Encounters with the Unknown—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, February 2021
The Smallpox Lady of South India
by: Brent Raynes
Kannan was quite worried as to whether he was going to make it as he had many smallpox sores on his body. However, the mysterious lady spoke to him, but in an unusual way. “There was no sound,” he explained, but yet he could understand what she was telling him in some way. What we call telepathy one would have to assume. “Don’t worry, in two days you will be all right,” she somehow conveyed. “Everything will be all right.” However, in a second part to her message Kannan was informed that at a nearby residences of some policemen “some children will be taken,” and sure enough, while he recovered by the second day, two children passed from the smallpox just as the lady had stated. Kannan described how his mother would often visit homes to read scriptures when someone in the home died or was on their deathbed, as well as provide a religious ceremony and a feast. On one of these occasions there were four children upstairs with smallpox. They were friends of his and he wanted to pay them a visit. So he snuck up the stairs when he found everyone busy with a ceremony. “As I went up, I saw her moving down the stairs, but not walking, not stepping down. And significantly, she had this long cloth which would not be necessary just for covering the body, a very long cloth like a drapery, very beautiful. And because by this time I had grown up a little bit, I was studying her features.”
“She wore white, pure white, not just white but a special, creamy white cloth.” Kannan said he was told “your friends are all right. Because you are so concerned about them, I went to see them and they are all right.” Then he tried to step in her way, wishing to communicate with her. “But one thing that happens in these incidents is that they look at you and make you ‘non thinkable,” Kannan added. “You won’t be able to think. You are so attracted to them and appreciating the situation that before you can think of anything, they are gone.”
“She was floating,” he declared. One moment she was in front of him and then she had passed him. “I looked behind me, and she was there with a very big smile on her face, saying ‘See you’re trying to stop me and ask me something and I am already gone.’”
“She is a kuladevata,” he explained. “A particular family lineage is protected by that person. Because I belong to that particular family lineage, she took special interest in me. So because I was concerned about those boys, she visited there, even though they are not in our family line.”
Later as a grown up, Kannan had yet another encounter. “It was a festival,” he stated. “There is a very ancient temple of Durga in that city – she protects the city. I was going around the temple, and there in the back at the temple there is the worship of Kanyas, virgins. So I was going around there and suddenly, there she was under a banyan tree standing in a very beautiful dancing pose. And I was walking so fast toward that place that it was like being pulled. I came this close, almost, so that if she was breathing, in our terminology, it would be on my face.”
Being this close he could see her breathing. “I was very respectful,” he added. “She spread that type of atmosphere. You feel like going down and begging for some benediction.” “I looked back to see if anybody was there, and there was nobody,” Kannan continued. “Then she said that even if somebody was there they would not notice. She spoke this in my language, and there was sound. I could hear the sound. This breathing was there. Her breathing was comparatively very slow. And I also noticed that she had a dot on her forehead. I noted her lips. They moved, but they didn’t synchronize with the words. So she was speaking something else. I have analyzed that she must have been speaking something else, and it gets to me so I am hearing in my language. So I thought that this sounds like dubbing in a movie.”
Toward the end of this encounter, Kannan recalls the lady said, “Learn to see every woman as an expansion of Durga.” Next, he recalled, “And she put her hand on my head. And I felt, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’ It was cool, but it was a wonderful experience. Then I asked, ‘Will I see you again?’ And she said, ‘Not unless it is necessary, if I am needed.’ I haven’t seen her after that.”
In author Richard Thompson’s analysis of Kannan’s testimony he noted: The Smallbox Lady has a number of features reminiscent of [Western descriptions of] commonly reported UFO entities. At the same time, Kannan’s description of the Smallpox Lady closely matches traditional Vedic accounts of female Devas (Goddesses). The following points sum up the salient features of the Smallpox Lady: 1) she appeared at times of smallpox epidemics and mysteriously cured people of smallpox, 2) she looked like a classical celestial woman, as portrayed in South Indian temple sculptures, with a big forehead, very thin waist, prominent breasts, and dressed in traditional Vedic fashion, 3) Kannan could see that she was breathing but at the same time she was more like a beautiful painting or sculpture than a human being, 4) she floated through the air and passed through objects, using doors and stairways only as a matter of convention, 5) she communicated telepathically, 6) she was able to block his thinking.”
I also found interesting that during Kannan’s festival encounter with the Smallpox Lady that he looked around for other people, and there were none, and then she stated that even if there had been that they would not have noticed. Which I feel goes along with Thompson’s point 6, the ability to block or thus manipulate human thinking or awareness, which also brings to mind the “Oz Effect” first noted by British ufologist Jenny Randles, where there may be a change in the local environment, with the absence of other people, as though suddenly isolated from other humans. Also consider the similarity of the Smallpox Lady to the Marian apparitions in conjunction with UFO type phenomena. You may read this feature I wrote on that subject in the November 2018 edition of this magazine at: http://www.apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1222&Itemid=53
Also check out Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner’s book Where the footprints End, Volume 1, 2020, particularly Renner’s chapter 8, “Women in White,” involving similar appearances in conjunction with spooklights, Bigfoot, the medieval goddess Perchta, and of course the Marian apparitions, and many more stories and legends of similar beings. The reader may also be interested in our interview with Renner on this subject in the March 2020 issue of this magazine: http://www.apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1453&Itemid=53
Reference 1. Alien Identities: Ancient Insights into Modern UFO Phenomena [1995], by Richard L. Thompson. I came across this article excerpted in Newspeak: Guide to Alternative Information, 1996-97, Providence, RI.
