In psychology and parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience.
It is characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception. The person experiencing the apparition is awake, excluding dream visions from consideration.
In scientific or academic discussion, the term apparitional experience is to be preferred to the term ghost in respect of the following points:
- The term ghost implies that some element of the human being survives death and, at least under certain circumstances, can make itself perceptible to living human beings. There are other competing explanations of apparitional experiences.
- Firsthand accounts of apparitional experiences differ in many respects from their fictional counterparts in literary or traditional ghost stories (see below).
- The content of apparitional experiences includes living beings, both human and animal, and even inanimate objects.
Read more about Apparitional Experience: History of The Concept
Famous quotes containing the word experience:
“If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)