Can a person turn to stone? Pagan legends and biblical stories show that this is quite real and happened more than once in antiquity. Think of the stories about Medusa the Gorgon or Lot's rebellious wife. Modern scientists do not exclude that such a transformation is possible in reality. The question is, by whose will and how does it happen?
This amazing story happened a few years ago in Samara … “The groom came to Zoya for Christmas fast. Zoe's devout mother begged her daughter not to throw a party on the day of the fast, but she could not be convinced. Mother goes to church, and Zoya meets her friends with young people, a total of fourteen. Nikolai, the groom, should appear fifteenth, but he is not. They wait about an hour, and then they start having fun. They dance. Zoe has no one to dance with. And so she declares: "I have another Nikolai!" - and removes the icon of St. Nicholas from the wall.
The girl is dancing, holding the icon in her hands. Girlfriends persuade: "Put the icon back in its place!" Zoya exclaims in response: "If there is a God, he will punish me!"
A scene from the film "Miracle" (2009) about the case of the petrified Zoya
A few moments - and the incredible happened. The roar and noise completely drowned out the music. A blinding light flared up - as if lightning had flashed, and as if a tornado had passed through the room. In a dazzling column of light, Zoe with the icon froze. The rest did not yet understand what had happened, everything seemed to be returning to its place. Someone smiled tightly. And then it got even worse. Everyone saw something for which no words can be found.
Zoe stood like a marble statue. They approached her - and were convinced of the impossible: her body became a stone! The guests were blown away by the wind - they left to spread the news of what had happened throughout the city. Zoe's mother fainted when she returned from church and was sent to the hospital for several days. So the girl stood in the room for 128 days and nights. Her heart was beating under the stone, his beats were bugged. Doctors tried to inject, but the needles of the syringes broke: they could just as well try to inject a marble column.
Many curious people flocked to Zoe's house, others even entered her room. Soon the police appeared and stopped this "pilgrimage". Day and night, policemen kept watch, changing three times during the day. Zoya did not eat, although there were attempts to feed her.
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She just couldn't eat. It is hard to imagine what her mother went through as she prayed all night long. The youngest of the policemen could not stand it: it was considered especially difficult duty, and hard nights left many of them with early gray hair as a keepsake, because at night the girl screamed. Deathly silence during the day, heartbreaking screams at night. Gradually, the content of the girl's cries-pleas became clearer, gained stability: “Pray, pray for our sins! The world is perishing in sin! The earth is burning in lawlessness!"
So many nights in a row.
"He who punished, he will have mercy!" - allegedly answered the highest church rank when he was asked to take part in the fate of Zoya.
The influence of unearthly forces on events was obvious. And neither mother, nor compassionate people, nor priests - no one could return the icon of St. Nicholas to its place: the girl's petrified hands did not give it to anyone. Only on the feast of the Nativity of Christ did Father Seraphim manage to free the image of St. Nicholas and return it to its place. Before that, he sanctified the entire room.
Metropolitan Nicholas of Moscow came, served a prayer service and consoled: "We must wait for the great feast of the Resurrection of Christ." Another significant visit: an elder came to the girl. Where he came from - no one knew and does not know. He asked her: "What, tired of standing?"
The militiamen twice refused the elder, did not let him into the apartment. Only the third time, on the eve of the Annunciation, was he admitted and uttered these three words. No one heard what Zoya answered, who was usually silent during the day. But even if she answered him, it would be exactly what he expected to hear … The police entered the room to escort him to the exit, but did not find anyone. The elder disappeared.
On Easter, Zoya returned to her normal state. Her body was freed from the stone bonds, became elastic and soft. They put her to bed.
"Who fed you?" - asked the girl.
“The pigeons fed me,” Zoya answered.
On the third day of Easter, she died …"
“One could think of something more believable,” I thought after reading and forgot about this story. But it had a sequel. In the spring of 1997, the III International Conference “Special states of human consciousness. Experimental and theoretical research in parapsychology”.
During the break, I discussed with one of the participants - let's call him Yakov Ivanovich - the report I had just heard. And Yakov Ivanovich said that in his youth he witnessed a real "miracle" with a negative sign. With the Komsomol propaganda brigade, he traveled to remote villages in the Northern Urals, conducting anti-religious propaganda.
This was the time when, at the direction of the then Secretary General Khrushchev, churches were closed everywhere. They, the Komsomol members, had to explain to the “irresponsible” that there is no God, and therefore his temples are not needed.
In one of the villages, their leader Mikhail learned that before the church was closed, the villagers had taken the icons out of it to their homes and that the main, "prayed", was taken by an old woman named Alevtina. And now, if someone in the family is seriously ill, everyone goes to her to pray. And it supposedly helps better than any medicine.
Naturally, Mikhail could not pass by such "blatant obscurantism." Komsomol members in a crowd went to the old woman, where he imperiously demanded to hand over to him the "painted board" embarrassing people. Alevtina long persuaded him not to touch the icon, but the Komsomol "leader" was adamant.
In the end, she gave the "prayed", tearfully begging not to desecrate it, so that trouble would not happen, but to transfer it to the local museum of local lore. The old woman turned out to be literate. To calm her down, Mikhail promised to fulfill the request.
However, when in the evening they stoked the stove, and the Komsomol members were spending the night in one of the classes of the local small school, their leader brought the icon and declared that he would send it into the fire with his own hand, so as not to mess with old junk.
Mikhail opened the oven door, took the icon in both hands and already made a movement to throw it, when suddenly he froze, Yakov Ivanovich told. At first we didn't understand anything. Someone said: "Give it up, what are you waiting for." But he did not answer, continuing to stand in a strange position, as in a child's game with the command: "Freeze!"
The oven door was closed and Mikhail was harassed. And something incomprehensible was happening to him: his eyes were wide open, a half-smile, half-grimace froze on his face. Most importantly, he could not move his arm or leg, bend or straighten. All our efforts have come to nothing. Someone suggested taking Mikhail to the newly heated bathhouse and steaming it properly.
They took it away, somehow undressed, although they couldn't take off their shirt and T-shirt because of the icon. So they put it on the shelves along with the icon. They poured a couple of buckets of water into the stove and began to haunt Mikhail with brooms, massage, and stretch his muscles. No sense. Only the icon slipped out of his hands. But nobody paid attention to this. To avoid getting in the way, she was pushed under the bench.
No one fell asleep that night. A little light, they wrapped our Mikhail in a sheepskin coat, loaded him into a lorry and took him to the regional hospital. What happened to him later, I don't know. The winter holidays are short and I left for the city. Later, I heard from someone that Mikhail was sent to some medical institute a few months later, since local doctors were powerless to help him.
In the opinion of my interlocutor, this was a typical case of remote energy-informational influence. Today, it has allegedly been experimentally established that psychics are able to mentally influence a person's state. The effects of such a therapeutic effect are recorded and studied. It is logical to assume that, in principle, a negative impact is also possible. That which from olden times was called "send spoilage".
Unfortunately, orthodox science does not consider this to be real and does not study such cases. Therefore, there is no reliable data. And those who can "send damage", of course, keep their gift secret and do not offer to take part in experiments.
Apparently, the old woman Alevtina was a strong psychic and put Mikhail into a trance when she felt that they were going to burn her icon. We have seen more than once how hypnotists do it: the human body becomes solid like a log. It is placed with its neck and ankles on the backs of chairs, and it is held in this position for a fairly long time.
It was then that I remembered the Samara story. But there was no one there who could play the role of a psychic. This means that the remote energy-informational impact was provided from somewhere outside, from another dimension.
- You mean to say that God himself acted? But then why did he not come to the fore every time icons, including miraculous ones, were destroyed? - Yakov Ivanovich doubted. - After all, such cases during the existence of Christianity are countless. As you wish, but I believe that we are talking about remote extrasensory influence.
And yet, the more I later thought about this phenomenon, the more clearly I realized that the matter was not so simple.
Let's start with mythology. It features such heroines as the sisters Sfeno, Euryale and Medusa, known by the nickname Gorgon. Winged, with a body covered with scales, and snakes instead of hair on the head. The youngest, Medusa, died at the hands of Perseus. Moreover, since the gaze of any of the sisters turned all living things into stone, the brave Perseus decapitated Medusa, not looking at her, but using his copper shield as a mirror.
The Bible tells the story of Lot's disobedient wife, who violated the prohibition not to look back at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by the heavenly fire, and turned into a pillar of salt.
In later legends and traditions of different peoples, there are often references to people whom the gods turned into stones and rocks as punishment for specific misdeeds. Such "sights" are found in many countries. Moreover, these stones and rocks do not always resemble the outlines and especially the sizes of people.
Apparently, they were given the names of the victims of the observed cases of "petrification" for the edification of their descendants. Another thing is important here: now we are increasingly convinced that no matter how fantastic myths, legends, traditions seem, they are based on real facts, only fancifully processed into an artistic form.
Is it possible at all to turn a person into stone?
In the full sense of the word - no, if we mean such rocks as, for example, granite. But there are other minerals, the same limestone or silicon, which are found in the body. It's all about their concentration. If it turns out to be extremely high, then the person will really seem to be stone.
On the other hand, in our body, every second there are countless biochemical reactions, during which some substances are constantly converted into others. Many people know this from their own sad experience, when the deposition of salts begins and the joints bend with difficulty, that is, in fact, they petrify. If this happens to the cells of the skin and muscles, a person will turn into a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife.
Of course, in life, salt deposition proceeds slowly and is the result of malfunctions with metabolism, elimination of toxins and other failures in the work of various body systems. However, immediate noticeable consequences of biochemical reactions are also possible.
Perhaps the most common case is when a person suddenly turns gray after severe stress. But a change in hair pigmentation is, in principle, the same biochemical process of replacing some substances with others! Meanwhile, medicine is also aware of cases of the instant appearance of cataracts - the transformation of liquid protein in the lens of the eye into a solid one, although the reasons for this are not clear.
So, let's summarize. The body is capable of instant tissue remodeling. The command for this can be given with the help of an energy-information signal from the outside. Although such examples have not been registered with psychics, it cannot be argued that there cannot be a subject in the Universe to whom this is but forces.
Who he is - God or the Supreme Intelligence, we do not know. But the fact that he is present in our world is indisputable. As Academician Sakharov once remarked, "something is outside matter and its laws." And the anger of this supreme being can be terrible.
Pavel Gross