By all accounts, some gifted mediums are capable of materializing flowers, fruits, and even living animals. The creation of such objects, called APPORTS, is surrounded by heated debate, and at times, suspicions of fraud.
As an example, look at the case of Paul McEloney, a London-based medium who often held similar demonstrations at home in the 1970s and 1980s. Like many other mediums, McEloney created apports in a shaded room, which naturally raised doubts among fans of his talent and skeptics alike.
However, in McElonney's case, many witnesses reported that the flowers did appear directly from his mouth. In November 1981, the spiritualist Michel Clery told Psychic News about the experiments being carried out in the medium's family circle. He said that before the start of the session, he examined McEloney himself and his room. During the seance, a spirit named Syros entered the medium. “Syros created the first flowers by the light. I stared into Paul's mouth. There was nothing there! Then a fresh flower began to appear from there. My family is very fond of carnations. I addressed my mother's spirit in advance with a request to send this particular type of flower. When Syros created the first carnation, he said it was a gift from my mother."
Another eyewitness was the writer and researcher Guy Léon Playfair, who also got the carnation. Returning to his home, he tried to put a flower in his mouth and try to speak, as the medium did. “The stem was scratching my throat. And I almost vomited. Paul spoke fluently, without interference, and then a carnation appeared."
Although Clery had previously inspected the medium and his room, one day he decided to look also into the tape recorder that McEloney was using. During the demonstration, the journalist, wishing to establish the truth, turned on the light and found several colors inside the tape recorder. This discovery marked the end of McElonney's career.
Flower appliqués have been around for over one hundred and fifty years. One of the first researchers of this phenomenon was the Frenchman G. P. Billot, who in October 1820 observed the creation of aport - flowers by a blind woman-medium.
One of the most unusual accounts of such an event concerns the famous English medium Madame d'Esperance, in whose presence a spirit named Yolanda materialized. During a session in 1880, Yolanda took a glass decanter, half filled with water and sand, and placed it in the center of the room, covered with a piece of cloth. The audience was amazed to see that the fabric began to rise, and Yolanda went over to see what happened. When she pulled off the rag, there was a plant underneath that was growing right before her eyes.
Yolanda ordered those present to sing quietly for a few minutes. When they again checked the condition of the plant, it turned out that a flower twelve centimeters in diameter had blossomed on it. The plant had a thick, stiff stalk that filled the neck of a decanter, reaching fifty-six centimeters in height and twenty-nine leaves. Subsequently, the plant was identified as the Indian "spark of crocata" and lived for another three months.
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Ten years later, the same medium had an equally impressive apport. On June 28, 1890, a beautiful golden lily with a strong aroma stretched out to a height of two meters in front of the amazed spectators. Five of her eleven flowers immediately reached full bloom. The photographs taken at that time show the fortress over the head of the medium woman. Yolanda announced that it was impossible to leave the fortress in this position, and was very upset when it was not possible to dematerialize it. She ordered to keep the flower in a dark room until the next session, scheduled for July 5. On that day, the flower was placed in the center of the room. The appearance of the spirit was noted at 9:23 pm, but by 9:30 am it was gone. The only evidence of his presence were photographs and a couple of flowers.
Even such large apports could not convince the most stubborn skeptics who tirelessly searched for ways to implement this or that trick. However, fraud is difficult to discern in cases where mediums materialized objects at the request of those present. A friend of Agnes Nichols (later Mrs. Samuel Guppy, one of the mediums who created many aports in the sixties and seventies of the XIX century) once asked her to materialize a sunflower. The medium immediately complied with the request, and a huge plant, 1.6 meters long, with clods of earth on the roots literally collapsed on the table. In another session, each spectator was offered to order any fruit or vegetable. The apports that appeared after this turned out to be extremely diverse: a banana, a bunch of white grapes, two oranges, a bunch of red grapes, a dozen plums, a handful of hazelnuts,walnuts, a slice of candied pineapple, two apples, three figs, an onion, a peach, two pears, a handful of currants and a lemon.
Pigeons and other birds are obtained from mediums as often as from magicians, but the conditions in which materialization occurs are significantly different for them. Charles Bailey, an Australian shoemaker, has amassed an entire zoo over the years as a medium. To prove that he was not a fraud, before the session he allowed the researchers to undress and examine himself and his clothes. Dr. McCarthy, a practicing physician from Sydney, suggested that the conditions of the experiment even be made more difficult. After examining Bailey, he slipped a bag with hand slots over it, which he tied.
On other occasions, spectators examined the cage, into which the medium was then locked and covered with a mosquito net. Then the windows and doors were locked and sealed. The only furniture left in the room were chairs for spectators and a table. The lights were turned off for a few minutes. When the lights were turned on again, Bailey had apports in his hands - for example, two nests with live birds. During one session, a shark was found in his cage - a hammer forty-six centimeters long and a crab on a heap of seaweed. Many apports disappeared as mysteriously as they appeared.
However, in the future, Bailey's abilities were not recognized, as it turned out that he often made purchases from animal traders. Nevertheless, many continued to believe that, if not all, then some of his phenomena were genuine.
It is curious that the "spirit-mentor" of the famous medium Mrs. Everitt refused to work with the aport. "I am not going to do this, because these actions are mainly related to theft." Indeed, there is reliable evidence that in a number of cases the appearance of aport was associated with the disappearance of objects in one place and their materialization in another, and materialization could take place not only in the medium's room, but also in another place indicated by the viewer. In this sense, an interesting report compiled by the famous Italian researcher of psychic phenomena Ernesto Bozzano: “In March 1904, in the house of Cavaliere Peretti, a medium - a person we know closely - conducted a memorable session, during which he invited the audience to come up with tasks. I asked the summoned spirit to transfer from my house (that is, from a distance of about two kilometers) a piece of pyrite,which was on my desk. The spirit (through the medium) replied that this task may not be up to him, but he will try to fulfill the request.
Soon, the medium began an attack of convulsions, which usually accompanied the appearance of apports, but there was no sound of an object falling on a table or on the floor. We asked for an explanation of what was happening, and the medium said that it was possible to dematerialize only a part of the object I indicated and move it into the room for the session, but the forces were no longer enough to materialize back.
In conclusion, the medium asked to turn on the light. To our greatest amazement, we saw that the clothes and hair of the spectators, the table, chairs, furniture and carpets were strewn with the finest layer of the smallest pyrite dust sparkling in the world. Returning home after the session, I found on the table only a part of a large piece of pyrite - about a third of it had disappeared."
Apparently, apporting mediums use different ways of realizing this phenomenon; but in many cases apports appear to emerge from the medium's body. T. Lynn, a former miner from northern England, photographed a similar process. Small clumps of ectoplasm seemed to be coming out of his solar plexus area. In 1928, Hewvet McKenzie and Major S. Mowbray examined Lynn at the British College of Psychology in London. The medium was placed in a bag, after having tied his hands to his knees. Flash photography revealed glowing "threads" linking Lynn's body to the aport.
Several years later, photographs were taken during a session by another former miner, Jack Webber, who created the aport in a similar way. Webber, became known as a medium, in whose sessions the trumpets levitated, and the voices of the spirits talked to those present. During a session in 1938, a police officer carefully examined him and then tied him to a chair. An account of this performance is given in the book by Harry Edwards "The Witchcraft of Jack Webber": “The red light was turned on, and everyone could clearly see that the medium's hands were tied to the chair. The sockets levitated … one of them turned its wide side to the area of Webber's solar plexus, and there was the sound of an object falling into it. And then the author of these lines was asked to pull out the contents - there were Egyptian letters. A minute later, another bell approached the solar plexus again and the sound of another apport falling was heard."
In November of the same year, at a session in Paddington (London), Webber's spirit-mentor announced his desire to materialize copper jewelry from an adjacent room in the session room. He asked to record this event with a camera. During materialization, a dull sound of falling was heard, and a small copper figure of a bird weighing about sixty grams, surrounded by a whitish substance, appeared in the bell.
In the sixties of the twentieth century in London, at Cuckston Hall, the American medium Keith Milton Reinhart performed with a demonstration of the creation of ports. In a well-lit room, in front of a competent audience, he took numerous apports from his mouth, including a very spiny seahorse. Semi-precious stones also appeared from his body: they protruded under the skin and eyewitnesses were even allowed to pick out some of them. However, some of those present remained unsatisfied: no one saw that the stones themselves would come out through his skin, and it seemed that they were implanted ahead of time.
But when comparing the best mediums, striking coincidences emerge, which many consider to be proof of the authenticity of the phenomenon. In the mid-twentieth century, Henry Sauss described many of the apports created by a female medium working in full light. She simply folded her palms in a boat, in which ectoplasm began to swirl. At the request of the medium, the ectoplasm was transformed into such apports as the stem of a rose, strewn with flowers, buds and leaves. Stories of this kind are truly innumerable. However, the fact remains that today apports have become a rarity.