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Jinxes and Hexes
by
Melissa Martin Ellis
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- Traumatic events can leave a mark
- James Dean's car caused multiple tragedies
- It started with Dean's death and spread
- Click here for The Everything Ghosthunting Book
It was once considered a totally radical idea that a consciousness in nature could interact with human consciousness. These days, there are many people who believe this is happening on a daily basis.
Jinxed
We usually associate jinxes as curses placed on an individual by another person, but nature spirits and elementals can bring curses or jinxes down on people, too.
In Laurens van der Post’s book, The Lost World of the Kalahari, the author tells the tale of a jinx being placed on his expedition after they broke a native taboo as they traveled across the countryside toward the Slippery Hills in Africa. They were repeatedly attacked by bees and plagued by inexplicable equipment failures.
In general, they had nothing but bad luck from the moment they broke the taboo.
When they finally accepted that they had violated a strict taboo, they propitiated the spirits of the Slippery Hills and the expedition proceeded without further incident.
In the literature of the supernatural, there are more stories about cursed objects than about cursed people. It only becomes apparent that an object is cursed after it has passed through the hands of several owners, consistently bringing misfortune and injury to them.
Details of how or why objects carry negative energy vary according to location and time period. One single theme seems to apply in most instances, though. A traumatic event imprints itself so thoroughly on the object or surroundings that its negativity becomes permanently associated with it.
James Dean’s Cursed Porsche
After James Dean died in a car crash in 1955, the Porsche he had been driving was sold to a garage owner. It slipped as it was being unloaded and a mechanic standing nearby suffered two broken legs.
The car was chopped up for parts and the engine from the Porsche was sold to a doctor who was into racing.
Subsequently, the car he had put the engine into went out of control, killing him and seriously injuring the driver of another car in the race, which just happened to have the drive shaft from Dean’s car in it.
The Porsche’s battered body was sold to be used in a movable display for Highway Safety, and it fell off its mounting brackets and broke a teenager’s hip in Sacramento. Weeks later, a transport truck carrying Dean’s car was in an accident. The transport’s driver was killed when he was crushed by the car, which came loose and rolled over him. A racecar driver who bought the car’s heavy-duty tires was nearly killed when all the tires blew out simultaneously for no apparent reason.
In Oregon, a truck carrying the car slipped its handbrake and crashed into a store.
On display in New Orleans, it mysteriously broke into eleven pieces. Perhaps everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the car mysteriously disappeared while being transported by train back to Los Angeles.
...from The Everything Ghosthunting Book.
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