By KEN KORCZAK
Grant Cameron of Winnipeg, Manitoba — a one-man-publishing machine — and this time his topic is exploring the “occult” phenomenon of apports.
Appropriately titled Weird: Paranormal Tales of Apports and Manifestations, the book attempts a broad examination of the apport phenomena including a possible, intriguing connection with UFOs.
WHAT ARE APPORTS?
In case you’re not up on your occult lore, the apport phenomenon is most associated with séances and mediumship. Séances began to gain widespread popularity in the mid-to-latter part of the 19th Century across Europe and parts of North America, especially among wealthy and highly educated elites.
A key event was the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in the U.K. in 1882.
Its early members were brilliant luminaries, including the eminent applied physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, Nobel Prize physiologist Dr. Charles Richet, renowned chemist Sir William Crookes and the great and historically consequential American intellectual, William James, considered “the Father of American Psychology.”
Note: See my review of Sir Oliver Lodge’s book: Raymond: Life & Death
This group pursued more than séance study, however. In addition to afterlife communication, they delved into all kinds of things, such as hypnotism, apparitions, psychic abilities, astral travel, clairvoyant dreams, levitation — and the apport phenomenon.
An apport is a mysterious object that appears out of nowhere, usually dropping from above onto the floor or the table around which séance participants are gathered. One notion is that the spirits of the dead are somehow transporting these “gifts” from their side of “the veil” to ours.
Apports come in a wide variety of materials and forms. Old or ancient coins and medallions are a significant category. Also prominent are crystals and semi-precious jewels. Another apport type materializing frequently during séances is fresh flower petals that rain down from the ceiling.
Many are small statues of religious significance, such as tiny depictions of Buddha or Hindu deities. Christian-themed apports also appear at times, most often in the form of votive medallions, small crucifixes or figurines of the Virgin Mary.
But sometimes an apport can be a chunk of metal — as in pure gold or silver ingots. Such a specimen exists in the apport collection of psychologist Dr. Stanley Krippner. He has published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers that focus on paranormal subjects.
Krippner’s apport collection is now archived at the University of Manitoba which, by the way, is in Grant Cameron’s hometown of Winnipeg.
Interestingly, Krippner approached the U of M to archive his collection after thieves broke into his house and stole a portion of his apport stash.
One of Krippner’s apport pieces is a smooth, palm-sized rock of pure gold.
UFOs DROPPING APPORTS
In his book, Cameron posits that the apport phenomenon might be compared to instances when UFOs have been observed to drop objects to Earth. Although not mentioned in Cameron’s book, I want to note one of the most amazing cases of UFO-dropped artifacts because it happened right here in my home state of Minnesota.
In 1982, Julie Ohlson was a 16-year-old girl living in the Twin Cities bedroom community of Willernie. As she slept in an upstairs room with her mother, a fantastic “brilliant lime green UFO” appeared just outside the house.
Julie and her mother stood in stunned amazement as they watched the unbelievable object hover, wobble and drop a series of flare-like “fireballs” into the snowbanks near their house.
The next morning, Julie and her mother went out to collect several of the objects, at least one of which is still in her possession today. Another of these UFO “apports” is now in the hands of famous ufologist Jacques Vallee who has arranged for scientific analysis.
I wrote about the Willernie Case in some depth here: DARK SECRETS
UFO + APPORTS: TIED FROM THE BEGINNING?
Cases of UFOs dropping chunks of metal are rare but far from unknown.
In fact, the day after the first sensational UFO report hit the newspapers on July 8, 1947 — the report of the Roswell saucer crash — an article in the July 9, 1947, Ceylon Times told the story of a “piece of rock-like metal” that had “fallen from a flying saucer.”
The samples had just arrived at Chicago University for metallurgical analysis, the Ceylon Times said. This “UFO artifact” and recovered specimen is part of the famous Maury Island incident. Cameron includes this example in his book.
The UFO artifacts were recovered by Mr. Harold Dahl of Tacoma, Washington. He was a “marine scavenger” working a patrol boat in the waters of Puget Sound. Suddenly, Dahl and his crew –- consisting of his teenage son and a dog — were stunned to observe six silvery UFOs in the sky above the sea.
Dahl described them as “huge silver doughnuts” 200 feet in diameter with a central hole. These crafts also featured portholes. One of the flying saucers appeared to be experiencing flight difficulty. It wobbled and began to spew what Dahl thought at first was “newspapers” because the debris was whitish in color.
But then some of the pieces landed right in the boat. It was not newspapers but silvery white metal chunks. Sadly, one chunk struck and killed the dog. Other samples fell on the shores of nearby Maury Island.
Mr. Dahl recovered several of them. What followed is a complex and wildly controversial story that entails everything from conspiracy theories and Men in Black to a host of other bizarre “UFO encounter fallout scenarios” that I will not get into here.
IS IT A VALID COMPARISON?
In my view, the comparison of UFO artifacts to apports as in the cases like the two I noted above may be a stretch.
By definition, an apport is something that “appears out of nowhere” or it is any item that is “moved from one location to another by unknown means as if teleported.”
Mysterious as it may be, we witness a UFO dropping metal or other substances as an event of direct cause and effect. A solid “nuts-n-bolts” UFO appears. It drops something, and people recover it. Thus, we have a direct chain of possession scenario to account for a recovered artifact.
But wait a minute!
The always thorough and “think-outside-the-box” approach of Grant Cameron offers much more to bolster his UFO-Apport connection hypothesis. Read on.
THE UFO-APPORT CONNECTION
One of the best examples cited by Cameron to make his UFO-Apport case is the amazing and ongoing experiences of Chris Bledsoe Sr.
He is a former North Carolina building contractor who in January of 2007 encountered a massive, complex and deeply elaborate encounter that involved UFO-like crafts, aliens, orbs, missing time, physical traces and more.
Six witnesses were on hand to confirm Bledsoe’s UFO experience. Another was his teenage son who also endured shocking, frightening and intensely close interactions with what can only be described as alien-like beings of exotic variety.
What started as an experience that best fit into the UFO/aliens category soon evolved into a multifaceted series of events that include everything from shadow beings, archetypical apparitions of religious figures, psychic phenomena of vast variety, healing abilities and yes — apports.
Lots of them.
These paranormal happenings have continued unabated for the entire Bledsoe family since 2007. The activity is centered around the backyard and property of Bledsoe’s North Carolina home. The kicker is that dozens if not hundreds of visitors to Bledsoe’s home have experienced these same bizarre events for themselves over the past 15 years.
According to UFO researcher Richard Dolan, the Bledsoe case was the first ever to be investigated by AATIP, the much-vaunted Pentagon UFO study led by Lue Elizondo. But an array of other top scientists, including former NASA figures, along with the U.S. military and civilian intelligence community have beat a path to the Bledsoe property to observe the amazing stuff that happens there.
Bledsoe was befriended by none other than Jim Semivan, the former Director of Operations for the CIA. A frequent visitor to Bledsoe’s home, Semivan has witnessed numerous paranormal events. He said:
“I don’t care what anyone says. (The Bledsoe case) is the story of the millennium, and it needs to be talked about.”
Another staunch supporter of Bledsoe and visitor to his North Carolina residence is retired U.S. Army Colonel John Alexander, a former Green Beret combat veteran, Ph.D. sociologist and a significant figure in both the UFO realm and civilian-military intelligence community.
Alexander is said to be a key member of the mysterious “Aviary,” a group of influential and powerful insiders deeply involved in the machinations of all things UFO. The group is called the Aviary because all members have a code name based on a bird species. Alexander is supposedly “The Penguin.”
Anyway — among the ongoing paranormal happenings at the Bledsoe property are the materialization of apports.
The bulk of them have been small objects that are much like glass marbles. They appeared in large numbers at first, scattered randomly around Bledsoe’s yard and property. The output of these marble apports gradually became less frequent, but they still show up from time to time. Bledsoe has about 40 in his collection. He gave one as a gift to Grant Cameron.
Incidentally, Cameron has also visited the Bledsoe home and witnessed an astounding incident of healing. Bledsoe’s dog was spewing a gush of blood from its neck due to a mysterious injury— only to be instantly healed at the touch of Mr. Bledsoe. Cameron has photos of the event.
But what about the apports? What are they? And why do they appear on Bledsoe’s property? What meaning is being conveyed?
It’s a profound mystery.
Furthermore, Bledsoe has sometimes observed orbs flying around in his yard that eject streams of what appear to be tiny bits of molten metal — similar to the Maury Island UFO.
This ejecta ends up on the ground as small objects of hardened metal, about half the size of a fingernail.
Bledsoe and his family have also experienced that other primary aspect of the apport phenomenon — the teleportation of objects. This involves any mundane objects — a bolt, a tool, a bag of groceries — which vanish from one location only to reappear somewhere else as if they have been randomly teleported.
Thus, Cameron is on firmer ground here in showing a relationship between UFOs and the apport phenomenon. It seems a meaningfully linked phenomenon on the famous Bledsoe “UFO” ranch.
For this, and for all of the information Cameron provides in this book, I give it my top recommendation.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Weird: Paranormal Tales of Apports and Manifestations includes numerous illustrations of apports and other relevant topics. The photos are instructive and fascinating.
Cameron provides a lengthy section on Skinwalker Ranch and the powerful connection with the high strangeness that happens there including numerous incidents of apport phenomena.
As it happens, the U.S. Pentagon and other military governments around the world have engaged in intense study of apport phenomena. Cameron provides an overview of this activity.
NOTE: For more stories about UFO issues, please see: KEN-ON-MEDIUM