Conyers Apparitions: Nancy Fowler's Final Public Message (1998)

13 October 1990. Nancy Fowler, a homemaker raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the Virgin Mary appeared to her at her farmhouse outside Conyers, Georgia. It happened again on the 13th of each month. From the Apparition Room inside the house, she relayed messages "to all citizens of the United States" over loudspeakers to pilgrims in the fields. The schedule deliberately echoed Fátima, and its "miracle of the sun" of 13 October 1917.

The crowds grew. Several hundred came at first. By 1993, groups as large as 80,000 were not uncommon. Many came from South Florida, Mexico, Haiti and the rest of Latin America. Prayers were said in English, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. After May 1994 the public messages came once a year. Always on 13 October.

Tuesday, 13 October 1998. The Associated Press put the crowd at about 100,000. Fowler described entering a "deep sleep that is wide awake" during a message. Then she relayed what she said were Mary's words. "If you are worried about the future, put not your attention to these matters." And: "I love you all, my dear children."

Angie Moogalin had come from Chester, Virginia. "I come because of all the miracles I have experienced," she said. Christina Peschard had come from Zacatecas, Mexico. "We in Mexico and Latin America believe in the power of Maria." Some attendees said their cameras captured images of Mary along with strange colors and shapes emanating from the sun.

Over eight years, the reports piled up. The sun spinning and changing colors. Strange flashes of light. The scent of rose petals filling the air. Rosaries and medals turning gold. Mystical light auras around statues and crosses. Fowler reported the Virgin Mary hovering above a pasture near her home. On 13 June 1993, a statue of the Virgin Mary was said to have a heartbeat. Water from the Blessed Well was believed blessed.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta never opened a formal investigation. On 19 September 1991, Archbishop James P. Lyke forbade priests to lead pilgrimages or celebrate sacraments at the site. Archbishop John F. Donoghue repeated the directives in 1994, while acknowledging: "Conversions are taking place." In 1998 the Vicar General, Msgr. Peter Dora, called it "a claim of private revelation by an individual." At Fowler's own initiative, Prof. Richard Castañón of the Catholic University of Bolivia ran neurological tests on her. The National Catholic Register reported that they ruled out psychiatric or physiological causes.

The skeptic Joe Nickell came at the request of an Atlanta TV station. He put a stethoscope to the heartbeat statue. "I found that there were no surprise heartbeats detectable by my stethoscope," he wrote. People, he concluded, were feeling the pulse in their own thumbs. A metallurgical test on a "golden" rosary found "no presence of gold." Nickell put such colors down to yellowish tarnish or worn silver plating. He placed Conyers alongside Medjugorje and its sun miracles, warning that some pilgrims have reportedly suffered retinal damage at some sites. Some skeptical readings called the whole affair a scam. No proven hoax was found.

Fowler said her private visions continued daily. Title to the farm passed to the nonprofit Our Loving Mother's Children Inc. A Byzantine-rite parish, Mother of God Catholic Church, was set up nearby. Fowler died on 10 January 2012. For eight years, a Georgia pasture had drawn the faithful by the tens of thousands. All of them looking up.