It began with a mother and daughter sitting in a kitchen and an alleged apparition of Christ. Then came the attention of 'hundreds' of sightseers and the scepticism of a local priest.

Now, two weeks later, crowds of curious pilgrims are still flocking to the gable wall in Ballina, Co Mayo, where 'our Lord' reportedly appeared in a small, working-class housing estate.

On the evening of 3 May, Cheryl Muldoon (24) and her mother Caroline were sitting at home when, they claim, the face of Christ appeared on the wall of a neighbouring building.

Since making the apparition public, the family has become the centre of local attention and the target of accusations that they have pulled some kind of stunt.

"It's no hoax or anything. We are not looking for anything," Caroline told the Sunday Tribune.

"As you can see we are in a down trodden estate and they [the houses] are all condemned. Nobody in this place is looking for anything."

Word of the alleged sighting quickly spread and hundreds of people have since shown up to see the apparition for themselves. Even now, with the fuss having died, up to 10 people a day are visiting the estate.

"Some people are coming up at six thirty in the morning," said Caroline Muldoon. "Over the weekend there was an awful lot on the Sunday. There was a constant stream but not as much now."

Everybody in Muldoon's family claims to have seen something on the gable wall, but there are a variety of experiences.

Muldoon recalled: "The night before [my daughter] had had a few drinks, and she was just sat on the chair in the kitchen and I kept looking at her and she looked afraid or something.

"Then she stood up and said 'Ma, would you think I was imagining things because I had a few drinks the night before?' and I said why?

"She said would you look over at the gable on the wall of the house and I looked over. She said 'what do you see?' and I said, well it looks like our Lord's head and she said 'well I see the same'."

The Muldoons say they are happy their vision has been witnessed by others and that no matter what anyone else believes they have their faith in what they saw.

Parish priest Fr Brendan Hoban was reluctant to discuss the situation but told the Sunday Tribune: "As far as we are concerned there is nothing in it. These things happen all over the place."

Elaborating slightly more for local media a few days earlier, he reflected: "Credulous and sometimes pious people seem to be more susceptible to such imaginings – but imaginings they are.

"A characteristic too is that people undergoing some kind of trauma or caught in the slipstream of other people's trauma can more easily imagine signs and messages," he said.

"Invariably, after a few weeks and all of the excitement, it becomes no more than a memory."