Do you remember the episode from The Brady Bunch, when they went to Hawaii? Peter and Bobby find an ancient Tiki idol that some locals believe brings bad luck to anyone who touches it. The boys take the idol and, of course bad luck ensues. One by one, Peter, Alice and Greg had it in their possession and something bad happened to each of them. It wasn’t until they return the idol to a cave (and meet up with Vincent Price) that their bad luck ends.
Well, a woman in Canada just went through a bunch of bad luck and blames it on the artifacts she stole from Pompeii, so she returned them.
The woman, identified only as Nicole, visited the famed Italian site 15 years ago, when she was in her early 20s. She took 2 mosaic tiles, two pieces of amphora vase and a piece of ceramic wall while she was there, and has had a run of really bad luck ever since. Convinced that her financial hardship and two bouts of breast cancer were due to her stealing and keeping the artifacts, she decided to mail them back.
“Please, take them back, they bring bad luck,” she wrote in a note along with the package containing the artifacts.
“I was young and stupid,” the note continued. “I took a piece of history captured in a time with so much negative energy attached to it,” she wrote. “People died in such a horrible way and I took tiles related to that kind of destruction.”
She continued that she had learned her lesson and wanted “forgiveness from God.”
“We are good people and I don’t want to pass this curse on to my family, my children or myself anymore,” she concluded in the letter. “Please forgive my careless act that I did years ago.”
Over the years, hundreds of people have returned pieces of Pompeii that they had stolen during past visits. They usually return them due to guilt more than thinking they were bad luck, but trying to make up for a past transgression is always a good thing.
There are plenty of stories about it being “bad luck” if you steal from certain places. The Petrified Forest, in Arizona, is famous for its legend about stealing from it. A Gold Rush ghost town in California gets returned artifacts, in the form of “curse letters” about once a week. And during our visits to Hawaii, I have never taken a piece of volcano rock or sand because of Pele’s Curse.
Hopefully, Nicole in Canada will start having better luck now.
Feature Photo: Needpix.com
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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