Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance is the claimed ability to perceive a person, object, place, or event beyond the normal range of sight. The term became common in nineteenth-century Spiritualism and later parapsychology. Researchers have tested related claims through card guessing, remote-viewing tasks, and controlled-choice experiments, but results have not produced a broadly accepted demonstration of a paranormal faculty.

The word combines French terms for “clear” and “seeing.” Early psychical research used it alongside telepathy, though the categories can overlap when an experiment does not establish whether the alleged information came from another mind or directly from a target.

Fiction often presents clairvoyance as vivid, cinematic vision. Reported experiences are usually less orderly and may involve impressions, dreams, inference, coincidence, or information learned normally but forgotten.

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Clairvoyance,” reference entry.
• National Research Council, Enhancing Human Performance, National Academies Press, 1988, chapter on parapsychological techniques.