Apport

An apport is an object, such as a coin or piece of jewellery, that suddenly appears, or materializes, “out of thin air.” Whereas some apports materialize at the behest of a medium during a séance, others materialize during a poltergeist episode, which is an attack on objects or people by some unseen force that believers in spirits say is an angry ghost. Some mediums say that they themselves produce apports, using powers given to them by earthly spirits or some supernatural entity or god. Others believe that the apports are being produced by the spirit being contacted during the séance.

Apports are usually small. For example, one poltergeist was known for apporting coins through the ceiling of a house so that they would drop on the heads of unsuspecting visitors. Sometimes, though, an apport is impressively large. For example, in 1928 a British medium named Agnes Guppy apported, on request, a 6-foot-tall (1.8m) sunflower, its roots clumped with dirt.

Skeptics believe that whether apports are large or small, they are always the result of a trick being performed by the medium in order to convince participants in the séance that the spirit world is real. Indeed, stage magicians often make objects suddenly appear and disappear, but believers in spiritualism say that magicians’ actions are very different from the kind that result in apports from the spirit world. From time to time, spiritualists have challenged skeptics to prove that apports are the result of trickery, but even when a skeptic appears to succeed, believers say that it was the skeptic, not the medium, who was guilty of trickery.

SEE ALSO:

• Physical and Mental Mediums
• Spiritualism

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning