Theories Vary on Recent Wave of Mary Sightings : Catholicism: Believers are drawn to sites of apparitions. Skeptics challenge miraculous claims.

For the chance of beholding an apparition of the Mother of God, Monica Banuelos made the long trek with eight members of her family in one of 10 buses from Juarez, Mexico, to a farm in Georgia.

“Why?” she said of her pilgrimage. “Because we love the Virgin.”

Banuelos and tens of thousands of true believers from all 50 states as well as other nations have been drawn to the home of Nancy Fowler, a homemaker from Conyers, Ga., who claims the Virgin Mary appeared to her on Oct. 13, 1990.

The vision has returned on the 13th day of most months, and Mrs. Fowler said she saw the vision Oct. 13 on the ceiling of an “apparition room.”

Scores of other sightings of Mary have been reported in the United States in the past decade.

At a modest tract house in Hollywood, Fla., Rosa Lopez says Mary appears to her on the 13th of each month. She had received well water thought to have curative powers from Conyers and visited Mrs. Fowler’s property before the visions started.

Other sightings have been reported in Marlboro, N.J.; Denver; Cold Spring, Ky.; Scottsdale, Ariz., and Emmitsburg, Md.

“We’ve seen a spate of these,” said Charles Nuckolls, an Emory University anthropologist who studied the Hindu religion in India and has visited Conyers.

Although Nuckolls, like the Roman Catholic Church, is unconvinced that something miraculous is going on, he described the pilgrimages as a “serious cultural phenomenon.” Theories about the proliferation of sightings range from the end of the millennium to personal isolation in a cold, technological world.

“People want immediate contact with something greater, bigger and more powerful than themselves. Religion can do that,” Nuckolls said.

Those who have trekked to the sites claim to have seen the sun spinning on its axis, to have had chains on their rosaries transformed from silver to gold, or to have felt a heartbeat in statues of Mary--proof to them that the apparitions are real.

Although skeptics don’t doubt anyone’s religious beliefs, they do challenge some of the miraculous claims.

“If people feel the Virgin Mary in their heart, that’s a matter of personal religious choice, and people are entitled to their beliefs,” said Joe Nickell, who has investigated such sightings for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

“I just see no evidence there is anything of a supernatural or miraculous nature at these places, other than a kind of emotional contagion, ranging from spiritual revival all the way to mass hysteria,” he said.

Nickell offered some explanations for what people perceive: stare at an object long enough and it appears to move because of an optical illusion; the silver coat on a rosary chain can erode to reveal its golden brass base; and those who hold their thumb to a statue may feel their own pulse.

He found no heartbeat when he placed a stethoscope to the Conyers statue.

U.S. sightings proliferated after a 1981 vision of Mary by six youths in the mountain village of Medjugorje, Bosnia. Nickell said it led to an outbreak of “Medjugorje virus” in America.

The Catholic Church, which takes an ultra-cautious view of such matters, is still investigating the Bosnia sighting. Church policy dictates that the local bishop conduct the first inquiry if he feels it’s warranted, then a team of investigators from the Vatican authenticates any findings. The process can take decades.

Several of the U.S. sightings, such as the one in Conyers, are linked to Oct. 13. That’s the date in 1917 when the Virgin Mary made the final in a series of appearances to three children in Fatima, Portugal, which ranks with Lourdes, France, as one of the world’s most famous shrines to Mary.

Mrs. Fowler has said Mary appears on the 13th because the apparitions are “linked directly to Fatima.”

She said she was told this month that Mary would no longer appear monthly, but only on the yearly anniversary date. That came as good news locally to some weary nonbelievers who have sported bumper stickers reading: “Eat, Drink and See Mary.”

The Fatima and Lourdes appearances have been authenticated by the church, but no inquiry has begun yet in Conyers.

“We fully acknowledge that people are seeking something they don’t seem to be finding elsewhere,” said the Rev. Peter Dora, spokesman for the Atlanta Archdiocese.

“In the same breath, we are concerned about the damage this could do to these believers if it turns out to be false,” he said.

But those who have faith are resolute that what they are seeing is real, no matter where the Virgin Mary appears.

“What one person sees, another may not,” said a sobbing Susan Butler, 26, outside Lopez’s house in Florida. “If you believe, you’ll see it.”