1985 and the Moving Statues Phenomena

Harry Palmr

Yep it was 30 years ago that a craze swept across Catholic Ireland as it seemed that representations of the Virgin Many at grottoes started to move, people started to gather in small numbers before the news broke wider and suddenly statues across the country were jiving at crossroads and thousands would gather at the bigger events on a regular basis.

RTE News

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcYsMlvr5zk

Needless to say the rest of world decided that this was worth a look-see, this is from BBC 2 Newsnight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZjM83wZmWw

Of course the summer of 85 was one of the most inclement in recorded history, it was appalling. A summer without sun and one would have to suspect that many played the craze up to get some money in the till around the country.

As someone old enough to remember all this I laughed when scratching my head then and I'm still gobsmaked that it took off like it did with people who sounded perfectly sane explaining how they'd seen things that only the deluded could truly believe. While its clear the rational can be elbowed aside quickly enough I doubt we'd fall for this now.

Menas

It was nuts. People swearing the statues moved down in Ballinspittle.

If you kneel and stare at something long enough it will move for you!

strelok

really? what about the anti vaccination people, or the anti gmo people, or anti-nuclear people, the anti-fluoride people, etc etc etc


gullible people who want to believe in things in spite of the evidence will never be in short supply

Stojkovic

Phenomena do do be dooby
Phenomena do do be do

Menas

Menas wrote: »

It was nuts. People swearing the statues moved down in Ballinspittle.

If you kneel and stare at something long enough it will move for you!

I saw it move, as did many others, precisely for that reason.

It was great craic though, a bus trip to Cork to see the home of the craze that swept the nation, Ballinspittle was to moving statues what Croke Park is to Gaelic games.

Mint Aero

What year was fluoride introduced to our water? I'd imagine it was some mass corruption to peoples health that caused hallucinations coinciding with flu jabs or something. I'm not saying it was flu jabs or fluoride that caused these visions but I wasn't born then and I be f*cked if I do research for AH on a Sunday morning for this.

So if anyone knows of anything that was introduced to the public in 84/85 i'm willing to go with that as being the cause.

fryup

1985 more like 1885

janey mac!! were really that backward??

we were the laughing stock of europe

vicwatson

Just like the photo of jesus in the tree trunk and the toast

Mint Aero

fryup wrote: »

we were the laughing stock of europe

Still are.

strelok

Mint Aero wrote: »

Still are.

oxi

Sam Kade

fryup wrote: »

1985 more like 1885

janey mac!! were really that backward??

we were the laughing stock of europe

Ah stop most only went out of curiosity and for the drive also to spot the talent

RomanKnows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnao5SBunfI

fryup

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

brilliant parody

written by our good friends Lenihan & Matthews

galljga1

Local statue of Bernadette was knicked, replaced with a sign: "Gone to lunch".

keith16

Harry Palmr wrote: »

While its clear the rational can be elbowed aside quickly enough I doubt we'd fall for this now.

It's in the past where it belongs. Just fucking leave it there.

kneemos

Reciting the hail mary repeatedly always struck me as just out there weird.
Say a few prayers if you believe in it,but constant repetition I could never fathom.

LETHAL LADY

Harry Palmr wrote: »

While its clear the rational can be elbowed aside quickly enough I doubt we'd fall for this now.

Only a few years ago here.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/irish-pilgrims-warned-against-staring-at-sun-436702.html

eviltwin

Morning Ireland on RTE did a feature on this place recently, there are fools still believing this actually happened to this day. Fools.

Wibbs

It was the last desperate death rattle of the Catholic church here. A loud, unsettling but final benediction.

galljga1

kneemos wrote: »

Reciting the hail mary repeatedly always struck me as just out there weird.
Say a few prayers if you believe in it,but constant repetition I could never fathom.

Agreed, I have memories of other religions being ridiculed for being similarly ridiculous. The obvious irony was lost on those who ridiculed.

donegaLroad

I remember it well. Apparently these statues did more than just move a few cm. I heard a garda seargent's eye wittness account of how a holographic like image of a systue of mary was floating around the place in front of a crowd pf people. I think there is a gerry ryan interview with that guy somewhere.

Sam Kade

Wibbs wrote: »

It was the last desperate death rattle of the Catholic church here. A loud, unsettling but final benediction.

Even though they denied it.

Jeez, looking at the news in the first vid.......Anne Doyle was a bit of a foxy looking lady back in the day :eek:

galljga1

LETHAL LADY wrote: »

Only a few years ago here.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/irish-pilgrims-warned-against-staring-at-sun-436702.html

I love the quote: “It is a shame to see Knock being misused this way.”

Anesthetize

What a fine bunch of intellectuals they were.

the_monkey

fryup wrote: »

1985 more like 1885

janey mac!! were really that backward??

we were the laughing stock of europe

Yep can you imagine any British people watching that report on BBC - laughing their asses off at a bunch of inbred illiterate paddies gawking at a statue .

the_monkey

kneemos wrote: »

Reciting the hail mary repeatedly always struck me as just out there weird.
Say a few prayers if you believe in it,but constant repetition I could never fathom.

Brainwashing basically

Sam Kade

the_monkey wrote: »

Yep can you imagine any British people watching that report on BBC - laughing their asses off at a bunch of inbred illiterate paddies gawking at a statue .

Did you ever watch Jeremey Kyle :rolleyes:

the_monkey

Sam Kade wrote: »

Did you ever watch Jeremey Kyle :rolleyes:

Hehe good point ...

the_monkey

donegaLroad wrote: »

I remember it well. Apparently these statues did more than just move a few cm. I heard a garda seargent's eye wittness account of how a holographic like image of a systue of mary was floating around the place in front of a crowd pf people. I think there is a gerry ryan interview with that guy somewhere.

Id love to get some of the whatever he was smoking that day ...

Samaris

kneemos wrote: »

Reciting the hail mary repeatedly always struck me as just out there weird.
Say a few prayers if you believe in it,but constant repetition I could never fathom.

It's worth saying that prayers such as the Rosary, with its constant repetition , is the same as meditative trances around the world. It is intended to induce a calm and meditative state for later prayers. If you attempt to say the Rosary now, I can almost guarantee that you will probably find yourself saying it as you were taught in school when you repeated it as a group in a drone, with much more emphasis on the rhythm than the meaning.

Menas

Samaris wrote: »

It's worth saying that prayers such as the Rosary, with its constant repetition , is the same as meditative trances around the world. It is intended to induce a calm and meditative state for later prayers. If you attempt to say the Rosary now, I can almost guarantee that you will probably find yourself saying it as you were taught in school when you repeated it as a group in a drone, with much more emphasis on the rhythm than the meaning.

And that is going to be the one thing I have learned today!

galljga1

Samaris wrote: »

It's worth saying that prayers such as the Rosary, with its constant repetition , is the same as meditative trances around the world. It is intended to induce a calm and meditative state for later prayers. If you attempt to say the Rosary now, I can almost guarantee that you will probably find yourself saying it as you were taught in school when you repeated it as a group in a drone, with much more emphasis on the rhythm than the meaning.

It just made me angry because it is nonsense.

padd b1975

the_monkey wrote: »

Yep can you imagine any British people watching that report on BBC - laughing their asses off at a bunch of inbred illiterate paddies gawking at a statue .

Maybe....but none of them laughed as hard as I did at the antics around Princess Dianas death.

kneemos

Samaris wrote: »

It's worth saying that prayers such as the Rosary, with its constant repetition , is the same as meditative trances around the world. It is intended to induce a calm and meditative state for later prayers. If you attempt to say the Rosary now, I can almost guarantee that you will probably find yourself saying it as you were taught in school when you repeated it as a group in a drone, with much more emphasis on the rhythm than the meaning.

It appears to be quite often the end purpose.
Yer one in the video said she was walking and decided to say a few decades of the rosary.
I've heard of folk talk about reciting the rosary.
More often than not during those devotion things around the country it's the rosary that is being recited continuously.

If you were really into it I could see how it might induce a trance,but so would humming the birdy song.

Delphinium

Was in Cork at the time and went to see. Big crowd all staring at grotto. You could persuade yourself that the whole mountain was moving. Optical illusion if anything. Lots of prayers alright. Non believer so i was not moved!!

galljga1

kneemos wrote: »

It appears to be quite often the end purpose.
Yer one in the video said she was walking and decided to say a few decades of the rosary.
I've heard of folk talk about reciting the rosary.
More often than not during those devotion things around the country it's the rosary that is being recited continuously.

If you were really into it I could see how it might induce a trance,but so would humming the birdy song.

Well fcuk you. That's stuck in my head for the day.

NachoBusiness

I remember some chap seen our lady in a ditch on the back roads between Blanch and Mulhuddart one day and came off his motorbike as a result.

It was headlines of the Sunday World and for the next year or more, every Sunday, hundreds of people would queue up on that part of the road to meet the chap, give him a few quid if he would lay his hand's on them or their wheelchair bound family members.

Was sometime in the 90s.

SpaceTime

Honestly, we don't get the right to sneer at American rednecks after seeing those 1980s clips!!!

The Backwards Man

It's not even an optical illusion, it's just simple headology.

I don't have much time for all this 'let's all laugh at how thick we were thirty years ago' craic, it smacks of smug condescension. Not many people believed in that bollocks back then, it was primarily a classic example of media hype and bad summer boredom in the pre interweb era.

eviltwin

The House of Prayer place over in the west somewhere has gatherings where people say they see the sun dance and things like that. We might have moved on from 1985 but some people still have that gullibility and naivety.

SpaceTime

There was a bit of general media hysteria in the mid 80s about moving statues though.

Only Fools and Horses even did a whole show based around Del Boy and a leaky church roof causing the Weeping Virgin of Peckham ... Flood of international media, lots of £££ ....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miracle_of_Peckham

SpaceTime

eviltwin wrote: »

The House of Prayer place over in the west somewhere has gatherings where people say they see the sun dance and things like that. We might have moved on from 1985 but some people still have that gullibility and naivety.

If you stare at the sun it will most certainly "dance". Your retinas have no pain sensors and it's just the visual sensation of them being over-stimulated and burnt out!

Most likely will cause permanent vision damage and possibly even blindness!!

The Backwards Man

eviltwin wrote: »

The House of Prayer place over in the west somewhere has gatherings where people say they see the sun dance and things like that. We might have moved on from 1985 but some people still have that gullibility and naivety.

Certain people will always believe the one person telling them what they want to hear over the hundred telling them the truth, tis human nature. It's why statements such as 'we've already paid for our water' and 'VRT is illegal' gain traction.

omerin

Wibbs wrote: »

It was the last desperate death rattle of the Catholic church here. A loud, unsettling but final benediction.

:rolleyes:

The organisation or the devotees? I can't remember many if any priests or nuns that said they saw the statue move.

Rubberlegs

I remember going to a grotto with my parents and a friend to see one of these statues. Most people there were saying they could see it moving, some could see a hologram of Jesus. I could see absolutely nothing, and was disgusted. My friend told me it was because I was wearing glasses! I remember hearing some fella set up a chip van near another statue in town. He knelt down at the statue and said he could see it moving. It drew a crowd, and he made a tidy sum selling chips and burgers

fullstop

Weren't there ones crying blood in the 90s as well?!

3rdDegree

kneemos wrote: »

Reciting the hail mary repeatedly always struck me as just out there weird.
Say a few prayers if you believe in it,but constant repetition I could never fathom.

God is very old and tends to forget stuff. That's why you have to repeat yourself.

I was 18 back when all this was going on. I came from a religious family, and like most people in the country, we all thought that if you stared at anything long enough, it would start to do some fairly strange things!

Back then no one outside of Ireland took much notice of anything we were doing, so I don't recall any sense of embarrassment. Just a feeling that these people were muppets.

Kind of similar to the idiots staring at the sun in Knock recently.

I also recall the jokes like the empty grottos with the "Gone to lunch" signs and the statues with the "Out of order" signs on them.

We weren't all mad, but enough of us were to scare the rest of us all a little!

SpaceTime

When you think about it Ireland was one very weird place in those days!

Until 1980 condoms were basically illegal and not only couldn't be imported but couldn't be mentioned in publications!

In the mid 80s they were still incredibly tightly controlled.

You'd no divorce, being gay was illegal and the magdalene laundries were still busily doing the ironing.

corner of hells

Its not rare for statues to move in Ireland , sure didn't Molly Malone move recently.

petrolcan

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Yep it was 30 years ago that a craze swept

Of course the summer of 85 was one of the most inclement in recorded history, it was appalling. A summer without sun

Eh? The summer of '85 was great in Donegal. The sun didn't stop shining and the turf was easy won.

I do recall my elder brother attending the Jamboree in Portumna and coming back with everything caked in two inches of mud though.