The Book Review Series (Review One)

Ingo Swann is best known as the CIA’s psychic spy, a painter turned parapsychologist who helped pioneer the government’s “remote viewing” program at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s. Most of his books explore ESP and the strange overlap between psychic perception and UFOs. But in 1996, Swann published one of his most unusual works: The Great Apparitions of Mary: An Examination of Twenty-Two Supranormal Appearances.

I’ve been studying Marian apparitions for more than thirty years, a long time. I read as much as I can on the subject. Swann’s book is neither academic reductionism, where visions of Mary are explained away as politics or psychology, nor devotional literature written to inspire the faithful. Instead, it is something else entirely: the analysis of a professional psychic who believes the phenomenon is real and interprets it with a spy’s eye for detail.

This post is the first in a new book review series, where I share works that have intrigued, provoked, or stayed with me. These range from philosophy and religion to books that defy easy categories, like Swann’s supranormal study of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). His approach is unique, his sources wide-ranging, and his willingness to examine both approved and unapproved apparitions makes this book a rare resource for people interested in BVM apparitions and in supranormal phenomena like UFOs.

For readers unfamiliar with Marian apparitions, these are reported appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary throughout Christian history. Her messages often address local concerns while also calling for broader devotion and repentance. The phenomenon gained prominence in medieval Europe, and in the modern era has been marked by widely known events at Guadalupe (1531), Lourdes (1858), and Fatima (1917), each associated with miraculous signs and prophetic warnings. Some apparitions, like those at Medjugorje or Bayside, remain disputed, while others, such as Zeitoun in Egypt (1968), have been recognized by the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Duggan, M. (2018). ‘Ingo Swann’. Psi Encyclopedia. London: The Society for Psychical Research. <https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/ingo-swann>. Retrieved 14 September 2025.

Ingo believes the phenomenon is real, and he approaches it as a trained psychic who brings his understanding of supranormal phenomena to bear on these events. He focuses on historical primary sources such as the original accounts of what the seers heard and experienced, as well as integrating data from the social and political contexts of each apparition. He is not obligated to only report on what Church officials state about the apparitions, so he includes a lot of material that cannot be found in most of the devotional literature, and wouldn’t be found in academic treatments. He includes apparitions that are not approved by the Church as well as those that have been approved.

Neither bound by the rules of academic scholarship, nor by the moral constraints of devotional literature, he is free to read the historical sources and provide his opinion. In each of the twenty-two cases he examines, he reveals that the apparition is speaking about historical events that matter significantly to the people to whom the BVM appears. These contexts include impending wars and conflict that have real-world consequences for the seers and the members of their communities. He also believes these events are real and that they provide information to the communities that allows them to navigate within their particular circumstances. In this sense, Ingo’s treatments remind me of statements made by Pope John Paul II in the 1980s about angels. He said that the mostly invisible world is real, and its emisaries still intervene in human history (Catechesis on the Holy Angels, 1986). There is a wealth of information in Ingo’s book, so this is a first review. It won’t be the last.

Ingo points out recurrent patterns, one of which is that accounts of Marian apparitions often reveal that the Virgin Mary most frequently chooses children or uneducated adults as her “seers.” With few exceptions, these apparitions are reported by the very young, sometimes two to four at a time, and in one case a classroom of children. The children appear to enter a hive-mind trance in which they share a single vision. Adults, by contrast, and with a few exceptions, cannot see what the children describe. Their inability to access the apparition often makes them skeptical, and in many cases they treat the young seers harshly, assuming mischief or deceit. Local church hierarchies, including bishops, typically respond with caution or suppression, wary of the implications of such experiences.

Historically, the children who reported these visions were subjected to tests that, from today’s perspective, are ethically dubious. Investigators pricked them with pins or needles, shone bright lights into their eyes, or attempted other means, usually painful, to disrupt their trance. More recently, as at Medjugorje, medical professionals have analyzed the seers’ eye movements to determine whether they were tracking the same object—and consistently, they were. Remarkably, despite being subjected to pricks or physical interference, when the trance ended the children bore no injuries.

Elements of this dynamic recall other cases of the extraordinary perceptions of children. Years ago, in analyzing the recorded death of Daisy Dryden, a young girl from the nineteenth century, I noted her description of seeing “another world” close to our own. From her deathbed she reported visits from deceased relatives and neighbors, offering information she could not have otherwise known (A Communion of Little Saints: Nineteenth-Century American Child Hagiographies, 2007). In much the same way, Marian seers relay knowledge they could not possess on their own—messages, often deeply personal, conveyed to pilgrims or witnesses who bring private concerns.

Ingo’s unique skill in reading the apparition events is that he understands them from what appears to be the inside-out. Ingo is arguably the most verified psychic in American history, so he brings these skills to bear in apprehending the meaning of each apparition. He doesn’t just repeat the content of the messages, nor does he just attend to how witnesses or the seers themselves understand the events. Instead, he reads the visionary symbols and the image-rich landscape. This is evident in his readings of the apparitions in Kibeho, Rwanda, in 1981, and Tilly-Sur-Seulles, France.

Ingo opens each of his treatments of the apparitions with the historical context of the local apparition site. In the Rwanda case, he paints a picture of conflict between the minority Tutsis and the majority Hutus. He describes this relationship as one of mutual hate which has periodically erupted into violent conflict.

He noted that half of the Rwandans were animists, while the other half were Christian, most of whom were Catholic. Within this environment, a Catholic school girl of seventeen, Alphonsine, became aware of a lady who was speaking to her. After a few conversations, Alphonsine realized that this lady was the BVM. The apparition explained that she was there to reignite devotion within the community, as she said that belief was non-existent, and it was important, due to imminent developments, that they change their ways and prepare.

As typical of most apparitions, Alphonsine was at first subject to ridicule and mockery. Soon, however, other children began to see the BVM and the situation began to attract a few thousand people. The young seers were subject to the same sort of techniques to confirm that something supernatural was at play, and they were taken away from each other and asked to provide a description of the Lady. They were pricked by pins and knives, and even fire from candles. While they were in trance, they entered a beautiful meadow which they all described in nearly identical detail. They couldn’t be shaken from their trances, as some of them experienced being in a coma-like state.

As with almost all of the modern apparitions, witnesses identified solar phenomena. The sun changed colors, spun, and danced around. The stars were reported to do the same.

The messages of this apparition were apocalyptic. In one episode, the seers were shown graphic images of destruction, which included decapitated bodies in waters and rivers, fire, and mass graves. The seers saw this together and when they came out of this terrible trance they described this scene to more than two thousand witnesses. The apparition told the seers to leave Rwanda. It is here where Ingo notes that the apparitions are often accurately prophetic, as four years after this apparition the wars between the Hutus and the Tutsis exploded in horrific tragedy, ending in a real-life depiction of what the seers had seen.

Ingo describes a similar case with the apparition of Tilly-Sur-Seulles, France, in 1896. During this apparition many of the seers experienced violent convulsions causing witnesses to fear it was possibly diabolical. Ingo argues that here a trained interpreter of omens is crucial. Whereas psychoanalysts of the time were interpreting these events as mass hysteria or group psychosis, Ingo believed them to be a classic omen of the future. One young seer’s body convulsed such that her spine curved backward and touched the heels of her shoes. Witnesses became ill watching this spectacle. Ingo noted that fourteen years after this apparition the town was devastated by World War I. It became an apocalyptic scene of mud, death, destruction, and also bodies strewn across the landscape. Dead bodies, over time, often stiffen so the spine bends backward toward the feet. Ingo noted that this was foreshadowed by the young seer’s own contortions while in trance. He also noted that one trained in understanding omens would be able to interpret the meaning and warning of this apparition, as well as many more.

There is much more to explore in his book, and I intend to do that here, in the coming months, among other things. Up for speculation is: why do children mostly see the apparition? I wonder if this has to do with a topic I also study… the spiritual sense. More to come, and be well.