Robert the Doll
There's a lot of haunted dolls out there.
Cursed ones, randomly moving ones and this is one of the dolls.
The name is Robert from Florida and he is said to be cursed.
He was the doll of a boy called Robert Eugene Otto, or Gene for short.
Some people say the doll was given to Gene by his grandfather while others say it was
from a servant who was mistreated by the family whom by chance practiced voodoo.
Either way, the doll had always been a bit creepy.
Gene named the doll Robert after himself and would always be seen carrying the doll around
with him everywhere he went.
Often his other toys would turn up mutilated and household objects would be found thrown
across the room.
Gene's response would always be "Robert did it!"
Which no one wanted to believe.
Sometimes, weird voices can be heard in the direction of the room where they were playing together.
So after some time, Gene's parents was feeling anxious and creeped out, they took Robert
away, hid him in a box and stored it in the attic.
It was only after so many years, Gene already an adult, an artist and a married man came
back to the house because he inherited it.
This was when he found the doll and became attached to it again.
He would sometimes put the doll near the attic window or even perched it on a chair in his own bedroom.
After Gene's death, Myrtle Reuter purchased the house which included Robert in it.
Visitors said they could hear footsteps in the attic, or even heard giggles wherever
Robert was.
Some even believed that Robert's expression changes whenever people talk about Gene, especially
if its bad things.
Currently Robert is in the Fort East Martello Museum in Florida.
Where he gets letters every day and its not just normal letters, they are letters of apologies
asking for their bad fortunes to be stopped or even letters asking for help.
Help on putting a hex on other people.
The Crying Boy Painting
The crying boy painting depicts well, a crying boy.
The myth of this particular painting was said to be a mass produced print of a painting
by Italian artist Bruno Amadio.
The crying boy in the painting is said to be of a runaway orphan whose parents died
in a blaze called Don Bonilo.
It was believed that wherever the boy went, there was fire.
Even the artist's studio got on fire that the artist himself doubted the child.
Was he the arsonist?
Well, the boy claimed to be innocent while crying just like in the paintings.
Years later, the boy was believed to have died in Barcelona at the age of 19, burnt
beyond recognition when his car exploded and was only able to be identified from his driving license.
Its interesting that even his death was surrounded by fire.
But all this is just mere speculation as the truth about the paintings are lost in the past.
So why is this painting cursed?
Its because there have been a series of accounts of houses getting caught on fire, especially
in the 1980s, and the only thing that usually survived the fire was the painting.
The paintings got even the fire department baffled as to how it survived.
There was a video on BBC that actually tried to light the painting on fire, but as expected,
the fire died out very quickly right after.
So try not to have them in your home or your house might just mysteriously catch on fire.
Busby's Stoop Chair
The chair is also known as Dead Man's chair.
Its the favourite chair of a man called Thomas Busby.
The legend as to how the chair became cursed started like this: Thomas Busby was a thief
with a temper and he often frequents a particular pub.
In this pub, he had a specific chair that he liked and he even claimed it as his own.
So one day, Busby got into a fight with his father-in-law and the final straw to his patience
was when he found out that the father in law was sitting on his favourite chair probably
even out of spite.
So that night, he went to his father-in-law's place and bludgeoned him to death.
Through this act, Busby was caught, trialed, found guilty and given hanging to death as punishment.
Before his death, they gave him a chance to have one final request and his request was
to sit on his favourite chair and have a drink.
Then minutes before his execution he was heard saying, "Death shall come swiftly to anyone
that dares to sit in my chair" and thus the start of the curse?
Well, there have been quite a lot of possible victims of the chair.
The cleaning woman who stumbled onto the chair suffered an aneurysm later the same day, a
chimney sweeper took a rest on it and unfortunately fell off the roof to his death and more after
sitting on the chair.
Anyways, the last owner of the chair gave it to the Thirsk Museum to get it off his hands.
Currently the chair is still displayed in the museum but rather than on the floor, the
chair is hung to the wall to make sure no one sits on it intentionally or not.
The Basano Vase
Another item on this list which causes imminent death if possessed.
The Basano Vase, a beautiful, carved, silver vase, was said to have been a gift given to
a bride on the eve of her wedding around the 15th century near Napoli, Italy.
But sadly she was murdered either on the eve or on her wedding night and was found dead
clutching onto the vase as if holding onto dear life.
The vase was then passed around within the family but death follows wherever the vase
has been.
So the vase was then boxed and sealed away only to be recovered in 1988.
In the vase, a piece of parchment paper was found with a message written on it that said,
"Beware...
The vase brings death".
But at that time, no one thought much of it and the vase was quickly auctioned off.
The first person to have then owned it was a pharmacist but of course he died after 3
months of owning it.
Then 3 more owners died after.
The final victim's family was sure the vase was cursed and in panic and turmoil, someone
threw the vase out the window which almost killed a police on duty.
The police fined the person who threw the vase for disorderly behaviour and the family
took the opportunity to let the vase go, so they asked the police to take it away.
Now the vase is said to be in a coffin and buried in some cemetery in hopes of it never
to be in anyone's possession ever again.
Dibbuk Box
Around 2003, a wine box was auctioned on eBay and the description from the seller even included
this statement:
All of the events that I am about to set forth in this listing are accurate and may be verified
by the winning bidder with the copies of hospital records and sworn affidavits that I am including
as part of the sale of the cabinet.
From the story, the man bought the box from a liquidation sale in 2001.
The sale was from an old woman's estate who survived the concentration camp during world
war II and had just passed away at the age of 103.
After the sale, the old woman's granddaughter approached him and said " I see you got the
dibbuk box" referring to the wine box the man bought.
Confused as to why she called it a dibbuk box, she explained that the grandmother called
the wine box as the dibbuk box and said that inside it is a "dibbuk" and "keselim".
The grandmother even warned her that the wine cabinet should never be opened so the guy
should also never open it, ever .
The man hearing a detailed story of the item,
offered the girl to keep the box because it seemed like a sentimental keepsake
but she refused and was being weird about it insisting it to be taken away.
She even raised her voice and said "No, no, no!
You bought it!
You made a deal!" which I personally find interesting because it seems like that's the
only way to get rid of the box, by selling it to other people.
Anyways, this is when things starts getting weird, the first one was when he left the
box in his antique shop in the basement because he intended to refinish the box.
He was out running some errands when he got a call from his salesperson.
The salesperson sounded very scared and hysterical saying there's an intruder in the basement
breaking things and she's locked in the shop because all the security gates and emergency
exits were locked shut possibly by the intruder.
So the man hurriedly returned to his shop and found the salesperson sitting in a corner
sobbing and terrified.
He checked up on her and then he ran downstairs to the basement only to find himself in the
dark and suddenly hit with an overpowering odor of cat urine.
All the lights were smashed but no one was there.
It was weird because there was only one entrance to the basement. After everything was settled,
the salesperson never returned and never wanted to discuss what happened on that day.
Then things got worse, to refinish the box, he opened it.
So he refinished it and gave it as a gift to his mom.
Right when the mother received it, she got a stroke.
When the mother woke up, she said she hated the gift and returned it to him.
Then he tried giving the box to his sister but the sister complained that the box's doors
kept opening by itself and she also returned it.
He found that weird because the doors wasn't the kind that had springs in them.
He then gave it to his brother, but his brother and sister-in-law said weird smells were coming
from the box and they also returned it.
He even tried giving it to his girlfriend but she said to just sell it and so he displayed
it in the shop where a middle aged couple bought it.
But after a few days, they also returned it.
They said the box had a sort of bad darkness to it. The man,
not believing in superstition and is definitely not religious, he had no idea what that meant.
Thus, he still didn't see the connection between the box and the series of unfortunate events.
Now, seeing how no one wanted it nor could he sell it, he ended up taking it home with him.
This is when he gets recurring dreams of some evil demonic looking hag that would attack him.
He would wake up finding bruises and marks on him but still he didn't relate that to
the box.
Only after a few months later, when he spent the night with his brother and sister that
he saw the connection.
This was only because they were talking about the box and they found out that they all had
the same kind of dream during the time they had it and it was the same old hag.
After the discussion and the acknowledgement that something is very wrong with the box,
he started seeing shadows in his peripheral vision and smell weird smells of either cat
urine or jasmine flowers that would suddenly appear out of no where.
That is why he listed the box in eBay to get rid of it and since then, the box had been
in the hands of multiple people.
Apparently a dybbuk is a spirit in Jewish folklore that would possess either a person
or an object because they are in a state of purgatory not able to go to heaven or hell.