Can A Jesus Icon Kill?

I cannot resist passing along the following odd story that recently was sent to me via the Internet.

The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, removed an ancient icon depicting Jesus Christ from its display after it was feared that an energy field from the icon caused the deaths of several staff members.

Professor Boris Sapunov told the London Telegraph he complained about the effects of the icon for years and sought the removal after he thought the art piece led to the deaths of three or four people working as facility supervisors.

"It's an inexplicable phenomenon and it started long ago," Sapunov said. "Three or four people died of diseases, and the coincidence began to make me wonder. When the seats (of employees) were moved away all the trouble stopped."

The story quoted the professor as saying that the large art work was created by several people. He said a middle section, painted by an apprentice, was the part the created the negative energy field.

Sapunov said the display also caused minor health problems to other workers, including high blood pressure and general malaise.

He said he first told his story to a Russian newspaper, the Komsomolskaya Pravda. After that story appeared the museum received complaints from the public.

Not willing to believe a painting depicting the life of Jesus would cause so much trouble, the museum brought a local doctor, Vyacheslav Gobanov to the facility to do an analysis. Gobanov said it was his opinion that the icon had a powerful energy field, but it would not cause harm.

Here is where the story gets a bit strange.

"It is a wonderful icon, a very powerful one," Gobanov told Pravda. "It is not guilty of making people feel bad. It produces the power, which makes the human brain vibrate at a high frequency. Not every human being can stand that. Most likely the icon was meant for the elite, not for common people."

The doctor then expounded on his theory: "There is no mysticism about it. Everything can be explained with physics. High frequency signals form the 'biofield' of any living or non-living object, including icons.

"If someone comes up to it, the icon's radiation sets the frequency of the brain's radiation. The biofield of an icon helps people find a way out of a trouble; the faithful think it is a miracle," he said.

The controversy apparently attracted some experimentation with the icon. Pavel Goskov, a professor from Altay State Technical University, told the London newspaper about several experiments he conducted with icons, but not necessarily the "killer Jesus" icon.

"We put a glass of water in front of an icon just for 10 minutes," Goskov said. "Then we poured the charged and common water into two bowls filled with wheat grains. The result was always the same. The wheat was growing a lot better in the charged water.

"According to our research, the Holy Trinity icon is the most powerful one. Some people say they can even sense its power," Goskov said.

Then there was museum worker Alexandra Kostsova, who said the whole story seemed to be a lot of bunk.

"Only one of the workers in contact with the icon died, and she had cancer," Kostsova said.

Source: WorldNetDaily.com

Photo: London Telegraph