i have a hunch my audience believe in curses
you seem superstitious some of you believe in all kinds of things
magic Bigfoot human rights all are equally terrifying but there's
something especially scary about curses many places in the world are said to be
plagued by a curse among them is the tomb of Cornelius Vanderbilt
it's said that after he died someone he
cheated in business put a curse on the tomb
and ever since anyone who visited would die young
another is corvin castle a place Vlad the impaler was once held as a prisoner
but these places and their alleged curses are relatively small
in fact they are barely worth mentioning having said that
there is an entire village believed to be cursed a mysterious village abandoned
after centuries of unexplainable events this is the story of that place
deep in the Arabian desert there is a little-known ghost town
though abandoned for decades it stands almost exactly as it did then
only with less people and more weathered by sandstorms
frozen in time it gives a glimpse of a traditional existence now largely gone
from the region the town was first settled in the 14th
century by a tribe called za'ab a small tribe
they made their living raising sheep and diving for pearls
they had a fleet of pearling boats and regularly sold valuable pearls
in fact they found so many pearls rumor spread they were being supplied
them by Djinn according to Arabian folklore
Djinn are a form of invisible beings not quite
human the Djinn possess magical powers and are able to take on any form they choose
in their natural form we can't see them but they can see us
it is said they were born from smokeless fire and are generally feared as demonic
but jinn possess free will and can be good or evil
in this case it was said visa ab had made some kind of pact with them
some said virgin was simply showing kindness to the tribe
others said they were exchanging pearls for human children who they would later
cook and eat whatever the truth the Za'ab grew wealthy
from the pearl trade but apart from rumors of mysterious
forces the Za'ab lived a fairly un-noteworthy life
their small village never growing to more than a few thousand people
in the 1920s the pearl market collapsed pushing the community into poverty
this began another dark rumor that they were cursed
a rumor still told now the village itself is in the United Arab Emirates
specifically the emirates of Ras Al Khaimah unlike other emirates
Ras Al Khaimah is very traditional and in the 1960s a conflict broke out between its
ruler and the za'ab the exact nature of the conflict
is unknown but it got so bad the entire population
was re-housed in Abu Dhabi and so the village was deserted, left to
crumble into the sand
it's held up surprisingly well considering it's been abandoned for
decades this might be because coral was used as
a major building material but for some it's well preserved
condition is evidence something much deeper is going on still
now the village is said to be occupied by jinn
who walk its streets endlessly many surviving members of a tribe have
returned to visit their ancestral homeland but even they tend to
advise against staying too long such is the strength of the curse
believed to surround it