Charles Fort coined the term "teleportation" to cover mysterious appearances and disappearances of people or objects. He suggested that there might be a connection between these two phenomena, with objects and people who disappear in one place or time appearing elsewhere.

This theory--which is half humourously suggested--would offer an explanation for strange falls of objects or creatures living and dead, such as falls of fish, frogs, or stones, for example, without resorting to naturistic explanations such as waterspouts or Fort's much lampooned "fishmonger".

Teleportation of objects from the spirit world or through seemingly impassable barriers, of course, was one of the stocks-in-trade of Victorian spiritualists (and of modern magicians). Fort expressed no great interest in spiritualism, but his lack of interest may have been partly misdirection on his part, since there is no reason why his "teleportation" theory should not be used to explain spiritualist feats if they are more than parlour tricks.

However, he may have merely wished to avoid giving credence to the performances of spiritualists. Fort was anything but credulous even with respect to his own "theories".

Many Fortean or allegedly supernatural phenomena are explicable by some form of teleportation, even Alien Big Cats (ABCs)

Some have robed teleportation in quantum mechanical garb, suggesting macro-quantum tunnelling might be at the origin of these diverse phenomena and other strange stories such as remote viewing, out-of-body experiences, and so on and so forth, or even that wormholes open and close in the fabric of reality, although wormholes remain highly speculative, although within the realm of possible mathematical and physical entities, and not pseudo-scientific or fantastic concepts.

Folklorists, on the other hand, relate strange appearances and disappearances to folk themes such as abduction by the fairy folk, and the nearness of other non-physical worlds, Heaven and Hell, the Fairy World, etc., which reduces teleportation to the more conventional forms of "magic" or "miracle" or "wish fulfillment".

In science fiction, teleportation provides a bridge between the scientifically possible and the fantastic. Without teleportation, space exploration stories have withered and died, although Warp Drive, Worm Holes and other semi-scientific technologies and physics continue to sustain space exploration

In the laboratory scientists claim to have "teleported" sub-atomic particles, although what they seem to have done is merely transfer the properties of one sub-atomic to another sub-atomic particle remotely. Nonetheless, this is basically the same as what much science fiction teleportation involves -- matter is not carried across the universe but the properties of an object in one place are transferred instantaneously to another place and reassembled.

Imagine for example, a scanner which scans (and destroys) an object in one place and which transfers the information to a three dimensional printer in another place, which assembles an exact duplicate atom by atom. The technology necessary to do this in a crude way already exists--modern computer controlled machines can fabricate complex objects from a matrix of powder in this manner. You can literally fax the mold or prototype for an automobile engine from Japan to California, or the design for a vase from Milan to Hong Kong.

If you are not too particular about the quality or material of the end product, the object transmitted can be the final product itself--say, for example you want a plastic vase or a plaster statue.

While Fortean, magical, religious, scientific or technological explanations can account for some mysterious appearances and disappearances of objects and people, other real-world cases of such disappearances and appearances have a naturalistic explanation although the available data is insufficient to allow us to determine which explanation that is.

For example, not only do some people who mysteriously disappear without a trace turn up, having wandered off, run away, or been kidnapped, but recently a man who suffered amnesia for several years found himself in a database of missing persons and was reunited with his family after living for several years in a distant town under a new identity.

Other mysterious appearances and disappearances are explicable by hoaxes or pranks--for example there are any number of garden gnomes travelling the world at the present time, often with their travels being documented by photography and websites. It is often lack of complete information or sufficient imagination which creates mysteries, although a residual number of cases permits new phenomena such as quantum tunneling and teleportation to be discovered. There are, however, examples for which no scientific explanation can be found, and which can only be explained in para-scientific terms.