The last will and testament of Baba Vanga has been fulfilled with the May 5 opening of her Petrich house as a museum.

The document, dating to 1984, in which the Strumica-born (now part of the Republic of Macedonia, though when she was born in 1911, it was part of Bulgaria) blind clairvoyant granted all her possessions, including property, to the state for the creation of a museum was found after she died on August 11 1996, zagrada.bg reported.

A Bulgarian Cabinet decision from April 6 2007 ceded gratis the house at 10 Vanga street and all contained in it to Petrich municipality, enjoining it to carry out Vanga's will. In July 2007, the municipality granted 35 000 leva to the renovation of the house and the creation of the museum.

The house itself was built in 1942; Vangeliya Pandeva Goushterova lived there from the time she married her husband Dimitar in 1942 until she moved to a remote house in the Rhodopes, at Roupite, a place known for its mineral springs. It was at her home in Roupite that Baba Vanga became most famous for her "gift" of predicting future events and seeing the unseen; since she died (from exhaustion and dehydration, the aftermath of her breast cancer) the house has been kept locked and in the exact condition in which it was when she died.

The Petrich house-museum possesses about 3000 items that belonged to her; about 1000 objects are on display, including jewellery, photos, clothing, documents, and gifts from people she helped. It is expected that the other exhibits will be shown on a rotating basis.

Vanga lost her eyesight as a child during a wind storm; she said that it was at that point that she received her gift. Many people travelled to consult Vanga and hear her prophecies. Some compare her skills to those of Nostradamus.

She was considered close to communist leader Todor Zhivkov.

According to some interpretations, Vanga predicted the return of Simeon Saxe-Cobourg to Bulgaria, but not as king, the incident involving the Russian submarine Kursk, the break-up of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

In Vanga's own words to former MP Ventsislav Madarski, she said that the return of the king was not the solution for Bulgaria: "Why should Simeon come? So that we can tell him, too, `Step down'? No? Stop fighting, you're fighting before the country! All of you are sick for power. And then next? This nation does not deserve this."

Her predictions about a re-unification of Bulgaria and Macedonia were cryptic.

Source: zagrada.bg
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