The Turzovka apparitions: Matúš Lašut's visions on Živčáková hill and the communist crackdown

Kysuce, in the north of what was then Czechoslovakia. Above the town of Turzovka rises Živčáková hill, 787 metres high. Near the top, a picture of the Virgin hung on a pine tree, and locals stopped there to pray. The year was 1958, the centenary of Lourdes.

Sunday 1 June 1958. Matúš Lašut, a 42-year-old forest worker, knelt at the picture on his rounds. About 12 metres away, on a small mound, he saw what he first took for a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes on a pedestal. She wore white robes girdled with a blue ribbon. A long veil flowed from her head. Her hands were joined, and a long rosary hung from her left hand.

"I understood it was not a statue, but a living being, standing on a cloud of light mist," he later stated. Her robe shone like snow lit by the sun. The veil sparkled as if strewn with diamonds. She shook her rosary and looked hard at him. He took it as a request to pray.

She never spoke a word. Lašut said he understood by inspiration, by pictures, or by reading a tablet below a map of the world, where explanations appeared "similar to movie subtitles." Yellow spread across the globe. Fiery rain fell. Explosions struck the sea near coasts. In the last picture, if people repented, the earth turned green and full of flowers.

Then lightning split the sky. In a large glowing triangle stood Christ in a white robe and red cloak. Three rays of light flashed from his shining heart. One struck Lašut and he fell. He heard a loud bell at noon and lost consciousness for about three hours. When he woke, his face was pressed into the soil, yet his clothes were dry and clean. A snow-white rosary lay beside him. Six more visions followed. The last came on 14 August 1958.

7 September 1958. Lašut told his story publicly. The next day about 1,000 pilgrims gathered on the hill. He had said he would be arrested within three days. Police came that same night. Charged with incitement, he was interrogated for four days without food or sleep, and signed 120 statements with identical content.

Then came psychiatry. About ten months at Bytčica near Žilina. A second arrest in September 1959. A third in September 1961, and a transfer to Kosmonosy in Bohemia until 12 December 1961. Accounts describe beatings, ice-cold showers, electroshocks and eight hypnotists. The authorities burned chapels, pictures and statues on the hill again and again. He was never convicted. One release note reportedly called him psychologically healthy, "only burdened by visions of the Mother of God."

The hill did not fall silent. A neighbour, Juraj Kavalek, struck the ground with a pickaxe as his dreams instructed, and a spring appeared. In 1963 over 500 people reportedly watched the sun seem to blaze "with flames bursting out of it." In 1964 Alois Lasák saw blood running down the face of a picture of Christ.

The regime spoke of visual delusions. No source accuses Lašut of fraud. The Church has not recognised the apparitions, and a medical review of reported healings after 1989 was unsatisfactory. The 1963 sun report invites comparison with Fátima. In 2008 Bishop Tomáš Galis declared Živčáková a Marian pilgrimage site and place of prayer.

In 2015 a church was consecrated on the hill before about 15,000 pilgrims. Lašut went to Mass daily and refused money. He died on 10 August 2010. Of his vision he said only this. "Why did I see Her? That's nothing unusual."