The Devil's Rocking Chair; Or, The Dangers of Buying Discounted Antiques

Fifteen-year-old Jody Randall of Long Beach, California, was in most ways a typical suburban teenager.  The one thing that set her apart was a passion for antiques which was unusual for someone of her youth.  As a result of spending all her available free time (and her parents’ money) on her hobby, she eventually amassed some impressive pieces, including a doll collection noteworthy enough to earn a writeup in “Teen” magazine.

In the summer of 1970, she sold a vintage French doll to an antique dealer named Marge Lord.  While in Lord’s shop, Randall saw a heavy, ornate rocking chair dating from about 1550, of a style known as “Black Forest sleigh.”  The girl was fascinated.  She knew instantly that she must buy it, even though when she sat in the chair, she had the disconcerting feeling that invisible arms were tightly holding her waist.

Lord told Randall that she didn’t want to sell the chair, but an offer of $1,250 might change her mind.  This was way over Jody’s budget, but the teen was in love.  All she could think of was trying to find some way to get enough money to make the chair her own.

In August, Lord phoned Jody to say that she was now willing to give her the chair for $800.  Randall could even pay her in installments!  Jody was so thrilled to get the antique buy of her dreams, she never stopped to wonder why Lord’s feelings about the chair had changed so abruptly.

By early September, the chair was gracing the Randall living room.  It was not long before the family noticed that there was something…odd about their new acquisition.  No matter how well-lit the room was, the chair appeared to be in darkness, as though it was surrounded by a murky fog.  One afternoon, as Jody sat reading on the floor next to the chair, she suddenly felt a weird blackness surrounding her, leaving her immobilized.  She could not even speak.  After a period of time--she couldn’t even say how long--the dark haze disappeared, leaving her back to normal.  Telling herself that the creepy experience was all in her head, she decided not to mention it to anyone.

About a week later, the black veil again enveloped her--only this time, she saw “hellish-looking yellow eyes” appear over her head.  The terrified girl felt some evil presence was trying to possess her.  The eyes soon disappeared, but the black fog clung to her for some time.  After it finally vanished, Jody was left completely exhausted.

Jody began to feel frightened whenever she was in her house.  She had the sense that some sinister presence was stalking her.  The family’s Yorkshire terrier, Girl Dog, appeared to share the girl’s fear.  Girl Dog avoided the living room, and whenever she was alone in the house, the Yorkie would go next door to the home of Jody’s grandparents, begging to be let in.

One day in October, Jody and her mother were sitting in the living room, when the girl suddenly saw two bats fly through the room.  Her mother had seen nothing.  However, the next day, when Mrs. Randall and some visitors were in the living room, they all saw a weird light appear.  The whole family began to hear strange tapping on the walls, and the sound of invisible hands banging on the front door.  One evening, Mrs. Randall saw the heavy wooden chair vigorously rocking on its own.

Soon after this, Jody was in the kitchen when she heard loud scuffling noises coming from the living room, as if people were fighting there.  When she entered the room, she saw the chair rocking.  She then heard mocking laughter and a voice saying, “Soon she will be in my power.”  After this, the girl frequently woke up in the night to the sound of some invisible being breathing hoarsely in her bedroom.

It began to dawn on Jody why Marge Lord became so willing to sell the chair.

Despite all this, Jody’s father, Jim Randall, remained skeptical.  He did not believe in ghosts, or evil spirits, and remained convinced that the household was suffering from nothing worse than an outbreak of overactive imaginations.  However, realizing that his daughter was genuinely terrified, he offered to buy the chair from her.  He explained that if he became its official owner, she would then be left in peace.  Jim gave Jody $10, and she gave him a formal receipt.

Jim moved the chair to their garage, jokingly telling the antique that if it didn’t behave, he would turn it into kindling.  A few days later, as Jim was gluing formica to a wall, the can of glue mysteriously exploded, covering his legs with burning adhesive.  His burns were so severe he needed a series of skin grafts.

After Jim was hospitalized, his panicked family--now thoroughly convinced something satanic was going on--went to a family friend, Nadine, who was a clairvoyant.  After meditating near the chair, Nadine stated that she saw a monk standing near the rocker, and another man sitting in it.  She sensed that the sitting man was a ruler somewhere in Northern Europe who had sent very many people to their deaths.  She said it was the most disturbing vision she ever had.

Being exiled to the garage did nothing to stop the chair’s malevolent properties.  One day, when Mrs. Randall went to the garage to feed the cat, she saw the chair do its ominous rocking.  A few days later, Jody’s grandmother entered the garage.  She saw nothing, but felt such an air of unease that she left as soon as possible.  The minute she reentered the house, a large ladder that was leaning against the house inexplicably crashed to the ground.

Shortly after this episode, a friend of Judy’s named Bob Anderson playfully sat in the chair and announced that the rocker didn’t scare him.  That night, he was in an auto accident which nearly killed him.

The Randalls--rather late in the day, one would think--decided it was time to get rid of the chair.  A local antique dealer put the chair on sale, without attracting any buyers.  Then, the Randalls had the ingenious idea of writing to Anton LaVey, the notorious founder of San Francisco’s Church of Satan.  The family explained to him that they appeared to have a demon-possessed rocking chair on their hands, and--considering his line of work--they asked if he would be interested in acquiring it.

LaVey was delighted at the idea, and offered them $500.  He cheerfully explained that it was entirely possible to live peacefully with such entities, if you only understood them.

Journalist Marilyn Estes-Smith, who wrote an article about the chair in the July 1973 issue of “Fate Magazine," asked Marge Lord about the rocker’s history.  Lord explained that she had bought the chair from a Mrs. Conger.  She had planned to keep it for her own use, but after coming into the room one day to find the chair rocking on its own, she thought it might be a good idea to let young Miss Randall have the thing.  When Mrs. Conger was contacted about the chair, she became very upset and refused to even talk about it.

The backstory of this antique chair will probably forever remain a mystery.  At least Mr. LaVey had a happy ending from the story.  It’s not every day that a satanist can pick up a cursed rocking chair on the cheap.

The Egyptologist and the Angry Cat God

Arthur Weigall at the Temple of Edfu

I love tales of ancient curses.  I love tales of sinister ghost cats even more.  Show me a story that combines the two, and I’m in Blog Nirvana.  The following is an excerpt from Egyptologist Arthur Weigall’s 1923 book, “Tutankhamun and Other Essays.”

The large number of visitors to Egypt and persons interested in Egyptian antiquities who believe in the malevolence of the spirits of the Pharaohs and their dead subjects, is always a matter of astonishment to me, in view of the fact that of all ancient peoples the Egyptians were the most kindly and, to me, the most loveable. Sober and thoughtful men, and matter-of-fact matrons, seem to vie with the lighter-minded members of society in recording the misfortunes which have befallen themselves or their friends as a consequence of their meddling with the property of the dead. On all sides one hears tales of the trials which have come upon those who, owing to their possession of some antiquity or ancient relic, have given offense to the spirits of the old inhabitants of the Nile Valley. These stories are generally open to some natural explanation, and those tales which I can relate at first hand are not necessarily to be connected with black magic. I will therefore leave it to the reader's taste to find an explanation for the incidents which I will here relate.

In the year 1909 Lord Carnarvon, who was then conducting excavations in the necropolis of the nobles of Thebes, discovered a hollow wooden figure of a large black cat, which we recognised, from other examples in the Cairo museum, to be the shell in which a real embalmed cat was confined. The figure looked more like a small tiger as it sat in the sunlight at the edge of the pit in which it had been discovered, glaring at us with its yellow painted eyes and bristling its yellow whiskers. Its body was covered all over with a thick coating of smooth, shining pitch, and we could not at first detect the line along which the shell had been closed after it had received the mortal remains of the sacred animal within; but we knew from experience that the joint passed completely round the figure—from the nose, over the top of the head, down the back, and along the breast-so that, when opened, the two sides would fall apart in equal halves.

The sombre figure was carried down to the Nile and across the river to my house, where, by a mistake on the part of my Egyptian servant, it was deposited in my bedroom. Returning home at dead of night, I found it seated in the middle of the floor directly in my path from the door to the matches; and for some moments I was constrained to sit beside it, rubbing my shins and my head.

I rang the bell, but receiving no answer, I walked to the kitchen, where I found the servants grouped distractedly around the butler, who had been stung by a scorpion and was in the throes of that short but intense agony. Soon he passed into a state of delirium and believed himself to be pursued by a large grey cat, a fancy which did not surprise me since he had so lately assisted in carrying the figure to its ill-chosen resting-place in my bedroom.

At length I retired to bed, but the moonlight which now entered the room through the open French windows fell full upon the black figure of the cat; and for some time I lay awake watching the peculiarly weird creature as it stared past me at the wall. I estimated its age to be considerably more than three thousand years, and I tried to picture to myself the strange people who, in those distant times, had fashioned this curious coffin for a cat which had been to them half pet and half household god. A branch of a tree was swaying in the night breeze outside, and its shadow danced to and fro over the face of the cat, causing the yellow eyes to open and shut, as it were, and the mouth to grin. Once, as I was dropping off to sleep, I could have sworn that it had turned its head to look at me; and I could see the sullen expression of feline anger gathering upon its black visage as it did so. In the distance I could hear the melancholy wails of the unfortunate butler imploring those around him to keep the cat away from him, and it seemed to me that there came a glitter into the eyes of the figure as the low cries echoed down the passage.

At last I fell asleep, and for about an hour all was still. Then, suddenly, a report like that of a pistol rang through the room. I started up, and as I did so a large grey cat sprang either from or on to the bed, leapt across my knees, dug its claws into my hand, and dashed through the window into the garden. At the same moment I saw by the light of the moon that the two sides of the wooden figure had fallen apart and were rocking themselves to a standstill upon the floor, like two great empty shells. Between them sat the mummified figure of a cat, the bandages which swathed it round being ripped open at the neck, as though they had been burst outward.

I sprang out of bed and rapidly examined the divided shell; and it seemed to me that the humidity in the air here on the bank of the Nile had expanded the wood which had rested in the dry desert so long, and had caused the two halves to burst apart with the loud noise which I had heard. Then, going to the window, I scanned the moonlit garden; and there in the middle of the pathway I saw, not the grey cat which had scratched me, but my own pet tabby, standing with arched back and bristling fur, glaring into the bushes, as though she saw ten feline devils therein.

I will leave the reader to decide whether the grey cat was the malevolent spirit which, after causing me to break my shins and my butler to be stung by a scorpion, had burst its way through the bandages and woodwork and had fled into the darkness; or whether the torn embalming cloths represented the natural destructive work of Time, and the grey cat was a night-wanderer which had strayed into my room and had been frightened by the easily-explained bursting apart of the two sides of the ancient Egyptian figure. Coincidence is a factor in life not always sufficiently considered; and the events I have related can be explained in a perfectly natural manner, if one be inclined to do so.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Door-to-door salespeople can be a pesky lot, but it would be hard to top the one featured in this report in the “St. Louis Post Dispatch” on August 2, 1908:

That a gypsy woman has bewitched her and her little nephew is the firm belief of Mrs. William Koester of 4126 Osceola street. 

An old gypsy woman, with a pack on her back, who looked like a witch, called at her home last Wednesday and became angry because Mrs. Koester did not buy from her. As she left, the gypsy said: "You will be sorry you did not buy," and Mrs. Koester says the old crone gave her a look that made her think of stories she had heard of "the evil eye." 

"She was the queerest old hag I ever saw,” says Mrs. Koester.  “She was bent and had a hump on her back exactly like the pictures of witches you see in the story books.  When she first came in I was afraid of her. She put her pack down and opened it, and although I told her I would not buy, she insisted on taking out all her goods and showing them.

"And as I refused to buy each article she became more and more angry. At last she packed up and with a look in her eyes that I can never forget she patted my little nephew on the head and then came over to me and rubbed the palm of her hand across my head and mumbled something in a strange tongue.” 

The old gypsy woman had not been gone long from the house until strange things began to happen. The first unusual thing Mrs. Koester heard was the striking of a clock in her front room, although she has no clock in the house. 

“It struck four times slowly and distinctly like the tolling of a funeral bell," says Mrs. Koester.  

Next she saw the table go tipping and dancing across the floor, she says. Then, as she sat at the table, some strange force took the shoe lace from her shoe and wound it around a broom-handle. 

Her little nephew became frightened and declared that he saw a man in the house moving around from room to room. He was a little old man, bent and with an evil-looking face. Mrs. Koester tried to soothe him and convince him that he saw nothing, but every little while he would run, screaming to her and bury his face in her lap and cry out that the man was after him. 

Mrs. Koester’s husband works in a shoe factory; they own their home and they have never been erratic.  But Mrs. Koester told this story last night: 

"As I went into my front room this afternoon leading my little nephew by the hand I saw a man standing at the chiffonier. I saw him plainly. He was small and old and his figure was bent. His face bore a strong resemblance to the gypsy woman. I asked him: 'Who are you?’  He answered: 'I am a friend of yours.' I asked him:’What's your name?' He answered: 'M.W.’  I never knew anyone with a name those initials would fit and I am mystified to know what it means." 

The neighbors are taking a deep interest in the case and nearly two hundred of them visited the house last night.

So now you know why people put up “No Soliciting” signs.

Egyptian God Theater Critics Are the Worst Theater Critics

Joseph Lindon Smith, via the Smithsonian Institution

While virtually everyone has heard of the alleged “Curse of Tutankhamen's Tomb,” there are a number of “curse” stories related to ancient Egypt that are much more obscure.  The old Egyptians lived in a world where what we would call “magic” was a part of everyday life, and according to some people, they didn’t hesitate to use it...even many centuries after their death.  One such account was recorded by an artist named Joseph Lindon Smith.  It was published in the posthumous collection of his writings, “Tombs, Temples, and Ancient Art.”  Smith started his career as a portrait painter, but after visiting Egypt in 1898, he became fascinated by the country’s antiquities.  His exquisite paintings of Egypt’s archaeological past caught the eye of Egyptologists, who hired him to make copies of the fragile wall paintings in newly-excavated tombs.  

In 1909, Smith was working on recent excavations in the Valley of the Kings.  With him were his wife Corinna and two of their closest friends, archaeologist Arthur Weigel and his wife Hortense.  One day while exploring the area, Joseph and Arthur came across a natural amphitheater in the Valley of the Queens.  Smith loved amateur theatricals--he even had a small theater behind his home in America--so this discovery gave him an idea: he and his wife and friends would put on a play.

And not just any old play, either.  Smith was surely one of the most ambitious playwrights in history.  He and Arthur Weigel wrote a play aimed at interceding with the Egyptian gods to remove a curse which had been put on the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten, which had condemned him to be a restless, wandering spirit for all of time.  They hoped that the performance would lift the curse and enable the pharaoh to finally find eternal rest.

The quartet scheduled their play for January 26, the presumed anniversary of Akhenaten’s death.  They held a dress rehearsal on the 23rd.  The play opened with the god Horus (Smith) offering to grant the spirit of Akhenaten (as portrayed by Hortense) a wish.  The pharaoh asked to see his mother, Queen Ty, who was played by Corinna.  As Hortense raised her arms in supplication, a peal of thunder and a flash of lightning struck near them.  Akhenaten asked his mother to bring him comfort by reciting one of his hymns to the sun god.  The instant Corinna began the hymn, a wind came up which was so violent, she was unable to be heard.  Corinna, feeling it would not be queen-like to retreat, tried to finish her poem, but when the performers began being pelted with sand, rain, and hailstones the size of tennis balls, most of them were forced to flee to the shelter of a nearby tomb.  Corinna, however, insisted on standing dramatically on her rock, reciting the long hymn to the very end.  When her husband finally persuaded her to leave the stage, she was soaking wet, but elated that she had managed to defy both the elements and the ancient priests of Amun.

Soon afterwards, the quartet got a lesson in what happens when you defy Egyptian deities. Corinna began feeling pain in her eyes, and Hortense had intense stomach cramps.  That night, both women had the same dream: they were in the temple of Amun, the Egyptian king of the gods.  The statue of the god suddenly came to life and hit them with his flail; Corinna was struck over her eyes, Hortense on her stomach.  By the following morning, Corinna’s eyes were so painful that she was brought to a eye specialist in Cairo.  The doctor found that she had one of the worst cases of trachoma (an eye infection which often causes blindness) that he had ever seen.  The following day, Hortense was also hospitalized.  She had to undergo a stomach operation which nearly killed her.  Most of those who had attended the rehearsal also fell ill in various ways.  Fortunately, everyone eventually recovered completely.

Our thespians were left in that state known as “sadder but wiser.”  Their performance was permanently cancelled.  Akhenaten would just have to resolve his afterlife issues on his own.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

An ancient cross which puts a curse on anyone who dares to meddle with it. No, it's not the plot of an M.R. James story, but rather a news item in the Saskatoon "Star Phoenix," March 28, 1969:

Copplestone, England.--Residents in this Devon village fear the consequences of an ancient Saxon curse when municipal workmen move the massive stone cross which has stood here for 1,000 years.

Legend has it that anyone tampering with the 20-ton granite monument will suffer a life of misfortune and eternal damnation.

Thirty years ago the council decided the cross was a traffic hazard and planned moving it, but workmen refused to do the job. Last year the scheme was revived and this time objections came from local citizens, led by 75-year-old Madge Pope, who petitioned officials to heed the warnings.

No action was taken for six months, but now workmen have begun the long task of digging up the stone from its 10th century foundations and re-erecting it on a new site.

We are not worried about the curse, said a spokesman for the county highway department. And a workman commented, "if there is a curse, it will only fall on the boss. He gave the order to move it. My mate and I are just doing as we are told."

Meanwhile, Miss Pope is apprehensive.

"They are all very foolish to interfere with it," she says.

"The curse does work. Nobody in the village would dream of touching it--we all know what happened to others who tried to interfere with it."

"Well," I thought. "This is getting good."  I eagerly searched the archives for the sequel, wondering what was the final body count from this act of desecration.

And then I came upon this story from the (Victoria, British Columbia) "Times-Colonist" from September 6 of the same year.

Copplestone. Eng.--Saxon curses may have lost their potency after 1.000 years. At any rate, no dire consequences appear to have followed the shifting of an ancient stone cross in this Devon village in the interest of highway safety.

The cross, a Saxon monument which has stood at the village crossroads since the 10th century, was supposed to bring a lifetime of misfortune and eternal damnation to anyone tampering with it. In modern times it has proved a traffic hazard, impeding the view of motorists approaching the crossroads. But when the council first proposed moving it 30 years ago, workmen refused on account of the curse and the scheme was dropped.

Earlier this year when the idea was revived, some villagers headed by 75-year-old Madge Pope pleaded with the council to heed the ancient warnings. The council compromised, agreeing to move the cross only a few yards from its original site and to keep it on the crossroads.

The job was done about two months ago. apparently without supernatural retribution.

Bummer. Curses just aren't what they used to be in the good old days.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

I suppose the headline pretty much says it all, but read on. The "Los Angeles Herald," January 21, 1910:

NEW YORK, Jan. 20.—Assistant Purser L.F. Lipscombe of the Royal Mail Packet steamship Orotava was in desperate straits last night. The curse foretold by the Obi woman, the seeress he had consulted many months ago in Hamilton, Bermuda, had come upon him. 

He had seen a white rat, not once, but three times, on the voyage, from the Summer lsle that ended here yesterday.

All of the 101 passengers know of the direful thing that menaced the assistant purser. All knew he must have that rat killed by a black tomcat that had not a single while hair. For had not the Obi woman said so? Mr. Lipscombe himself confirmed it and groaned as he did so.

"You will have good fortune," she told him, "until you see a wild white rat. When you do ill luck will follow you unless a perfectly black male cat kills the rat."

The assistant purser laughed with joy. His fortune teemed assured, for who ever heard of a wild white rat?

That was last summer, and the assistant purser's lucky star seemed on the ascendant until the Orotava was cutting the Atlantic two days ago. Then the rat appeared. It leaped on the table in front of Mr. Lipscombe, ran across it, jumped to the floor, scampered the length of the saloon and disappeared. The sight of that white rat spoiled the assistant purser's dinner. He sought the ship's cat, but alas! the animal's tail was tipped with white. It was such a tiny white speck in the very end of the tail that Mr. Lipscombe did not notice it until the cat made many futile efforts to catch the white rat that appeared twice on Sunday.

Then Mr. Lipscombe shut up the cat, fearing it would kill the rat, and to have the wrong sort of cat do that would be the worst of evils. He was moody when the ship berthed, and as soon as he could leave his duties and the sympathizing passengers he went ashore to look for an utterly black tomcat.

Purser Sturgess says he has not the least idea how that white rat came aboard the Orotava.

As is usually the case with the really good newspaper items, there was no follow-up to this story, so I have no idea how Mr. Lipscombe's travails ended.

Toothache and the Temple God; Or, The Hazards of Indiscriminate Souvenir Shopping

19th century ivory Ho-tei, via Buddhamuseum.com. Not guaranteed to come with a curse.

In 1928, travel writer Charles James Lambert and his wife Marie were visiting Kobe, Japan. While passing the window of a junk shop, a small statue of Ho-tei, the Japanese god of good fortune, happened to catch Mrs. Lambert’s eye. Although the exquisite little figure was obviously very old and made of pure ivory, it was available at a very cheap price. The only visible oddity about the figuring was that centered on the underside was a small hole where the nerve of the elephant's tooth had ended. This hole was plugged with an ivory peg. The Lamberts, congratulating themselves on finding such a remarkable bargain, purchased it on the spot.

All of you with any exposure to Ghost Stories 101 will have some idea of what came next.

After they returned to their cruise ship, Marie Lambert, who had the statue in her luggage, began to suffer horrible toothaches that were impervious to painkillers. Her husband came down with mysterious joint pains and fevers. When she went to a dentist, his drill accidentally hit a nerve on the tooth, which, of course, just made matters worse. The couple became so debilitated that they abandoned their planned destination of Manila, obtained passage to Sydney, "and crept on shipboard more dead than alive."

On the next leg of their cruise, the Ho-tei wound up in Mr. Lambert’s luggage. He immediately began experiencing severe tooth pains. At the first port they reached, he visited several dentists, only to be told there was nothing whatever wrong with his teeth. In desperation, he told the last one to start pulling out his teeth and just keep pulling them out until the pain went away. After the first tooth was extracted, his agony stopped, but resumed the minute he went back aboard his ship.

When they reached Sydney, the Lamberts left their luggage in storage, so they were "parted from Ho-tei" for several weeks. While on land, their pains ceased, only to return as soon as their belongings were in their cabin with them. This pattern continued for the rest of their voyage. The couple only found relief from their pain when the ivory figurine was not in their direct possession. It never occurred to them that this might possibly have been more than coincidence.

When they were back in America, Lambert’s mother was so taken with the Ho-tei figure that they gave it to her. Yes, of course, within a few hours she came down with a severe toothache. The elder Mrs. Lambert, clearly considerably sharper than her son and daughter-in-law, quickly returned the statuette to them, saying it was "bad medicine."

The Lamberts did not connect their dental miseries to their new acquisition until a short while later, when they were sailing from America to Britain. A fellow passenger, who was a collector of ivory, borrowed the Ho-tei overnight. The next day, she told them that she and her husband had both suffered from toothaches all the time the object was in their cabin.

Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, at long last, put two and two together. "We went over dates and symptoms carefully all the way back to Japan, and our hair rose in horror." Mrs. Lambert was all for throwing the sadistic little object overboard, but her husband, who by now had a thorough dread of the figurine, feared it might retaliate by "rotting every tooth in our heads." They decided the safest thing to do would be to return the Ho-tei to its compatriots.

In London, they brought the statuette to a Japanese art shop. The manager was anxious to buy it, but the Lamberts told him they could not take money for the object. They felt obliged to warn him of the troubles the god had brought into their lives. A strange expression came over the manager's face. Speaking in Japanese, he had an assistant bring in an elderly Japanese man. When this older man saw the Ho-tei, he gasped and extended his hands "in a kind of supplication." The three Japanese carefully examined the object, speaking to each other in short, excited bursts of their native language. The elderly man carefully placed the Ho-tei on a shrine at one end of the shop and lit a row of joss sticks at its feet. Then they all fell reverently silent. The Lamberts quietly left the shop, utterly relieved to see the last of the ivory god. Lambert later wrote, "I do wonder sometimes what has happened to that tiny ivory figure, but I have no intention of finding out."

Lambert was subsequently told that some Japanese temple gods were given "souls." The figures were engraved with characters which matched the one on the Ho-tei. Perhaps this particular god was offended at being removed from its rightful domain.

Lambert later described the incident in his 1953 book “Together We Wandered.” The travel narrative sold very well, largely on the strength of his story of being cursed by a temple god.

So, in the end, perhaps the little Ho-tei brought him good luck, after all.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

 Via Newspapers.com

If "The Raven's Curse" isn't a classic Strange Company topic, I don't know what is. From the "Ottawa Journal," August 20, 1927:

LONDON. (By Mail). The raven, bird of ill omen and foreboder of death, is the central figure in a weird and tragic occurrence at the Tower of London.

Ravens have made their home at the Tower for hundreds of years, and it is a superstition among the troops that if a raven's death is encompassed a soldier's life pays the penalty.

A few days ago a Guardsman was leading a dog through the square. He was confronted by a raven, credited with 80 years, which attacked the dog vigorously with his beak, still sharp for all his advanced age. The Guardsman repelled the attack by means of his stick, and unintentionally killed the bird.

The barracks were filled at once with dread forebodings. The raven's body was buried with due ceremony, and a piece of wood, suitably inscribed, was erected to mark his grave.

The sequel was not long delayed. The following night Guardsman Arthur Chidgey overstayed his leave. He tried to enter the Tower by climbing the wall, but he fell Into the moat, breaking both his legs. He was the following morning--although the deepest sympathy was expressed for him--generally voted lucky in escaping the full penalty of the raven's vengeance.

He died later in the day, however, gangrene having developed. The officer whose duty it was to report the details of the case visited the scene of the accident. He found that the unfortunate Guardsman had fallen directly on the raven's grave, the imprint of his body being clearly visible.

The Curse of the Setons; Or, The Dangers of Confusing An Ancient Tomb With a Souvenir Shop

Dundee Courier, March 29, 1937

A familiar and beloved theme of horror films is "tourists bring home ancient relic they nicked, soon learn to regret it." However, there is at least one notable instance where this well-worn Fortean cliche allegedly played out in real life. Sir Alexander Hay Seton, 10th Baronet of Abercorn, (1904-1963) came to believe that his wife's macabre act of Egyptian souvenir-hunting essentially destroyed his entire family.

Seton's account of the disaster--which needs only a creepy film score and a cameo by Christopher Lee to make the cinematic resemblance complete--was included in his (unpublished) autobiography, "The Transgressions of a Baronet." As you will see, he considered his major "transgression" to be getting on the wrong side of the Gods.

Alexander Seton, 1939

In the spring of 1936, Seton and his wife Zeyla were touring Egypt. Initially, at least, the visit was idyllic. Although the baronet was "disappointed" by the Valley of Kings ("there was really little to see,") they were thrilled by the Temple at Luxor. After two days of sight-seeing, (including a ride on "a rather unpleasant camel,") the couple returned to their hotel in Cairo, literally under the shadow of the Great Pyramid.

Their mood was of "complete satisfaction," augmented by Seton receiving a check from an editor in Glasgow who had bought an article Sir Alexander had written about their trip. Their guide informed them that some tombs had recently been discovered behind the Pyramid. Although they were not of any great historical value, he said that the Setons might find it interesting to view the finishing stages of the excavation. Although the Egyptians greatly frowned upon visitors entering the tombs, it was arranged that for an extra fee, the guide would sneak them inside. Sir Alexander--perhaps speaking with the benefit of hindsight--wrote that he had a bad feeling about committing what the locals would consider a sacrilege, but his wife persuaded him to accompany her. "I wish earnestly to God that we had not gone!"

Zeyla Seton, Sunday Post, May 13, 1928

The tomb they were to visit was, they were told, from the pre-mummy era, and for the last four or five thousand years, had been filled in by the mud of the Nile. Seton recalled that "we went down some roughly hewn rock steps--about 30 of them--and there, lying on a stone slab and uncovered was the remains of a skeleton--water and mud had removed most. You could see the skull quite clearly and the leg bones but few ribs were left although the spine was almost intact." Their guide told them that these were remains of a girl of high status, although her name and age were long since erased by history.

Sir Alexander felt mournful as he gazed down at these ancient, anonymous bones, which were all that remained of this long-forgotten fellow human being. Perhaps, he thought, one day far in the future his bones may be gazed upon wonderingly by some idle tourist. He muttered a quick prayer and thankfully went back up into the world of the living. His wife, however, was oddly entranced by the skeleton. She insisted on slipping back into the tomb alone for one last look.

On the way back to their hotel, it was suggested that they stop at the Pyramid's souvenir stand, but to Sir Alexander's surprise, Zeyla declined. That night, she told him that she had already acquired one very special memento of their visit--one not to be found in any mere store. She had taken a small bone from the skeleton they had visited!

Sir Alexander was unimpressed with his wife's prize. He thought the bone "looked like a digestive biscuit."

The Setons continued their holiday, and some weeks later returned to their home in Edinburgh. Sir Alexander had forgotten all about their unconventional souvenir until Zeyla proudly brought it out to show to friends. They put the "somewhat grotesque relic" into a small case, which they left on a table in the drawing room.

As their guests were leaving, they all heard "the most almighty crash," and a large piece of the roof hit the ground about two feet from them. It could easily have killed one of them.

The superstitious Sir Alexander had a very bad feeling about this.

A few nights later, after the Setons had retired to bed, their young daughter Egidia's nanny, Janet Clarke, came to them in great alarm. She said she had heard someone moving around in the drawing room. Seton went to investigate, but found nothing. He told Miss Clarke that it had only been her imagination. Later that night, Seton thought he heard a crash, but chose to ignore it. In the morning, it was discovered that the table holding the bone was on its side, with the little case holding the relic lying on the floor.

A few weeks later, the Setons began hearing loud footsteps...in areas of the house they knew were unoccupied. Over the next few nights, their sleep was disturbed by loud, inexplicable noises. One morning, a visiting nephew announced that the night before he had seen "a funny dressed person going upstairs." Assuming that they had a burglar casing the house, Seton resolved to sit up all the next night, after making sure all the doors and windows were locked. He saw and heard nothing. Seton was about to go back to bed, when his wife cried to him that she heard someone downstairs. He dashed down the stairs. The drawing room was still securely locked tight, but when he unfastened the door, he was startled to find a scene of complete disorder. "Chairs were upset, books flung about, and there in the middle of the chaos was that damn Bone, looking as harmless and more like a biscuit than ever."

Sir Alexander concluded that they were being visited by a poltergeist. Zeyla consulted a soothsayer, but alas, she "really said practically nothing except that her fee was £1."

Some days passed without incident, and the Setons began to think the weird ordeal was over. Then, the poltergeist--or whatever one cares to call it--started up again with a vengeance. The drawing room became the center of loud bangs and noises that left the family with scarcely a moment's peace. They tried the experiment of moving all the articles in the room that had been thrown around--including the table holding That Damn Bone--down to Sir Alexander's sitting room. After a week had passed, Seton tired of the cluttered condition of his room, and announced that he would be moving everything back on the following day. "That night, however, something nearly did the job for me." All the furniture in the sitting room had been thrown about and, as usual, the bone was left lying on the floor.

It finally began to occur to the Setons that there was something very unusual about that bone.

Sir Alexander announced that he was burning the damned--in every sense of the word--object. However, this met with such a "storm of abuse" from Zeyla that he simply threw up his hands in exasperation and went out for a drink. After getting "a little tight," he went home with the stern resolve to destroy the bone.

He learned that during his absence, his nemesis had been one busy little bone. The damage was even worse than usual. Not only had all the furniture in the drawing room been hurled around, the table holding the bone was severely cracked.

Sir Alexander was feeling a bit cracked, too, especially when the newspapers somehow got hold of the story. He found himself pestered by reporters eager for him to make some statement on the matter, but he refused. He recalled that the press made his life "hell on earth," but surely the bone was doing an even better job in that department.

A few weeks later, Miss Clarke, "scared out of her life," told the Setons a most disturbing story. She had heard the usual "noises, etc." coming from the drawing room, but this time they were followed by "a terrific crash" and the sound of breaking glass. She had been too frightened to investigate. When Sir Alexander entered the room, he found the room untouched...except for the table holding the bone. The table was smashed to bits. The glass case which had held the bone was shattered into fragments. The bone itself was broken into about five pieces.

Well, thought Sir Alexander. He certainly had something for the reporters now! He allowed in a cameraman from the "Daily Mail" to record the destruction. ("You should have seen the story the next day!") He gave the bone to one of the reporters who covered the story, but the journalist soon returned it. He had become seriously ill. Zeyla, to her husband's "disgust and dismay," had gotten a doctor friend to repair the bone as best he could (he informed her that it was a sacrum, the bone at the base of the spine.) She then insisted on placing it on a new table in the drawing room. Zeyla seemed to have an almost maternal fondness for the infernal thing.

The climax to this series of uncanny events took place on Boxing Day, 1936. The Setons had guests over for dinner. After a fine meal and some cocktails, everyone was in a jovial holiday mood. Conversation turned to the topic of the bone. As they chatted about Zeyla's pet sacrum, the whole table--bone and all--was lifted by invisible hands and flung on to the opposite wall. "The maid fainted as did Zeyla's rather hysterical cousin Gert!"

The party was most definitely over.

After this incident, the American papers began carrying the story. To Sir Alexander's disgust, "they went to town with it, the whole story being magnified and I found myself again the leading figure in a story which I had begun to hate." Spiritualists held meetings on the topic which drew hundreds of people. ("I only wish now I had had a good agent--I could have made a fortune out of it!") Seton also received a letter from Howard Carter, the man who has gone down in archaeological history as the discoverer of King Tutankhamen's tomb. Carter asked him to keep the details of his letter private, but "he assured me that things quite inexplicable like this could happen, indeed had happened and will go on happening."

Sir Alexander was not Catholic, but he had great respect for an uncle of his who was a priest. One day while his wife's back was turned, he had his uncle come and perform an exorcism at his house. Then Seton burned the bone into ashes.

After this, the Seton home was never troubled again. By the bone, at least. Zeyla Seton never forgave her husband for destroying her precious bone. Their marriage, already on shaky ground, irretrievably foundered.  (This comes as no surprise, considering that Zeyla's true love seems to have been a fragment of haunted spinal column.)

Seton had no answer for the eerie happenings, other than that the bone somehow released "some strange power." If, as many people believed, the bone carried a curse, Seton wrote that it did not end with the bone's destruction. "From 1936 onwards trouble, sometimes grave, seemed to be always around the corner."

In later years, both Egidia Seton and Janet Clarke independently verified that the strange phenomena described by Sir Alexander did indeed take place. Sir Alexander and his wife ended their increasingly unhappy marriage in 1939. They both remarried, but neither found happiness in their new unions. Both continued to suffer from ill-health, financial difficulties, and depression. To the end of his days, the baronet was convinced the evil spell cast upon his entire family had never lifted.

After all, exorcism or no, there was still one venerable Egyptian lady who will forever be missing part of her spine...

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

This medieval-sounding tale of a fatal curse put on a Kentucky doctor appeared in the "St. Louis Republic," October 11,1901:

"Within nine days that fine mare will die, the colt you value will die, your last hunting dog will disappear, and then you will die."

This was the prophecy made by an unknown mysterious woman to Doctor Alfred Lemberger, and it came true to the letter, for Doctor Lemberger fell over dead from heart failure on the evening of the ninth day.

The other conditions of the prophecy had already been fulfilled.

Now every detective on the Louisville force and every newspaper reporter is looking for the strange woman who made that prediction. Physicians say that she probably caused the man's death by the psychic effect upon him. But the question remains, Who is the woman? for only Doctor Lemberger knew and he never told her name. That section of the city was never so excited before.  Miss Kate Schuster, who was to have married the doctor the latter part of this month does not know nor does her sister Mrs. Schweitzer, who kept house for the bachelor. His brother and intimate friends can tell simply what Doctor Lemberger told them that a woman had predicted his death.

It started several weeks ago when Doctor Lemberger was called to attend a child suffering from diphtheria. The physician and family differed as to the diagnosis. He reported it as diphtheria, placarded the house, and enforced the sanitary measures that the law provides. The family objected bitterly. The baby died. One of the family visited the physician's office on Goss avenue to "wish him ill."

 According to the story of the dead man's intimate friends, Doctor Lemberger was a member of a little club that met each week at the home of some member for a social card game. Almost all of the well-known men in that section of town belonged. It was at a club meeting that the doctor first told the story of the strange prophecy. The man who heard him tell the story first repeated it.

"Boys," he began, "you can play cards on my coffin in a couple of weeks if the prophecy of a woman made today comes true."  Then he went on to tell his friends about the table what he called a good joke on himself. He told them the story, but held back the name of the woman, professing not to know it. In the intervals of the game, amid the jokes and laughter of his comrades the doctor told how the woman had entered his office and said first that she wanted to let him know that he need not hunt for that dog; that he was gone; because he would never come back. It had gotten into the street and a boy had carried it to the country. Then the woman said:

 "Be careful, for in nine days that fine mare will die, your colt, that you value, will die, and finally you will die on the ninth day--if you are not careful."

"But that mare is not mine. She belongs to my brother," said the doctor.

"That makes no difference," replied the woman. "Anything that is in your stable during the next nine days must die. You have enemies and they may kill you. The greatest danger to your life will be in the nine days after the mare dies. Don't go out alone at night. You can believe this because I predicted the death of President McKinley, but said nothing about it because I feared I might get into trouble."

The members of the club heard the doctor's story, and straightaway it became the standing jest. But one day the physician did not answer the questioner so readily. The fine mare was dead. Colic seized the mare one morning, and before Doctor Miller, the veterinary surgeon who was quickly summoned, could arrive she had died.

In a couple of days, however, the physician had apparently forgotten all about the incident. He was only reminded of it by the disappearance of his good hunting dog and the death of two of her pups the same day.

But one of the strange woman's prophesies remained now to be fulfilled. Lemberger had ceased to scoff about the fortunetellers, soothsayers, and the like.

One day he went fishing, but told the people at the house exactly what must be done in case he did not come back.  When the doctor went out at night he took a man with him. The time for the club meeting rolled around. The doctor went. He seemed in finer spirits than he had been for a week. He was even joking and laughing about the prophecy of the strange woman. They were playing "auction pitch."

"I bid one," said the man on Doctor Lemberger's left. The physician skinned his cards. The others were doing the same thing and paid little attention to him.

"I bid two," said Doctor Lemberger at last--then he fell forward on the table dead. The last prophecy of the strange woman had been fulfilled. It was the evening of the ninth day.

Other obituary notices confirm that Dr. Lemberger did die suddenly on October 9 of a massive heart attack. He was only 34 years old.

A similar story about the eerie circumstances surrounding Lemberger's death appeared in the "Louisville Courier-Journal" on the following day:

"Within nine days that fine mare will die, the colt that you value will die, your last hunting dog will disappear, and then you will die."

This was the prophecy made by an unknown, mysterious woman to Dr. Alfred C. Lemberger, and it came true to the letter, for Dr. Lemberger fell over dead from heart failure on the evening of the ninth day. The other conditions of the prophecy had already been fulfilled. Now all Germantown is asking the question: "Who is the woman that made the prophecy?" And none seems able to answer, for the prophecy was made to Dr. Lemberger in private, and only he knew the woman's name.  Miss Kate Schuster, who was to have married the doctor the latter part of this month, does not know, neither does her sister, Mrs. Schweitzer, who kept house for the bachelor. His brother and intimate friends can tell simply what Dr. Lemberger told them--that a woman had predicted his death.

It all started several weeks ago, when Dr. Lemberger was called to attend a child suffering from diphtheria. The physician and the family differed as to the diagnosis. He reported it as diphtheria, placarded the house and enforced the sanitary measure that the law provides. The family objected bitterly. The baby died. One of the family visited the physician's office on Goss avenue to "wish him ill," as the saying goes in that part of town.

Mrs. Schweitzer yesterday told the story of the visit. "She came and wished the doctor ill every way, and he was awful mad, and said he reckoned he'd get even with her some time."

"But is the mother whose child died the woman who predicted Dr. Lemberger's death?" asked the reporter.

"No, that is another one," said Mrs. Schweitzer. "I think she came first to tell the doctor where his hunting dog had gone. He had a fine dog, and it disappeared. One day a medium-sized woman came to his office. I didn't notice her. I wouldn't have thought of it but for the stories that the doctor told. He said that the woman predicted that he would never get the dog back, because it had been carried far away in the country by a boy, who picked it up on the street. He said, then, that she went on to tell him not to worry about that dog, because if he wasn't careful his mare would die and his colt and his other dog, and, finally, himself. My! the doctor was mad. He said he would like to break that woman's neck for telling him such foolishness. I don't believe in such things, but it all came true."

The reporter hunted up another friend who had been very close to Dr. Lemberger. And then, the only story of the occurrence that the doctor told his friend came to light.

Dr. Lemberger was a member of a little club that met each week at the home of some members for a social card game. Almost all of the well-known men in that section of town belong. It was at a club meeting that the doctor first told the story of the strange prophecy covering his end. One of the men who heard him tell the story first repeated it:

"Boys," he began, "you can play cards on my coffin in a couple of weeks if the prophecy of a woman made today comes true."

Then he went on to tell his friends about the table what he called the good joke on himself. He told them the story, but he held back the name of the woman, professing not to know it. In the intervals of the game, amid the jokes and laughter of his comrades, the doctor told how the woman had entered his office and said first that he need not hunt for that dog that was gone, because it would never come back. It had gotten into the street and a boy had carried it to the country. Then the woman said: "Be careful, for within nine days that fine mare will die, your colt that you value will die, and finally you will die on the ninth day--if you are not careful."

"But that mare is not mine. She belongs to my brother," said the doctor.

"That makes no difference," replied the woman. "Anything that is in your stable during the next nine days must die. You have enemies, and they may kill you.  The greatest danger to your life will be nine days after the mare dies. Don't go out alone at night. You can believe this, because I predicted the death of President McKinley, but said nothing about it because I feared I might get into trouble."

The members of the club heard the doctor's story and straightaway it became the standing jest.  For the next few days, whenever any member of the little club saw Dr. Lemberger, the greeting would be exchanged: "Well, Doc, ain't dead yet, are you?"  And the doctor would reply with some joke at the expense of fortune tellers, witches, soothsayers, and the like.

But one day the physician's joke did not answer the questioner so readily. The reason was plain. The time for the counting of the nine days had arrived. The fine mare was dead.  Colic seized the mare one morning, and before Dr. Miller, the veterinary surgeon, who was quickly summoned, could arrive, she had died.

In a couple of days, however, the physician had apparently forgotten all about the incident. Only he conducted a very careful examination of the stable, and ordered the negro boy, John, who attended to the horses, and who slept in a room over the stable, to move into the main house.

The club meeting night was the day after the mare died, and the members cast all sorts of jokes at their friend, asking him if he was not sorry that he had only one week to live, and similar pleasantries, which he apparently enjoyed as much as the jokers.

About three days after the death of the mare the six-months-old colt drooped and would not eat. No one told the doctor because of the prophecy, but the next morning the colt had developed an acute case of pleurisy. Dr. G.W. Knorr, from the office of Dr. Miller, was on hand quickly. He saw at once that the colt was in a very serious condition. Four men worked with the little animal for six hours and then, like the mare, it died.

Two of the strange woman's prophecies had come to pass.

"I never saw a man so much broken up over the death of an animal," said Dr. Knorr last night, "and certainly it was rather a strange case. I don't see how the colt got pleurisy in that stable."

The morning after the death of the colt, the last good hunting dog disappeared. Two of the pups died that same day.

But one of the strange woman's prophecies remained now to be fulfilled. Dr. Lemberger had ceased to scoff about fortunetellers, soothsayers and the like.  One day he went fishing, but told the people at his house exactly what must be done in case he did not come back. When the doctor went out at night now he took a man with him.

The time for the club meeting rolled around. The doctor went. He seemed in finer spirits than he had been for a week. He was even joking and laughing about the prophecy of the strange woman.  They were playing "auction pitch."

"I bid one," said the man on Dr. Lemberger's left.

The physician skinned his cards. The others were doing the same thing and paid little attention to him.  "I bid two," said Dr. Lemberger, at last. Then he fell forward on the table-dead.

The last prophecy of the strange woman had been fulfilled. It was the evening of the ninth day.

As a postscript, here is an even weirder tale from the "Atlanta Constitution," January 8, 1902:

Louisville, Ky., January 7.--Three Louisville young men have within the past six weeks come to violent deaths which were foretold them. The singular fatality which overhung them, the fact that their fates were predicted and that they died within so short a space of time has caused considerable comment.

The first of the three to die was Stuart Young. A few months ago there was not a gayer young man about town than he. Attractive, with a host of friends and holding the lucrative post of city treasurer, he seemed in an enviable position. But Young's pace had grown until finally he had to take the city's money to meet expenses. Then he began to gamble to catch even and ruin was complete.

It has recently been the fad in Louisville for young people to visit one of a member of those fortune telling here. During the summer Young was at a number of fortune tellers who held forth parties. The fortune teller gazed at Young's hand and then shook her head ominously.

"Your line of life is broken now," she said.

On November 27 he shot himself through the head in a freight yard within a block of his hotel just after an afternoon paper had announced his shortage.

The second to meet his doom was Austin Kent. He came of a leading wealthy family of Louisville. A few weeks ago he went to St. Louis. One evening he made one of a part at which palmistry served to pass away the time. The young lady who was reading Kent's hand said laughingly:

"Why, Austin, you should be dead now. Your life line stops at thirty and you're thirty-one."

"Well, I guess I've got a new one by now," laughed Kent.

Ten days later, while on an automobile party he sprang to escape what seemed a certain collision between the vehicle and a freight engine, and was ground to death beneath the wheels of the enging.

Will H. Goddard was the last to fill out the trio of destinies. He was a young man, well liked socially in Louisville for his attractive personality and gay spirits. Like Young he went on a fortune telling party. The seeress told him he would meet a violent death in less than twelve months. On Thursday last he was on a hunting expedition and pulled his gun toward him by the barrel, believing it empty. It was discharged and the contents passed through his heart.

But slightly removed from these cases by time, and of a similar nature, was that of Dr. Alfred Lemberger. Last August he incurred the enmity of a fortune teller of the east end who cursed him and his, and predicted that in nine days he would be dead. On the evening of the ninth day Dr. Lemberger died while sitting at a table playing cards with friends.

These may have been merely coincidences but they have given Louisville fortune tellers a grewsome reputation for fatal veracity. Fortune telling parties are no longer popular with the young folk of the city.

"Grewsome," yes, but you can't say Louisville palm-readers don't give you your money's worth.