lucid Dreaming: Dreaming in which the person is aware that the experience is a dream. Often associated with feelings of aliveness and freedom, and with the ability to control dream events.
• Materialization: The deliberate, usually temporary, visible and/or physical formation of a spirit.
• Medium: A psychic through who spririts can communicate. There are two types of mediums: light and deep trance.
• Medium (direct voice): A trance medium that apparently acts as a transmitter for the voices of disembodied spirits.
• Medium (materialization): A medium that seems to be able to give physical form to the deceased from a substance called "ectoplasm".
• metaphysics: Derived from the Latin word meta which means "beyond," metaphysics would literally mean that which is beyond the laws of physics. The study of psychical research.
• NDE: Near death experience. Experienced when the person is in fact clinically dead for a period of time. The person usually feels himself or herself leaving their body and sometimes observing the location and people around them, they usually often view their own lifeless bodies, then the person feels as thought they are rising up through some sort of tunnel towards a bright light. Sometimes they may see or hear a deceased family member or friend, or even a religious figure of some kind. The person having this experience is usually told it is not the right time, or they decide themselves it is not the right time to die and they return to their bodies.
• OBE: Out of body experience, or astral projection. This is the sensation or experience many people have of actually leaving their body for a period of time, this is where the spirit or soul leaves the body. This can also be described as "traveling clairvoyance".
• Orb: A sphere or electromagnetic energy produced by spirits. Also called a globule.
• Ouija Board: Game board manufactured by Parker Brothers Company. Used to communicate with spirits. Some believe this "communication" is caused by the collective unconscious of the participants.
• Paranormal: Occurrences that take place outside the natural order of things. This would include ghosts, UFOs, ESP and other things difficult to explain by nature but in the realm of the natural.
• Parapsychology: The branch of science that studies psychic phenomena.
• Percipient: A person who sees an apparition or ghost.
• Phenomenology: An approach to research that aims to describe and clarify a person's own experience and understanding of an event or phenomenon.
• Poltergeist: A German word meaning "noisy or rowdy ghost".
• PK - Psychokinesis: The power of the mind to affect matter without physical contact.
• Place Memory: Information about past events that apparently is stored in the physical environment.
• Precognition: The ability to predict things beyond present knowledge.
• Psi: A letter in the Greek alphabet that denotes psychic phenomena.
• Psyche: The Greek word for "self", "mind", or "soul"
• Psychic: A person with above average ESP abilities.
• Psychic Healing: A mode of healing affected by the psychic abilities of the healer.
• Psychic Surgery: The supposed ability to para normally perform invasive surgery using no conventional medical tools.
• Psycometry: ESP of events associated with inanimate objects
• Quantitative Method: A research method involving the collection and statistical analysis of numerical data.
• Qualitative Method: A research method involving the collection of non-quantitative data (e. g. observations, interviews, subjective reports, case studies).
• Remote Viewing: 1) Another term for clairvoyance2) An ESP procedure in which a percipient attempts to become aware psychically of the experience of an agent who is at a distant, unknown target location.
• REM: Rapid eye movement during sleep that indicates dreaming.
• Represssed Psychokinetic Energy: A theoretical psychic force produced, usually unconsciously, by an individual undergoing physical or mental trauma. When released, the power causes paranormal occurrences such as poltergeist activity.
• Retrocognition: The awareness of objects and events that existed in the past time
• RSPK: Recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis. A possible cause of apparent poltergeist activity.
• Sceptic (Skeptic): A person inclined to discount the reality of the paranormal and to be critical of parapsychcological research. Generally seeks rational or scientific explanations for the phenomena studied by parapsychologists.
• Scrying: A term used to cover a wide range of divination techniques which parapsychology would tend to classify as types of ESP. Most scrying techniques involve some degree of fixation on a surface with clear optical depth or on an area, which shows random patterns, the idea being that subconscious information available to the scrying will be manifested in their interpretation of the imagery or random patterns they see.
• Seance: A group of people who gather in an effort to communicate with the dead.
• Sensitive: a person with psychic abilities
• Shadow Ghost: A black mist like spirit that has no discernible features. It is usually demonic in nature and is sometimes described by witnesses as a "black shape".
• Shaman: A 'wizard' in tribal societies who is an intermediary between the living, the dead, and the gods.
• Sheep: A subject in an experiment who believes in the ability for which he or she is being tested.
• Spirit Photography: A spirit photograph captures the image of a ghost on film. Many of these are supposedly intended as a mere portrait of a living human being, but when the film is developed, an ethereal ghostly face or figure can be seen hovering near the subject. This may also incorporate orbs, vortexes and mists to some degree.
• Spirit Theater: A term used by modern-day magicians to describe shows, acts, or tricks in which ghosts or other spirit activity are apparently produced.
• Spiritualism: A belief system that "spirits" of the dead can (and do) communicate with living humans in the material world.
• Subjective Apparitions: Apparitions or phenomena that are hallucinations created by our minds.
• Stigmata: Unexplained markings on a person's body that correspond to the wounds of Christ.
• Supernatural: Something that exists or occurs through some means other than any known force in nature. As opposed to paranormal, the term "supernatural" often connotes divine or demonic intervention.
• Telekinesis: Paranormal movement of objects.
• Telepathy: The direct passing of information from one mind to another.
• Teleportation: A kind of paranormal transportation in which an object is moved from one distinct location to another, often through a solid object such as a wall
• Temporal Lobe Activity: Electrical activity in the temporal lobes of the brain. Often associated with strange sensations, time distortions and hallucinations. Sometimes used as an explanation for seemingly paranormal experiences such as apparitions.
• Thought Form: An apparition produced by the power of the human mind.
• Trance: A sleeplike state in which there is a change of consciousness
• Vortex (vortice): A photographed anomaly that appears as a funnel or that is not seen at the time of the photograph that supposedly represents a "ghost".
• White Noise: A hiss-like sound, formed by compiling all audible frequencies.

Series & Lists edit see section history

List the series to which this book belongs.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Kalila Katherina Smith (Author)

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Add a note to help parents select a book for a child.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Travel › United States › Regions › South › East South Central
• Books › Nonfiction › True Accounts › Murder & Mayhem
• Books › History › Americas › United States › State & Local › Louisiana
• Books › Nonfiction › True Accounts › True Crime

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Kalila Smith: Author's website

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history