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>In Egypt a bit after WWI and their revolution some rich coptic fellow builds a church in memory of his father in Olive District, consecrates it to the Virgin Mary after dreaming Her vividly
>Decades later circa 1968 the Yom Kippur War (6-day War) and PLO's Attrition War happen, which also included Israel's mine campaign on Gaza and the Sinai plus their nuclear program. The height of back-then Pan-Arab vs. Jew tension
>This also sees holy sites like Baptist's Bethany being wired to explode, whole Arab world mad as fuck at Israel for being extremely jewish in behavior due to this and many other things. One day, on April 2th...
>A watchman named Abdul in a district of Cairo called Al-Zeitoun (aka The Olives) is working late afternoon in a Public Transport garage with mechanics mechanicking inside, when suddenly he sees something on top of the Church of the Virgin Mary opposite of his post
>Abdul sees a tall white figure on the crest kneeling in front of the cross, he alerts people of this and a couple of mechanics get alarmed at, what they think is a nun, trying to kermit suicide. They start screaming at her to stop, onlookers start piling to see the ruckus
>Suddenly they realize this figure is shining brightly and is of quite big dimensions, when the sun sets the domes start glowing too; Abdul and a bunch of onlookers, all from different religions, realize that they are seeing something out of the ordinary and kinda resembles Mary
>Minutes later, some say 10-15, the police arrive and disperses the crowd, claiming the event was due to a couple of sodium street lamp reflections on the dome... probably. The apparition disappears and people go home commenting everyone what happened
>A week later the event happens again in the same circumstances, people now knowing the deal rush to the site and witness only for a couple of minutes a bright light with other curious particularities happening nearby, cleric authorities get alerted
>After this the event re-occurs 2 to 3 times a week at significantly later hours, often from 2am to 5am with a couple of times well into the bright dawn. People realize this quick and camp at night on the sidewalk to see the event, clerics attend
>The phenomenon is described by all parties as a very bright and shining "cloud" or gaseous figure moving among the domes, inside the big one and the nearby palm trees, tall and changing in form + position as if it were "walking", featured two ends at the bottom, one on top and two sides
>Many mention that squinting made the features of the figure clearer, showing hands, shawl and face, directing the gaze directly over them and sometimes even waving but more often "kneeling" (getting shorter but wider and oblong) to pray in front of the cross
>At hours or moments the light wasn't so harsh, at dawn or late afternoon, witnesses claim the cloud/Mary had a blue dress/shawl/layer, red robe/layer above the dress, halo floating about the pointy upper end/head, teeth could be seen when She smiled
>These events coincided at times with other light phenomena, which famously included the "doves", golden-tinted orbs with pointy over sides as if they were wings flying at fast speeds often in formation only to disperse and disappear at different heights
>Seen flying horizontally at dome-level heights, seen sky high in cruciform formations or vertically descending/ascending as stars, sometimes circling, sometimes shooting out from the dome. Universally mentioned that these doves did not flap their wings
>Also with this came lighting-like flashes from nowhere and a subtle glow over the domes, referred as being orange to light blue. Couple witnesses mention an instance in which people got frenzied at seeing the moon in one apparition due to it mirroring Mary's face
>At times other clouds appeared to accompany, one a bit taller, one considerably wider and pointier, with some claiming seeing a man like Joseph inside a dome, an angel and even an animal form resembling a donkey. Everyone had a story and interpretation
>Skeptics claimed to not see a human figure but do confirm the existence of orbs and a glowing cloud moving among the palms and stopping at the domes, bigger-than-human dimensions (3.5 to 5m), the crosses glowing, the cross-formation orbs and lightning flashes
>These events, numbered theoretically in the hundreds, range from a couple of minutes to even 2 hours, at different hours ranging from sunset to dawn and more common around feast days. Numbers start becoming lower by 1970 and end around 1971. At least 1/4 of the city witness it
>Among the many witnesses some groups went in to attest, debunk or investigate the security aspect
>Parties confirmed there range from a Coptic patriarch-pope who saw it (Kyrillos VI) and confirmed it along with 90+ other priests in a May 4th confirmation
>Also a catholic cardinal saw it (Stephanos I) and sent a notice to the Vatican, a priest of the Jesuit Order saw it (Father Dr. Henry Ayrout), a protestant-evangelical reverend saw it (Rev. Dr. Ibrahim Said), catholic nuns from the Sacred Heart Order saw it and sent a detailed report to the Vatican, an envoy representing the catholic pope saw it (Paul VI) and remained silent to the western media
>A German theological student in the Cairo American University saw it (Otto Meinardus) several times and even organized groups of fellow foreigners to go see the apparitions, later as a college professor in the US claimed once again to its veracity
>An american army nurse in Egypt (Pearl Zaki) claims to have seen a girl she knew, who suffered from polio-related injuries and could only move with crutches, get her legs thicker overnight and be able to walk suddenly after being at Zeitoun
>Another member of the Cairo American University, anthropology professor Cynthia Nelson, went several times over the course of the first 5 months of the event. Being the big skeptic she claimed to not have seen a Mary figure at all but insisted the source of the lights were a mystery and disregarded the street light reflection theory due to the fact that entire blocks around the church had their lamps disconnected or permanently turned off to see the apparitions better
>The bolice, puzzled by these events, and the military, paranoid about many things, started aggressively checking rooftops and big windows around a 15-mile radius of the church to find a suspicious projector or floodlight, resulting in finding nothing at all but witnessing the events too
>By a couple of book accounts the president Gamal Abdel Nassr decided to visit the church a couple of nights to witness himself what was going on, attesting officially to having seen the apparation and paranormal events surrounding it
>Ethiopia's Haile Selassie, emperor at the time, is not widely known to having been at an apparition but it is officially known for having donated icons and a sum to the Church of the Virgin Mary in which these events happened
>The source of several images was a pro photographer called Wagih Rizk, who captured some pictures after knowing an apparition was taking place often in one of his city's church (Zeitoun's Church of the Virgin Mary) in personal peregrination
>Years before barely gets alive from a serious car crash which left his left arm almost severed and disabled stiff. Allegedly worked his trade by holding the lens to focus and then pressing the shutter all with one hand, aside from controlled studio conditions
>Witnessed the beginning of his first apparition and took his camera out, did his normal procedure but after missing focus in the first try he panicked and took a second one very quickly to not miss the "transfiguration"
>In the morning a few hours later, not being able to sleep he started thinking about how long would it take for his film to be processed, he remembered how he almost missed the shot and suddenly realized he focused with his left hand
>Shocked he rose up and started moving his elbow-locked arm and was appalled to see it could move normally. Out of admiration went to the church once in a while to take more pictures and captured many particularities with expensive film
>5 surgeons who had operated on Wagih and told him he was stiff later attested to his unexplained recovery, claiming it would be normally impossible for his elbow tendons and forearm muscle to have recovered because there weren't any after the accident
>Allegedly sent copies of his pictures to newspapers and journalists for free and only gave his name so people could get someone accountable rather than seek for fame, offered negatives to be tested
>Al-Ahram newspaper's chief photo expert analyzed the negatives and declared no manipulation had been done, specifically a dodge & burn one
>Due to the popularity of the happening and the devotion, perhaps the greediness, some pictures of the event get "tweaked" and artists start drawing, overlaying or tricking forms into more discernible images like downright painting the Virgin Mary
>Due to Egypt's poorfag economy the few photographers only had somewhat dark lenses and slow film stock, with only the well-to-do photographers (W Rizk) having speedy high-ISO film ASA1600+ and decent lenses from back then (f1.8)
>Many of the photographers claim that a normal way to detect shenanigans is the fact, they claim, that the light was harsh enough that normal exposures made it only appear as shapes unless taken at sunset/dawn or shot so fast that a figure appeared but all the context was pure darkness
>The Apparitions ended famously (and supposedly) when scheming small crowds started seeing a constant flow of people and started charging money to access the blocks and streets near the church
>A couple of instances have happened in which similar things occur on top of churches in Egypt but none with so many witnesses from all sides, lasting remotely as much, repeating themselves so often or with prepared people with decent gear to take pics