In 1879, Mary appeared to fifteen people in Knock and remained there for two hours. She had St. John on her left and St. Joseph on her right. There was a lamb on an altar behind the three as well. After the event, word traveled fairly quickly and soon people from all over Ireland started coming to see the spot where it had happened. A shrine was built there to commemorate the event and to revere and show respect to Mary. Many miracles have been attributed to water or soil taken from the grounds.
This is the inside of the Church of Apparition. To the left, you can see the depiction of the apparition as all fifteen witnesses described it. St. John is holding a book and appears to be teaching while St. Joseph is simply looking respectfully at Mary.
One of the best things about Knock is the tacky Christian paraphenalia one can buy. The popular thing to buy is little bottles to fill up with Holy water from the fonts. I also saw hundreds of rosaries, religious statues, thousands of medals of all different saints, and all sorts of things of that nature. Above, you can see me pictured with a very large set of rosary beads. I plan to take one like that to my next novena.
The most popular part of Knock by far is the holy water fonts. There are a bunch of them lined up, each with a different picture. Some of them are obviously scenes from the Bible, others are apparently random. I used one with a deer on it and one with some oranges. My roommate tells me the pictures mean things, like certain ones have been known to cure certain kinds of ailments, so who knows what I'm protected against now. Maybe lyme disease or scurvy or something.
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