The Lady in Blue
Spanish missionaries in New Mexico were told that a woman in blue had already visited and taught the people. A nun in Spain said she had been there without leaving her convent.
What was reported
In 1629, Jumano people came to a Spanish mission in New Mexico asking to be baptised, saying a lady dressed in blue had come among them and told them to seek out the friars. She had appeared to them many times, they said, though no Spanish woman had travelled there.
In Spain, a young abbess, María de Jesús de Ágreda, said that she had been carried to the Americas in spirit, hundreds of times, while in deep prayer, to teach the people there. A friar who interviewed her said she described the land and its people in convincing detail.
Explanations offered
Sceptics suggest the friars, eager for a miracle, shaped what they were told, and that her descriptions could have come from what she had heard of the missions. Believers see it as a case of bilocation, being in two places at once. She later became a well-known writer, and the case has never been resolved.
- When
- 1620s
- Where
- Jumano lands, New Mexico and Texas, USA
- Witnesses
- Jumano people and Spanish friars
- Status
- Unexplained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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