7 Famous Cursed Objects: The Stories vs. What the Evidence Says

People love a good curse story, and some cursed objects have kept their reputations for more than a century. Museums display them, tour guides tell their legends, and every few years a new wave of social media posts brings them back.

Below are seven of the best known, with the legend first and then what the records actually show. In almost every case the curse can be traced to a specific person: a journalist, a donor, a tabloid or a seller with a story to tell. That does not make the objects less interesting. It just changes the mystery from “what is this thing doing?” to “why did so many people believe it?”

Quick facts

1. Tutankhamun’s Tomb: The Original Mummy’s Curse

The story: Howard Carter found the tomb of the boy king in November 1922. Within months, Lord Carnarvon, who paid for the dig, was dead. Newspapers ran with the idea that the pharaoh had taken revenge, and every later death linked to the excavation was added to the list.

The evidence: Carnarvon reportedly developed an infection after cutting a mosquito bite while shaving. Carter, the man who actually opened the tomb, lived until 1939. In 2002, Monash University epidemiologist Mark Nelson studied 25 people who had entered or worked in the tomb soon after its discovery. Their average age at death was about 70, which was normal for the period. His paper in the British Medical Journal found no evidence of a curse.

The curse idea was also older than the tomb. It grew out of 19th-century fiction and legends, and rival newspapers pushed it hard after The Times secured exclusive access to the dig.

2. The Unlucky Mummy at the British Museum

The story: The painted lid of a coffin, long said to belong to a young priestess of Amen-Ra, was blamed for the deaths of its owners and a photographer. A popular version says it was secretly shipped on the Titanic.

The evidence: Despite the name, it is not a mummy at all, just a wooden coffin lid from around 950 BC. The British Museum has owned it since 1889 and says it never left the collection, which rules out the Titanic tale. The curse grew from Edwardian gossip and newspaper stories, not from anything recorded about the object itself.

3. The Busby Stoop Chair, Thirsk

The story: Thomas Busby was hanged in North Yorkshire in 1702 for murdering his father-in-law, Daniel Auty. Legend says he cursed his favorite chair at the local inn so that anyone who sat in it would die. Over the years, deaths were pinned on it, including airmen from a nearby RAF base during World War II and fatal accidents in the 1970s.

The evidence: The landlord gave the chair to Thirsk Museum in 1978, and it was hung high up so no one could sit in it. A furniture historian later examined it and found machine-turned spindles. Chairs of Busby’s era were made on a pole lathe, so he dated it to about 1840, well over a century after Busby died. If that dating is right, Busby never sat in it.

4. The Delhi Purple Sapphire

The story: This gem was supposedly looted from a temple in Cawnpore (Kanpur) during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and every owner after that is said to have suffered misfortune.

The evidence: First, it is not a sapphire. It is an amethyst. Its curse comes mostly from one man, the scientist and writer Edward Heron-Allen, who also had a strong interest in the occult. He sealed it in seven bags with a protective charm and left a note calling it “trebly accursed.” It reached London’s Natural History Museum in 1944, after his death. The museum keeps it in storage and shows it only occasionally. There is no independent record of the misfortunes beyond the story that came with the stone.

5. Robert the Doll, Key West

The story: Robert is a cloth doll in a sailor suit given to Key West boy Robert “Gene” Otto around 1904. Local folklore says the doll moves, changes expression and giggles, and that visitors who disrespect him suffer accidents, job losses or worse.

The evidence: The doll is real and well documented. Otto grew up to be a painter, died in 1974, and the doll was donated to the East Martello Museum in 1994, where it still draws visitors. Visitors write him letters, and the museum displays them; many complain that their photos of Robert came out ruined. What does not exist is any record that the doll has done anything. The legend is folklore, and the museum leans into it as part of the visit.

6. The Crying Boy Painting

The story: On 5 September 1985, the British tabloid The Sun reported an Essex firefighter’s claim that undamaged prints of a painting of a crying child kept turning up in burned-out homes. Readers panicked, and by late November the paper was organizing bonfires of copies sent in by the public.

The evidence: The image was a mass-produced print by an artist who used the name Giovanni Bragolin, and there were huge numbers of them in British homes, so finding some in fire-damaged houses was not surprising. In 2010, comedian Steve Punt investigated for BBC Radio 4. Tests at the Building Research Establishment found the prints were coated in a varnish containing fire retardant, and that the string holding them up tended to burn through first. The picture would drop face down and be shielded from the flames.

7. The Dybbuk Box

The story: A small wine cabinet sold on eBay came with a tale about a Holocaust survivor and a trapped evil spirit. Later owners reported nightmares and bad luck. The story inspired the 2012 horror film The Possession, and the box ended up in ghost hunter Zak Bagans’s museum in Las Vegas. In 2018, fans even linked singer Post Malone’s string of bad luck to it.

The evidence: This one has been settled by the man who started it. Kevin Mannis, who bought the cabinet at a yard sale in Portland, Oregon and wrote the original listing, told Input magazine in 2021 that the whole backstory was fiction he created. Of all the cursed objects on this list, it is the clearest case of a story invented first and believed later.

Why Cursed Objects Stick Around

The same few ingredients show up again and again. A dramatic origin story, often from a single source. A death or accident that happens soon after. Then a slow pile-up of later events that get counted as “hits,” while the far larger number of people who handled the object and were fine are never counted.

Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old body found in the Alps in 1991, is a good example. Several people connected to his discovery and early study died over the following years, and a curse story followed. But as TheCollector notes, a handful of deaths among the many people involved is far too small a sample to mean anything.

Famous gems and dolls such as the Hope Diamond and Annabelle follow the same pattern, and each deserves its own deep dive. The lesson from the cases above is simple: when you trace a curse back far enough, you usually find a person with a reason to tell it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most cursed object in the world?

There is no measurable winner, because no curse has been shown to be real. Tutankhamun’s tomb and the Hope Diamond are the most famous, and the Dybbuk box is the best known modern example.

Is the Dybbuk box real?

The cabinet exists, but its spooky backstory does not. Kevin Mannis, who wrote the original eBay listing, said in 2021 that he made the story up.

Can you sit in the Busby Stoop Chair?

No. Thirsk Museum hung it high on the wall after it was donated in 1978 so nobody could sit in it. A furniture historian dated it to around 1840, after Busby’s death.

Did the curse of Tutankhamun kill anyone?

A 2002 study in the British Medical Journal found that people exposed to the tomb lived to an average age of about 70. Howard Carter himself lived until 1939.

Where can you see Robert the Doll?

Robert is displayed at the East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida, where he has been since 1994.

Keep reading

• Annabelle Doll
• 12 Camping Gadgets on Amazon Actually Worth Buying
• 7 Best-Selling Portable Power Stations

Sources

• Live Science: Tutankhamun tomb, Carnarvon’s death, Mark Nelson’s 2002 BMJ study, media origins of the curse
• TheCollector: Unlucky Mummy, Delhi Purple Sapphire, Busby chair at Thirsk Museum, Ötzi
• Wikipedia: Thomas Busby, the legend, 1978 donation and furniture historian’s 1840 dating
• Wikipedia: Robert the Doll, Robert Eugene Otto, 1994 donation to the East Martello Museum
• Wikipedia: The Sun’s 1985 story and Steve Punt’s 2010 BBC Radio 4 fire tests
• Wikipedia: Kevin Mannis, The Possession, Zak Bagans, Post Malone, 2021 admission

Last updated October 2026. Featured image is AI-generated for illustration.