Used as a verb, the word ‘curse’ has traditionally referred to making an utterance or engaging in symbolic activity aimed at harming someone or something by paranormal means. As a noun, ‘curse’ may simply be shorthand for a cursing ritual. Alternatively, it may imply that the target of a supposed curse has indeed suffered misfortune. For example, if we hear of a curse on a particular family, the implication is that they’ve experienced difficulties. But whether their problems were brought about by a curse might be debatable.
There’s experimental evidence suggesting that people can influence living systems by paranormal means.1 Quite possibly, then, negative thoughts and wishes (whether or not formalised in spells or cursing rituals) can have harmful effects. I’ve addressed this question in my recently published book Curses, Coincidences & Malign Influence.2
In the book, I distinguish between two types of curse or presumed curse. With a Type I curse, the targeted person or family is assailed by paranormal phenomena. For example, I cite the case of Sir Alexander Seton and his first wife, Zeyla. During a visit to Egypt in 1936, Zeyla stole a piece of bone from the remains of a skeleton in a tomb. When she and her husband returned to their home in Learmonth Gardens, Edinburgh, intermittent poltergeist-type phenomena reportedly occurred there.3
I’ve defined a Type II curse as one that seems to be associated with a disproportionate amount of bad luck. But there doesn’t seem to be any cosmic law decreeing that good and bad luck will be evenly spread across the world’s population. Therefore, it’s often hard to know whether a run of bad luck is anything to do with a curse.
A number of films have had bad luck associated with them, leading to suggestions that they’ve been cursed. As always, though, one has to ask whether prosaic factors played a role, or whether the misfortune was
