Attend to the place.
Give the explanation time.
A disciplined method for observing difficult experiences. The Bureau’s definitions and instruments are provisional and will change as field observations, participant accounts, literature and formal studies improve the framework.
From encounter
to field record.
Use the method as a support for attention. If recording changes the experience, note that change too.
Your field companion is the method.
Open the toolkit to record conditions, rate responses, attach media or plan a comparison.
Open field toolkit ↗Before entering
Record access conditions, familiarity, mood, fatigue and expectations. Note relevant safety, consent and privacy restrictions.
Initial orientation
Attend to function, occupancy, light, sound, scale, movement, repetition, material wear and temporal cues. Record what you notice before interpreting it.
Free observation
Track attention, internal dialogue, familiarity, memory and perceived temporal distance. Keep your own language for near, behind, through, beneath or elsewhere.
Controlled pause
When safe, remain still for two to five minutes. Notice changes in attention, bodily response, memories, imagined scenes and perceived time.
Exit and review
Record why you left. Complete ECI and ERP independently. Separate observations from interpretations, consider rival explanations and identify missing evidence.
A shared vocabulary.
Room for uncertainty.
These terms organize descriptions. They do not establish causes, mechanisms or diagnoses.
Liminal environment
An environment characterized by transition, ambiguity, incomplete context, displacement from expected use, uncertain social status, or a mismatch between what the setting implies and what it presently contains.
Liminal experience
A lived episode in which ordinary expectations concerning place, role, occupancy, identity, sequence, or time become unstable or unusually noticeable.
Phenomenological temporal adjacency
A subjective condition in which another temporal context is experienced as unusually near to present consciousness, sometimes acquiring spatial, embodied, or existential qualities that exceed ordinary remembering or nostalgia.
Familiarity without recall
A sense of knowing or prior contact without retrieval of a specific autobiographical event capable of explaining it.
Temporal ambiguity
Uncertainty about when an environment belongs because of mixed-era cues, obsolescence, preservation, repetition, simulation, reconstruction, or missing context.
Expected-presence violation
A mismatch between the people, activity, sound, or movement normally implied by an environment and what is actually present.
Cognitive quieting
A reported reduction in internal verbal thought or ordinary cognitive noise during an encounter.
Spatial pull
An embodied sense of being drawn toward, through, behind, beneath, or beyond an environmental feature. The term describes the experience; it does not imply an external force.
Two profiles. Two different questions.
ECI describes the environment; ERP describes your response. Both use 0–4 ratings. A blank is unrecorded, not zero. Neither instrument is validated or diagnostic; totals are not thresholds for an unusual event.
Try the ratings below as a scratchpad. They remain in this browser when storage is available. For a dated investigation with media and notes, use the Field Toolkit.
No ratings recorded.
Make the boundaries
of a claim visible.
A report records the environment, encounter sequence, observer response, spatial language, ECI and ERP profiles, interpretation, rival explanations, epistemic status and unresolved questions.
Read existing reports →Before sharing a report
Personal field practice, public archive collection and institutionally reviewed research are distinct activities. Saving in the toolkit does not publish a report.