Urban Legends of Religious Visitations...
Thank you Shannon623! I feared that I was the only person who fell for the whole Mr Ed was a zebra hoax on Snopes. False authority syndrome indeed. Still, I do still use them to filter most of the crap I get e-mailed, so it is a rare urban legend that catches me out.

Starting them on the other hand....

In my youth I was (and to a lesser extent still am) fascinated by all things spooky, paranormal and otherworldly. Although more cynical and jaded these days, I recall with fondness the days when I had an unwavering belief in the existence of ghosts, monsters, ufos and every conspiracy under the sun (I'm still a fully paid subscriber to Fortean Times btw).

Anyway, one rainy autumn afternoon when I was in Primary 6 (I and my classmates would have been about 10 or 11) my group where doing their very best to avoid doing any work, so we were swapping all the usual Bloody Mary/dead janitor/the hook was still attached to the door stories. The usual friend of a friend bullshit.

So, I start telling stories that these kids have never heard before. It is important to know two things at this point. Firstly, this was a Catholic Primary School. Secondly, I am from a Catholic family, but was raised on a diet of supernatural and conspiracy books, bought by my father who in all other respects appears to be more hard-line than the Pope!

I start on with stories of religious apparitions. Moving statues. Fatima. Lourdes. Stigmata. And then I left, as I had to attend clarinet lessons. Only on my return to school the following morning did I find out what I had unleashed.

You see, like all classrooms in the school, we had a statue of the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) in our classroom. I don't know how familiar you people are with these statues, but generally the BVM has her hands outstretched and is crushing a snake under one foot. I mentioned that a lot of people see statues, like the one in our classroom, moving, the eyes blinking, the lips moving etc. I should have sensed trouble brewing when someone in my group said they thought they saw the snake move.

After I left the class, apparently the other kids in my group swore blind that the statue was swaying, that it's hands moved to bless them, that it looked at them. Word quickly spread. By the end of the day, every statue of the BVM was pretty much goose-stepping up and down the worksurfaces of every classroom in school.

And it gets better. There was a HUGE statue just by the main door to the school. Yup, you guessed it. It had apparently begun to wander about the school too.

There was a school disco that night. The school chaplain was in attendance. Poor Fr O'Brien. I don't think seminary prepares you for 40 terrified children begging you to perform an exorcism on the school and "tell Mary to stop moving".

So, the question we must ask ourselves is this: did the Virgin Mary decide to manifest herself in the form of moving statues in a primary school in Paisley on a wet and dreary autumnal afternoon in 1990? Or did the hyperactive imaginations of small children get overstimulated by the tall tales of a young lawofnations?

You decide...

Apologies for the rambling incoherence. Must remember not to post at 4am. But I was waiting up for soon-to-be-Mrs-lawofnations to get back from her hen night, and am still not quite sleepy enough to hit the sack.
(lawofnations, Sun 8 Jan 2006, 3:56, Reply)