Retrocognition, also called postcognition, is the supposed ability to know something about a situation after its occurrence through psychic means. Retrocongition often involves ability to know the past (sometimes including distant past) of oneself and others, without direct observation of events. Psychometry and past life regression can both be considered kinds of retrocognition.

The word means past sense perception, and is usually a relatively minor set of circumstances. These are specific usually to unknown individuals, or those whose names are not given by the visions involved in psychic transfer. The understanding, as it is, comes spontaneously and usually through the stress or emotions involved in a set of circumstances that is specific to you, which may or may not include other individuals. They usually are unaware of such ideas: they are seen only in the eyes of the beholder. However, as with all purported psychic phenomena, the details of the experience are highly subjective to each individual.

Retrocognition is the art of seeing or sensing the past. Retrocognition occurs at spontaneous times, but very uncommonly during the course of daily life, dreams, and parapsychology experiments. Retrocognition has been claimed to be accomplished deliberately by psychics who seek access to the past events that have occurred to obtain information or gain an insight to a certain situation.

It is difficult to test because of the possibility of clairvoyance existing in historical records. Spontaneous psychic Retrocognition usually takes on the form of a vision or hallucination, and the surrounding scenes are replaced by surroundings of the past, but only for a short. They sometimes feature sounds and smells from the past. Retrocognition is a psychic phenomenon of haunting and apparitions that are replays that seem to be continual events such as murders or suicides.

Psychologist Gardner Murphy came up with the theory that most ghosts are cases of retrocognition in which an individual becomes momentarily displaced in time and can actually perceive scenes from the past.