A Bulgarian clairvoyant, who went blind at the age of 12, made many predictions during her life, some of which will come true in 2024. Who was Baba Vanga really?
Under her black veil, a face that we do not forget. Although she died more than 25 years ago – in 1996 – Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova, known as Baba Vanga (“Grandma Vanga”), continues to make headlines with her prophecies. The clairvoyant, whose life is surrounded by mysticism, had made predictions for every year until 5079, including some for 2024 that appear to come true.
Born in 1911, Vangeliya grew up in Strumica in Salonika Vilayet, a province of the Ottoman Empire now in North Macedonia. Having left her mother’s womb prematurely, she suffered from recurring health problems during her childhood. In keeping with local tradition, it was not immediately given a name. We then preferred to wait to see if the baby survived before baptizing him.
Blind from a tornado
During his childhood, his father was an activist in the pro-Bulgarian branch of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which seemed to have a strong sense of local Macedonian identity. The latter was drafted into the Bulgarian army during the First World War, while Vanga’s mother died shortly afterwards.
Orphaned by her father who went to the front and her mother, Vanga owes her survival to the charity of her neighbors and close family friends. Following the war, the town of Strumica was ceded to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, i.e. Yugoslavia. Yugoslav authorities then arrested Vanga’s father because of his pro-Bulgarian activities. They confiscated all his possessions and the family fell into poverty for many years.
Her father, a widower, eventually remarried, giving his daughter a stepmother. In 1923, she and her father settled in Novo Selo, a few kilometers from Strumica. But a turning point came a few weeks later. Baba Vanga was caught in a tornado that lifted her into the air and threw her into a nearby field. She was found After a long search. Witnesses described her as frightened and her eyes, covered in sand and dust, remained closed. The 12-year-old girl had just lost her sight.
SECOND WORLD WAR AND SUPPRESSED ACTIVITIES
In 1925, Vanga was taken to a school for the blind in the town of Zemun (now in Serbia), where she spent three years and learned to read Braille, play the piano, knit, cook and perform the housework. After her stepmother died, she returned home to care for her younger siblings. The family lived in poverty, and in 1939 Vanga contracted pleurisy (inflammation of the lungs). The doctors were then pessimistic: her days were numbered but Vanga was still recovering.
During World War II, Yugoslavia was invaded and dismembered by the Axis powers and Strumica was annexed by Bulgaria. It was at this time that Vanga began his predictions. Many people came to her bedside to consult her. Bulgarian Tsar Boris III himself was among his visitors.
On May 10, 1942, the “Nostradamus of the Balkans” married Dimitar Gushterov, a Bulgarian soldier from the village of Krandzhilitsa, near Petrich, the town where they settled and where she would become famous. At the end of World War II, Bulgarian police and the Communist Party initially attempted to suppress Vanga’s activities, but she continued to receive many visitors.
popularity and visits of great communist leaders
Gradually, police pressure eased, and in 1996 the Bulgarian government enrolled Vanga, whose popularity was steadily growing, in the state’s pay. According to the Russian newspaper Pravda, she was assisted by two secretaries to interview potential patients. Bulgarian politicians and leaders of the Soviet republics, including the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, consulted her. In 1995, she even received the Russian healer and sect leader Grigori Grabovoi but she had the luxury of chasing him away, not satisfied after having imposed a test on him.
Alongside her activities, the Bulgarian “clairvoyant” became an “icon” in the countries of the former communist bloc. Baba Vanga would have “predicted” the election of an African-American president in an indeterminate future, taking into account the date of Stalin’s death, announced the dismantling of the USSR, the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the “presence of extraterrestrials among human beings. . If doubts remain about the veracity of these events, according to information from Le Monde, Baba Vanga was secretly paid by the Bulgarian secret services, themselves annexes of the KGB (Soviet intelligence services).
Building on his fame, a church was built in Rupite in his honor thanks to money left by visitors. Cult figure of divination, Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova died on August 11, 1996 from breast cancer. During her funeral, with great pomp, many dignitaries came to greet the deceased one last time. In accordance with his wishes, Baba Vanga made, on his deathbed, predictions for each year until 5079, including that so that humanity can travel back in time to 2304.
