[7][1] After the communists took power in Bulgaria in 1944, Dyado Vlaycho, who was considered close to the old regime and religious, was investigated, arrested, and convicted for anti-national conspiracy.
[8] He was first sent to a forced labor camp in Pernik, then moved to Belene, where he endured the humiliation of being publicly doused with ice water while naked.
Reportedly, he alerted the chief about an imminent collapse, resulting in a non-working day that saved lives when a landslide buried the mine galleries.
[6] During the final 15 years of his life, Dyado Vlaycho traveled extensively at night throughout Bulgaria as a wandering healer and prophet.
[5] Throughout his travels, he regularly visited Konyovo to collect letters mostly from across Bulgaria, but also some from Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Russia, and Australia.
He always answered all written requests for help, depositing his replies in various mailboxes due to the discovery of some of his hiding places by communist authorities.
[9] Ignored for decades in Bulgaria, Dyado Vlaycho is now acknowledged as a rare mystic believed to have foreseen his own future, anticipating his survival from communist death camps.