Closer to home, seven-months pregnant Laura Turner, from Studley, Warwickshire, spotted Jesus watching over her baby in the womb during a routine ultrasound scan.

Some of these so-called miracles, admittedly, stretch credulity, sometimes to breaking point. Religious inscriptions and symbols have apparently been found inside freshly sliced aubergines in Bolton and tomatoes in Bradford.

Dozens of ‘miraculous’ sightings of the Virgin Mary have been reported, perhaps the most well-known being at Medjugorje in Bosnia. It was here the Holy Mother was repeatedly seen by numerous local teenagers.

Mind you, she has also been seen in a Mexican puddle, plastered across a Florida skyscraper, and even in a pork scratching found in a pub in Hull. Crowds of pilgrims have flocked to statues of the Virgin Mary — everywhere from Western Australia to Spain — that have been spotted crying rose-scented tears or, even more dramatically, streams of blood.

Although many of these sensational events can be reasonably dismissed as delusions, hoaxes or mere coincidences, does this mean that all of them can be written off? Absolutely not. And for one simple reason: there remains a hard core of mysteries that simply cannot be explained by any conventional means.

One of the strangest and most inexplicable of these was reported in the respected British Medical Journal in 1997. It was uncovered by the esteemed consultant psychiatrist Dr Ikechukwu Azuonye.