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The Encyclopedia of Cursed Objects: Artifacts of Misfortune, Folklore, and True-Case Hauntings
Paperback
Dictionaries & EncyclopediasMythology & FolkloreGeneral Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN13: 9781961714731
Publisher: Rainbow Quartz Publishing
Published: Jan 7 2026
Pages: 442
Weight: 1.17
Height: 1.10 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A doll sealed behind glass. A chair no one is allowed to sit in. Diamonds blamed for ruined dynasties. Paintings that survive fires. Books, mirrors, relics, jewelry, and ordinary household objects people became afraid to keep.
Some objects acquire history.
Others acquire warnings.
The Encyclopedia of Cursed Objects: Artifacts of Misfortune, Folklore, and True-Case Hauntings explores 95 infamous, mysterious, and unsettling objects whose stories have become inseparable from tragedy, haunting, obsession, ritual, and unexplained misfortune.
Encounter familiar cases such as the Dybbuk Box, Annabelle doll, Hope Diamond, Koh-i-Noor, Busby Stoop Chair, Codex Gigas, and The Hands Resist Him, alongside lesser-known artifacts, ritual tools, sacred relics, haunted furnishings, mysterious manuscripts, cursed jewelry, and objects deliberately buried, sealed away, destroyed, or removed from circulation.
But this is not simply a collection of scary stories.
It is an exploration of material folklore: what happens when grief, fear, devotion, trauma, obsession, and belief become attached to physical things and remain there long after the people involved are gone.
Inside, discover five categories of cursed and haunted objects:
- Ritual objects and tools created for protection, punishment, transformation, or power
- Jewelry, clothing, and personal possessions tied intimately to identity and loss
- Religious and sacred artifacts surrounded by devotion, conflict, and fractured belief
- Art, manuscripts, films, and media said to carry more than the stories they contain
- Mirrors, dolls, furniture, toys, and other domestic objects that turn the familiar unsettling
Each entry examines the object's history and origins, cultural context, reported disturbances or patterns of misfortune, folklore and eyewitness accounts, skeptical interpretations, and the unanswered questions that allowed its reputation to endure.
Some stories are supported by archival records and documented ownership. Others survive through testimony, folklore, disputed history, and generations of retelling. The distinction matters, and this encyclopedia leaves room for both skepticism and belief.
Because the strangest part is rarely one isolated tragedy. It is what happens when the same story begins repeating.
This encyclopedia does not tell you what to believe. It shows you what repeats.
And sometimes the most unsettling question is not whether an object is truly cursed. It is why so many people eventually decided they no longer wanted to own it.
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