Valtat is not the first author to be interested in séances

Once again we introduce you to the delightful and arcane vocabulary of Aurorarama that frequently baffled our poor copy-editor.

Today’s word is apport: the production of objects by apparently supernatural means at a spiritualists’ seance.

Author Jean-Christophe Valtat describes how he came across the term:

I encountered the word for the first time in Marina Warner‘s great book, Phantasmagoria. It is used in Aurorarama figuratively for the memories of a dream, but literally, in the spiritists’  jargon, an “apport” is an object made from concentrated fluid and materialized by the medium: flowers, cast limbs etc… In Allan Kardec‘s Book of Mediums, a spirit, “Eraste,” avows good-naturedly that these mystical objects are rather “boring and tiring” to make.