➤ Don’t believe in curses? The following list might make you think twice.
From Harry Potter to Sleeping Beauty, pop culture is littered with stories about curses. But are curses completely make-believe? We compiled this list of the Top Five Curses in History that might make you think twice before enraging your significant other or reading from that old spell book someone gave you.
1. What is the Kardashian Curse, or should we say Kurse?
If you’ve been keeping up with the Kardashians, you may have noticed that all of the men around the Kardashian–Jenner family seem to suffer from bad luck. Sports stars Tristan Thompson, Reggie Bush, Lamar Odom, and Kris Humphries became far worse players after dating a Kardashian. And unlike his successful sisters, Rob Kardashian has struggled with diabetes, depression, and anxiety. At one time, he was struggling so much he had to stop appearing on his family’s show.
Kourtney Kardashian’s ex-husband Scott Disick lost both of his parents and has had a long battle with drugs. He even asked a psychic if he was cursed. (Spoiler alert: She said he was!) Watch Lifestyles of the Cursed and Famous to learn why it seems like only men in the family appear to get the bad mojo.
2. The Sports Illustrated Cover Curse, is it real?
Being on the cover of the most popular sports magazine in America might be more of a curse than a blessing. Sports Illustrated itself did an article on the curse and found out that of 2,456 issues of Sports Illustrated, 913 of the people or teams on the cover had some kind of misfortune happen to them. For example, the same week that skier Jill Kinmont was on the cover, she hit a tree while practicing and was paralyzed from the neck down.
After Laurence Owen was on the cover in 1961, she and the entire U.S. skating team died in a plane crash. There may have been even more victims who weren’t counted because the curse struck before the cover even came out.
Bill Woodward, Jr. was supposed to be on Sports Illustrated’s Cover in 1955 as Sportsman of the Year, but was tragically shot by his wife before the issue appeared. The cover was quickly changed.
➤Maybe Michael Jordan should have thought twice before being on the cover over fifty times!
3. King Tut’s Tomb, Curse of the Pharaohs
Locating the pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1923 was one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries of all time. But did excavators find more than just treasure? Ben Solo Show’s episode on Bad Omens tells how eight of the original 58 men who entered the tomb died soon after it was unearthed. Lord Carnarvon, one of the financiers, also died from a mosquito bite. Was it a consequence that the bite was in the same place where King Tut himself supposedly had a lesion on his cheek?
Did the ancient Egyptians place a curse on anyone who dared disturb King Tut’s thousand year long rest? Sir Authur Conan Doyle, a famed believer in the supernatural and friend to one of the deceased, seems to think so.
“We know that all the powers of the ancient Egyptians were used to guard their mummies, and they must have had great powers. … There are many malevolent spirits.”—Sir Authur Conan Doyle
4. Is saying the word Macbeth cursed?
Say the name of this Shakespearean drama backstage at a theater, and your castmates might just shove you outside and refuse to let you in again until you’ve spun around three times and spat over your shoulder.
Is there any truth to the old superstition that saying the name of “the Scottish King” or putting on a production of Macbeth causes bad luck? In Ben Solo Show’s episode on Cursed Theatre, he found some compelling evidence.
An Amsterdam production of Macbeth in the 1600s saw one actor stabbed to death on stage when a false dagger was replaced with a real one! In 1942, three actors and a custom designer died when the Piccadilly Theatre staged the show. How about in 1849, when one performance led to a riot where 20 people were shot to death?
➤Maybe theaters should just produce Hamlet instead.
5. The curse of the Exorcist
Rated the scariest horror movie of all time on Rotten Tomatoes, The Exorcist’s first audience could hardly handle it. Moviegoers screamed, fainted, threw up, and walked out of the film like they were viewing real events. But did the negative forces on screen begin affecting people in real life? One psychiatrist even suspected watching the movie could cause mental illness.
Another man claimed the movie left him possessed and caused him to kill his stepdaughter! But the cast suffered worst of all. Nine people connected to the movie died, two cast members were permanently injured, and the set burned down. Just like the priests in The Exorcist, were the filmmakers stirring up dark forces they couldn’t contain? Watch Top Curses in History: Cursed Movies for the full story.
➤Like bone-chilling tales and spooky curses? Ben Solo Show’s series on the Top Curses in History has everything from cursed objects and places to cursed celebrities, movies, and theater—plus a special bonus episode discussing curses from a spiritual perspective. What if the stories of curses and jinxes were real
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