Everyone experiences a bit of bad luck now and again, but for one Canadian tourist the bad luck has been extraordinarily bad over the course of the past 15 years and now, she’s returning five artifacts to Pompeii in the hope of changing her fortunes. The woman sent the artifacts back to Pompeii with a letter indicating that she didn’t want to pass on the “curse” they’d brought upon her to anyone she loves anymore.
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According to CNN the tourist, a woman identified only as Nicole, sent back five small artifacts — two white mosaic tiles, two pieces of amphora vase, and a piece of a ceramic wall — to the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. The artifacts were accompanied by a letter that detailed why she was sending them back and called herself “young and dumb” when she took the items in 2005, having wanted ” a piece of history that couldn’t be bought.”
As for the bad luck the woman was “cursed” with over the past decade and a half? Her letter noted that since returning to Canada from Pompeii all those years ago, she’s endured two bouts of breast cancer that required a double mastectomy. She also noted financial trouble for her family and cited the negative energy the pieces contain due to their origin — the eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD which destroyed Pompeii and its residents.
“I took a piece of history captured in a time with so much negative energy attached to it,” the woman wrote. “People died in such a horrible way and I took tiles related to that kind of destruction.”
However, the woman did not send back all of the artifacts she took. Her letter noted that she’d given another tile to a friend and while she’d alerted her to the decision to return them, she was unsure her friend would follow suit. Interestingly, this Canadian tourist isn’t the only person to send artifacts back to Pompeii. A park spokeswoman told CNN that others have also sent back artifacts with letters claiming bad luck over the years.
While the Canadian tourist’s unfortunate experiences are nothing to make light of, it seems that the concept of ancient things and curses just go together. Earlier this month, video of the opening of an ancient mummy sarcophagus in Egypt went viral, prompting the internet to not only make quite a few The Mummy jokes, but also express semi-serious concerns that opening said sarcophagus had unleashed an actual curse.
What do you think about the return of “cursed” artifacts back to Pompeii? Let us know in the comments.
Photo: Antonio Balasco/KONTROLAB/LightRocket via Getty Images
