At Oakland Cemetery in the American city of Iowa City, Iowa, there is the famous 2.6-meter bronze statue in the shape of a winged angel, erected in 1912 by the Czech-American sculptor Mario Korbel. Locals call the statue the Black Angel and attribute sinister supernatural properties to it. It is argued that if you ignore all warnings and touch the blackened metal, then you will surely die soon.
The statue stands on the grave of Teresa Dolezal and her family. Teresa is known to have moved to Iowa City with her 18-year-old son Eddie and worked as a midwife here. The guy died in 1891 of meningitis and was buried in Auckland Cemetery. Dolezal left for Oregon, where she met mutual love and married Nicholas Feldevert. However, the American woman's family happiness did not last long, since her husband left this world in 1911, just a few years after the wedding.
Teresa returned to Iowa City and turned to renowned sculptor Mario Corbel to create a statue of an angel that would tower over her son's body and her husband's ashes. No one knows why, but Korbel poured the statue that looks down to the ground, while the other angels in the cemeteries tend to look up to the heavens. Rumors that the monument was unkind spread among the superstitious townspeople as soon as the strange sculpture was delivered here by train.
Teresa died in 1924, her ashes were buried with her husband and son. Years passed, and the gleaming golden statue began to turn black, starting from the eyes. The blackness slowly spread to the angel's head, then to the whole body, transforming the bright sculpture into a terrifying dark cemetery figure.
Mysterious Black Angel bringing death
Some local residents whispered that the deceased was a witch who sold her soul to the devil. Others suggested that she killed her relatives, and the angel darkened to expose the killer. According to others, Teresa swore to the angel that she would always be faithful to her deceased husband, but she did not fulfill this promise, so the monument turned black.
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There were also those who, on the contrary, considered our heroine a very faithful and pious woman. Such people say that Teresa was very grieving after the death of her son and husband, and therefore soon fell ill and died. The eyes of the statue turned black overnight, like an angel himself wept with sorrow.
There are several known cases when, after interacting with the Black Angel, people suddenly died. For example, one story tells of four young men who went to a cemetery on Halloween and urinated on a statue. When they returned home, they had an accident and died on the spot.
In another story, a teenager appears who sawed off a statue's finger with a hacksaw. The next day, the guy disappeared, and a week later he was found drowned in a local lake. Most surprising of all, the finger returned to the Black Angel, as if it had never been sawed off.
It is noteworthy that a couple of years ago, the presenters of the American television program "Ghost Highway", dedicated to the paranormal, visited the Oakland cemetery and, using a thermal imager, saw how a bronze sculpture radiates heat. And this despite the fact that it was winter. Thus, even if we put aside all unverified rumors, the Black Angel still definitely hides something mysterious, mystically inexplicable …
Victoria Prime