New Terms

See Witch Doctor.

The deity of a religious parody. This began in 2005 when a man named Bobby Henderson wrote an open letter protesting a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow the teaching of "intelligent design" in public school science classes. He claimed he worshiped as creator a being that looked like spaghetti and meatballs and that he should get equal time. It was an attempt to mock the school board, but after he posted the letter to his website it became an internet phonomenon, and has grown in numerous ways. Followers of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are known as "Pastafarians."

The belief that after physical death, the soul of a person can migrate to another body, such as that of a newborn child, animal, or even an object that is not generally considered to be alive.

Electrical activity in the temporal lobes of the brain as registered via electroencephalography. Activity in the temporal lobe has been associated with strange sensations, time distortions and hallucinations. As a result, some pseudo-skeptics, as well as legitimate scientists, have used TLA to explain apparitions and alien abduction.

Being able to perceive objects or actions without conscious awareness or those objects or actions.

The idea that an advertising message presented to someone at a subliminal level will move them to action. Although the concept was popularized in books such as Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders (1957), the success of of such advertising is debatable.

The idea that subliminal advertising works was attributed to James Vicary (who coined the expression). Supposedly, he placed messages such as "Hungry? Eat Popcorn" for 1/3000 of a second at various times throughout a showing of the movie Picnic. Sales for popcorn supposedly went up almost 58%. Because of this, in 1974, the FCC banned subliminal advertising from radio and television.

Vicary eventually confessed that he had falsified the data from his experiments and some critics doubt that he had performed the tests at all. To this date, there is no evidence that such advertising works, but many people strongly believe in its efficacy.

A message made at a subliminal level intending to influence the person who receives the message.

Phenomenon that exists below the regular perceptive abilities of our senses.

An archaic term for person who has been hypnotized by another, such as the client of a hypnotherapist.

Impersonal term sometimes used to describe a person whose psi ability is being investigated.