If you are not the sort of person who believes in the paranormal, and particularly if you find yourself turned off by the slew of TV “reality” shows which are almost entirely fake and scripted, then this is for you.
Let me ask you a question: are curses real?
You can look up the meaning, but this is the definition to which I refer:
curse/kərs/Learn to pronouncenoun
- 1.a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.”she’d put a curse on him”; I do not refer to spoken words considered “PG-13” or “R”.
There are supernatural curses. They’re real. There are different kinds, but one in particular seems so prevalent that it gets shrugged off by most people.
TYPES OF CURSES
Sports Curses
THE CURSE OF JOE NAMATH
Let’s start with something softball, easy to take. It’s a source of humor for scores of NFL fans, kind of like the Madden Curse, which appears to have been more coincidence than curse. That one involved the real players who appeared on each new Madden NFL video game cover, a new cover each year. Those players went on to have highly unlikely awful seasons or serious injuries that ended their seasons. But there are other curses in sports, and those are real enough for fans. After years of trying to reverse a curse uttered by a fan who was ejected from a World Series game in 1945 for bringing a goat, the Chicago Cubs won a Series in 2016. The efforts to nullify the curse first involved the fan who cursed the team, then a family member later, to no avail. When goats turned up dead on statues it went into the realm of the weird. Even a vegetarian restaurant tried to get fans to go meatless, and a severed goat head appeared on a statue. After 2016, the weird activity seems to have ceased. Thank God for that. Farmers had to be worried that the goat was becoming an endangered species.
In days after 1945 but still in the long ago, there was the National Football League and another league, the upstart American Football League. Don’t ask me when or where, but at some point the two leagues began contests that were crossovers. A fan’s dream. It was awesome, but the mighty NFL had the talent and organizational experience to wipe any field with AFL blood.
This was an age long ago and, some say, best forgotten, when the game was pure and messy and fun. Players didn’t make much money, had off season jobs, wore crew cuts and flat tops, Madras shirts and dress slacks with dress shoes. Often thin neckties were also worn.
It was not uncommon for fans to show up in a sport jacket and black tie. It seems so very long ago…
Then the New York AFL Jets with a coach who had an eye for talent urged the signing of a young quarterback out of Alabama’s Crimson Tide named Joe Namath, who then brazenly asked an absurd amount of money to sign. Head coach Weeb Eubank knew what he wanted, and the team agreed to Namath’s price, at that time more than any other player including Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas. It outraged players, coaches and fans alike, but then Namath went into the game and showed what he knew and what he could do.
Not a scrambler by any means, having separated a knee in college, Joe was a pure passer whose arm performed miracles. In the meantime, both leagues decided to have an annual championship game, and that was history. College games in the postseason were called names like the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl. So the two leagues decided that for pro football, only one title would do: the Super Bowl. A sports phenomenon was born.
The mighty Green Bay Packers won the first two, against the AFL Chiefs and Raiders. Bart Starr was everyone’s hero, while no AFL team could ever measure up to the NFL.
Then came the New York Jets with their Broadway-loving, woman-chasing upstart quarterback, Joe Namath. He guided an extraordinary team to the playoffs and Super Bowl III which put them up against the Baltimore Colts and famed John Unitas. That should have been daunting. Namath didn’t see it that way. He knew Unitas wasn’t going to start; his arm was sore and he was showing his mileage. Earl Morrall would be starting for the Colts, and he was good, very good. But everyone underestimated him without fail despite his being one of the reasons the Colts were in the game. It’s a shame; Morrall went on to help the Miami Dolphins with their 1972 perfect season, but nobody remembers him. When they think of that team, they think of Bob Griese who was out with injuries part of the season.
Joe was unfortunate enough to say, pregame to the press, “The Jets will win on Sunday. I guarantee it.” He was upset by all the condescending questions by the press, and it wore him a bit thin.
That just wasn’t done, and fans of the Baltimore Colts and the NFL hated Namath even more; this was worse than Babe Ruth calling his shot. If Namath ever got hate mail, I can’t remember him talking about it. I need to read his book, but I want a signed copy. But that statement caused a lot of anger and outright hatred toward Broadway Joe. Despite this, the Jets led the entire game. Unitas came in late and drove downfield for a touchdown, but it took time off the clock and the Jets won, 16-7.
The curse comes in at this time. Whether it was because of waves of bad karma from Baltimore Colts fans or the scores of people who lost large sums of money on the game isn’t clear, but the Jets haven’t been back to the Super Bowl since.
There are theories from the practical to the absurd, but despite a tongue-in-cheek post on the Jets message boards where Namath playfully claimed to have sold his soul to Satan in return for the Championship, the long-suffering Jets fans are willing to believe anything.
It doesn’t matter, because the facts speak for themselves. There’s been trouble in management ever since, making horrible decisions that lost key players and gave coaches so much shit that the turnover rate is staggering and no quarterback has ever prospered there. One game saw Vinnie Testaverde pass for over 400 yards against the Baltimore Ravens, and still the Jets lost despite managing such a feat against that legendary defense. That season saw the Cleveland Browns of old, now in Baltimore and renamed, break their own curse and defeat the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.
Namath, for his part, doesn’t blame a curse. He picks apart everything from owners who had no idea of what they were doing to key injuries, to quarterbacks and otherwise. So the Jets last year debuted new uniforms. They’ve already tried that before. It didn’t work. Team mismanagement on such an unbelievable scale is evidence for a curse if evidence for such was even needed. You’d have to go to Cleveland and Detroit to find equal ineptitude. New uniforms are not a solution. They suck A anyway.
Once bad luck is apparent in every level of any business, I start thinking about the Curse of Joe Namath.
I’d say there is a solution, but whether it can be done, I’m not sure. First, the main office has to recruit management talent, good talent with a feel for the game as a whole. You don’t just need a quarterback. You need a top-notch head coach, and the Jets haven’t had one of those since Parcells bailed. Defense, special teams, an offensive line, a top-draft running back, a place kicker. None of those will fall in your lap; management has to be able and willing to scout, negotiate and pay. And the Jets have scrambled egg-brained management…and owners. Second, they have to remove Namath’s number 12 from retirement and all starting quarterbacks have to wear it. All uniforms should match the 1968 uniforms, with no deviations for “throwback day” as this will change the karmic process. Even the facemasks must revert to the Riddel gray. That’s a start.
What do you think? Curse, or no curse? Look up the weird history of the Jets since Super Bowl III for yourself.
And now that we’ve had some fun, let’s get a bit more serious.
Cursed Places
A cursed place, a physical space; be it land, a house, a farm, a business, a forest. It doesn’t matter. It can be anywhere.
AOKIGAHARA
At the base of the dormant volcano that is Mount Fuji in Japan, there is a dense forest named Aokigahara, or, “The Sea of Trees” and also known as the “Suicide Forest”.
It is so named because it’s been the place for people to kill themselves in unknown numbers at least since the 1950s, but more so around 1960 when a Japanese author wrote a novel about a heartbroken lover going there to take her own life.
People from all over the world go there to die. It is a hiking park, and is open to all. But some go in and never come out. Unless their bodies are carried out in a bag. Some suicides aren’t found for a long time. Aokigahara is about a thousand years old but survived the last eruption of Mount Fuji in 1707.
Because lava hardened in places inside the forest, there are tubes and deep recesses into which people crawl to take overdoses or poison to end their lives. Sometimes a body isn’t found despite periodic searches by park officials and volunteers. One man supposedly found 37 bodies in 36 days.
The nature of the forest is indeed very chilling; hikers can easily get lost because trails, for some reason, are too often strayed from. This is terrifying, yet the same quirk is probably responsible for the delays in finding and recovering bodies.
The Japanese authorities no longer give the number of suicides per year that they determine or suspect have occurred. And they’re desperate to stop the interest in Aokigahara as a suicide destination. They claim that “Japanese people don’t go there.”
But they do go there. Japan has a heartbreaking suicide rate, and they do die there, along with people from other countries. And that’s a big problem because if a body is not found in a certain time after death and given rites, the belief is that the spirit of the deceased will become trapped in this world, and worse, become an evil spirit, a predatory ghost.
Stories of survivors seem to corroborate this belief, as they relate the sense of a being pulling them toward going through with their suicide even as they’re having second thoughts.
However, science is desperate to account for everything paranormal, and to this end experts point out that the basalt under the mosses and trees is high in iron concentration which interferes with a compass or cellphone reception. It doesn’t account for sightings of demonic creatures, hearing voices coaxing them to die, the heaviness that follows hikers, the terror of being in there when night falls. People also relate heavy silence, an absence of birdsong or smaller mammals and even insects, although many species of birds and mammals do inhabit the area, and one thing is certainly abundant: spiders. That just makes the whole thing creepier. Especially to westerners, and Josh Gates found this out when his show “Destination Truth” filmed there.
With untold numbers of suicides having been committed there, the forest once considered sacred is cursed and occupied by cursed spirits, since the killing of oneself is an unnatural act, a crime for which absolution can be granted only in cases where a person is so infirm of mind and body that, surely, God understands.
Cursed People
PICKETT’S CURSE
Civil War battlegrounds are cursed for certain. Not counting the Revolutionary War or the War of 1812, and massacres of Native Americans by settlers and of settlers by Native Americans, the Civil War was simply barbaric by any definition; men died of sickness and starvation, exposure and heat stroke more than most people realize. Horse droppings were supposedly gone through by hand to find corn kernels, according to William C. Davis in his book “A Taste For War: The Culinary History Of The Blue And The Gray”.
That book is not the first place I’ve seen this reference. As the war continued, battles often lasted several days and resulted in bodies and body parts strewn across vast areas of land. Desperate battles went from artillery, musket, carbine, bayonet and revolver to hand-to-hand and was as savage as the worst your imagination can conjure. Men tore at each other’s throats, gouged eyeballs out, bit one another as would ravening wolves, and into the night after the fighting stopped, the screams and moans of the wounded and the pleas of the slowly dying kept silence at bay.
The next day fighting often resumed while the bodies lay unrecovered. Piles of bodies had to be buried on-site by graves details after one side or the other left the area. On rare occasions, a tense ceasefire allowed the recovery of wounded and dead soldiers. Then, fighting resumed or one side would bug out at nightfall.
When humanity is so reduced, shedding all vestiges of civilization except for the killing hardware they carry, the land on which they kill and are killed is soaked in blood and a residue of intense fear, hate, anger and utter helplessness permeates everything, from buildings to trees, even rocks. War is killing, and killing is murder. Murder is an evil act which, like the residue it leaves, curses the place where it is done.
Perhaps the worst places come to mind easily: Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Shilo, The Wilderness, Petersburg, Vicksburg, Atlanta, Richmond.
In Gettysburg, the three day battle of 1-3 July 1863 killed or incapacitated or saw captured more generals than any other battle. The casualties are still being debated to this day. The battle saw fighting in the Devil’s Den (where Lt. General John Bell Hood was hit by Union canister or grapeshot, losing the use of an arm), below Little Round Top, which also saw a major pitched battle, and Cemetery Ridge, among others. But there can be no place worse than the open ground where Pickett’s Charge took place.
The slaughter was so horrific that afterward, Lee said to him, “General Pickett. You must look to your division.” A shocked George Pickett said, “General Lee, I have no division.”
He was never the same afterward; the curse of that final act of the battle stayed with him for the rest of his days.
The truth about Pickett’s Charge isn’t what you may think. He was only part of Lee’s attacking force under Longstreet, and his bravery was questioned later when nobody could remember seeing him during battle, while General Armistead led his troops across the field with his hat impaled on the tip of his raised sword. Rebel troops advanced nearly a mile over open space where cannon picked them apart with such terrible ordnance as grapeshot, then canister bombs, and, closer to Cemetery Ridge, muskets that opened up with enfiladed fire from the flanks of the Union line along the ridge. In the center, canon had been silent, kept in reserve until the Confederate soldiers were closer in their advance. Generals Armistead and Kemper, among others, were seriously wounded, and Lew Armistead later died. The losses were so devastating for the CSA that between Gettysburg and a victory in the Western Theater by General Grant immediately following Gettysburg, the South was doomed to lose the war.
Pickett was so bitter that his after-battle report was ordered destroyed by Lee, adding to his darkness. He resented the press naming the charge after him, since it wasn’t his attack and his division was not alone. He took harsh criticism for the failure of the charge, even though Longstreet had already predicted its failure to Lee, who ordered it anyway.
Pickett’s Curse is but one of many that stain the grounds of Gettysburg. I have never wanted to go there, and as a sensitive, I know I never will.
The curses of Pickett, Lee and Hood remain. In fact Hood, who mended and returned to the war, later lost a leg to a shot (some reports say a cannonball) that shattered his femur and necessitated amputation. Hood lived to marry and have children, but he died of Yellow fever days after his wife and one of their daughters.
Since he was from Kentucky and I have a lot of kin there, I’ve checked to see whether I could be related. My family had at least a handful of Confederate soldiers, even though Kentucky was essentially neutral, at least for most of the war. So far what I’ve found is worse. Of all his children, only two seem to have been married, and none had children. There was the one who died with Hood and his wife; the others seem to have lived obscurely. It bears further research but it has the mark of a family curse. For my part, I went to ancestry.com to find answers: why did parts of my family wind up so evil and sick, enough to injure their own, leaving legacies of wounded, wrecked shells of a next generation? Why did mental illness or demonic influences or both become so prevalent? My parents were Southern Baptist Sunday School teachers, and nobody in Lake Shore Baptist Church ever knew that hours earlier, around 23:00 to midnight, they’d both been engaged in child sexual abuse. How the fuck does that happen? I searched for answers. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I’ve found so far: slave owners and Confederate soldiers, victims of Native attacks that blurred the lines of any concept of white invaders vs. a large indigenous population and atrocious acts committed by the settlers. So much hate and blood in the names of freedom and survival that Caligula himself would have vomited over it. The answers begin to fall into place.
Other places are said to be haunted. Gettysburg is certainly haunted and cursed. Sometimes you think a place is haunted, yet you will find no ghosts there. Not even in some places frequently visited by ghost hunters. They hear sounds, they feel a heaviness in the air, they don’t even want to stay, but they want proof of the haunting. In the end, it often turns out that they should have left when their gut told them to.
INDWELT AND OWNED
One thing that happens is that a person moves a family into a new home, and within a short time, weird things begin to happen. Full-blown poltergeist activity is rare, and there’s no such thing as a poltergeist anyway. But activity can ramp up, and when things are moved, lost, misplaced or doors open and no one’s there, well, count on it; this is often just the beginning. Almost invariably it gets worse and family members, usually children, get nightmares or even see things in their room at night, as I did. In my case, what was there didn’t seem to make noise. It wanted to cause fear, and it did a good job, because silence is terrifying, far more than any noise. It also caused bad things to happen, and nightmares.
In many cases, it tries to hurt people physically. You’ve heard of the three claw marks on a victim’s back, three scratches that burn, like a cat’s scratch? That’s not a ghost. In Christianity, this is a demon. Other religions have other names for them, but whatever the name, it’s a demon and it’s there to wreck your life. Mark this well: they hate you and will do everything they can to hurt you; they can cause physical illnesses, financial ruin, family infighting; and they can be argued to have taken lives.
These are seen as “shadow people” often, and a sighting doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be attacked. People report seeing them even when no other activity is present. These folks are sensitives and mediums. They may not know it or even believe in such things, but they can see the demons going about, sometimes just passing through.
When activity does get raised, there’s no living in the house. Exorcism is for possession in people. The rite usually doesn’t work on homes. Priests and pastors and others can do cleansing rituals, but unlike the epilogues of reality shows, where “The activity has stopped” shows up at the end credits, it rarely ends like that in real life. Activity may cease, but it’s only a matter of time before it returns, worse than before because now, it’s pissed. Things get so bad families can be forced to flee. Cleansing done by “smudging” or burning sage will never get rid of a demon. Some can be temporarily displaced by it. They don’t like the smell. There are an unknown number of different kinds of demons, and those most powerful can breathe; I’ve heard them and known others who also have. Trust me, hearing breathing next to or on top of you while you’re lying down will scare you enough to jump clean against the ceiling. You need to cancel your lease or sell, because that’s too close, and the entity is already far too familiar with you to ever stop.
The dwelling is occupied by a demon because it has been cursed. There are different ways this happens. One is that, quite simply, bad people have lived there. The things that they did were so awful that demons were attracted. If a murder or attempted murder, assault, rape, ongoing sexual abuse and incest were part of the incidents, that’s enough to bring a curse on the dwelling, rendering it an unholy place, and therefore attracting demonic entities, who feed on fear and suffering. Rooms where a lot of abuse took place are hotspots of activity, but more than one room can be active. During your walkthrough with a realtor, you’ll never know.
Another sure way a house can be cursed is that builders or previous owners purposely contacted demons. Whether through black rituals and summoning of spirits, ouija sessions, or even dedication of the dwelling to Satan.
One family had continued trouble in their home beginning the first week they were there, and being Christians, sought help from their pastor. He visited and did a blessing and a cleansing. It didn’t work and the activity worsened. Finally, during a subsequent visit and intense prayer, he had the couple lead him to the basement. It was a finished basement, one of the reasons they’d liked the place so much. The pastor pulled an edge of the carpet up and back from the wall, and sure enough, there was a pentacle in the concrete that had been drawn out before the cement had cured. At that point the pastor advised them to move out immediately. He explained that the house had been dedicated, consecrated to Satan, and unholy land cannot be reclaimed.
Still more ways exist. Homes can be cursed easily by the focused hatred of neighbors. Pure emotion and wishes that you will meet with misfortune can cause dark forces to enter your home. It is the same with witches. They can perform cursing rituals by creating potions and calling on demons or as they sometimes think of them, “nature” gods or “elementals”. Once done, it is impossible to know what they did and therefore to counteract it without ongoing help from a priest and a medium. Let’s get something else straight.
Demons are, by definition, spiritual beings, angels who have refused obedience to God. There is very little else we know, even if we believe in them as defined. We have the biblical accounts of Jesus casting out demons and then later, his Apostles also did this.
Demonology makes unfair presumptions to students, and the Roman Catholic Church remains the go-to authority on the subject. Books mislead by inclusion of named demons from classic literature and even folklore. There’s one name not mentioned in the Bible that I’m familiar with and, since I was very young, I would have this name pop into my mind periodically. I’m not sure if there’s any correct spelling but it formed as the name “Azizel”. It isn’t “Azazel” or “Azazil”, both of which which are referred to in extracanonical books from the Bible and Qur’an. All I know is, it is evil and it is persistent. It could be that he’s some kind of leader, but the name repeated in the mind of a sensitive for years? Bloody scary.
Cursed Objects
Probably the easiest way to cause misfortune is to bring a cursed object into your house. It could be an antique, say a rocking chair, cradle, figurine, doll, even things like flatware sets, like those rendered in silver. How an object becomes cursed is not always easy to find out. But, when a new or old object is brought in, it pays to be on the lookout for any unusual types of sounds, dreams, visions, or the change of behavior in a family member. Some objects seem charming, and in one’s initial desire to have it, any intuitive feeling by touch is ignored. Later, clues can be had several ways. You observe such changes as the above, or an eerie feeling looking at, touching or even being in the same room with the item.
It pays to be careful and not introduce many old items at once in your home ( like you might do with garage and yard sales, antique and thrift stores where you load up on lots of neat stuff for cheap prices). If something happens, it’s more difficult to single out the source. Usually, once a cursed object is removed, any activity stops. Contrary to superstition, these things can be returned, or if that’s not possible, thrown out.
This happened in my house when one day, my son and I were playing a video game and decided to take a break, and go to the kitchen for a cold drink. Just as I was in the doorway, I heard a loud crash behind me. In the room was a closet that was added on. It didn’t go to the ceiling and a bunch of old stuff from my in-laws was stored up there. I’d gotten my son a toy helicopter that was really a collector’s item; it was for 12″ soldier figures like the original G.I. Joe. So it was big and too heavy for actually playing with.
I had it sitting on top, with the skids lateral to the edge. It could not have slid sideways, yet it had done that, crashing to the floor in pieces. I went into the room, my back prickling, hairs on my neck raised. I knew something creepy had just happened. I looked at where the helicopter had been, and a plastic bag was projected over the edge as if it had pushed the thing off. I knew nothing of what was on top of that closet, but I somehow felt the bag contained a doll or a stuffed animal. I didn’t want to touch it. But to be frank, it had to go. I looked inside and it was an old stuffed cow from Cloverland Dairy. It was the ugliest thing ever. How the hell can someone make a stuffed cow that’s uglier than a real cow? It was bloody cursed. Where the bag containing it had been, a Christmas tree angel lay on her side, as if she had hauled off and rammed the bag with the cow, trying to push it off. It almost made it, too. But it sure got our attention, and I took the bag out to the street trash cans and that was the end of it. I considered throwing the angel out as well, but decided to wait. When nothing else happened, I left it there.
MAYBE THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE, TOO
Except that was hardly the end of trouble in that house. In the winter of 2004-2005, it was demolished and hauled away in roll-off dumpsters. What led to this was so strange that, to this day, it compels me to examine the circumstances in an ever-widening manner, including events I had not considered to be a factor previously. The house may have been haunted, but no one had anything particularly horrible to tell about it. Built in 1927, at least two people died there. In window seats later taken out, Baltimore Sun newspapers dating back to World War Two were found in fair condition. You could actually thumb through them like yesterday’s paper. Unfortunately, they were disposed of. Lingering spirits usually take great exception to changes of any kind to their former house. Renovating an old house can trigger ghostly activity in a house the new owners never even knew was haunted. Ghosts who lived comfortably in a place they loved, celebrated holidays in, sheltered from the worst weather conditions, slept peacefully in, cooked amazing food in, then went to meet their maker in, do not have much patience with people who change even little things that meant so much to them.
However, a single-level house with a cramped dormer added to it contained bizarre mysteries best left alone and unpondered. Hardwood wainscoting, rich and old, had tiny closets set into it. Things like those are, of course, frightening to people who have seen too many B-movies. You don’t go poking around where you don’t have to. In book and film alike, that’s where nightmares lie.
The interesting part is that in 1997 my fatherfather-in-law died in the house. In life, he was a big man of gregarious nature, but he had a hair-trigger temper. His wife and kids suffered years of verbally abusive outbursts, and I remember one time hearing my mother-in-law saying, “I wish he would get cancer and die.”
And that is exactly what happened. It was never spoken aloud, but I know she always deeply regretted those words. After many years of marriage, she was heartbroken when he passed. Did such an utterance curse her husband? There are stories which, if you believe them, absolutely back such an assumption up. Even in religious context: Christ’s warning to love one another, forgive those who abuse you and to resist judgement upon another’s soul. Karma is the same concept, just with accompanying and explicit warnings. Every thought, every word, every deed, revisits the person they come from in kind. Its “Reap what you sow” in forged steel. Even a second of anger can harm the spirit of the person who is the object of it. Karma may be thought of as a companion to negative thoughts and emotions or deeds. But it doesn’t stop there. It also becomes a boomerang that inflicts the same or greater damage to the first subject.
CURSED FORT HOOD
In the past year, two soldiers went missing from Fort Hood, the Army base named after General John Bell Hood. Prior to that, there had been two mass shootings just 6 years apart. Both missing soldiers have been found, the second being E-4 Vanessa Guillen. She was killed in an armory, taken off base and dismembered, then placed in a shallow grave. One suspect shot himself. One is in custody. Does Fort Hood bear the curse of its namesake? I don’t know. I think it’s likely. There’s currently a petition for taking the base out of service. That is never going to happen. But changing its name is imperative. In fact all military installations bearing Confederate Generals’ names must be changed. It’s time.
THE SMITH FAMILY CURSE
I’m 60 years old. I’m in failing health and I can’t anticipate another five years of life; it is so unrealistic. I sit often and wonder why I’ve been through so much. Why I had to outlive my children. Why a photograph in black and white showed a boy with a happy smile and sparkling eyes posing beside a baby sister, and what dictated that those two kids had to end up so hurt, so dysfunctional, in so much pain decades after things happened that dulled the sparkle in those eyes. I wonder why I had an uncle who vowed never to marry and have children because he refused to pass on whatever evil ran in the family. It means my uncles and aunts may have been, probably were, abused. It means the family on both sides had bad blood, from Confederate soldiers to slave owners to incestuous sex and madness.
I watched my father build two businesses from scratch, operating from an office in the house. When we moved into the house in Pasadena, Maryland in 1962, my parents could barely furnish it, and I remember playing with carved wood toys on the hardwood floors as it got dark. The lights were never turned on until nightfall because the electric bill would get too high to pay.
By 1970 he had built two businesses to impressive levels. He leased an office in Glen Burnie next to the Glen Burnie Mall. The building had a warehouse and he made money with it. The trucking company was Comet Fast Freight. By 1979 he had built a fleet with new Budd trailers, two Peterbilt 352 Pacemakers, a fleet of Volvo F86s, and more. But mistakes had been made. In 1974 dad began a massive renovation at home, including an in-ground pool, fence, retaining walls, sundeck and a double driveway. Lush green grass now covered what used to be dirt and weeds. The feds were curious as to how he managed that, a new fleet, and an office renovation that took all of the summer of ’76 to complete. Worst of all was a massive warehouse in Jessup that he would have to fill and keep full in order to pay the lease and turn a profit. But he couldn’t fill it. At no time was it ever more than two-thirds full. Then he bought the self-serve car wash across from the Glen Burnie headquarters and didn’t report the full income because it was cash. He had cash flow problems and so didn’t report the cash income from the car wash in full, using it for payroll. By 1980 several accidents occurred that turned out to be quite costly. One happened on Interstate 70 east, a load of something headed to Baltimore pulled by one of the Peterbilts. The driver fell asleep, Jackknifed and flipped onto a car, blocking all lanes and making the car burst into flames. The pinned woman was further injured by inhalation of smoke and dry chemicals from the extinguisher someone used.
The accidents were disastrous. Then came the FBI, looking into just how a man with private businesses managed to build a small empire in less than fifteen years. They were looking for bonded cargo, a load of coffee in an overseas container that had gone missing.
By 1981, the warehouses were empty. Chattanooga Glass pulled out. Burlington Industries pulled out. Koppers pulled out. Schenley left. And just like that, Chapter Eleven. In 1983, the trucking company followed. A fortune made and pissed out the window. Bad decisions? Absolutely. What nobody else knew was that in those later years, he was obsessed with one of his daughters, calling her his “second wife” and after hours, he did bestial shit to her. Every bit of this was a result and renewal of the family curse and some genetic factors that may also be a curse. He wound up in prison, as did my mother, for rape, statutory rape, unnatural and perverted practices, child sexual abuse and more. He died not long after his parole.
CONCLUSION
I believe we’re living on borrowed time. This country has much to atone for. We do indeed bear the iniquities of our fathers, and until we drastically change our direction, begin treating each other as equals and finding a way to stop being hypocrites, the United States is doomed.
Also, we’ve been increasingly hated by other nations, and it’s scary. We have the chance to stop that.
As a species, look at what we’ve done to the Earth. Read honest, science-based material, not right-wing propaganda. Your waterfront home, with the pier and electric boat lift? It is already worthless and you don’t even know it. Unload it now and head inland before realtors cease being greedy enough to take it off your hands. Before they realize it’s about to be part of the ocean.
If America is the land of curses, we can do something about it. We can stop glorifying traitors to our country. We can stop hating each other, killing, raping and bloodying our land. We can atone for our past misdeeds and vow never to repeat them.
We’ve had enough. Don’t let this once in a lifetime chance slip away.
How to counter any curse like this begins with love, and how we treat each other.
EXTERNAL LINKS
https://www.militaryghosts.com/hood.html
https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/5370444002
http://m.nautil.us/issue/30/identity/science-is-proving-that-tragic-curses-are-real
1960s: Baltimore Woman Believes Her Life Doomed By A Hex, Dies Within Days
Memoirs of an American Asshole 