Let’s talk about haunted things.
And I don’t just mean houses or graveyards; ghosts definitely aren’t limited to wandering around specific locations. There are all sorts ofthings that are haunted: Places… people… and, of course, objects. I have never made it a point to bring haunted objects into my home; some people do, though, and the results are usually pretty tragic.
Here the 9 most cursed objects in the world that have harmed, injured and in some cases even killed.
This gem was stolen from the Temple of Indra in Kanpur, India in the 19th century before bringing bad luck to its first owner, Colonel W. Ferris. After going bankrupt and losing everything, it was passed on to a troubled friend who soon after committed suicide. The amethyst was then given to Edward Heron-Allen in 1890. After experiencing bad luck of his own and watching friends who borrowed the jewel suffer, too, Heron-Allen tossed the amethyst into Regent’s Canal hoping to be rid of the jewel once and for all, only to have a dealer find and return it months later. Finally accepting his fate, he stored it inside seven locked boxes in a bank vault until his death, when it was sent to the Natural History Museum in London where it still resides to this day.
Spanish artist Bruno Amadio, alias Giovani Bragolin, was a popular painter in the 1950s who created a set of portraits featuring tearful, crying children. His work gained international attention after an article in The Sun in 1985 claimed that a print of one of his paintings, “Crying Boy,” was the cause for a string of house fires that had destroyed everything but the prints which were left untouched.
When traveling in Hawaii, you will likely quickly hear of Pele’s curse, which states that anyone who takes something natively Hawaiian from the state will be cursed with bad luck. This belief extends from traditional lore about not spurning the volcano goddess and respecting her fiery divinity. However, it has taken on a unique power in recent years, despite the fact that taking rocks, sand, pumice, and other objects is already illegal. As a result of the curse, the Hawaiian National Parks Service received hundreds of returned rocks with apology notes asking for forgiveness.
Thomas Busby was a petty thief and alcoholic hung for murdering his father-in-law in 1702. When the law came for him, he was sitting in his favorite chair at the local inn, which would later be named after him. Before being hung, he cursed anyone who sat in his chair to die violently. Although his curse was respected at first, time dulled the memory, and a new owner soon put the chair out, leading to the death of its first victims; a chimney sweep. Friends would dare one another to sit in Busby’s chair and sometimes perish in mysterious accidents, but the last known victim was a deliveryman who died hours after sitting in the cursed chair in a car accident. Today, the chair hangs 5 feet off the ground for safety in the Thirsk Museum in North Yorkshire.
At the start of the 20th century, a scorned servant gave a sailor doll to Robert Eugene (Gene) Otto, which he named after himself . Soon enough, the doll had his own seat at the dinner table and in the boy’s bed. Trouble began when Gene’s parents heard him and his doll talking, which was followed by Robert terrorizing the boy at night. Over time, it was left in the attic, though passing children claimed to see it move. After Gene’s death in 1974, a new family moved in with a young daughter who quickly grew to fear the doll. Robert was given to the lFort East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida, where he resides to this day, safely locked within a glass case.
In “The Hands Resist Him,” painted by Bill Stoneham, a California-based artist, a boy and doll-girl stand before a window covered in ghostly hand prints. The painting acquired its cursed reputation after the gallery owner who first displayed the artwork, the buyer, and the art critic who first wrote about the painting all died within years of each other. Quite the coincidence right? That’s not the half of it. After the death of the original owner, the painting changed ownership to a family who claimed the figures in the painting actually moved at night, crawling out of the painting to cause mischief. It was eventually put on Ebay where gallery owner Kim Smith purchased the painting for $1,025. It now resides in the gallery’s storage space, hidden from view of unsuspecting art lovers.
When author and antique dealer Kevin Mannis bought a wine cabinet at an estate sale, he did not expect to unleash an evil spirit. With the cabinet in the house, he and those around him began to experience nightmares of an old hag, but, upon giving it to his mother, she suffered a stroke. From there, he turned to eBay, but each owner afterwards experienced terrible misfortunes. After much research, Mannis discovered the cabinet’s ownership can be traced back to a Polish Holocaust survivor named Havela, whose family believed it contained a dybbuk, a restless, malicious spirit in Jewish belief. The dybbuk box was eventually sold to J. Haxton of Missouri, who worked with local rabbis to seal the dybbuk in the box to prevent it from doing any further harm.
Although Otzi the Iceman died in 3300 BCE, he’s not quite done causing chaos. As Europe’s oldest known natural mummy, he was found in 1991 in the Otztal Alps of Italy after having been preserved by glaciers growing around him. Initially, it was believed that he died of exposure, but later details showed that he died from blood loss from a fatal wound inflicted by an arrowhead. The legend of Otzi’s curse began as the people connected with his discovery began to mysteriously die. In all, the curse is said to have claimed seven lives which include a forensic pathologist who died in a car crash, a mountaineer who died in an avalanche, and the hiker who found him, who fell from a dangerous path. You can see Otzi, if you dare, at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.
When James Dean died in 1955, the insurance company declared his Silver Porsche 550 Spyder a loss. The car was dismantled and it’s parts soon found their way into other vehicles. The drivetrain was sold to Dr. William F. Eschrich of Burbank, a racer who was soon injured in a car crash. He was lucky compared to another man who died while driving a car powered by Dean’s engine. Other incidents include a mechanic whose legs were crushed by the car and a truck driver killed in an accident while transporting its shell. After car designer George Barris bought and began touring the wreck, the Spyder caught fire while awaiting display as a safety exhibit, injuring none. The very next year, it disappeared while being transported across country.
