Original subtitles

Imagine, a Hollywood sports car

with a killer reputation.

They take it on tour, as a cautionary tale

on the dangers of reckless driving.

At one stop, it falls from its display

and breaks a teenager's hip.

At another stop, the garage that it's kept in

burns to the ground and everything around it burns,

except the Porsche.

Or an amusement park

that proves anything but amusing.

There's an 11-year-old girl

riding the rotating swing

when a delivery truck backs into the path of her swing

and she smacks right into it.

There's even a report of a boy who's riding a Ferris wheel

when something snaps

and he falls to his death.

How about a malevolent force so powerful

people built an entire castle to keep it contained.

They describe headless horses, winged demons.

And they hear screams of terror.

To the local villagers, they feel like they just found the gate to hell.

These are the stories of cursed encounters

with forces so strange and relentless,

they are truly unbelievable.

In most car crashes,

people are quick to blame the man, not the machine.

But in 1955, a sleek silver Porsche

earns a reputation that goes far beyond reckless driving.

It's 1955

and James Dean has burst on to the Hollywood scene as a huge star.

He's just finished East of Eden

and Rebel Without a Cause.

He's a movie star officially,

so he wants to do what movie stars do,

and that's spend money on a cool car.

James Dean walks into Competition Motors,

the go-to spot in California

if you want a really high-end cool car.

And James Dean sees this beautiful silver Porsche 550 Spyder.

He trades in his car and writes a check

for this beautiful new Porsche

that he nicknames "Little Bastard."

When Dean's friend, actor and future Jedi Alec Guinness, sees Dean in the car,

he gets a bad feeling about it.

And some strange thing came over me,

some almost different voice,

"Please do not get into that car.

"Because if you get into that car,

next Thursday, you'll be dead."

Nine days later, on September 30th,

James Dean ignores the warning and hits the open highway.

It's late in the day,

James Dean is flying north,

he's driving fast with his mechanic friend.

Coming the other way,

is a college student and Navy vet, Donald Turnupseed.

The sun is setting and the glare's pretty bright.

Dean's in this low-slung silver Porsche

that kind of blends in with the asphalt.

Turnupseed never actually sees the Porsche coming towards him,

and makes a left turn directly in front of James Dean.

The cars collide.

The impact is nearly head-on.

The Porsche is launched into the air

where it twists violently

and then crashes into a roadside ditch.

Dean's mechanic friend escapes with minor injuries,

but the star is fatally injured.

The picture of this wreckage is all over the papers.

Front page everywhere.

It doesn't even look like a car, it's unrecognizable.

It looks like a crumpled-up piece of foil with wheels.

But surprisingly, "Little Bastard" lives on,

when the wrecked car is stripped for parts

and sold off in pieces.

A doctor and amateur racer, William Eschrich,

buys the engine and puts that in his Lotus racecar.

And he actually loans the transmission and the suspension

to another racer, Troy McHenry.

Incredibly, at the 1956 Pomona sports-car races,

both of these cars crash.

Eschrich survives, but barely.

McHenry hits a tree and he's killed.

The body of the car ended up with custom builder George Barris.

He eventually becomes famous for building the Batmobile

and the Munster Koach

amongst many other cars.

Now, long before that, Barris actually loans the Porsche body

to the National Safety Council.

They take it on tour,

sort of using it as a cautionary tale on the dangers of reckless driving.

But even as a cautionary tale,

strange incidents seem to follow "Little Bastard" across the country.

At one stop, it falls from its display

and actually breaks a teenager's hip.

At another stop, the garage that it's kept in

burns to the ground and everything around it burns

except the Porsche.

That's when whispers begin to swirl:

"Little Bastard is cursed."

We're all familiar with that trope in horror movies

where there's some sort of object

that is tainted with some sort of curse or, uh... demonic presence

that, you know, infuses itself into the object

so that if you're somebody that owns that thing,

you then are inflicted with that curse.

Then somehow, what's left of "Little Bastard" goes AWOL.

In 1960, it's being shipped from Miami to Los Angeles,

and the remains of the "Little Bastard" just disappear.

The wreck is never seen again.

For decades, there's no sign of it anywhere,

until March of 2020.

Somebody discovers one of the "Little Bastards'" transaxles in a crate.

It gets bought at an auction for nearly 400 grand.

And eventually it goes on to be displayed in Las Vegas,

where superstitious gamblers avoid it like the plague.

Skeptics could argue that German racing cars

are inherently dangerous,

so maybe they don't have to be hexed to be deadly.

But try explaining away a quiet, wooden porch chair

that seems to harbor

an insatiable blood lust.

In the early 1700s, in North Yorkshire, England,

there is this man named Thomas Busby.

And he was generally not a nice guy.

He's a violent criminal,

and he likes to hang out at his father-in-law's pub and inn,

and he has this wooden chair on the stoop of the inn

that he is really attached to.

Way too attached to.

He sits on this chair like it's his personal throne.

Every night he settles in

and no one else is allowed to even touch it.

One day, in 1702, Thomas Busby heads to the pub

like he always does,

and sees his father-in-law, Daniel Auty,

sitting in his chair.

Busby flies off the handle

and the two of them get to arguing.

Auty doesn't like the way that Busby treats his daughter,

Busby doesn't like the way Auty conducts his business,

they fight about everything.

There's so much baggage between these two,

it was inevitable for something to happen.

And it gets heated.

In fact, it gets more than heated.

They argue and they argue,

and finally,

Busby straight-up murders Daniel.

Busby is convicted of murder and sentenced to hanging.

So, they decide to hang him near the inn,

and as they do it, he points to his chair,

the chair he's always sitting in,

the chair he considers his own chair, the chair that was part of the reason

why him and Auty got into a fight in the first place,

and curses it.

He curses the chair and says

that anyone who dare sit in it will suffer sudden death.

In the years that follow, stories begin to circulate

about anyone bold enough to sit in Busby's chair.

In 1894, there's a chimney sweep who sits down in the chair,

just taking a break,

and the next day, he is found dead,

hanging from the side of the building.

During World War II,

the chair is still sitting at the inn.

And the inn is now popular with Canadian airmen

who are stationed at the nearby base.

The airmen know the lore,

and they actually challenge each other to sit in the chair.

Slowly, it's no longer a joke.

They start noticing that a lot of the people who sit in the chair

don't come back from their next mission.

A bricklayer who's working nearby,

he sits down in the chair, and shortly thereafter

he ends up falling from some scaffolding and dies.

You'd think that at some point, they would just stop warning people

and get rid of the dang chair!

By the 1970s, the chair is removed from the pub

and donated to the Thirsk Museum

to avoid any more casualties.

But even there, staff take precautions.

Instead of displaying the chair on the ground,

they hang it high up in the air

so that no one will ever be able to sit in that chair again.

Cursed or not,

that chair has convinced generations of people

to keep standing.

Coming up, a curse even Dracula can't shake.

Bela sees the yellow eyes everywhere.

He starts to have a mental breakdown.

He cannot get her out of his head,

haunting him.

No one has ever played Dracula more convincingly

than Bela Lugosi,

those piercing eyes,

those fangs.

But some believe Hollywood's most famous vampire

may have drawn inspiration from an encounter

that haunted him for years.

It's 1914,

in the seaside resort town of Abbazia,

modern-day, it's known as Croatia.

And you've got 32-year-old Bela Lugosi grinding it out

in the local theater scene.

Bela is a bit of a ladies' man.

And he meets this fellow performer

named "Hedy."

This doesn't seem like a conventional beauty.

He describes her as exotic but almost alien.

She has pale, glowing skin,

and thin lips

that hide these tiny, razor-sharp teeth.

The standout feature

are her eyes, which have this sort of yellow tint to them.

After a torrid three-week affair,

Lugosi says that Hedy just vanishes,

without a trace.

But then he finds a note,

which reads, "We may never see each other again,

"but remember, you are mine,

always."

Lugosi feels as though his heart has been ripped from his chest.

He is tormented by the idea

that he will never see this woman again.

He can't eat, he can't sleep.

The only thing that ultimately takes his mind off of this woman

is World War I.

He's a skiing commando,

and an officer in the 43rd Royal Hungarian Infantry.

Upon coming home from the war a decorated soldier,

Bela settles down, marries,

and makes his return to the stage.

But one night,

just before a performance in Budapest,

he feels a chill run through him.

As the curtain rises,

right there, sitting in the front row,

he sees those yellow eyes.

Shaken, he delivers a terrible performance.

But he gets through the play, and afterwards

he cannot get her out of his head.

So obsessive does he become that it takes a toll on his marriage,

which eventually breaks down.

Broken-hearted and desperate to put distance

between himself and the one who got away,

Bela flees to the U.S. with a Hungarian theater troupe.

He starts to find his groove again,

meets another lovely young woman,

and he gets married, and he's happy.

The yellow eyes return.

This time,

Hedy shows up in his dressing room!

She says, "You're fighting against it,

"but it's no use.

You belong to me."

Shortly thereafter,

Bela's second marriage breaks down.

After that encounter,

Bela once again starts seeing the yellow eyes

everywhere!

In his house, in dark corners.

It's almost like some supernatural entity

that refuses to let him go.

Eventually, Bela channels that torment

into the performance that will make him a legend.

I am Dracula.

The movie is a phenomenon

in these early days of American cinema.

In New York alone, 50,000 tickets are sold in just 48 hours.

The Lugosi version of Dracula

is essentially the birth of the American horror genre.

Lugosi's Dracula does more

than inspire the modern vampire,

it's more like a template for it...

ageless, seductive,

the piercing, hypnotic eyes

haunting his victims to obsession.

It is suggested that his depiction of Dracula

is based on the woman with the yellow eyes.

While on the outside, Bela is blessed with fame and fortune,

on the inside, he continues to struggle.

Unable to hold onto love,

Bela sinks into a morphine addiction.

Shortly before his death,

Lugosi reportedly tells his friends he's not afraid of dying.

He's afraid of Hedy,

and the curse following him into the afterlife.

If Dracula taught us anything,

it's to be wary of old castles.

And few have a darker reputation

than the one in our next story.

Houska Castle is this 13th-century edifice

in the Czech Republic, just north of Prague,

and it's kind of a strange building.

So, this fortress is on the edge of a cliff,

and it's not actually near anything

that needs to be defended.

It's not on a water source,

there's no kitchen to cook anything,

there's no barracks for people to stay.

Here's what's really weird,

its fortifications face inward

toward the center of the courtyard.

It's almost as if the builders believe

that the enemy is already inside the gates,

attacking from within.

To understand why Houska Castle was built this way,

you have to go back centuries,

to a time when locals believed the ground itself was cursed.

Some of the earliest recording

of local tradition around Houska

appears in a chronicle

by Czech historian Václav Hájek.

He writes that back in the day there is this hole,

this very deep crevasse

that seems to have no bottom.

Local peasants notice this spot

because they hear these howling screams

coming out of it.

So the local peasants go to investigate,

but they can't see how deep it is to the bottom.

So, they get an idea and drop a rock and listen,

but they hear nothing.

So, for all they know, this is a bottomless pit.

The only thing worse than a creepy bottomless pit

is what might crawl out of it.

Local lore tells of strange creatures

emerging from the chasm,

and disappearing into the neighboring forest.

They describe them in various ways,

just a cavalcade of monstrosities.

There are headless horses, winged demons.

According to legend,

the locals decide to try and seal this hellhole

by pushing stones to fill it up.

But this proves impossible because they never find a bottom.

By the late 13th century, the castle is constructed,

including a chapel built over this mysterious pit

to guard against whatever demonic forces might be hiding deep inside.

But during construction,

builders can't contain their curiosity

to see what's really down there.

Not surprisingly,

there are no volunteers to go into this hellhole and check it out.

Local authorities decide to extend an offer to a local prisoner,

and they tell him, "Look, you can get out of jail free,

"all you have to do is we'll lower you down into this deep, dark pit

and you tell us what you see."

They tie a rope around his waist,

and they start lowering him into the hole.

He's going down,

and they're almost out of rope,

and then they hear screams of terror.

They begin to pull as fast as they can,

until they pull the prisoner out.

The guy is babbling incoherently.

He looks like he's seen the worst kind of horrors.

And strangest of all, is his hair.

It's turned completely white.

The workers cannot get this man to calm down

to describe anything that he experienced in the pit.

Two days later, he's dead.

To the local villagers, they feel like all of this is evidence

that they just found the gate to hell.

Over the centuries, Houska Castle becomes a magnet

for those drawn to the forces supposedly trapped inside.

Local legends say that Swedish practitioner of black magic Oronto

took over Houska Castle in the early 1600s.

He's looking for the key to eternal life.

Locals are concerned that he might uncork something greater

than what he's actually looking for,

so two local hunters break in

and actually murder him there in the castle.

After that, the castle lies in ruins for more than 300 years,

until an extended stay by another set of dark souls.

Followed by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939,

Houska Castle is taken over by Hitler's SS.

Whatever the Nazis were up to in Houska Castle,

it obviously doesn't help them win the war.

After 1945, it just goes back to being an architectural curiosity.

Or, depending on who you ask,

a fortress holding back the minions of hell.

Despite its sinister reputation,

Houska Castle is admired as one of the best-preserved Gothic castles in Europe.

It's available to rent for private functions, too,

in case you ever want to host a real hell of a party.

Coming up, a supernatural bully

messes with the wrong future president.

The witch begins to torment Jackson and his team.

He's suddenly peppered with hits.

He ends up getting thrown to the ground

by a presence that no one can see.

Andrew Jackson fears nothing.

Not bullets, not blades,

and certainly not a witch.

So, when he hears an unseen force

is tormenting a Tennessee family,

he goes to put it in its place.

It's the early 19th century in central Tennessee

and 14-year-old Betsy Bell

is living with her parents on the Bell farm.

She wakes up one morning,

and her face is covered in red welts.

It looks like she's been slapped by somebody, in the face.

And unfortunately for Betsy, this is just the beginning.

The reports are that night after night

she's being attacked by some unseen force.

Her hair is getting yanked,

she's getting hit,

and there's even one night where she's just in convulsions on the floor

in front of her family.

It's like fighting a sheet

but you can't see it.

It's touching you, it's laying on top of you,

it's hitting you, it's grabbing you.

Other members of the Bell family

start to hear scratching coming from underneath the beds...

...chains rattling across the floor,

a laughter that's echoing through the house.

Everyone in the family experiences this,

this is not just something going on in Betsy's head.

Word spreads quickly throughout Tennessee,

and people begin referring to Betsy's tormentor

as "The Bell Witch."

Neighbors, ministers,

curious looky-loos

are all making their way to the Bell farmhouse

to see if they can catch a glimpse of this Bell Witch.

These people report that they see

chairs sliding across floor by themselves,

they see blankets yanked off the bed,

and they see little Betsy getting struck

over and over again.

This family is experiencing a haunting.

They are trying to seek help,

but nobody wants to dabble with the devil.

As the legend of the Bell Witch grows,

the story eventually reaches one of the toughest men in America...

future president Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson lives close to the Bell farm,

only about 40 miles away.

And according to Tennesseans,

he's so intrigued by the ongoings at this farmhouse

that he wants to go see the Bell Witch for himself.

In addition to being a war hero,

Andrew Jackson is famous for two things...

cussin' and fightin'.

So, he heads out to the Bell farm,

and he even brings along a self-proclaimed witch tamer,

and they are gonna tame this here witch.

As Jackson's wagon approaches the farm,

the horses suddenly just stop,

dead in their tracks,

they refuse to move an inch further.

Some people say that the witch even begins to torment Jackson and his team,

subjecting them to slaps,

taunts, laughter.

In retaliation,

Jackson's "witch tamer" takes action.

He starts casting spells, chanting.

But he's suddenly peppered with hits.

He ends up getting thrown to the ground by the Bell Witch,

a presence that no one can see.

Now, Andrew Jackson,

he's not about to let his witch tamer get beat up

by some invisible witch.

So he jumps in the fight himself.

Now, the eyewitnesses claim

that this fight goes on throughout the night.

They are fighting this thing for hours.

As the sun begins to rise,

Jackson and his friend have had enough.

He's even quoted as saying that

he would "rather fight the British again

than spend another night contending with the Bell Witch."

So, Andrew Jackson packs up his wagon

and him and his team hightail it up out of there.

And the Bell family?

They're left to contend with this thing by themselves.

It takes a lot to rattle "Old Hickory."

But as stubborn as Andrew Jackson was in life,

some future White House residents claim he remained just as immovable

in death.

It's 1862,

Mary Todd Lincoln is hosting a séance

in the White House.

She is overcome with grief

at the loss of two of her sons.

So, this séance is an attempt to reconnect with her children.

These séances are just like you'd expect a séance to be.

Candles are flickering,

the table is shaking.

And according to Mary,

she is actually feeling the presence of her son.

And as days go on...

...she even says to friends

that Willie visits her every single night

at the foot of her bed.

And sometimes, she says, Willie brings other people

from the spiritual world to come and visit,

like Eddie, his brother.

Unfortunately, once the door to the spirit realm is opened,

there's no telling who else might walk through.

Now, one night in the same parlor room where the séances were held,

Mary starts to hear noises...

boots stomping,

doors that are slamming.

She goes to investigate and it's empty.

There's nobody there.

She also starts hearing a man's voice.

Shouting, he's angry.

And she can't pick up all of it,

but she can tell that he's swearing.

Mary goes ahead and tells some of the staff of the White House,

and some of them think that these noises that they're hearing

sound very much like a former

White House resident.

To longtime staff,

the disturbances bear the unmistakable signature

of Andrew Jackson.

People knew he was a loudmouth,

he was raucous, he was demanding, he was rude, he was arrogant.

So, when these loud sounds and noises and swearing

are reported throughout the White House,

it's not a stretch to say,

"That's gotta be Andrew Jackson."

And soon enough,

other staff members in the White House

start experiencing the same outbursts that Mary has been dealing with.

Even President Lincoln is rumored to have heard

some very strange sounds in the White House.

Now, finally, in 1864,

Mary ends the séances,

and then she'll move out of the White House a year later, in 1865,

following President Lincoln's assassination.

But whatever, or whoever, was invited in

doesn't seem too eager to leave.

For decades afterward, the strange sounds continue.

After World War II,

President Harry Truman writes a letter to his wife Bess

claiming that there are these, "Ghostly creaks that happen in the hallway."

And the curtains are fluttering in a certain type of way

that makes him think

that it's Jackson's ghost still in the White House.

In 1964,

a secretary to the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson,

also hears noises.

Someone angrily stomping,

cussing in the empty Rose Room.

She goes to investigate, there's nobody there.

The Rose Room used to be Andrew Jackson's bedroom.

So, to believers,

it seems that America's crankiest president

is one that continues to haunt The People's House to this day,

and he is not one that you are going to vote out any time soon.

It seems in the eternal afterlife,

there are no term limits.

Coming up, even the fastest gun in the Wild West...

...can't dodge fate.

He is haunted at night.

He begins to have a kind of premonition.

He tells the bartender he feels cursed.

That his death is drawing near,

and he knows how it's gonna happen.

In the Wild West, a fast draw could save your life.

But some curses can't be outrun.

And Wild Bill Hickok is about to find that out the hard way.

In 1876,

a man of great fame arrives

in the mining town of Deadwood,

James Butler Hickok,

but everyone knows him as "Wild Bill."

Now, this is not an ordinary man

'cause he brings with him a tremendous reputation.

Wild Bill is notorious for his exploits as a soldier,

he was a spy in the Civil War,

he worked as a scout for General Custer.

And he was for a time the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.

But mostly, he is known

as one of the most gifted gunslingers in the Wild West.

Wild Bill could draw faster than anybody,

and shoot straight with both his left and right.

But by his late 30s, Wild Bill is a shadow of his former self.

His eyesight is failing.

And as a gunslinger, this is a problem.

So, Bill finds a new way of making a living,

from being a gunslinger, to a gambler.

And so, this is his mentality when he makes his way into Deadwood,

this lawless boom town.

People that are looking to head into the Black Hills

to mine for gold, to strike it rich.

But then you've got another subset of people in Deadwood,

people that don't want to mine the gold,

they just want to take it in other ways.

Thanks to newspapers and dime novels,

Wild Bill arrives in Deadwood

as one of America's most infamous gunmen.

And that notoriety feels less like a blessing

and more like a curse.

Some journalists have claimed

he's killed over 100 men.

And the men that he put in the ground had family,

had business partners, had friends,

which means he has plenty of enemies.

He gets no real sense of peace,

since he's constantly perceived

as a threat everywhere he goes.

And this starts to take a toll on him.

He is haunted at night,

and he begins to have a kind of premonition,

right, of his own impending death.

In that dream,

Wild Bill is sitting at a poker table in a saloon.

He's not facing the door.

A shadowy figure comes up behind him,

and a shot rings out.

And in that instant, Wild Bill sits up in bed,

jolted awake by the horror,

in a cold sweat,

that sick feeling that he just saw himself die.

Bill becomes so paranoid

that he makes a new rule for himself.

He can never have his back toward any door in any room.

He tells Harry Young, his friend,

a bartender at one of his favorite saloons,

that he feels cursed,

and that his death is drawing near

and he knows how it's gonna happen.

Bill even writes a letter to his wife

where he talks about never seeing each other again,

and he even signs the letter, "Goodbye."

So, clearly he's being haunted by his own fate.

In one long night at the table,

he clears the felt of chips.

He takes every penny off a young man by the name of Jack McCall.

And realizing that he left the man penniless,

Wild Bill tries to do the noble thing

and he gives the man a few copper coins

to buy himself breakfast.

But this act of kindness

does little to bring Bill good karma.

It's August 2, 1876,

and Wild Bill Hickok enters the Nuttal and Mann's Saloon.

The crowd is already in, it's loud,

it's thick with cigar smoke,

and every chair at the gambling tables is full,

except for one.

The one not facing the door.

What he doesn't notice, though,

is as he's playing a round,

a man slips into the saloon behind him.

The man is Jack McCall,

an individual who Wild Bill just the night before

had completely cleaned out at the table.

McCall pulls a Colt .45 from his waistband,

takes aim...

and fires.

Chaos, shock,

Wild Bill dead in an instant.

Hickok falls forward onto the table,

blood splattered everywhere,

including on his cards.

Which, the hand that he was holding at the time of his death was

a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights,

which has become known as

The Dead Man's Hand.

The story travels around the world.

Newspapers sell a lot of ink talking about his final moment.

Not only did Wild Bill's haunted dream come true,

but the hand he played is still considered cursed

even in the 21st century.

Most superstitious gamblers who draw the Dead Man's Hand

fold it right away.

Coming up, a popular amusement park

makes more headlines than memories.

A boy is on the waterslide, hits his head,

and he dies of his injuries a week later.

There's even a report of a boy who's riding a Ferris wheel

when something snaps and he falls to his death.

Amusement parks are designed to give you thrills,

to scare you.

A few screams on a roller coaster,

a jolt in a haunted house,

maybe a stomachache from some questionable fair food.

But at one park in West Virginia,

locals believe the real horror started long before the rides were built.

In 1926,

West Virginia businessman Conley T. Snidow

opens the Lake Shawnee Amusement Park.

For all the local coal miners and their families,

it's like Six Flags.

It's got merry-go-rounds,

flying swings,

and best of all, a big ole Ferris wheel.

Lake Shawnee also has a rustic swimming hole with slides,

and by all accounts, people in this town,

they love going there.

But it's not all fun and games at Lake Shawnee.

Almost immediately, freak accidents seem to plague the small park.

In 1930,

the newspapers report that a boy named Kelley Souder

is on the waterslide...

...hits his head,

and he dies of his injuries a week later.

There are reports that in the 1950s

there's an 11-year-old girl,

and she's riding the rotating swing.

But then comes this soda delivery truck

and it backs up right into the path of her swing

and she smacks right into it

and that kills her.

There's even a report of a boy who's riding a Ferris wheel...

...when something snaps and he falls to his death.

And it's not just the rides that prove deadly.

In 1961, a boy drowns

right there, in sight of everybody.

And then a few years later, in 1966,

another boy drowns,

he gets his hand stuck in a drain and can't get out.

By the late 1960s,

six people have died at Lake Shawnee Amusement Park,

and there've been a number of injuries as well.

And almost all of them were children.

Parents start whispering,

"Is there something darker going on here?"

Some people even start to speculate

that this place is cursed.

In 1967,

Lake Shawnee Amusement Park is finally closed.

The reason for the shutdown is a failed health inspection.

Two decades later, a former employee buys the park,

hoping to turn it into an ATV track.

But the moment they break ground,

the project comes to a dead stop.

These bulldozers uncover

pottery shards

and other Native American artifacts.

At that point, construction stops

and White calls Marshall University

and brings in some archeologists to come check the site out.

When the archeologists start to dig,

they begin to find human bones.

Ultimately, they find the skeletons of thirteen children.

Upon closer inspection,

the site turns out to be an ancient burial ground

for the local Shawnee tribe.

And it's not just dozens

or even hundreds of bodies.

They estimate that there could be

as many as 3,000 people buried here.

Archeologists stop digging

because this place has to be respected as a sacred site.

But long before those bulldozers,

someone else might have disturbed this land first.

In 1775,

a family by the name of the Clays, they move in.

It's Mitchell Clay, his wife, their fourteen children.

Clay builds a cabin and a barn,

and sets up a homestead.

And we don't know if he knew

that he was actually building on the site of a burial ground,

but if Stephen King novels have taught us anything,

it's that building on sacred burial grounds

never turns out well.

In 1783, there's a horrible massacre,

where the Shawnee people come,

murder two of his children, kidnap a third,

and burn him at the stake.

This horrific event leaves a stain

that will never be washed away.

Today, the land is left alone.

The decaying rides stand as a reminder of what can happen

when this ground is disturbed.

People who visit abandoned Lake Shawnee Amusement Park today

claim to hear the sound of children playing,

they see shadows of people running around.

If there is such a thing as a cursed place,

it's gonna be a place like this.

People still leave toys at Lake Shawnee

as offerings to the restless spirits,

which seems like a small price to pay

to avoid angering ghosts.

Coming up,

a mother's curse gives birth to a monster

that terrorizes generations.

Something is landing on their livestock and tearing it apart

from the top down through the spine.

They start closing schools down.

They are not letting children outside the house.

This is how serious they're taking it.

Every parent says something to their kids they later regret.

Maybe you threaten to give them away to a circus

or call them a little monster.

But one 18th century mother's moment of frustration

unleashes a fury that curses the Garden State for centuries.

It's the early 1700s,

and deep in the wild New Jersey Pine Barrens

there's a woman by the name of "Mother Leeds."

She's got twelve kids,

she gets pregnant again with a thirteenth child.

She's not happy about it

because she doesn't want a thirteenth child.

So, the day comes for her to have the child,

she's, you know, in a situation of almost utter chaos,

and in a moment of frustration, of exhaustion,

she curses the child in the womb.

And then, she has it. It's born. It's fine.

She's done this a lot of times.

But then something happens.

According to the story,

this baby changes into something strange.

The way they describe it is,

it's face elongates,

almost like a horse...

...it grows wings, its feet become hooves.

It is basically a demon-looking creature.

This creature spreads its wings,

flies up through the chimney,

and disappears into the Pine Barrens.

And locals who hear this story

start calling the creature the "Leeds Devil."

Over time, the story of the Leeds Devil

spreads far beyond the Pine Barrens.

And as the lore grows,

so do reports of strange encounters across New Jersey,

including one with a famous general's brother.

Joseph Bonaparte,

the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte,

he owns a little bit of New Jersey,

and he's out hunting one day.

And he starts seeing these hoofprints,

which he notices are from a bipedal creature.

Something with two hooves and two legs is walking around his property.

He leans down to examine this

when he says he sees a massive creature.

He describes this creature as having a head like a horse,

a body that's not quite human,

and wings.

And he says it screams, flies right over him.

While Bonaparte has one of the first close encounters with the beast,

he won't be the last.

We have Stephen Decatur,

who is a Naval Commodore,

and he's out in Hanover, New Jersey testing munitions.

He hears this screeching noise coming from above,

and he turns to see this flying creature

coming right at him.

According to the stories,

he finds the thing so threatening

that he orders the men to fire the artillery...

...at the creature.

The stories persist for more than a century,

and the creature comes to be known as the "Jersey Devil."

By January 1909,

reports are pouring in from across the region.

January 16th,

several area newspapers report

that local people are terrified when they see this creature

around Bristol, Camden, and Haddon Heights.

And people are saying they see bipedal cloven hoofprints in the snow.

People out there start talking about

attacks on their livestock,

like nothing they've seen before.

They are coming from above,

as if something is landing on their livestock

and tearing it apart from the top

down to the spine.

In Camden, a bunch of eyewitnesses see it while on the trolley.

This is the middle of the city,

with people gathered en masse, all seeing this at the same time.

They start closing schools down.

They are not letting children outside the house.

This is how serious they're taking it.

And now, you have these vigilante posses

forming throughout South Jersey.

And these people are armed,

and they claim they're gonna go out

to hunt down this Jersey Devil.

Whatever was stalking New Jersey in 1909

left an entire region terrified.

There are even a claims that the Philadelphia Zoo

offers a $10,000 reward for the creature's capture.

But the Jersey Devil is never found.

A 2023 poll finds

that about one in six New Jersey residents

still believe

that the Jersey Devil is out there somewhere.

With a million acres of Pine Barrens,

there's a lot of room to hide.

That's a remarkably long time

for one cursed creature to avoid capture.

From demon children cursing the Jersey skies

to death cars that won't quit,

deadly premonitions that come to pass

to angry witches that kick Andrew Jackson's ass,

these are the relentless curses

that leave us so hopelessly hexed they are truly unbelievable.