Stories of the Supernatural
  • Stories of the Supernatural
    • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast
    • Stories of the Supernatural Video Links
  • Miami Ghost Chronicles
  • M.P. Pellicer | Author
    • Books by M.P. Pellicer
    • Paranormal Chit Chat with Marlene
  • Stranger Than Fiction Stories
  • Eerie News
  • Supernatural Storytime
    • Supernatural StoryTime Podcasts
    • Supernatural StoryTime Videos
  • Paranormal Podcasts
  • Haunted Places
    • Anderson's Corner
    • Animal Hauntings
    • Belleview Biltmore Hotel
    • Bobby Mackey's Honky Tonk
    • Brookdale Lodge
    • Chacachacare Island
    • Coral Castle
    • Drayton Hall Plantation
    • ​Jonathan Dickinson State Park
    • Kreischer Mansion
    • Miami Biltmore Hotel
    • Miami Forgotten Properties
    • Myrtles Plantation
    • Pinewood Cemetery
    • Rolling Hills Asylum
    • St. Ann's Retreat
    • Stranahan Cromartie House
    • The Devil Tree
    • Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
    • West Virginia Penitentiary
  • Merch
  • Astrology Horoscope & Zodiac
    • Astrology Today
    • Horoscope
    • Zodiac

The Messages of Fatima

1/28/2025

0 Comments

 
Picture
by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Our Lady of Fatima is a Marian apparition seen in 1917, by three, illiterate shepherd children in Portugal. It wasn't until 1930 that the Catholic church declared the visitation worthy of belief. By then two of the three children had died. Over one hundred years later when compared to other similar, but secular experiences many wonder if the "solar dance" at Fatima was a UFO.

PictureLúcia Santos (left) with her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, 1917
In 2017, Pope Francis canonized Jacinta and Francisco Marto, the two witnesses of the Fatima apparitions who died as children of the Spanish influenza. They were nine and ten years old. Many see the children's canonization as a final confirmation by the Church that the events that took place at Fatima was indeed divine in origin. Their older cousin Lucia Dos Santos (1907-2005), died at the age of 97 having spent most of her life in seclusion in a Carmelite convent. She was declared venerable by Pope Francis on June, 2023.

What few people know is that in the century that passed between the Fatima apparitions, and present day the Vatican used an arsenal of methods to "sanitize" the retelling of those events to what they believed the Mother of Christ would entrust to poor, illiterate children and to millions of Catholics by extension.

The Portuguese researchers Joaquim Fernandes and Fina d’Armada wrote a book about the apparitions of Fatima titled Heavenly Lights, and a sequel Celestial Secrets. In 1978, they were the first secular investigators to have access to the official testimonies collected by the Church, which are fiercely guarded to this day inside the Fátima sanctuary. They looked at those events in 1917, without the lens of religious dogma and found that there are many similarities to extraterrestrial close encounters reported by many people throughout the years.

PictureA 1974 pamphlet by Filipe Furtado de Mendonca who described the activities of a Spiritualist group living in Lisbon during those years.
Since those who were alive then are dead now, none can remember a very interesting fact which is that only months before the children saw the "Lady", at least four Portuguese newspapers were writing stories about an important event that was to take place on the very day of the sighting. This date had been specified based on an automatic writing session done by a famous medium of the time named Carlos Calderon on February 7, 1917.

Most of it was produced with mirror writing. This information was found in a 1974 pamphlet by Filipe Furtado de Mendonca who described the activities of a Spiritualist group living in Lisbon during those years. 

It read:

​It is not thy place to be judges. He who is to judge thee would not favor thy prejudice. Have faith and be patient. It is not our custom to predict the future. The archanes of the future are impenetrable, although, on occasions, God does allow the corner of the veil cloaking it to be slightly displaced. Have confidence in our prophecy. The day 13th of May shall be a day of great joy for all the good spirits of the world. Have faith and be good. Ego Sum Charitas (I am Charity). Thou shall always have thy friends at thy side, who will guide thee and help thee on thy work. Ego Sum Charitas. The brilliant light of the Morning Star shall light thy way.
PictureAd published by the spiritualist group on March 10, 1917.
The last line of the cryptic message was not "inverted", but written in a normal way and with a slightly different handwriting, along with the signature of the ‘"entity" using Carlos Calderon as medium: Stella Matutina (Morning Star).

The letter "channeled" by Carlos was written mostly in Portuguese and signed by Stella Matutina, which has been associated with the planet Venus or the morning star. Other connections are to the Virgin Mary, Aphrodite, the Aztec/Mayan deity Quetzalcoatl/Kukulcan and even Lucifer the "Bringer of Light".

The Spiritualist group might not have understood precisely the meaning of the message, but they interpreted it as a sign that the Great War was due to end, and even went as far as to run a small ad in the classified section of a local newspaper on March 10, 1917.

They headed the ad with the numbers, '135197' a code referring to the "day of great joy" (13th May, 1917). May 13th arrived and the hoped for news of either a cease fire, or truce did not materialize.

​The word of the Marian apparition gradually spread, including the message received by the spiritualist group. ​

PictureSketch of the Being of Fátima c.1917
The link to a message produced by spiritualists could account for the Church's extra slow acceptance of the events, especially as there was a second spiritualist group in the city of Oporto, who sent a letter to the country's most important newspapers referring to the event that would occur on May 13. It was signed by a psychic named Antonio, and dated May 11.

Henrique António Guedes de Oliveira the editor-in-chief of O Primeiro de Janeiro, the most circulated journal in the North of Portugal ran the ad on the front page. The other newspapers mocked the ad, and believed it would show that psychics were charlatans.

PicturePage from Ilustração Portuguesa, 29 October 1917, showing the people looking at the Sun during the Fátima apparitions attributed to the Virgin Mary
The Miracle of the Sun

​The apparitions reported by the three children have changed considerably over time versus how they were originally described. The eyewitnesses to the "Miracle of the Sun" never said it was the sun, only that it was a bright, oval object that glowed like a pearl.

The children when asked where the lady came from only pointed upward, but they did not specify it was heaven. They never saw her mouth moving, and Lucia Dos Santos who was considered the main witness was the only one able to hear her voice, which was accompanied by a buzzing sound.

When Lucia learned how to read and write she was able to record the words. "Another physical attribute that was changed by the Catholic Church was that the being was said to be less than three feet tall, and appeared to be bald. Over the course of interrogations and revisions, the children changed this appearance to that of a tall beautiful lady, more fitting to the Virgin Mary archetype of the church."

​Across culture and time other mystics have claimed to receive communication in a similar fashion. Could it be that different deities described by different civilizations have the same source? Could these be the same messengers who appeared to the children in Fatima?

PictureSister Lúcia in the Chapel of the Apparitions next to the column marking the place where the apparitions of Our Lady are said to have taken place. The picture was taken during Lucia's visit to Cova da Iria on May 22, 1946
The Children's Encounter

The three young shepherds described being visited by an angel on different occasions. When the word spread of what they had seen thousands flocked to the area, as the lady promised a miracle on October 13 of the following year.

On October 13, 1917 over 80,000 people who had arrived to see the "miracle" described a bright disc-like object that emitted heat, spun through the sky and swoop over the crowds before returning to the clouds.

A small chapel called the Chapel of the Apparitions was built in April of 1919 by the local people. It was in the exact location where the Virgin Mary would visit every month on the 13th. In 1920, a statue of the Virgin Mary was then installed in the chapel by the local populace. This angered the Roman Catholic church and the government, as the miracle had not yet been confirmed by them. This original chapel was destroyed in March of 1922. However, the Chapel of the Apparitions was rebuilt and functioning as a place of local mass by 1923.

The area of Fatima, Portugal has a long history of pagan practice that include folklore about fairies, and other worldly beings. Portugal has a tradition of a race of supernatural women called the Moura Encantada who are said to be the guardians of doorway into other dimensions. They are said to be able to spin the sun, similar to what those at Fatima described seeing.

On July 13, 1917 the Lady was said to have imparted three secrets to the children. In the mid-1930s the Bishop of Leiria encouraged Lúcia to write her memoirs, so that she might reveal further details of the 1917 apparitions. Two of the secrets were revealed in 1941, however many point out that by then Lucia was exposed to information about communism having taken over Soviet Union. 

Starting in 1932, the Portuguese lived under the rule of Antonio Salazar, a staunch Catholic who was opposed to Communism and believed its fall was inevitable. Therefore, this part of the second secret was a widely held belief and hope of many in Portugal.

The Bishop of Leira asked Lucia to disclose the third secret in 1943, however she did not believe the time was right. But in the fall of 1943 she contracted influenza and pleurisy which had killed her cousins. She feared she would die, so she put the third secret in writing, and sealed it in an envelope which was not to be opened until 1960.

The third secret was disclosed in 2000, and the Vatican described the vision as the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul in 1981.

There was anger in Portugal when the third secret was released.  It seemed there was no reason to have kept the prophecy secret for 50 years, and many suspected the contents had been altered by the Vatican. It's been pointed out that Lucia wrote the third secret on one sheet of paper, however the version produced by the Vatican was four pages long. Many believe the contents of the third secret is some type of doomsday prophecy.

When Lucia's memoirs were published the events became widely known outside of Spain and Portugal. Between 1935 and 1993 she wrote six memoirs.

Whatever really happened on that secluded spot in Cova da Iria, over one hundred years ago, will probably take us a few more centuries to fully comprehend –if ever.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Stranger Than Fiction Stories

    RSS Feed

    M.P. Pellicer

    Author, Narrator and Producer​

    StrangerThanFiction.News

    Picture
    If you like my work, then Buy Me A Coffee
    Picture
    Listen to Stories of the Supernatural Podcasts, interviews of authors, experts and those who have witnessed the unexplained. Ghosts, cryptids, UFOs, conspiracies and more
    Picture
    Listen to Nightshade Diary podcast stories of classic horror, mystery and adventure stories
    Picture
    Listen to Supernatural Storytime podcast. True stories of strange encounters with ghosts, cryptids, strange beings and weird things
    Eerie News podcast archives
    Listen to podcast of Eerie News with all the latest news and stories of the paranormal and the unexplained

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023

    Picture

    Categories

    All
    1970s Cold Case
    1980s Cold Case
    Abandoned & Forgotten Places
    Alternative Medicine
    Amulets & Talismans
    Ancient Customs & Discoveries
    Animal Mutilations
    Anthropology
    Architecture
    Bigfoot & Sasquatch
    Blood Rituals
    Bootleggers & Gangsters
    Circus And Carnival Tales
    Close Encounters
    Cold Case
    Conspiracy Stories
    Cryptids
    Cursed Places
    Curses & Hexes
    Customs For The Dead
    Dark Psychology
    Dark Rituals
    Deviant Behavior
    Diabolism & The Dark Arts
    Earth News
    Elementals & Earth Spirits
    Exorcism And Deliverance
    Extraterrestrials
    Ghost Story
    Ghost Town
    Haunted Bars & Taverns
    Haunted Buildings & Houses
    Haunted Castles And Mansions
    Haunted Florida
    Haunted Hotels & Inns
    Haunted Roads And Crossroads
    Haunted Tunnels Bridges & Caves
    Haunted Waterways
    Healers And Prophets
    Historical Crime
    Historical Mystery
    Hollywood Scandal
    Hospitals Asylums & Prisons
    Human Body Parts Trafficking
    Human Sacrifice
    Ill Fortune & Bad Luck
    Insane & Wicked Killers
    Insects And Nature
    Legends And Folklore
    Lighthouses & Lonely Outposts
    Lost Cities And Civilizations
    Manson Murders
    Medical Experimentation
    Misfortune And Bad Luck
    Missing Person
    Modernity
    Monsters And Demons
    Murder Mystery
    Mysteries Of National Parks
    Mystery Story
    Mysticism And Occultism
    Nautical Mystery
    Necrophiles
    Necropolis And Cemeteries
    Occult Crime
    Occult Rituals
    Oddities
    Old West Mystery
    Orphanages & Foundling Homes
    Outlaws & Criminals
    Paranormal Encounters
    Pedophiles
    Portends And Disasters
    Psychics And Fortune Tellers
    Railroad Hauntings
    Relics And Ruins
    Religious Figures
    Remote Places
    Rome & The Gladiators
    Ruins Of Mesoamerica
    Sacred Sites
    Satanic Murder
    Sea Serpent Sighting
    Secret Rooms And Passages
    Serial Killer
    Shipwrecks And Treasure
    Skeletons & Bones
    Solved Cold Case
    Southern Gothic
    Space Exploration
    Strange Archaeology
    Strange Burials
    Strange Crime
    Strange Deaths
    Strange Science
    Strange Tradition
    Superstitions
    Suppressed History
    True Crime
    UFO
    Unusual Folk
    Urban Myths & Legends
    Volcanos And Earthquakes
    War Time Ghost Story
    Weird Creature
    Weird Discovery
    Weird Science
    Witchcraft & Cults

Free Astrology Report
Free Astrology Report
Picture
Find our podcasts everywhere
Ultimate Gut Cleanse
Picture
Puretalk Wireless by American for Americans
Anytime Mailbox Service
Manage Your Postal Mail Online Services at 2,328 locations. Rates starting as low as $6.49 per month.
Picture
Shop our unusual and delightful novelties
My Patriot Supply Deals and Discounts
My Patriot Supply Deals and Discounts
Picture
Find Where Traditional Latin Masses are Held in the United States
Picture
VISION FOR THE FUTURE: The World Should Be Safe For Children
Picture
#CashFriday
#cashfriday #casheveryday
Picture
"When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe."
- Frederic Bastiat
Marlene Pardo Pellicer, author, producer and narrator
M.P. Pellicer
Picture
Send an email
Picture
Copyright © 2009-2025 Eleventh Hour LLC. All Rights Reserved ®
​DISCLAIMER

  • Stories of the Supernatural
    • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast
    • Stories of the Supernatural Video Links
  • Miami Ghost Chronicles
  • M.P. Pellicer | Author
    • Books by M.P. Pellicer
    • Paranormal Chit Chat with Marlene
  • Stranger Than Fiction Stories
  • Eerie News
  • Supernatural Storytime
    • Supernatural StoryTime Podcasts
    • Supernatural StoryTime Videos
  • Paranormal Podcasts
  • Haunted Places
    • Anderson's Corner
    • Animal Hauntings
    • Belleview Biltmore Hotel
    • Bobby Mackey's Honky Tonk
    • Brookdale Lodge
    • Chacachacare Island
    • Coral Castle
    • Drayton Hall Plantation
    • ​Jonathan Dickinson State Park
    • Kreischer Mansion
    • Miami Biltmore Hotel
    • Miami Forgotten Properties
    • Myrtles Plantation
    • Pinewood Cemetery
    • Rolling Hills Asylum
    • St. Ann's Retreat
    • Stranahan Cromartie House
    • The Devil Tree
    • Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
    • West Virginia Penitentiary
  • Merch
  • Astrology Horoscope & Zodiac
    • Astrology Today
    • Horoscope
    • Zodiac