Case files
Joan of Arc
Peasant girl who said God's voices sent her to war, and whose answers survive in two trial records.
Handsome Lake
Seneca chief whose 1799 visions, written down that week by a Quaker, began the Longhouse religion.
The Bab
Persian merchant who claimed to be the awaited Qa'im and was shot in Tabriz in 1850.
Bernadette Soubirous
Miller's daughter questioned by police, prosecutors and bishops after reporting eighteen visions at a Pyrenean grotto.
Wovoka
Paiute ranch hand whose 1889 vision gave the Plains nations the Ghost Dance.
Amadou Bamba
Senegalese Sufi teacher whom France exiled twice and whose order became a pillar of Senegalese life.
Ramakrishna
Bengali temple priest whose ecstatic states and conversations were recorded almost day by day by a schoolteacher.
Baal Shem Tov
Healer and mystic of Podolia whom Hasidism remembers as its founder, and whom Polish tax clerks recorded.
Latest finds
Black Elk's letters in Lakota
Nine of his 16 signed Lakota letters of 1907 to 1912 were found in the mission paper Sina Sapa Wocekiye Taeyanpaha. They show him in his own language and his own name, decades after the book that made him famous. None has been translated yet.
A police report on his arrival in prison
Police commissioner De Vriendt reported on Kimbangu's arrival at Elisabethville on 14 February 1922. The report, Archives Africains AI 1405 bis, was read in print in Vellut's 2010 edition.
A scholar rejects the 1840 birth date
Wang's 2008 study rejects the traditional 1840 birth date behind Xuyun's reported age of 119. No government record of the 1951 Yunmen incident has been found.
Ottoman shelfmarks for a wartime commander
Two modern studies give Ottoman archive references for Nursi's volunteer command, his pay in Russian captivity and a pamphlet seizure, such as BOA DH.SFR 89/138. The originals have not been seen.
How to read this
Every wonder is treated as testimony. We say who reported it, when it was written down, and how close that person stood to the event. We don't state miracles as fact, and we don't dismiss them by assumption. The same standard applies to every religion.