Cursed Locations
There are many areas of the world that are considered
cursed by either what occurred there or by a person or group of people who
actually place a curse on the area or still it could be possible that the
area was all ready cursed for some unknown reason.
The first area that we are going to visit is the Windy
City, Chicago, all though Chicago is noted for its many haunted locals, there
is a legend of a curse that was placed on the Chicago Cubs back in the year of
1945. The story begins with a man named William Sianis or better known to his
many friends as Billy Goat. Sianis was the owner of a tavern which is now
known as the Billy Goat Tavern. He was an immigrant from Greece and an avid
baseball fan. The year of 1945 the Chicago Cubs were to play the 4th
game of the World Series against the Detroit Tigers at Wrigley field, Sianis
purchased a box seat for two for $7.20. He took his goat, Murphy to the game.
He and the goat were allowed to come into Wrigley Field, and they paraded
around the field until the ushers led them off the field. Sianis did not like
this one bit and a heated argument began, afterwards he and the goat were
allowed to take their box seats. The game began, but before the game was over,
Sianis neighboring seat attendees complained to the ushers of the awful smell
of the goat, Cubs owner Philip Knight Wrigley had no choice but to eject both
Sianis and Murphy before the game was over.
Sianis was so angry over this ejection that it is said
he issued a curse that the Cubs would never win another pennant or play in a
World Series game at Wrigley Field ever again. Not surprising the Cubs lost
that game 4 and the World Series to Detroit, naturally Sianis wrote to Mr.
Wrigley asking him one question . . . "Who stinks now?"
For the next 20 years the Cubs would only finish second
in their division series, since that time the cursed Cubs have not won a
National League pennant or played in a World Series until the 2004-2005
season.
Our next cursed location is the infamous Bermuda
Triangle that is located just east of Florida. The points of this legendary
triangle are said to be Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Miami.
The first legend of the Triangle began with Christopher
Columbus as he and his crew sailed into the Triangle waters he reported in his
log that his compass began to act strangely. Later he reported seeing a fire
ball falling from the sky, this could have been a meteor, he kept these things
from his all ready superstitious crew. Later on he and the crew all saw
dancing lights on the horizon, all though they saw sea weed and land birds the
ship would wander the Caribbean for a week without sighting land.
Since the time of Columbus there have been reports of at
least 100 ships and planes being lost in the Triangle with many lives on
board. On December 4, 1872, the crew of the Dei Gratia found the Mary Celeste
drifting in the Triangle, they boarded the Mary Celeste and found it to be
abandoned. All though the ships had left New York for the trip to Genoa
together, the Mary Celeste seemed to have a haphazard route, so the captain of
the Dei Gratia decided to investigate. He found that the Mary Celeste was in
perfect running condition, the sails were still set, all was intact on board
except for one life boat which seemed to have been deployed. Of course there
are many stories concerning this, from bloody swords under the captains bed to
disembodied voices sucking off crew one by one into a dark underground world.
Another famous disappearance in the Triangle is that of
flight DC-3, in December of 1948, it had originated in San Juan Puerto Rico to
Miami, Florida. It was a perfect take off and about 50 miles from Miami the
plane radioed in, the tower radioed back, but they never received a reply
back. Shortly after making radio contact with the tower at Miami Airport, this
plane with 30 passengers vanished from the clear and calm night sky. Search
parties were sent to scour the land where it was believed that the plane had
crashed, there was not a sign of any wreckage either on the land or in the 20
feet of water, officials are still puzzled as to why this plane that was being
flown by a seasoned pilot could have just disappeared.
There are even reports of disappearances and strange
occurrences to this day. Many people have many theories about the Triangle.
This area is known for its sudden storms where a complete whiteout condition
is formed in seconds along with strong winds and waterspouts as well as other
dangerous conditions associated with these storms. This is thought to be one
explanation of how a ship or plane could simply disappear.
Other people believe that the lost city of Atlantis is
in the area known as the Triangle, they feel that the powers of the lost city
could be responsible for the disappearances. Other people believe that these
disappearances are due to UFOs. Perhaps we will never know.
Our next cursed location is Lake Ronkonkoma in Long
Island, New York. It is the largest lake in Long Island that is located in an
area that is rich in American Indian heritage. Perhaps this is what has
started the urban legend about the lake being cursed.
The lake at one time was deemed a sacred lake by the
Indians and it was also a meeting point for tribes in the area. Different
tribes controlled different areas of the lake. The legend says that an Indian
Princess fell in love with a white man, knowing that her father would
disapprove she would meet him by rowing out to the middle of the lake, one
night her father saw this clandestine meeting and he killed the white man, the
Indian Princess was so distraught that she rowed out to their meeting place in
the middle of the lake and killed herself.
This bottomless lake that empties into Long Island Sound
seems to make a sacrifice to the Legend of the Lady of the Lake each year.
This legend contends that this Lady of the Lake calls to young men that are
swimming in the lake to come to the middle and then she drowns them. There are
a lot of unexplained drowning of young men in this lake. Whether it is because
of some curse, no one knows for sure.
Our next cursed area takes us to the state of New
Jersey. The Pine Barrens is a section of New Jersey that is the reported home
of the Jersey Devil. The Pine Barrens area is a dark and beautiful place where
the red waters of the Mullica River rise to meet the bog in town. The cedars
that line the river banks stain the waters a deep reddish color, and this
helps with the appeal of the legend of the area. This area of Southeastern New
Jersey was originally inhabited by the Lenni Lenape Indians until white
settlers settled in the region in 1609. At first it seemed a promising area
for a settlement, but the land was inhospitable due to the dry and infertile
land which could not support any farming. Later bog iron was discovered and it
became very rich in industry, this iron supplied a large percentage of the
iron used for ammunition during the American Revolutionary war. But the
prominence was short lived as a higher grade of iron was discovered in the
west thus shutting down the Pine Barrens main industry.
Desperate the people of the Pine Barrens turned their
endeavors to the wood industry, this did not prove profitable for very long,
the residents were thrown into poverty. This all seems to intensify the urban
legend of the Jersey Devil.
The Jersey Devil is described as a creature with the
head of a horse, large wings and claws and has a roughly four-foot-long
serpentine body. Seeing the devil ushers the omen of disaster to come.
According to early legends its appearances have come before shipwrecks and the
outbreak of war.
The origin of this legend begins in the 18th
century with a Mrs. Leeds who was living in poverty with her 12 starving
children, found out that she was expecting her 13th child and
issued a statement that she did not want anymore children and to let this one
be a devil. When the child was born, it was deformed, legend says that it
crawled from Mrs. Leeds womb and up the chimney and out into the woods. There
are rumors that it has fed on small children and livestock all the while
haunting the area for years to come. There are rumors that the creature was
exorcised from the area in 1740 but the exorcism ritual only banished it for a
100 years allowing it to return in the year 1840. There have been reports of
the Jersey Devil being sighted up to present day.
The Jersey Devil is not the only urban legend to come
out of the Pine Barrens there are many reports of a ghostly apparition named
the White Stag that appears to forewarn of disaster. It is reported that this
White stag apparition appeared and saved a run away stagecoach filled with
people from crashing and killing all.
Another reported urban legend of this region is that of
the Black Doctor. There was a black doctor named James Still who lived in the
19th century. He had always wanted to be a doctor but the color of
his skin made it almost impossible for him to do this. The story goes that he
retreated to the Pine Barrens to study his medical books and learn herbal
medicine from the local Indians. He then began to help people in need even
after his death.
Our next cursed location is in Connecticut in the small
town of Dudleytown, Dudleytown is located in the woods of Cornwall Ct. It’s
an abandoned 18th century village. This small village in the
northern corner of Connecticut is one of the most intriguing haunted locations
in the United States.
The first plot of land in Dudleytown was acquired by a
man named Thomas Griffis in the year of 1738. Soon others including the Dudley
family members bought land and settled around the Griffis plot later in the
mid 1740s. All though life for these early settlers was difficult, they
managed an existence through cutting lumber for a nearby town’s iron
production. Farming was difficult due to the acidic soil and the lack of sun
as the town itself sits in the shadows of three mountains.
Many people believe that Dudleytown became cursed
because of the curses plaguing the Dudley family when they arrived from
England. Some people believe that the Dudleys came from a long line of cursed
ancestors including a primary carrier of the Bubonic plague. There is also
talk of a family member a well to do Lord that lost his head along with Lady
Jane Grey. Still others believe that the reason that the Dudleys left England
was because of a curse put on them and all generations of the family by a
powerful royal family member. Many also believe that this land that the town
was settled on was also cursed to begin with and that possibly that is why the
Dudleys felt the desire to settle there.
There were four Dudley family members, possibly brothers
that show up on land records for the settlement, they were Abiel, Barzillai,
Gideon, and Abijah Dudley. Abiel is the first one to be listed on tax records
and seemingly the first one to have been struck by the Dudleytown curse. It is
said that he lost all his money and became mad. This seemed to be the start of
what would soon become the norm in Dudleytown, reports of insanity, murder and
suicide. The first recorded fatality was in 1792 when a man fell while he was
repairing a barn roof, he was believed to have been murdered by the owner of
the barn, it is reported that the owner of the barn soon became insane due to
all the speculation as to the man’s death.
The list of strange occurrences and death go on, in 1793
the Carter family members were all but wiped out by Indians, in 1804 a young
woman was struck and killed by lightening, her husband went insane, the wife
of Horace Greeley hung herself in 1872.
In the 19th century many people reported
seeing strange apparitions as well as beasts, there were reports of corpse
mutilations, as well as strange and unusual deaths. By 1900 the town was
almost deserted.
Still the strange thing was that people still tried to
live in Dudleytown, in the 1920s a doctor and his wife set up a summer home in
the now abandoned town. Upon arriving from a business trip he found his wife
laughing hysterically, she told him that she had seen demons and apparitions
that visited her while he was gone. He quickly moved her back to New York City
where she killed herself.
The strange thing is that the doctor remarried and
continued to spend his summers in Dudleytown. He in fact was one of the
founders of the Dark Entry Forrest Association that still helps to protect
what remains of Dudleytown today.
Today there are many reports of disembodied voices,
whispers and laughing, people have reported being pushed and shoved by unseen
hands, the apparition of a woman on a white horse has been spotted amongst
other apparitions. There is a feeling of all over despair once entering into
the abandoned village, shadows seem to move and oddly enough there is no sound
of birds or any other life in the village.
Another haunted area in neighboring Long Island is in
the township of Amityville. This small middle class American town came to the
public knowledge November of 1974 when six members of the DeFeo family were
found murdered in their home on 112 Ocean Avenue. The dead consisted of the
Mother and Father and four of their five children, the surviving family member
Ronnie DeFeo would be later charged with their murders, he later claimed that
something demonic came over him forcing him to kill his family members.
Two years later a family moved into 112 Ocean Avenue
where they claimed to have suffered from the unnatural evil, they fled 28 days
later completely abandoning all their possessions. Here began the urban legend
of Amityville. Some believe that the house was built on old Indian burial
ground, some believed that the house was built on land that one of the judges
from the Salem Witch trials owned, all of this resulting in the land being
cursed. No one knows for sure there are many ideas and theories on what went
on and why. Some believe that the house is still cursed, no one since the
family in 1976 has had any problems, waiting for the right family to move in.
Our next cursed area began in Clendenin, West Virginia
and ended at Point Pleasant, West Virginia on the border of West Virginia and
Ohio. This strange occurrence began in November of 1966 when a group of five
men was working in a cemetery when they saw what looked like a brown human
like being that flew over their heads. To them it did not appear to be a large
bird but rather a man with wings, soon over the whole region there were
reports of more sightings of this Mothman creature. There were many
descriptions of this creature as the sightings became more and more plentiful.
The descriptions said that this creature was between 6 and 7 feet tall, with
large red glowing eyes that were attached to a human like head, its wings were
folded on its back. Many people reported that this creature would emit a loud
whining sound that raised to a high pitch then ceased. The area dogs would
howl at it. One farmer’s dog went after the creature when it was seen at his
farm, the dog was never seen again, and the farmer was scared to death by the
experience.
Some people believe that the Mothman sightings were a
harbinger of disaster, this came true when on December 15, 1967 the Point
Pleasant bridge collapsed during rush hour traffic, sending a dozen vehicles
into the dark waters of the Ohio river all totaled 46 people were killed, 2
bodies have never been found the other 44 were buried all together in the town
cemetery.
This is one of the few urban legends that do not seem to
be a hoax there were just too many credible witnesses to the strange events,
this case even though some can logically explain the strange creature as
sandhill cranes that are not native of the area, but witnesses clearly state
that the creature did not resemble the crane, still others believe that many
people were spooked by the many reports and perhaps saw owls flying overhead.
Whatever the creature was the Mothman sightings remain very hard to dismiss.
Although these are a few of the many areas where strange
things have happened, many people believe that these occurrences can be
explained, many other people believe that these events are in fact paranormal,
perhaps these areas are windows for some other world, or the force of a lost
continent, what ever the reason, these areas still draw our attention to them.
Check back for more cursed areas.
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