The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (70 page)

For decades, sports stars have claimed that appearing on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
magazine was the fastest way to a slump or defeat.

Studying the records of fifty-eight baseball players going back to 1955, researchers found that there was a tendency for players' batting performances to decline, by about fifty points, from the time immediately before they get on the magazine cover until three weeks after the appearance.

Scientists say that if there is anything to this jinx, it's only because it spooks players and thus is selffulfilling. Because being on the cover of a magazine draws attention to the player, he begins to feel selfconscious at the plate and focus more effort on his performance. That self-consciousness and extra effort might, in turn, cause more injuries, fatigue, or other interruptions in the hitter's natural performance. As a result, his performance suffers.

THE OSCAR CURSE

Winning the much-coveted gold statuette can ruin, rather than help, an actor's career. It started when Luise
Rainer won back-to-back Oscars for
The Great Ziegfield (1936) and The Good Earth
(1937). Two years and five terrible movies later, she was considered a has-been. Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons wrote that Rainer was suffering from the “Oscar curse.”

Rita Moreno and George Chakiris (1961's best supporting actress and actor, for
West Side Story
) disappeared from films after winning. Richard Dreyfuss, who won best actor in 1978 for
The Goodbye Girl
, raised his weight to 180 pounds, stopped bathing, and started binging on booze and drugs after he won. Michael Cimino, the winner for best director in 1978 for
The Deer Hunter
, followed his Oscar with three unsuccessful films:
Heaven's Gate
,
Year of the Dragon
, and
The Sicilian
Linda Hunt won best supporting actress in 1983 for
The Year of Living Dangerously
and was last seen in the shortlived sci-fi TV series,
Space Rangers
.

This curse is considered quite credible in Hollywood. Oscars are accompanied by high expectations that can't always be fulfilled. The curse can also be attributed to winners' increased salary demands, typecasting, greedy agents or studio bosses, and stars who believe their own press and become hard to work with.

THE CURSE OF LADY TICHBORNE

In the year 1150, the saintly Lady Mabella Tichborne lay dying in her room at Tichborne Manor in England. For months she had lacked the strength to even sit by her window and overlook her beautiful rich farmland. She summoned her husband, Sir Roger de Tichborne, and shared with him her dying wish: that a loaf of bread be given to all the poor once a year on Lady Day, a feast day of the Virgin Mary.

But greedy Sir Roger felt no compassion toward the hungry and poor, and he quickly schemed to put an end to her request. He told his wife that he would distribute an annual gift in her name, equal to the amount of land she could walk upon holding a lighted torch. Assured that she couldn't get out of bed, Sir Roger was certain that he had settled the matter.

But Lady Mabella surprised him. She crawled out of bed, took the torch, and dragged her body around twenty-three acres of their estate. (To this day, this parcel of land is known as the Crawls.)

Back in her bed, Lady Mabella gathered the household around her and uttered the Tichborne curse. If the yearly dole of bread was ever stopped, the Tichborne family would die out.

So began the Tichborne dole. The custom went on for 600 years, until the local government got fed up with the influx of riffraff that showed up for it and shut it down in 1794. Afterward, male Tichborne heirs began to die.

Edward Doughty, a Tichborne ancestor who had changed his name, realized that the curse was in action when four of his brothers died without children. With the sudden death of his six-year-old son—the only remaining Tichborne heir—he reinstated the dole, which has been handed out ever since.

THE CURSE OF THE SCREAMING SKULL

During the seventeenth century, Azariah Pinney, a resident of Bettiscombe, a town in the heart of the English countryside, returned home after living in the West Indies for quite some time. Pinney brought a slave home with him to help care for his house, known as Bettiscombe Manor. The slave, unfortunately, soon fell ill, and lying upon his deathbed, requested one thing
from his master. He asked that his corpse be sent home and buried in the land of his birth. Pinney agreed, but when the slave passed away, he broke the promise and buried the slave in a nearby church cemetery.

Immediately after the burial, a strange moaning drifted up through the earth under which the slave had been buried. Before long, the moaning turned into an endless and agonizing scream, which tore through the countryside. Upon finding out about Pinney's broken promise, the local villagers demanded that he immediately dig up the body and remove it from the cemetery. Pinney did as told, and returned with the body to Bettiscombe Manor, where he stored the body in the attic. The tortured screams ceased. The corpse remained in Pinney's house, where it decayed over time, until all that remained was the skull.

As the years passed, Bettiscombe Manor saw many owners come and go. Some did not take well to sleeping so near the infamous skull and made the mistake of removing it from the attic. One owner threw the skull into a nearby pond, thinking it would sink, but the skull rose to the surface shrieking in anguish. Another family buried it in the backyard garden, but it dug itself out of the ground. In the end, the skull was returned to the house, where it is said to reside peacefully to this day.

THE CURSE OF KING TUT'S TOMB