Her name is Baba Vanga, and she died 21 years ago at the age of 85, and yet her predictions about 2018 are making headlines around the world, as we reported recently. But close scrutiny of this Bulgarian mystic shows that although she’s been called the Nostradamus of the Balkans, there’s absolutely no reason to take her “new” crazy predictions seriously at all.

To be fair, most people have never heard of her, but her devoted followers claim that she has predicted everything from the rise of ISIS to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the Boxing Day tsunami. Some predictions of hers that are supposedly scheduled to come true in 2018, according to her followers, are that China will become a world superpower and a new energy source will be discovered on Venus.

Her followers immediately point to world events to suggest that these predictions may come to pass. But a closer examination suggests that there’s really not much to them. After all, China is already a world superpower and has been for many years, and although a spacecraft will pass near Venus after being launch this July, it will only use the planet as a gravitational swing to get to the sun.

And looking at her supposed successes, they fail to hold up to scrutiny. Her 9/11 “prediction” from 1989 is so vague, it’s hard to take it seriously. “Horror, horror! The American brothers will fall after being attacked by the steel birds. The wolves will be howling in a bush, and innocent blood will be gushing,” she said.

Other predictions are equally vague, such as promises of disasters at some point in time, or that people of faith will be divided, which her followers have applied to just about any natural disaster or religious war that has happened in the years since her death.

Then there are the times she’s just been flat wrong. For example, she once tried to predict that the 1994 FIFA World Cup Final would be contested by two teams that start with a B, an odd prediction to begin with. It also didn’t come true, as Brazil defeated Italy in that matchup. Then there’s here much ballyhooed claim that World War III would suddenly break out in 2010 and end about four years later, which obviously didn’t come to pass.