Baba Vanga

Baba Vanga (1911–1996) was a Bulgarian blind mystic whose alleged clairvoyant predictions attracted widespread attention. Many predictions attributed to her were recorded or popularized after her death.

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Prophecy: A claim that a message or event comes from a supernatural source or reveals future events. Her public image rests on predictions presented as foreknowledge.
Strumica: A city in southeastern North Macedonia, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire and later Yugoslavia. Vanga was born there in 1911, before the region’s borders changed.
Chernobyl disaster: The 1986 nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. A warning about a great disaster is often retrospectively linked to Vanga, though the attribution is disputed.
Scientific skepticism: The practice of evaluating claims through evidence, testability, and critical scrutiny. It asks whether predictions attributed to Vanga were documented and specific before events occurred.
Bulgarian folklore: Traditional narratives, beliefs, customs, and practices associated with Bulgaria. Stories about Vanga became part of modern Bulgarian popular tradition.
Petrich: A town in southwestern Bulgaria near the borders with Greece and North Macedonia. Vanga settled there and received visitors at her home.
September 11 attacks: The coordinated terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. A supposed prediction about steel birds is commonly attached to the attacks without a secure contemporary source.
Cold reading: A technique for making plausible personal statements from cues and broadly applicable observations. It offers a non-paranormal explanation for some apparently accurate personal readings.
Nostradamus: A sixteenth-century French astrologer whose cryptic writings are widely interpreted as predictions. Both figures became internationally famous through retrospective readings of ambiguous prophecies.
People's Republic of Bulgaria: The socialist Bulgarian state that existed from 1946 to 1990. State institutions monitored and at times organized access to her consultations.