Better Than Dead

“Apport” is a term used in spiritualism or occultism for objects that seem to appear out of nowhere—or disappear in one place only to show up in another. They have a long history of appearing in seance rooms through the devices of mediums, but there’s also a long history of fraud

involved in these kinds of apports. I personally would be highly skeptical of anyone who claims they can do this trick on command. There are just too many avenues for hokum in these situations.

But there is another class of apports, ones that happen spontaneously to ordinary people. Perhaps you are certain that you left your keys on the kitchen counter only to have them gone when you look for them and have them turn up in some unlikely place like the refrigerator. Which could be a scary indicator of dementia—but maybe not. As this PDF

from the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research points out, spontaneous coin falls are common. There have also been extraordinary examples of fish or frogs falling out of the sky, but I’m not sure those are apports. I think they’re a different kettle of paranormal fish altogether, and there are also possible scientific explanations for them which don’t stretch credulity too far.

My own chief apport story falls into the category of spontaneity. At least I think so. Many years ago, I temporarily moved into a house my parents had recently purchased. (The house I inherited from them and that I now live in.) My bedroom, as I understood it at the time, had been previously occupied by the teenaged son of the people who sold the house to them. I don’t want to cast aspersions on teenage boys but there was a very weird energy in that room. Not sure what caused it, don’t really want to speculate, but it gave me the wiggins. So, I bought myself a nice piece of amethyst because I’d read it had protective qualities and could help cleanse negative energy.

It was an oddly shaped, elongated crystal but just the right size to fit neatly into the palm of my hand. When I went to bed at night, I would hold it in my hand and ask “the room” for peace and quiet and to help me get rid of any negativity. Then I would place it on the shelf of a headboard behind my bed which was also right behind the pillow I slept on. I immediately felt calmer and was able to go to sleep. But it got so that I couldn’t go to sleep without this ritual with my amethyst, long after the weirdness in that room had seemed to dissipate. I had developed a real dependence on that chunk of rock. Even I had to admit that to myself.

One night after relying on this crystal for many months I went in to go to bed and the amethyst was not in his usual place. I tore the bedroom apart looking but it was nowhere to be found, not under the bed, not on another shelf, not on the floor not…anywhere. I was upset and couldn’t go to sleep easily but I did finally manage it. The next day I thought about getting another piece of amethyst, but another piece would not be my special magic rock. So, I tried to sleep without my nightly ritual. As I said, the weird vibes in that room had dissipated and after a short time, I was able to sleep without the magic rock.
About a year later I was wondering what had happened to that piece of amethyst and thinking that perhaps the spirits (or whomever) had taken it away from me because I had gotten too dependent on it. I can’t recall if it was the same day I had these thoughts but shortly thereafter I went in to go to bed and the amethyst was in its regular spot on the shelf. I actually laughed out loud and said, “Okay, got the message.” I still treasured that crystal, but I no longer used it in the nightly ritual.

There have been several moves since then and I honestly don’t know where that amethyst is. I don’t think it’s been apported away again, I think it’s been relegated to being just another object I carry with me from place to place. It’ll probably turn up in some box someday. I’ll be happy to see it but I no longer need it to feel safe.

As a kind of addendum to this story, after I had moved out of my parents’ house and my father had passed away my mother rented out my rooms to a lady who was very staunchly Catholic. She was convinced the room was haunted, and specifically that her mother (who she had had terrible relationship with) was the one doing the haunting. She smudged the room and even got some holy water (through means I have no way of knowing) and sprinkled holy water around. It still wasn’t enough to completely calm her frazzled nerves, so she wound up sleeping every night on the couch in the sitting room that was next door to the bedroom. I should also note that we have a lot of critters in this neighborhood, and they do like to run across the roof sometimes at night—possums, raccoons, rats, even the occasional skunk. This poor lady was convinced they were demons even though my mother patiently explained that it was probably more likely raccoons. So, I believe this was a case of a human being who was haunted rather than a specific place.

But you never know. After this lady left and my mother started needing help I moved back into that bedroom and again the vibes were really strange. I ascribed it to the vibes left behind by that poor tortured tenant, but I also took steps to clear out the negativity. It’s been fine ever since.

Although to be on the safe side I did hang statues of the four gnostic archangels—Uriel, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael on the walls of the room. Because my magical thinking is so much more rational than that poor tenant lady.

How do I reconcile the spiritual, high strangeness, the otherworldly stuff that happens to me and to others I know with the shitshow that is the world? I know this is an old question, the oldest maybe. The world has always been a shitshow and yet we have these little tender pockets of spirituality springing up like magic mushrooms in the shit. How do we reconcile them? I know it’s more than just the human longing for something greater. There is something greater. But how do we bring it into the forefront? Or are we even meant to bring it into the forefront? How do we give it to the world without starting some new fucked up religion. Or must it remain strictly personal? I don’t think belief ever comes from outside. It can’t be inherited from your parents or anyone else. Belief is based on experience and those experiences are, as I said, fragile and rare. Must it, of necessity, remain tiny mushrooms of joy and wonder?

Do these others, these beings, these forces, these experienes, have as much power as I suspect they do or are they linked irrevocably to human imagination and hope and to the netherworld of our minds? Do they, in fact, feed on us as I suspect they do, on our hope and our creativity and our vitality and our humanness? It seems to me they need us as much as we need them, only our side has stopped acknowledging that for the most part. Maybe their side has, too. Are we on the brink of some great breakthrough as Jo Hickey-Hall of the Modern Fairy Sighting Podcast thinks, or is that just her wishful thinking? And mine. Can they save us from ourselves? If we’re lost, I suspect, they are lost too, their world destroyed along with ours?

Is this a road, this road of perception and feeling, one that masses of people can ever walk, or is it always going to be a select few or those who are persistent and insistent on walking that road? That whole opiate of the masses crap, is it real? Can only simplistic answers and religious thought affect great numbers of people at once? I don’t want to think that I am special in that way because I really do feel that anybody who wants to can walk the road of high strangeness and find some enlightenment. I also suspect that most people don’t want to make the effort. Or don’t have the time to make the effort because they’re too busy trying to survive.

I certainly have times when I don’t want to make the effort, certainly not in the way that other people of my acquaintance do. I’m lazy and a little afraid and tired. I’m very tired. The world has made me so tired and more cynical than I want to be. I don’t want to be a naif, but I think I need to open up the hope in my heart more. I want to trust my knowing heart, but I also think it’s important to retain our critical thinking. Our discernment, if you will. There are a lot of people out there who want to trick us and take advantage of our gullibility and our desperate need to believe in something. We need to stay within ourselves and our own knowing but also open ourselves to extreme possibility. Not locked in the prison of our prejudices but in the possibilities inherent in existence on this crazy planet. We need to trust our own perceptions, but we also need to be open to the perceptions of others.

That’s where the discernment comes in. We should listen to what they have to say but we don’t need gurus. We should be highly skeptical of gurus. They are, at base, tricksters as dubious as Coyote or Anansi, but lacking the scared elements of those gods. They have agendas that may not match with our own, and certainly not with our own good. They seek to lead us down their path and to worship them instead of trusting our own knowing, our own instincts.

How do we reconcile our perceptions of something more, something greater, something that walks beside us at every step, with the ugliness of the world? We can’t withdraw from the world. That’s as much a defeat as closing our eyes and letting other people lead us by the nose. We have to stay in the world and fight for our own personal redemption which has more to do with trusting the spirit within us then worshiping something outside of us.

And asking questions, perpetually asking questions, because the questions are the answer.