By Adri-Ann Peters
Crowds have been flocking to a flat in Lavender Hill where an 18-year-old girl says she saw a vision of Jesus in her frosted bathroom window.
Residents say the image resembling Christ on the cross, flanked by six angels, has now appeared four times, attracting hundreds of people, who queue outside the ground floor flat in Parkin Court to marvel at the sight.
It started when Remona Petersen, 18, looked through the bathroom window on Saturday, shortly after 7pm, and saw a bright but hazy image of Christ's silhouette on a cross.
"I looked up from rinsing the mop in the bathroom and suddenly the vision came to me. What I saw on the glass was a human form on a cross with his arms stretched out on either side, all inside a circle."
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Overpowered by emotion, Remona said she immediately burst into tears and ran outside to see if it could have been the reflection of an outside light on the window, but found nothing.
The image of the crucifix appeared again on Monday, this time accompanied by "six smaller angels" - then again on Tuesday and last night, by which time the "good news" had spread through Lavender Hill and neighbouring areas.
One of the curious neighbours is a self- proclaimed sceptic, known only as Mrs Minis, a 49-year-old resident of Parkin Court. She said she had gone to see the image twice to make sure it was real.
"My entire family thought I was nuts when I told them, but this must be for real, because you can clearly see the body on the cross surrounded by small angels with wings and a hazy cloud-like formation around it," she said.
Belinda Mutala, 44, also from the area, said she even managed to capture the white X-ray-like image on her cellphone camera.
"I believe this is a sign from God, because when I saw it I wasn't even scared. It was something so beautiful."
Puzzled by the revelation, Remona Petersen said: "I am a religious person, so I think that this is a sign from God telling everyone in Lavender Hill to change their ways and make things right with the Lord before he comes again."
She said her minister from the Baptist church was "praying about the matter" and hoped to have an answer about the image soon.
Asked to comment, Johannesburg clinical psychologist Dr Edward Wolff said: "We cannot eliminate the fact that this could very well be a sighting where God wants to make himself visible to people.
"Similar occurrences have been recorded throughout history."
But he added that Easter was an emotional time of year when people often expressed a need to be connected with a higher power.
This, with mass hysteria, could often lead to "sightings in an ambiguous situation", he said.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reports that an image of Virgin Mary has apparently appeared in an Australian bedsheet.
Believers say they can clearly see an image of the mother of Christ imprinted on the material.
Others point out that it looks like nothing more than a large stain on a sheet which has seen better days.
The sheet was spotted in a Salvation Army charity shop in the suburb of St Kilda in Melbourne, Australia.
It was donated by local resident Stuart Hadwin and has been dubbed the Shroud of St Kilda, after the Turin Shroud.
- This article was originally published on page 3 of Cape Argus on March 24, 2005
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