by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Few Montrealers have paranormal religious miracles taking over their living rooms, but Maureen and Clayton Marolly claim to have just that.

Since October 7, 1994, clear, thick oil has been dripping off of the many religious icons in their small living room. It drips off their coffee table onto a white metal rain gutter and drains it all into a large glass vase.

It’s as if Jesus participated in one of those surprise home decoration switcheroo shows with a taste for oil.

Maureen swears she’s not supplying the oil and that the statues are spontaneously “sweating.”

Each year thousands come to the small West Island house at Sunnybrooke and Hyman to witness the phenomenon. They come in busloads from the States during the summer and the Marollys invite them in and recite the Rosary and Hail Marys, accepting no money for the visits.

Maureen was raised by Catholic nuns in Pakistan and says the Unexplained began when her daughter Andrea, now 18, underwent heart surgery to repair three holes in her heart. Andrea, who has Down Syndrome, has apparently displayed a sort of religious telepathy to the pilgrims who show up. For example, a friend-of-a-friend in Pakistan drank acid, and had a vision of the girl and recovered.

Skeptics who enter unconvinced leave convinced, Maureen reports, including a pair of elderly Anglican ministers whose hands filled with oil. Michel Sayde, an Eastern Orthodox Melkite priest from Lebanon, also cautiously believes that the Marolly house is blessed. From his riverside digs in Cartierville, Sayde pulls from his blazer breast pocket a small half-empty bottle of mystical oils he’s collected by syringe from various religious places. Sayde reports that oil spontaneously appeared on an icon he carried to the Marollys.

Others who enter doubting and came out believing include “a boy who stormed out saying, ‘This is fake,’” says Maureen. “Later he called apologizing. A crucifix he had wrapped in a plastic bag in his pocket suddenly started dripping oil, leaving a stain near his pocket.”

Montreal hasn’t been kind to such modern miracle houses. In February, a Muslim janitor at 101 Deguire named Abderezak Mehdi attracted crowds of miracle seekers with similar oily Christian icons. Cops had to control the many who rushed there for blessings. Mehdi would show up with oil dripping from his head, alas, merely a regrettable hairstyle choice. He was debunked and fled town after allegedly collecting several months’ rent in advance from tenants.

In 1986, Maurice and Claudette Girouard and Jean-Guy Beauregard of 35th Avenue had a Virgin Mary statue that wept blood and attracted a seven-hour line-up, forcing them to relocate it to Ste-Marthe. They confessed it was mink oil and human blood, and a court ordered them to shut down their freakshow.

But Maureen Marolly says she has no doubts since September 1996, when a vision of the Virgin Mary ordered her to a church in Ontario where a rose petal with an image of Jesus on it fell right on her. The petal is encased in glass and featured on postcards she gives out.

Marolly’s tour includes a review of shadows in the background of pictures of her daughter and of religious figures. Some silhouettes look like religious figures if you look at them closely.

And many touch the heart of the velvet Jesus tapestry that overlooks the statues. I was urged to touch it and pray.

As an agnostic whose skinhead Cromwellian ancestors smashed up icon-laden places like this, I didn’t feel too moved by the Jesus-on-velvet. I prayed for a good parking spot on the way home and a winning lotto ticket next week. I got the parking spot.

I can’t deny that small amounts of oil fouled up my grip on my pen as I took notes, more of an annoyance than an invite to renounce the supremacy of science.

But science also shows that placebos don’t hurt. If mysticism floats your boat, it’s not my bee’s wax. Where else can a desperate person seek supernatural intervention? It’s not like McDonald’s is serving miracles in little plastic bags with Happy Meals.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca