Keith Thompson: Anomalous Phenomena—UFOs, Apports, and the Mystery of Consciousness

Summary

Journalist Keith Thompson, who introduced Harvard psychiatrist John Mack to the alien abduction phenomenon, discusses his new book 'Anomalous Phenomena: Apports and the Mystery of Objects that Materialize and Translocate.' He describes the Scole Experiment, a five-year series of seances in which coins, a 1944 newspaper, and images on sealed film reportedly appeared from nowhere, along with his own teenage experience of cosmic oneness and a near-death experience while drowning in Hawaii. The conversation ranges across Navajo Rangers investigating Bigfoot and skinwalkers, stigmata, Lourdes healings, Charles Lindbergh's phantom cockpit companions, and the state of UFO disclosure.

Key takeaways

• 1Thompson says he introduced John Mack to abduction research through Stanislav Grof, and that attorney Daniel Sheehan helped head off Harvard's attempt to remove Mack.
• 2The Scole Experiment in England involved 466 sessions over five years. It reportedly produced apports including a mint Churchill crown and a newspaper dated April 1, 1944, plus a spirit spokesman called Manu, and was supervised by the Society for Psychical Research.
• 3Film that stayed sealed in a locked box was reportedly developed with images of cathedrals, Arthur Conan Doyle, and a poem signed by Wordsworth.
• 4Before the 1966 Aberfan coal-slag disaster in Wales, which killed over 100 children at Pantglas Junior School, a schoolgirl reportedly dreamed of her school being covered by something black. Thompson presents this as a documented precognition 'white crow,' after William James's phrase.
• 5Navajo Rangers John Dover and Stanley Milford Jr. ran a paranormal unit. Fur from a Bigfoot case reportedly tested as 'unknown carnivore,' and at Window Rock, quarters fell from nowhere and all landed heads up.
• 6Charles Lindbergh reported misty, helpful presences during his 33.5-hour solo flight in 1927. Sailor Joshua Slocum believed the pilot of the Pinta steered his boat while he lay ill below deck.
• 7In a North Carolina case, a dead father appeared to his son in a dream and pointed him to a hidden will at Genesis 25 in the family Bible.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. Hey, how are you? How you doing? Welcome to Destiny. This is your host, Cliff Dunning. I hope you're doing well today. I have found a remarkable amount of data using chat, using Clive, in completing my manuscript, which is just about ready to turn in. And what that means is that there's going to be a number of editing cycles. Hopefully, it won't be too long, but I'm sure it'll take a few months just for the editing cycle. But what I want to talk about today is some of the documents that were discovered following the Spanish conquest of the Americas. And one of the most damaging events by the Spanish to the Maya was the burning of thousands of unique idols, statuary, stone markers, things like that. And books, or otherwise known as codices. And, you know, this is interesting to talk about because until very recently, I always thought it was, you know, papers and, you know, codices, which are dried leaves that they wrote on. And years ago, I spoke to Jim O'Conn, the forensic engineer who wrote By the way, he passed away a few years ago, but he is remembered in my book in a number of different chapters simply because he spent a great deal of time in Mexico studying ruins and looking at the brilliance of the Maya architectural engineering of pyramids and temples and buildings and causeways and just numerous items. But one of the things he told me that always was kind of a challenge for me was that the codices were translated from technical manuals. ...

Excerpt from Earth Ancients, Oct 21, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.