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About this episode
A gold ring from Roman Britain with a thief’s name engraved on it. A pub chair that killed everyone who sat in it. A purple stone locked away in seven boxes. And a cheap print of a crying child that, in 1985, half of Britain was afraid to keep at home.
For this Halloween special, I’m telling four short stories about cursed objects. First the legends, the way their believers tell them. Then a quick look at what’s really behind each one: a Roman curse tablet that still exists, a chair that turned out to be 140 years too young, a horror writer who may have staged his own curse, and a tabloid panic that ended in a bonfire.
Four objects, four storytellers. And the question I keep coming back to on this channel: who tells a story, and why?
Sleep well… Yours, Cris
Sources
- R. G. Collingwood, “Inscriptions” (1932), in R. E. M. and T. V. Wheeler, Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire. Publishes the Silvianus curse tablet and the faint “rediviva” addition.
- J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Name ‘Nodens’” (1932), appendix to the same Lydney report. Tolkien’s study of the god’s name, the link between Lydney and Middle-earth.
- Francis Haverfield, “Further remarks on the Ring of Senicianus” (1888–89), Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. An early warning against linking ring and tablet on the strength of a name alone.
- Chaloner W. Chute, A History of The Vyne in Hampshire (1888). The family history that first set the ring and the curse side by side.
- William Grainge, The Vale of Mowbray (1859). Local history recording the 1702 murder of Daniel Auty by Thomas Busby.
- Stuart Minting, “18th Century murderer’s chair continues to captivate supernatural fans”, The Northern Echo (2014). Reports the furniture historian’s dating of the chair to around 1840.
- Natural History Museum, London, behind-the-scenes blog on the cursed amethyst. Full text of Heron-Allen’s 1904 letter and the curators’ view that the curse was likely invented.
- Christopher Blayre (Edward Heron-Allen), “The Purple Sapphire” (1921). The short story the curse may have been staged to promote.
- Massimo Polidoro, “Curse That Painting!”, Skeptical Inquirer (2012). Overview of the Crying Boy panic of 1985.
- Punt PI, BBC Radio 4, Series 3, Episode 4 (2010). Steve Punt’s fire tests on original Crying Boy prints.
- David Clarke on the Crying Boy curse, Squaring the Strange podcast, episode 141. On the late origin of the Don Bonillo legend.
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