Once upon a time, on a cold, dark night on the outskirts of Stromitza, a town in Ottoman territory close to the border with Bulgaria, a baby's cries were heard coming from a small hut inside. Paris gave a Searchev wrapped her newborn baby's bloody and vernick's covered body in a sheepskin rug and cradled her, while husband Panda watched on, his eyes damp with tears as he prayed for a miracle. The child, a girl, was two months premature, feeble and wrinkly.
With her eyes clenched tightly shut, she yawned and wriggled in her mother's arms. It was October third, nineteen eleven, and with little to their name, Paris Gava Panda had no option but to simply hope for the best. But slowly, day by day, as Panda rose early each morning to work in the fields and Paris Gava stayed at home to nurture their daughter, the child began gradually to gain
her strength. With the parents confident enough that the worst was behind them, it was decided finally to give her a name, as was the custom. The child's grandmother was promptly sent out into the street to ask a passer by for a suggestion, and so it was that the nameless baby girl became Vangelia, from the Greek meaning bearer of good news. In English, they called her Fanger for short. If Vanger's entry into the world was a precarious one,
the next ten years would prove little different. By the age of four, she'd lived through two Balkan Wars and the burning down for town. The following year, Fanga's mother, Paris Gava, died in childbirth along with her baby. After five years scraping through together, Fanga's father remarried. A young woman named Tanker was due to marry her beloved, a Bulgarian soldier, when her parents canceled the wedding at the
last minute. With the region around Strumitza recently coming under the control of the Kingdom of Serbia in nineteen nineteen in the aftermath of the First World War, a policy of cultural cleansing had been enacted, Tanker's parents were fearful that they would all be deported if the marriage went ahead,
so they offered their daughter to Panda instead. It was an awkward, unwanted beginning to a union, but by all accounts, they appeared to have made the most of it when two years later they welcomed their first child, a brother for Vanger named Vassal. While Panda worked as a shepherd in neighboring villages that by then eleven year old Fanger helped her stepmother to bring up the baby and take care of the house. It was a difficult, impoverished life,
but one that was filled with love. Nonetheless, Fanger, especially a bright and sociable girl who remained stoic in the face of so much misery, was much loved by all who knew her. And then a year later came the moment that would change Fanger's life forever, and if the stories are to be believed, the lives of many others too. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClane Smith. In nineteen twenty three, Fanger and her family moved a few miles east to Novo Cello, trekking By and Cart to
live with her uncle in his much larger home. Whilst there, one bright summer's day, then twelve year old Vanger and her two cousins were running an errand to fetch milk when they took a detour to a nearby spring. Then the world went suddenly dark around them. Looking up, they saw that a vast bank of cloud had blotted out the sun, like a veil being drawn across the sky. Seconds later, a violent gust of wind whipped across the hills, pulling at their bodies as it began to coil around them,
sending clouds of dust corkscrewing into the air. As Vanger's cousins screamed and ran for shelter, they could only watch in horror as Vanga was slowly lifted from the ground and taken high up into the ever growing vortex. When an eerie stillness returned to the land, the cousins lifted
their heads to mind that Fanger had completely vanished. A small search party was sent out to find her, and an hour later they found the girl lying unconscious in a field close to the spring, covered in leaves and broken branches. Then she began to stir my eyes, she cried in agony, I can't open my eyes. Fanga's face was smeared in soil and grit that had been pushed so deep into her eye sockets it scraped and scoured
her eyeballs. At the slightest movement. After being diagnosed with severe corneal abrasions, her father, with the help of friends and family, miraculously managed to find enough money for an operation. For it to work, however, fanger would be required to rest and eat healthily. But no sooner had she returned home, her father and stepmother had a second child, a boy
named Tomma. With the family already struggling for money, there was no chance of maintaining the diet required for her recovery, and now with one more mouth to feed, both Fangua's parents had to work, leaving her to look after the babies. As the weeks turned to months, Fangus's sight failed to return, and by the age of fourteen, it was completely gone
for ever. With fanguars parents struggling to feed their three children, it was suggested to Panda that he sent his daughter to the School of the Blind, a charity about five hundred kilometers north on the outskirts of Belgrade. Though it was painful to leave her family, Fangus soon learned to appreciate the opportunity that had been afforded her, being effectively the first time she'd ever been to school, she learned how to read Braille and how to navigate the world
independently without her sight. She even fell in love for the first time with a fellow pupil named Dimita. The pair fantasized about getting married and moving in together, but then news arrived from Strumitza. Fanga's stepmother, Tanka, and her unborn baby had died in childbirth, just like Fanga's mother.
Fanga's father requested that she returned home to help raise her siblings, who by then included two year old Leubka, a sister who'd been born while Vanger was in Belgrade, and so after only three years of school, Fanga said goodbye to Dimita and returned to Strumitza, where life continued much the way it had been before, as Panda worked whatever hours he could while Vanga cooked, cleaned, and took care of her brothers and sisters, until one day when
Panda returned, exhausted from work, despairing at his family's plight. That night, as Vanga lay in the bed she shared with her sister, her father's desperate words echoed through her head. As she drifted off to sleep. Through darkness, shapes began to materialize, coalescing into the fragmented pieces of an old abandoned village, the crumbling ruins of an old fortress standing prominently among them. There was a river close by, too, and a jagged black rock. Then something glinting in the light,
gold coins buried under the fortress. Vanguer woke with a start the following morning, unable to forget the strange dream. When she told her father about it, he thought nothing of it at first, but then remembered the tale of the nearby village, abandoned many years before after the outbreak of a plague. It too had a large fortress and
a giant, jagged rock just outside its walls. Panda's plans to investigate it, however, were curtailed when he broke his arm at work, and coming to his senses, he dismissed his daughter's unusual vision as nothing but a fantasy. It wasn't long after that did Panda returned from work once again, tired and embittered, as he explained to Vanger as he took a seat at the table, a sheep he'd been tending had gone missing, and now he was expected to
find the money to replace it. Fanger felt for the edges of the table as she brought a bowl of stew over for her father, then stopped suddenly and turned her face toward him. It was a man from Mono's Beethovo, she said, a village near by. He stole it. Panda looked to his daughter with confusion as she went on
to explain the man in great detail. The following day, her father made the short track to Monospetovo, where, much to his astonishment, he found the missing sheep in a flock belonging to a man identical to that which Fanga had described. With the outbreak of another European war in nineteen thirty nine, the Serbian government allied themselves with Hitler's Germany.
One morning, a then twenty eight year old Fanger and her twelve year old sister Lyubka went to collect water from the well outside the village of Hamzali, where they'd moved at the beginning of the year. As Lyubka drew the water, she saw her sister sitting with her face turned away from her, seemingly looking into the middle distant It's in a peculiar way, Vanger, she said, but Vanga
didn't reply. Lyubka dropped the bucket and rushed to her sister's side, worried that she might be having some kind of seizure. Then Vanga snapped out of it and told her sister not to worry. She was just talking to a man on horseback, she said, who was dressed in shining armor and wanted to use the well. Liubka looked about, confused. The two of them were completely alone. The following year, Fanga's father, Panda, died from blood poisoning, and Vanga and
her siblings moved back to their home in Stramitza. Soon after, Fanga claimed she was visited again by the man in shining armor, who came with a message saying that soon everything will turn upside down in the world and many people will die. The man also insisted that Vanga should stay in the village to speak of the living and the dead, and that she mustn't be afraid. A great war was coming to their home land that would begin
in April nineteen forty one. A few months later, on April eighth, nineteen forty one, the German army marched across what was by then the Yugoslavian border and into Vanga's country. As words spread that the German army were nearing the
town of Stramitza. Those who hadn't already left to fight, or who had been captured by the German army and sent to work camps, hid in barns or cellars, or abandoned their homes entirely as they sought shelter in the nearby hills and forests, except for the blind Vanger and her sister Lyubka, who had nowhere else to go. Before long, the ominous roar of armored vehicles and the heavy steps of booted feet drew near to their home, until one day a German soldier arrived outside and kicked down their
front door. The young man took one look at the pitiful scene inside, and, finding not even food to steal, simply left Vanger and Leubka alone. Some time later, a neighbor of Fangers appeared at the door, coming to check if she and her sister were still alive. Stepping inside, she found Fanger standing quietly in the corner. At first, Vanger didn't move, Then slowly she turned around and fixed the neighbor with an unsettling stare, the whites of her
upturned eyes seeming to look straight at her. Then a strange, unfamiliar voice came from her lips. It spoke of people and far off places and seemingly random events. Then the neighbor realized Fanga was talking about all the men from the village who'd left to fight in the war, revealing each of their stories from where they were to whether they were dead or alive, and when, if at all,
they would be coming home. In shock, the neighbor called on others to come and witness the miracle for themselves, and soon women from all across Dramitza turned up at Vangar's door, desperate to know more about their missing loved Once a missus Nartanoff came in tears, looking for news about her husband Milan, who she hadn't heard from in months. Fanga told her not to cry, because Milan was safe,
albeit tired and hungry. He was hiding in a nearby ravine, she said, in nothing but his underwear, having just escaped activity. Vanger told the woman to go home and prepare some clean clothes and a hot meal for him that night. Natinov did just that and sat up waiting for her husband to appear, But as the hours went by and he failed to show sleep finally overcame her. It was sometime around midnight when she awoke to the sound of
someone knocking against her window. When she pulled back the curtain, there stood her husband in the front yard, his pale, skeletal figure lit up by the moonlight, all but naked in his muddy and sodden underwear. This podcast is sponsored by better Help. Is there something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals? Better help will assess your needs and match you with your own license to professional theorist. It's not a crisis line or self help.
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That's better Help dot com forward slash unexplained zero. In nineteen forty three, Fanger was approached by a stranger and told to expect an important visitor with no time for airs and graces. She had altered nothing of her home when one afternoon, a car pulled up outside and the
same stranger once again appeared at the door. The man then stepped back as another man entered the property, but before he could speak, Fanga turned to him sharply and said, your power is growing and to spread wide, but remember the date August twenty eight. The man then left without saying a word. At the sound of a door slamming shut and the heavy car driving away Lyubka informed her sister that the man was the Bulgarian King Boris the Third.
About the same time, in the town of Krinsolitza. Dimatar Kushkaroff, a soldier in the Bulgarian army, tossed and turned in his sleep as images of his brother being brutally attacked and murdered flashed before him. Then a face materialized from out of the chaos, while he recognized as the blind woman he'd heard about in Straumitza. The following day, Dimatar paid a visit to Vanger's home, only for her to tell him immediately that she knew why he was there.
He wanted to know who'd killed his brother, she said. As Dimatar looked at the woman dumbfounded, she continued that she would give him the answer, but only if he promised not to seek revenge and allow the justice system to do its work. Dimatar agreed, and over the next few months he returned often to Vanger's home, intrigued by her apparent gifts. Slowly, over time, the pair fell in love,
and in May nineteen forty two, they were married. Over the next year, having now moved across the border to petrich in Bulgaria to live with Dimaita, Fanger continued dispensing what knowledge she claimed to have about men fighting in
the war to anyone who came asking for it. It isn't quite known what King Boris the Third made of their alleged encounter, but as August nineteen forty three came around, he found himself in an increasingly delicate position, having concluded that he had little choice but to ally himself with Adolf Hitler, believing it the safest option for his country.
He is said to have spent a large part of the war resisting Hitler's demands that he deport tens of thousands of Bulgaria's Jewish population into the hands of the German government. Though many Bulgarian Jews were put into forced labor to build roads in Bulgaria, it has been argued that this was in fact a ploy to avoid having to send them out of the country, with the full understanding that to do so would mean almost certain death.
Boris also resisted calls to send Bulgarian troops to fight against the Soviet Union's army, since many Bulgarians supported the nation. After being summoned to another meeting with Hitler in August nineteen forty three, King Boris the Third returned to Bulgaria, seeming a little unwell. On August twenty eighth, the day that Fanga is alleged to have warned him about King Boris died. Some have suggested that he was poisoned at
Hitler's request for his refusal to cooperate. As word of Vanger's apparent gifts spread throughout the Balkans, more and more people came from far and wide to seek her knowledge. Some were afraid of the spiky and assertive blind woman, believing she was a witch, while others questioned if the stories and her predictions were exactly what people said they were, But the stories kept coming. In nineteen forty four, Fanga's elder brother, Vasil, told his sister that he was leaving
to join the Yugoslav partisan movement. Fanga begged him not to go, warning her brother that he'd be dead by the age of twenty three if he did. Meanwhile, Vanga's husband Dimita was also sent back to the front to fight in Greece. Though he would return, albeit severely ill, having contracted malaria, Vasil would not be so lucky. It is said that after blowing up a bridge in order to hamper the retreating German army, Vasil was tracked down
by German soldiers to a nearby village. When the villagers were given the ultimatum to turn Vasil over or face the consequences, the young partisan is said to have given himself up, after which he was allegedly brutally beaten and eventually shot to death, his body left to rot in the open as a warning to any others who might feel inspired by his actions. Vasil, just as Vanguer had apparently warned, was twenty three when he died after the war, As Vanger's fame continued to grow, she soon came to
the attention of paranormal researchers. One afternoon, a young scientist named Georgi Lozonov traveled to Vanger's home to find a crowd of almost three hundred people milling about outside. Many had come on a pilgrimage simply to get a glimpse of the avowed mystic. When Lozonov's turn to speak with her came, Vanguer turned to him in her inimitable way, her eyes now kept permanently shut, and said, you're a doctor, and you've come to test me. Lozonov smiled with disbelief.
Lozonov would go on to lead a Bulgarian government funded laboratory known as the Institute of Suggestology and Parapsychology, and devoted a large part of his career to investigating the possibility of clairvoyance. He would become famous for developing a process that he termed suggest Apedia, which, according to Lozonov, enabled people to learn a second language at a faster than average rate. What brought him most joy in his
professional career, however, was Vangor. Over twenty years, Losonov continued to visit her to record the many predictions she made about all manner of people, and claimed that roughly eighty percent of them could be considered accurate. By the nineteen sixties, Baba Vanger, as she would come to be known, was a much loved iconic figure in Bulgarian society, who was even said to have been placed on the government payroll as a member of the civil service for her services
to the people. After her husband Dematar died in nineteen sixty two, she entered a permanent state of mourning and was rarely seen without a black shawl clasped around her head. Fanger often said that when she met with a stranger, she was struck instantly by a reel of footage playing out the entirety of that individual's life in her mind. It was from this that she drew her apparent knowledge
and predictions. Other times, she claimed that invisible creatures whose origin she couldn't explain, communicated the information to her within human voices. Many continued to question her apparent psychic abilities, with some even speculating that these invisible creatures were in fact the Bulgarian state intelligence agency, who fared information to Fanger in return for money. With this information, as is claimed, she was able to fool people into thinking she knew
things about them that she couldn't possibly know. Once she had them on side, she could then extract more information about the individual to pass on to the intelligence agency. More recently, Fanger has become known for a string of extraordinary global predictions, such as apparently predicting the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September eleventh, two thousand to one, and the destruction wrought by the two
thousand and four Indian Ocean earthquake and soon army. It is also said that she predicted Barack Obama's presidency and that Donald Trump's presidency would mark the beginning of the end for America. Further to this, she is also said to predicted that Europe would cease to exist after twenty seventeen and President Putin of Russia would become lord of the world. The fact that such claims tend to appear first on Russian message boards suggest there is good reason
to question their validity. In August nineteen seventy six, Baba Vanga was visited by Yugoslav superstar the singer and actor Sylvana Armenelich, who was on tour in Bulgaria at the time. Fanga rarely asked for any money for her predictions, but Sylvana insisted she wanted to give her something. No, replied the blind woman, you don't have to pay anything. I don't want to talk to you. Go now and come back in three months. Wait, actually, you won't be able
to come. Two months later, the thirty seven year old Sylvana performed in Belgrade with the Serbian National Orchestra. Afterwards, she and her twenty five year old sister, who was five months pregnant at the time, decided to get an early night and planned to drive home in Sylvanah's car. Mire drag Yassevitch, the head of the Serbian National Orchestra
was tired too, and offered to drive them. Roughly thirty minutes later, with the Assovich at the wheel, Sylvana's forward grenada feared across into the opposite lane and plowed headlong at a hundred and thirty kilometers an hour into a truck coming the other way. The entire front part of the car disappeared under the front of the truck, killing all three passengers on the spot. By nineteen ninety six, Babavanger, now eighty four years old, was suffering from breast cancer,
tired and weary from life. In July, it is said that she made the prediction that she would die on August eleventh. The following month, almost completely incapacitated by the cancer, she was moved to a hospital to receive palliative care. On the morning of August eleventh, Vanger requested to be bathed and dressed in a clean set of clothes. When the process was finished, she lay back on her bed and held her face to the ceiling. Now I'm fine,
she said. Then, at just after nine am, she claimed to see people in the room with her, her family and loved ones from the mother she'd lost at only four years old, as well as her father and her beloved Dimita. They've come for me, she said, as she made movements with her hand as though she were stroking the head of a young child. And then, at ten
am on the day she predicted, Baba Vanger died. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can now do so via Patreon To receive access to add three episodes. Just go to patron dot com, forward slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones,
among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
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