Winchester Mystery House

Sarah Winchester, the widow of the gun magnate William Wirt Winchester sure seems to be surrounded by a spooky curse. After her husband’s death in 1881, Sarah began construction on what is popularly known as the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah was successfully convinced by a psychic that the house was haunted by all the people who had been killed by her husband’s guns!

So Sarah got to work. She had staircases built in the house that led to nowhere, doors to concrete walls, and many other such absurdities. Why? To confuse the ghosts!

The House built is a huge sprawling thing with 160 rooms which include 40 bedrooms! It is said that Sarah believed that if she kept building she could evade death which eventually came for her in 1922.

The end result of her curse? A delightfully strange house you can visit in San Jose, California.

 

Bruce and Brandon Lee

When Bruce Lee died in 1973 from Cerebral Edema, his fans suspected that the cause of his death may have come from the ‘Dim Mak’ or ‘The Touch of Death’ has received a few weeks ago.

‘Dim Mak’ in martial arts refers to the idea that touching certain parts of the body in sequence can cause death. Fans of Bruce Lee were in for a further spooky shock when his son, Brandon was accidently shot to death on the set of The Crow in 1993. Though Brandon died early in the filming process, the producers had the movie completed with special effects and a stuntman in place of Lee.

 

The Omen

The cast and crew of “The Omen” had the strangest cursed feel even before the production of the movie. Much of this sensation could be blamed on the satanic plot of the film. However,things just didn’t end there.

Sir Gregory Peck’s son committed suicide two months before the filming began – and both his and the producer’s planes were struck by lightning. The Executive producer’s hotel was bombed by the IRA. A plane that the production team had hired for an aerial scene crashed killing everyone aboard. A Stuntman was badly injured in a fall.
Upon regaining consciousness in the hospital, the Stuntman said that he was ‘pretty sure he was pushed!’ There was no one standing near him when that happened.

A character in the movie is decapitated in a scene by a pane of glass. A few months after the movie premiered, the special effects artist person was a in a car accident with his girlfriend….and guess what? She was decapitated!

The Kennedy Family

Even if we keep aside the most tragic assassinations of JFK in 1963 and his brother Bobby Kennedy in 1968, the Kennedy family is still riddled with curses of the strangest kind.

Ted Kennedy, the brother of the above deceased ran his car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick in 1969. He was lucky enough to manage to escape, but the same fate was not shared by his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. She drowned, leading to conspiracy theories that Kennedy had driven the car into water for that very purpose!

In 1999, JFK’s son died in a plane crash with his wife and her sister.

 

John Lennon: The number 9

Lennon was sure he was cursed as far as his relation with ‘the number 9’ went.

He was born on the 9th of October, 1940 in Liverpool and his band was fortuitously discovered on the 9th of November, 1961. The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show on the 9th of February, 1964. Lennon met Yoko Ono on 9th of November 1966.

The Beatles broke up after spending nine years together. Lennon’s son Sean was born nine years after he met Ono on John’s birthday, 9th of October.

Sadly, Lennon was shot and killed on December 8th, 1980 but in Liverpool where he was born, the date was guess what…December 9th!

Roman Polanski

A child survivor of Holocaust, Roman Polanski went on to have a successful career in Hollywood directing movies like Rosemary’s Child and China town. However, whispers about him being cursed started to float around the time when his wife, Sharon Tate and seven others were murdered in 1969 by the Manson Clan.

Many Christian Groups believed that his fascination with the occult was a bringer of bad luck, which continued in 1977 when he was charged with non consensual sex with a minor.

Superman

Strangely enough, the two men so famously associated with the Super man Curse, George Reeves and Christopher Reeve share eerily similar last names!

Reeves tried to escape the trappings of the case and it ended up completely ruining his career. He was so depressed that he committed suicide in 1959, though many surreptitiously believe that he was murdered.

After starring in four superman films, Christopher Reeve was paralyzed in 1995 after falling off from his horse. He died in 2004, and here’s the shocker, his devoted wife Dana Reeve died of lung cancer the next year even though she was never a smoker!

Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath

Ted Hughes was of the belief that his marriage to fellow poet Sylvia Plath was something of written-in-the-stars sort. However, the marriage failed when the rumors of his infidelity started doing the rounds culminating in the 1963 suicide of Sylvia Plath. The other woman who gave birth to Ted’s daughter two years later having discovered that Ted had been unfaithful to her as well, killed her four year old and herself by gassing – the same method as Plath.

Hughes passed away in 1998 and wasn’t around when his son by Sylvia, Nicholas committed suicide in 2009.

Poltergeist

In the movie Poltergeist there is a scene where skeletons pop up from their coffins in a family’s backyard. Allegedly, the special effects department had used real human remains for the shot and the Poltergeist Curse was born.

Dominique Dunne, who played the eldest daughter in Poltergeist was strangled to death by her ex boyfriend only few months after the film was premiered. During the filming of the third Poltergeist film, actress Heather O’Rourke, 12, died of a septic shock from an un-diagnosed condition.

Tecumseh

It has been observed that every single President elected in a year ending with a zero had met an unfortunate end/fate: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy were all assassinated. Warren Harding suffered a stroke and died and FDR died of a brain hemorrhage while still in office.

Reagan (who narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 1981) and George W Bush broke the Tecumseh’s curse that comes from President Harrison who was elected in the year 1840, largely due to his victory at Tippecanoe, where the US won over the Native Americans and their leader Tecumseh.

Harrison, who’d delivered his speech in a rainstorm, later caught cold and died serving for just one month as the President.

James Dean’s Little Bastard

James Dean’s blazing career was shot down when he was killed driving his car, the ‘Little Bastard’ in 1955.

Here’s the story behind this cursed little killer cruiser. It had already killed two people before Dean purchased it. Actor Alec Guinness had warned Dean beforehand, ‘If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week!’ As foretold, a week later the prophecy came true.

But there was more mayhem to come. When put in a garage, the Little Bastard caused the whole complex to burn down – only the Little Bastard was the sole survivor.

Then en route to an exhibition, there was an accident and the Little Bastard fell on top a driver who was hauling it in his flat bed truck killing him.

At another accident in 1960, Little Bastard was supposedly destroyed, but the wreckage has never been found!

The ‘27’ Club

Being a rock star sure has its advantages, but being a member of the Club 27 sure isn’t one of them! The Club refers to famous musicians who have all died at the portentous age of – well, 27. Notable members of this Club include Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain.

The wretched combination of drugs, the perils of stardom and the number 27… are indeed a curse for some!

King Tut’s Tomb

When the tomb of King Tutankhamun was opened by British archaeologists in 1922, mayhem followed. One of the team was bitten by a mosquito and died a few days later. When another member died from fever a month after the excavation, rumors of a protective curse began doing the rounds. Even the notable Sir Arthur Conan Doyle talked about the curse as if it were real, no doubt using it as a strong ploy to sell his books.