Blind mystic Baba Vanga’s alleged Syria prediction

The stunning fall of the Syrian regime to armed rebels has led to claims that blind mystic Baba Vanga foretold the events as marking the start of World War III.

The stunning fall of the Syrian regime to armed rebels has led to claims that “blind mystic” Baba Vanga foretold the events as marking the start of World War III.

The famous Bulgarian psychic, who died in 1996, has long been claimed to have predicted a number of world-changing events including the Covid pandemic, 9/11 and even Princess Diana’s death.

Syrian Islamist rebels, led by former al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS), this week seized control of Damascus after a lightning offensive and toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

That sparked fresh claims that Vanga, dubbed the “Nostradamus of the Balkans”, once delivered the following prophecy: “When Syria falls, a great war between the West and the East will follow. In the spring, a conflict will ignite in the East, leading to a Third World War — a war that will destroy the West.”

People make their way towards the Sednaya prison in Damascus looking for loved ones. Picture: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP

However, a Google search does not turn up any references to the alleged quote online prior to this month.

It seems to have first appeared in Indian media outlets before making its way to UK tabloids.

Previous reports of Vanga’s alleged prophecies have claimed she predicted a major war in 2025, with a conflict in Europe set to devastate the continent’s population.

The reference to Syria appears new, however.

And there’s one minor problem — like all of the other quotes attributed to the 84-year-old, it appears to be entirely made up.

A Syrian rebel fires into the air to celebrate the capture of the city of Hama. Picture: Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP

No evidence

“She wasn’t the type of person who had a diary or was documenting a lot,” Viktoria Vitanova-Kerber, an academic who has studied Vanga for years, told news.com.au earlier this year.

“The prophecies are not documented … so we will never know what she really said or not, because as I said, there are almost no documents about anything in her life.”

That begs the obvious question — where do these alleged predictions that surface in media reports from time to time actually come from?

According to Ms Vitanova-Kerber, some of the claims come from people who visited Vanga for readings back when she was alive.

“People who knew her or who visited her once or twice … and now in the present time, they come up with new memories,” she said.

“They say, ‘Oh I forgot that she said this and that.’ For example, if she said, ‘In future there will be great sickness spreading,’ then in 2021, of course, people said, ‘Oh, she meant Covid for sure.’ In most cases, those are just inventions or constructions.”

Another person pushing claims that Vanga made all these accurate historical predictions is her niece who used to live with the mystic.

“She claims to have written down some things [that Vanga], but she has never shown them,” Ms Vitanova-Kerber said.

“In a 2021 interview she … came up with the information that allegedly Baba Vanga had predicted Covid as early as 1988, but again, she’s not giving any proof. She says she’s waiting for the right moment [to release the evidence].”

‘Blind mystic’ Baba Vanga died in 1996. Picture: Supplied

There’s also a Russian journalist who claims to have secret tapes containing some of Vanga’s predictions, but the tapes have never been verified, and most of the claims allegedly relate to Russia’s primacy over the world.

There’s one other reason why Ms Vitanova-Kerber is sceptical about Vanga’s historical predictions.

“Most of her prophecies, they were not political, they were of a private matter,” she said. “It’s only after her death, I would argue, that people started interpreting these things in a political sense.”

As Vanga’s fame grew during her lifetime, so too did the interest in proving or disproving her abilities.

“In the 1970s there was a research team of psychiatrists, neuroscientists … who tried to find out [if Vanga was psychic] with the methods of hard science,” Ms Vitanova-Kerber said.

“They put electrodes on her head and were trying to measure her brain activity … but they couldn’t find much.”

The researchers then sent out questionnaires to thousands of people who had visited Vanga and asked them to report back with her accuracy.

“The results were kind of positive, but still so-so,” Ms Vitanova-Kerber said. “So even this study couldn’t prove or disprove anything. At the end of the day, we will never know.”

Claims of her alleged predictions of world events surfaced after her death. Picture: Supplied

Who was Baba Vanga?

Vanga was “probably one of the most popular Bulgarians of all time”, according to Ms Vitanova-Kerber.

“She was born in 1911 into a poor family and her mother died when she was a child. Then, at the age of 12, she lost her eyesight in a storm.”

It wasn’t until the 1940s that Baba discovered she had ‘psychic abilities’ and she allegedly used those powers to help people find lost soldiers towards the end of World War II.

After the war, her fame grew.

“People were consulting her, not only the people from her town, but also from the whole country and people from abroad,” Ms Vitanova-Kerber said. “And by the 1960s, people were queuing in front of her door.”

The majority of people were asking Vanga questions of a personal nature, such as, “Will my daughter ever get married?”, or, “Am I going to have children?”

“She died in 1996 but her fame didn’t,” Ms Vitanova-Kerber said. “And as you have seen, there are a lot of articles with predictions she allegedly made [that are still being published] today.”

According to Vanga’s supporters, the Bulgarian mystic predicted several historical events in advance, including the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000.

Vanga also allegedly predicted that an African-American would be elected as the 44th President of the United States, which is exactly what happened when Barack Obama won the 2008 election.

According to articles online, Vanga predicted humans will make contact with aliens in 2130 and that there’ll be some kind of war against the aliens in 3005.

It’s also claimed she predicted the world will end in 5079.