Marian visions or visitations, as they are called, have a long history.

Marian visions do not mean Mary appears as a disembodied spirit, since she has been assumed into heaven.

When Ann has her Marian vision, Carolyn goes with her the next day to check it out.

Reinolda had a total of ten Marian visions, preceded by an unusual occurrence, on December 1954: she perceived two figures, a woman in white and a monk.

Psychologists and others studying the Marian visions speculate that the recent increase could be connected to a variety of factors, including the poor economy and to the approach of the year 2000.

She is reputedly notable for her alleged Marian visions under trance, particularly the golden dust (Spanish: Escarchas, English: "Frost") which allegedly manifests on her face during her trances.

The letter, with a map to his home, relates how he once visited a church in Yugoslavia - the site of reported Marian visions - and felt a "warmth" in his body that healed a back injury.

After the Marian visions ceased on 31 May 1959, Peerdeman claimed to have received 151 of what she called "Eucharistic Experiences" for 26 years, where she was given divine revelation, usually during Mass.

Vittorio Messori, an Italian Catholic writer who is close to the Pope, said the then Cardinal Ratzinger had told him in 1985 that "patrience and caution" were the key to validating Marian visions.

It is written by two Catholics and is in a sense, an anthology of Marian visions, apparitions and inner locutions (inner voices) which centre on what "Mary" is communicating regarding the end of the world.

Sister Reinolda May's apparitions were the first in a series of Marian visions in Africa; in the 1980s, visions of Mary were seen in Kenya, Zaire, Mozambique, South Africa, and Cameroon.