Doomsday fears spread to Serbia: thousands seek refuge near mystic mountain

SERBIA – Hotel owners around the pyramid-shaped Mount Rtanj, in the east of the Balkan country, say that bookings are flooding in, with believers in the prophecy hoping that its purported mysterious powers will save them from the apocalypse. Adherents of the end-of-the-world scenario think the 5,100ft-high mountain, part of the Carpathian range, conceals a pyramidal building inside, left behind by alien visitors thousands of years ago. Arthur C Clarke, the British science fiction writer, reportedly identified the peak as a place of “special energy” and called it “the navel of the world.” In one day we had 500 people trying to book rooms. People want to bring their whole families,” said Obrad Blecic, a hotel manager. Predictions of an apocalypse are linked to the fact that the 5,125-year-old calendar of the ancient Mayans, who dominated large stretches of southern Mexico and Central America centuries ago, comes to an end on Dec 21. The doomsday scenario has inspired hundreds of books, websites and television programs but scholars of the Mayan civilisation, and Mayans themselves, say people have wrongly interpreted the meaning of the calendar and that it will not herald the world’s obliteration. But that has not stopped fears that the end of the world from spreading panic among the credulous across the world. Panic-buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, and in the United States, the sale of survival shelters is booming. A mountain in the French Pyrenees that cultists claim will be the only place still standing is to be closed to visitors to avoid chaos and overcrowding on its peak. EP