Clairvoyance (/klɛərˈvɔɪəns/; from French clair meaning "clear" and voyance meaning "vision") is the claimed ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception. Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said accordingly to be a clairvoyant (/klɛərˈvɔɪənt/) ("one who sees clearly").
Claims for the existence of paranormal and psychic abilities such as clairvoyance have not been supported by scientific evidence. Parapsychology explores this possibility, but the existence of the paranormal is not accepted by the scientific community. The scientific community widely considers parapsychology, including the study of clairvoyance, a pseudoscience.
Pertaining to the ability of clear-sightedness, clairvoyance refers to the paranormal ability to see persons and events that are distant in time or space. It can be divided into roughly three classes: precognition, the ability to perceive or predict future events, retrocognition, the ability to see past events, and remote viewing, the perception of contemporary events happening outside of the range of normal perception.
Throughout history, there have been numerous places and times in which people have claimed themselves or others to be clairvoyant.
In several religions, stories of certain individuals being able to see things far removed from their immediate sensory perception are commonplace, especially within pagan religions where oracles were used. Prophecy often involved some degree of clairvoyance, especially when future events were predicted. In most of these cases, however, the ability to see things was attributed to a higher power and not thought of as an ability that lay within the person himself.