Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the daughter of Col. Peter Hahn of the Russian Army, and granddaughter of General Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn (a noble family of Mecklenburg, Germany, settled in Russia), was born in Eskaterinoslaw, in the south of Russia, in 1831. "She had," says Sinnett, "a strange childhood, replete with abnormal occurrences. The year of her birth was fatal for Russia, as for all Europe, owing to the first visit of the cholera, that terrible plague that decimated from 1830 to 1832 in turn nearly every town of the Continent.... Her birth was quickened by several deaths in the house, and she was ushered into the world amid coffins and desolation, on the night between July 30th and 31st, weak and apparently no denizen of this world." A hurried baptism was given lest the child die in original sin, and the ceremony was that of the Greek Church. During the orthodox baptismal rite no person is allowed to sit, but a child aunt of the baby, tired of standing for nearly an hour, settled down upon the floor, just behind the officiating priest. No one perceived her, as she sat nodding drowsily. The ceremony was nearing its close. The sponsors were just in the act of renouncing the Evil One and his deeds, a renunciation emphasized in the Greek Church by thrice spitting upon the invisible enemy, when the little lady, toying with her lighted taper at the feet of the crowd, inadvertantly set fire to the long flowing robes of the priest, no one remarking the accident till it was too late. The result was an immediate conflagration, during which several persons--chiefly the old priest--were severely burnt. That was another bad omen, according to the superstitious beliefs of orthodox Russia; and the innocent cause of it, the future Madame Blavatsky, was doomed from that day, in the eyes of all the town, to an eventful, troubled life. "Mlle. Hahn was born, of course, with all the characteristics of what is known in Spiritualism as mediumship in the most extraordinary degree, also with gifts as a clairvoyant of an almost equally unexampled order. On various occasions while apparently in an ordinary sleep, she would answer questions, put by persons who took hold of her hand, about lost property, etc., as though she were a sibyl entranced. For years she would, in childish impulse, shock strangers with whom she came in contact, and visitors to the house, by looking them intently in the face and telling them they would die at such and such a time, or she would prophesy to them some accident or misfortune that would befall them. And since her prognostications usually came true, she was the terror, in this respect, of the domestic circle."