Woman Returns Cursed Artifacts to Pompeii

You may have heard of the curse of the pharaohs, where horrible fates befall those who disturb the tombs of ancient Egyptian kings. To the extent that these were real, they were probably caused by bacteria or radiation that were inside the tomb, though it’s basically just based on superstition and coincidence.

I have never heard of a curse of Pompeii, but I’ll bet if anyone placed one it’d be the guy who was flash-fossilized mid-wank.

That didn’t stop one tourist from blaming the fifteen years of misfortune that had befallen her to some sort of curse caused by knocking a few rocks on a visit.

Via CNN:

“I wanted to have a piece of history that couldn’t be bought,” wrote the woman, who said she was “young and dumb” at the time.

Since returning to Canada, she said, she has suffered two bouts of breast cancer, resulting in a double mastectomy, and her family has also been in financial trouble.

“We can’t ever seem to get ahead in life,” she wrote, blaming the bad luck on the tiles.

“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.”

“We are good people and I don’t want to pass this curse on to my family, my children or myself anymore,” she wrote. “Please forgive my careless act that I did years ago.”

Yeah, I really doubt those things are related. Peter Parker has terrible luck and not only has he not stolen any historical artifacts from Pompeii, he’s fictional.

But this woman is not the only one to claim misfortune befell her for lifting a piece of Pompeii.

Over the years, around a hundred visitors have returned small artifacts like mosaic tiles and pieces of plaster that they stole during a visit to Pompeii, according to a spokeswoman for the park.

The items were sent back along with letters from the visitors “claiming to have derived only bad luck” from taking away the artifacts, the spokeswoman told CNN.

A selection of letters and returned artifacts has been put on display at the Pompeii Antiquarium, she added, noting that, while the value of the artifacts was not significant, the letters were interesting from an anthropological perspective.