The Glass Menagerie
The Sighting: A 35-foot-high image of the Virgin Mary on the side of a building in Clearwater, Florida
Revelation: In 1996 workers chopped down a palm tree in front of the Seminole Finance Company building. Not long afterward, a customer noticed a discoloration in the building’s tinted windows that resembled Madonna. The discovery was reported on the afternoon news. By the end of the week, and estimated 100,000 people visited the site . . . including a Baptist minister who was ejected after he “condemned the crowed for worshipping an image on glass.”
Impact: The city set up a “Miracle Management Task Force” to install portable toilets at the site, arrange police patrols, and erect a pedestrian walkway over the adjacent road (Route 19) to stop the faithful from dodging in and out of traffic. “That’s the busiest highway in Florida,” one policeman told reporters. “You want to know the real miracle? Half a million people have crossed that intersection and nobody’s been injured or killed.”
