A series of apparitions by the Blessed Virgin Mary were first reported at the rocky hillside of Caysasay. According to a church inquiry, a vision appeared to a native servant girl, Catalina Talain, who had gone up the hillside with a companion to gather firewood and fetch some water. The unexpected vision of something small in stature but radiating extraordinary brilliance from a hollow in the rocky landscape so bewildered the girl that she ran to tell her companion, and both fled terrified back to the town of Taal, by the shore of the lake. From the cave near the spring was found the image of the Blessed Virgin—the same image that was fished out of the river almost a decade earlier and mysteriously disappeared.