La Milagrosa

The following story happened to me about 2 years ago in the Caribbean.

I went to Cuba for the holidays with a couple of friends, and of course as soon as we got there we had to go sight-seeing. We went for a week.

The first 3 days we spent in the beaches and just hanging out and taking photographs. On the fourth day we went back to the actual city for more tours. We spent that day going around the city buying souvenirs and stuff. Everything was fine, we were getting a sun tan meeting new people, etc. That was until we went to visit the most famous cemetery in all of the island, The Columbus cemetery.

Now this is a huge place and if you are not from the country you will get lost there easily. We went for the day tour and were very impressed, they had unreal statues and huge tombstones (unlike ours they are about 3 feet from the ground). It was almost the end of the tour when the guide took us to a very famous statue called "La Milagrosa" which after I came back I found out that it means "The Miraculous One". This statue was very peculiar and very different from the others, the other statues had religious meanings such as angels, devils, etc. This one was simply a woman sitting down with a baby boy between her legs. I found it very rare but didn't comment on it.

The day before we had to go at around dusk and when all my friends were taking a nap I went by myself hoping to meet with the tour guide so he could take me there again. But as soon as I got there I saw there was nobody except the security guard. I tried to ask him where the guide was but he just replied something in Spanish and signaled at me telling me I could go.

Now I had come from about 8km to see this and wasn't going to turn back. As I looked at the map I started to go towards where I thought the statue was, it didn't take me very long to get there and just as I suspected it was very lonesome there and I was the only person in sight. Before I continue, legend has it that this woman was once a common woman who was very happy about having her first-born child who would be a blessing. When the day came after long hours of labour the doctors told her that the child had been born dead, this of course would be devastating for any mother, and with this said she became frantic and desperate without consolation for days. It was finally the day of the burial after about 3 days of the child been declared dead, a priest put him in the casket and was about to shut the lid when the desperate mother asked not to and she went to take him out. People thought at this point that she had gone crazy, when all of a sudden a child's cry was heard echoing through the whole cemetery, the child had been brought back to life by a mother's love. This happened around the 1900's so to this day Cuban people go to visit the statue where the tombstone is.

Giving in to superstition I asked for the well-being of a relative, everything was pretty normal except there was something that wasn't right. I didn't have chills and nothing touched me, yet there was something creeping me out which I couldn't put my finger on.

I went back to the hotel and spent the evening wondering what it was that had made me so uncomfortable.

The next day as we were packing and hurrying off I forgot about the whole thing and came back home. (Also something about this, I took pictures of everywhere we went including the 2 times to the cemetery).

When I got back I found out that my relative had gotten better when I was away which took the breath out of me. And when I developed the pictures everything seemed normal at first, until I compared the 2 pictures for awhile only to realize that to my horror the statue had moved, let me explain. When I went with my friends the statue was sitting with the little boy between her hands and both hands holding him, on the second pictures when I went by myself, the statue still had the boy between her legs but only one hand was holding him and the other pointing to the sky. I took the pictures and burned them without showing my friends or anybody, I was afraid of a curse on me or of having any nightmares so nobody knows about this except for now that I'm sharing my story, if you have any questions or doubts e-mail me and I'll give you full details and the location of the place in Cuba, if you are still not a believer I can give the phone number of the cemetery and they would confirm about the statue.

Thanks for taking the time to read a very personal story,