Ballinspittle moving statue

Its forty years today since the Ballinspittle moving statue in county Cork were reported. Do you remember it? Did you see them move? It occurred for the first time on 22 July 1985 when locals claimed to have witnessed the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary moving spontaneously at the Ballinspittle Grotto. The Irish Examiner broke the story on 25 July, a reporter having witnessed a large crowd gathered in the Cork village the previous evening, two days after the first reported sighting of the statue moving:

HUNDREDS of people gathered in fog and rain last night to pray and sing hymns before a "moving" statue of the Blessed Virgin near a small West Cork village. The first movements of the statue in a hillside grotto near Ballinspittle were noticed on Monday at 10 p.m. by two women who had stopped to pray. The word of their experience soon spread and throughout Tuesday and into the early hours of yesterday morning, people streamed to the grotto to watch and pray. Almost all those who saw the statue move were reluctant to talk about their experience. However, two young men, Kevin Hannon (23) and Gerard O'Donovan (17) told the Examiner they were absolutely positive they had seen a movement of the head and shoulders at about 11.45 on Tuesday night. Kevin, who was watching the statue — about 30 feet up a hillside — through binoculars, said the movement was "to and fro." Both said the experience was "something of a shock." A lady in her twenties who didn't want to be named also confirmed that she had seen movements of the statue. ‘My impression was that the shoulders were swaying from side to side’. Others who saw it said there was a backward and forward movement of the head and nearly everyone who saw it said the statue was shivering or moving.

For more information search the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive (www.irishnewsarchive.com )