The Hrushiv apparitions at the Holy Trinity church, Soviet Ukraine, 1987

Hrushiv is a village in the Drohobych district of Lviv oblast, in western Ukraine. Its wooden church of the Holy Trinity was consecrated in 1878, where a small chapel had once stood beside a healing spring. The Soviet authorities closed it in 1959, or by some accounts in the late 1940s.

April 26, 1987. The first anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. A 12-year-old girl, named in the sources as Maria Kizyn or Maria Kizym, was in her family's yard about 100 metres from the chapel. On its balcony she saw the Virgin in dark clothing. She called her mother at once. Her mother and some neighbours came. They all saw her there too.

A BBC broadcast that November said the Virgin appeared in a halo and luminous crown. Other accounts describe a bright light covering the church, an "impressive silver dazzle" from which the Virgin floated above the cupola.

Word spread. Estimates run from 5,000 to 7,000 people near the chapel on some days to about 70,000 arriving daily. Some writers put the total near 500,000. Pilgrims lit candles in a huge circle round the chapel and peered through its windows and keyholes. Some reported a golden mist, a luminous hand, lamp-lights in the windows at night. Believers spoke of the "Pure Image". Non-believers spoke of a "Silhouette". Some saw nothing at all.

One pilgrim from Kremenchuk, who later wrote as a_avvakum, came in May. The day was cold and grey. Above the balcony was "a silhouette of a Woman in black", visible to the waist, in what looked like monastic dress. The figure "slowly bends toward the east and slowly rises again to the middle." Someone shouted: "Look, look, people, She is moving!" It was clearest from about 50 metres. At 20 metres it dissolved into a shimmer, "like above hot surface."

Traffic was stopped about 2 km from the village. Militia stood on duty, and plain-clothes KGB officers moved through the crowd. Three priests were held on a bus and asked: "Confess: are you participants in an anti-scientific, anti-Soviet subversion?" Canvas was hung over the balcony and paper over the windows. People said they still saw the figure.

The press joined in. Leninska Molod ran "Sensations around Hrushiv" on 26 May 1987. Soviet Central Television aired a brief report in June. On 19 August Literaturnaya Gazeta published "Miracle in Hrushiv" by K. Sergeyev, which drew even more pilgrims. In Moscow News, Vladimir Shevelev wrote: "A miracle is a serious matter and needs scientific examination." By most accounts the visions ended on the feast of the Dormition in August.

Josyp Terelya, a Greek-Catholic dissident who had seen visions in prison, said he also saw the Virgin at Hrushiv. He recorded messages dated 14 and 16 May 1987. They called Chernobyl "a reminder and a sign for the whole world" and said Ukraine "will become an independent state." These words come from Terelya's later writings, not from the girl's first report.

Sceptics point elsewhere. A local woman told the crowd: "People, what are you looking at, it's just a pillar." Pravda reportedly blamed an abnormal refraction of light, or hallucinations caused by Chernobyl radiation, though that article has not been traced. No scientific study was made. No formal church verdict has been found.

Liturgy returned to the Holy Trinity church on 7 July 1988. In May 2011, two schoolboys reported that the statue was weeping.