Was a curse to blame for John Getty's callous disregard for his grandson?
Did a Countess' spiteful words lead to the fall of the Hapsburgs and World War 1?
Or do bad things sometimes happen to wealthy people? You decide.
The Rockefellers are one of the richest families in American history.
But being one of the most prominent clans in the country has also come with some misfortunes.
They began when John D. Rockefeller, the world's first billionaire, rose
to the top of the oil business and supposedly crossed someone enough that he became cursed.
In 1951, Winifred Rockefeller, great-niece of John D. Sr., killed herself by leaving two cars
running in her garage. Her two children were found inside one of the cars. Then in 1961,
23-year-old Michael Rockefeller, great-grandson of John D. and heir to the fortune, was visiting
New Guinea, where he was gathering indigenous art. One day, his boat overturned and capsized,
and he vanished without a trace. And then in 1978, John D. Rockefeller III was killed in a car crash.
And when you consider all the depression, alleged affairs, and divorces that have plagued this
family, it's hard not to consider the possibility that something sinister has been going on.
Kennedy family members have had careers as ambassadors, senators,
chairmen, and even President of the United States. But the tragedies that have plagued
this influential clan are eerie, to say the least. The most famous example is of
course the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald.
"President Kennedy died at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time."
His younger brother Robert F. Kennedy was met with a similar fate just five years later.
While campaigning for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination,
he was fatally shot at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel by a man named Sirhan Sirhan.
The Kennedy family curse reared its ugly head yet again in 1969
when Ted Kennedy was involved in a car accident that killed his passenger.
There was also a drug overdose in 1984 that killed Robert's son David and a
skiing accident that killed another one of his sons, Michael. And on top of all that,
in 2002 Michael Skakel, nephew of Robert's widow Ethel, was convicted of killing his neighbor.
If you thought being a part of one familial curse is already traumatic enough, try suffering through
two. John F. Kennedy's widow Jacqueline found herself in another ill-fated clan after she
married Aristotle Onassis. With the world still grieving over the loss of JFK, Jackie's marriage
to the Greek shipping magnate in 1968 enraged America, with The New York Times declaring,
"The reaction here is anger, shock and dismay."
With the public in a fit, is it possible that a spooky hex was
cast? Onassis certainly thought so. In 1973, the businessman's son, 24-year-old Alexander,
died in an Athens hospital after a plane crash. Aristotle reportedly
went from calling his wife "the widow" to "the witch." According to Time Magazine,
"Deeply superstitious, he blamed her for the loss that broke his heart."
After Alexander's death, the Onassis family spiraled. In 1974, still wracked with grief
over her son's death, Aristotle's ex-wife Tina succumbed to a suspected overdose of barbiturates.
And then only a year later, Aristotle himself passed away from pneumonia.
As of 2021, Athina Onassis is the only one Onassis heir who remains alive,
after her mother Christina died from a sudden heart attack at the age of 37.
The story of the royal Russian Romanov family has been told countless times.
Even the 1997 animated flick Anastasia revolves around them, though that telling
is filled with hope, the complete opposite of the real-life family. Legend has it that the
Romanovs fell victim to a curse in the early 1900s by way of Grigori Rasputin,
a peasant who became a wandering holy man and made his way into the court of Czar Nicholas II.
The czar's son Alexei had hemophilia, and one day, Rasputin miraculously helped heal him.
Rasputin's supposed holy power was most likely just luck, though it solidified his relationship
with Nicholas. By the time World War I rolled around, Nicholas geared up to make his way into
the conflict. Around this time, word began to spread that Rasputin was actually a German spy.
Nicholas' relatives conspired to try to fire Rasputin, who then reportedly told Nicholas,
"If I am killed by one of your stock,
within two years you and your family will be killed by the Russian people."
In 1916, a man named Felix Yusupov finally killed Rasputin with a bullet to the head.
But then the Bolsheviks took power in November of 1917,
and the Romanovs were imprisoned. By 1918, they were wiped out in a mass execution.
The Getty family curse is an interesting one, as no grim tales of the occult
plaguing them actually exist. Perhaps their misfortunes are just karmic retribution?
Back in the 50s, Getty Oil Company founder J. Paul Getty was one of America's richest men.
But his attitude towards his own family was cold. As Forbes noted in 2015,
"He barely spent time with his family, many times looking down on them,
communicating through sarcasm and irony."
Tragedy first struck Getty's son, J. Paul Getty Jr., who had relocated to Italy.
His wife Talitha died of a heroin overdose in 1971. As for J. Paul's second son,
George Franklin Getty II, he spiraled into a great depression fueled by his father's
lack of warmth. He stabbed himself in the chest with a knife and died the following
day in a Los Angeles hospital after swallowing a lethal dose of pills.
Out of all the Getty misfortunes, perhaps the most prominent is the
1973 abduction of J. Paul's grandson, J. Paul III. When the kidnappers asked for a
ransom of $17 million, the family declined, with Grandfather Getty famously declaring,
"I have 14 other grandchildren. If I pay one penny, I'll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren."
The criminals proceeded to chop J. Paul III's ear off, and after six months,
he was released when the family paid $3.2 million.
This chapter of the Getty saga was dramatized in the 2017 film All the Money in the World.
"I have no money to spare."
"What would it take? I mean, what would it take for you to feel secure?" "More."
Guinness beer can trace its origins back to the brewery founded by Arthur Guinness in Ireland
in 1759. In 1997, The Irish Times noted that the Guinness family was the 23rd richest in the world,
but with all that money has come great tragedy.
Arthur Guinness fathered a whopping 21 children, though only 10 survived. Misfortune kept plaguing
this family throughout the years, as Walter Edward Guinness was killed in Cairo in 1944
by the Zionist terror group the Stern Gang. And then the heir to the family fortune,
also named Arthur Guinness, was killed during World War II at the age of 33. Their losses
only continued with Lady Henrietta Guinness, who threw herself off a bridge in Italy,
and Patrick Guinness, who died by running a red light and smashing into a van.
And this doesn't even scratch the surface of Arthur Guinness'
grandchildren who have turned to alcohol and ended up in mental institutions.
The European city-state of Monaco is known for glitz and glamour,
and it certainly lives up to its reputation, as does its royal family, the Grimaldis. Serving
as Monaco's rulers since 1419, the family is a symbol of unimaginable wealth. But while they
may have all the money in the world, their history has also been tainted with tragedy.
The Grimaldi family story can be traced back to the 13th century, when legend has it that Prince
Rainier I kidnapped and raped a beautiful woman who then became a witch, so as to seek vengeance.
She left a curse on the prince's entire family for countless generations, declaring,
"Never will a Grimaldi find true happiness in marriage."
And sure enough, the family has been rocked by scandal, divorce, and rumours of infidelity for
decades. The most famous example came by way of the late Princess of Monaco, actress Grace Kelly,
who married Prince Rainier III in 1956. She died in 1982 after her car fell off a mountain road.
Considering that all of Kelly's children have been romantically unlucky as well,
the curse suddenly sounds hauntingly real.
The Austrian royal Habsburg family has endured centuries of turmoil, as they've been supposedly
cursed not once but twice. As the story goes, around 1000 AD, ravens saved a Habsburg ancestor
from a lethal vulture attack. As repayment, the man built a watchtower for the birds in the woods.
Around 100 years later, a Habsburg relative then decided to turn the watchtower into a castle,
subsequently killing the ravens. According to the legend, the supernatural ravens then began
haunting the Habsburgs by appearing as death omens for centuries to come.
From this point forward, it's believed that the ravens appeared at every battle
that the Habsburgs lost. A rumor even circulated that the ominous ravens
appeared at the beheading of Marie Antoinette, who was born a Habsburg.
As for the second curse, in 1848, during an uprising against the Habsburgs, Emperor Franz
Joseph executed Hungarian rebels, among them an 18-year-old boy, the son of Countess Karolyi.
As reported by the Riverside Daily Press, Karolyi made her way towards the emperor, and announced,
"May heaven and hell blast your happiness! May your family be exterminated! [...] May
your children be brought to ruin, and may your life be wrecked."
Almost immediately, tragedies then befell the family without ceasing, perhaps most notably the
assassination of Joseph's nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to the start of World War I.
In June 2001, Prince Gyanendra was crowned the new King of Nepal. As reported by DNA India,
the public was in shock. Why was Gyanendra, the late King Birendra's brother,
assuming the throne, when the next in line should have been Prince Dipendra?
On June 1, 2001, Dipendra was allegedly drunk and high on cocaine while in the midst of a fight with
his parents about whom he was going to marry. He then changed into military fatigues and fired at
his family with a submachine-gun. He killed nine family members before turning the gun on himself.
He initially survived but ended up in a coma until passing away on June 4.
This is where things get spooky. According to an old Nepalese legend, Prithvi Narayan Shah,
the founder of the kingdom of Nepal, one day came across a meditating holy man in a forest.
He offered some curd to the yogi, but he regurgitated it and asked the king to drink it.
The king rejected this request, and so the holy man cursed him so that
his dynasty would be destroyed after 10 generations. Sure enough, the people of
Nepal remembered this tale and the fact that the murdered king was the ninth descendant.
"The massacre could in fact have a strong impact on the future of the monarchy in Nepal."
There's no denying that wrestling is an intense sport. Throw into the mix
the copious amounts of spandex and over-the-top showmanship, and it can be easy to forget that
wrestlers are actual human beings and not just muscle-clad caricatures. And as it turns out,
there are tons of wrestlers who have died under suspicious circumstances,
which is abundantly clear in the case of the Von Erich wrestling family.
The Von Erichs have suffered so many freak accidents resulting in death that it's widely
believed they're cursed. First to go was Jack Jr., son of patriarch Fritz Von Erich, who was only six
when he died in 1959. He was electrocuted, which resulted in him falling in a puddle and drowning.
The next tragic passing was that of David Von Erich. During the family's trip to Japan in 1984,
he was discovered dead in his hotel room. The exact events still remain a mystery,
though his death was ruled as an accident. His brothers Mike and Kerry
both suffered from depression and both killed themselves, Mike in 1987 and Kerry in 1993.
According to to the book The Squared Circle, it's believed that this can
all be traced back to a ghost of a Holocaust survivor speaking to Fritz in Chicago one day.
He supposedly put a curse on his entire family as revenge for choosing to diminish
the gravity of Nazism during one of his wrestling matches.
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