Baba Vanga

Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova was a Bulgarian mystic, clairvoyant, and herbalist. Blind since early childhood, she spent most of her life in the Rupite area in the Kozhuh mountains in Bulgaria. Zheni Kostadinova claimed in 1997 that millions of people believed she possessed paranormal abilities.

About Baba Vanga in brief

Summary Baba VangaVangeliya Pandeva Gushterova was a Bulgarian mystic, clairvoyant, and herbalist. Blind since early childhood, she spent most of her life in the Rupite area in the Kozhuh mountains in Bulgaria. Zheni Kostadinova claimed in 1997 that millions of people believed she possessed paranormal abilities. Vanga was born in 1911 to Pando and Paraskeva Surchevi in Strumica, then in the Ottoman Empire, but in 1912 the city was ceded to Bulgaria. Her father was an Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization activist, conscripted into the Bulgarian Army during World War I, and her mother died soon after. She was brought to a school for the blind in the city of Zemun, in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and was taught to read Braille, play the piano, as well as do knitting, cooking, and cleaning. In 1939 Vanga contracted pleurisy, although it remained largely inactive for some years. The doctor’s opinion was that she would die soon, but she quickly recovered. She died on August 11 1996 from breast cancer. Her funeral attracted large crowds Fulfilling Vanga’s last will and testament, which opened its doors for visitors on 5 May 2008. She could read some Serbian Braille; she could also read some Bulgarian Braille as she learned as she grew up. Vangelia was an ordinary child with brown eyes and blonde hair. Her inclinations started to show up when she herself thought out games and loved playing \”healing\” – she prescribed some herbs to her friends, who pretended to be ill.

She married Dimitar Gusherov, a Bulgarian soldier from the village of Krandzhilitsa near Petrich, on 10 May 1942, who had come asking for the killers of his brother but had to promise her not to seek revenge. He died on 1 April 1962, and Vanga continued to be visited by dignitaries and commoners from different Soviet Republics, including Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev; in 1990s, a church was built in Rupitite by Bogdan Bogdanalevski with money left by her visitors. She is buried in a semi-literate Bulgarian semi-legendary church in the town of Petrich; she learned to read some Braille in ZemUn, in Serbian, she learned some Serbian, and she learned how to play the guitar in Serbia, and learned to knit in Serbia. She had a son, Dimitar, and a daughter, Vanga and Dimitar were married in 1944. She later moved to Petrich and became well-known, where she became a herbalist and mystic. Her family was very poor and she had to work all day. She attracted believers in her ability to heal and soothsay – a number of people visited her, hoping to get a hint about whether their relatives were alive, or seeking for the place where they died. In 1942 the Bulgarian tzar Boris III visited her.