Séances

thumb|An original Ouija board created thumb|Norman Rockwell cover of the May 1, 1920 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, showing a Ouija board in use

Hereditary is a 2018 American supernatural psychological horror film written and directed by Ari Aster. Starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, and Gabriel Byrne, the film follows Annie Graham, a grieving miniature artist who uncovers disturbing secrets about her recently deceased mother. She, along with her husband Steve and their children, Peter and Charlie, are subsequently tormented by sinister occurrences.

2000 film by Robert Zemeckis

A séance or seance (; ) is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word séance comes from the French word for "session", from the Old French , "to sit". In French, the word's meaning is quite general and mundane: one may, for example, speak of "" (). In English, however, the word came to be used specifically for a meeting of people who are gathered to receive messages from ghosts or to listen to a spirit medium discourse with or relay messages from spirits. In modern English usage, participants need not be seated while engaged in a séance.

1931 novel by Agatha Christie

paranormal phenomenon

Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. It is a memory bias whereby a person may falsely recall generating a thought, an idea, a tune, a name, or a joke; they are not deliberately engaging in plagiarism, but are experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.

2017 film by Paco Plaza

1964 film by Bryan Forbes

1945 film directed by David Lean

1986 film by Ken Russell

Table-turning (also known as table-tapping, table-tipping or table-tilting) is a type of séance in which participants sit around a table, place their hands on it, and wait for rotations. The table was purportedly made to serve as a means of communicating with the spirits; the alphabet would be slowly spoken aloud and the table would tilt at the appropriate letter, thus spelling out words and sentences. The process is similar to that of a Ouija board. Scientists and skeptics consider table-turning to be the result of the ideomotor effect, or of conscious trickery.

1940 film by David Butler

play written by Noël Coward

paranormal transference of an article from one place to another, or an appearance of an article from an unknown source

novel by H. G. Wells

German magician