A Hollywood Curse Come True

By Bill Knell

I had a older friend who lived in the Midwest during the 1970s. She was a bright, inquisitive and religious widow who had lost her husband to cancer. The great grandchild of a Hollywood mover and shaker from the age of silent films, she had heard more than a few tales of intrigue, scandal and supernatural happenings in Tinsel Town. One involved a curse put on the family by someone who was described as a powerful shaman who came to America from elsewhere (possibly Asia).

It seemed that a member of her Great Grandfather’s family had accidentally caused the death of the shaman’s mother in a car crash. He would have understood and forgiven the person, but they failed to express any kind of remorse for what happened and offered no sympathy toward the afflicted family. As a result, the Shaman proclaimed that sorrow would be the reward for all Mothers of children born into the family for ten generations.

No one would have taken the story seriously and it probably would have been forgotten except for the fact that bad luck seemed to follow the Mothers of children born into the family. When I heard the story, I was concerned. Rather than judge the validity of the curse, I suggested that my friend might consider finding relatives of the Shaman (if at all possible) and making an apology on behalf of the family. Being religious and well educated, she was certain that the curse was nothing to be concerned about in her life.

Shortly after that her son started to develop a number of behavior problems. The normally polite and sober fifteen year old became argumentative, started using drugs and drinking. Desperate to help him, she placed the boy in a suburban treatment center. He fought the treatments with all his strength and even managed to convince a counselor’s wife to sleep with him. The counselor was asked to leave, his wife was escorted off the premises and the boy was sent home.

After a short stay in a facility for drug addicted young people, the boy was back home. By 1977 I hadn’t heard from my friend for some time. Her number had been disconnected and mail returned as undeliverable. I assumed that she might be trying to relocate, but decided to contact a mutual friend who lived near Detroit. He just assumed I knew what had happened and gave me the bad news.

Despite endless tests and attempts at all kinds of treatments, the boy got worse. In late 1977 he used some of his own prescription medicines to drug his mother. He then placed her in the family car, drove it to a nearby bridge and tried to drive himself and her off of the bridge. Fortunately, a police officer watching for speeders noticed the attempt and cut him off before he could make a second attempt. Both ended up in mental health facilities.

I have no idea if it was a curse or just circumstances of life that brought about the decline of what should have been good lives for both. The family had some money stashed away from her deceased husband’s insurance policy, owned their home outright and my friend was a well-paid and very talented accountant. She specialized in straightening out books for small companies that had been unable or unwilling to keep their books up to date.

Ironically or as yet another proof of the curse, a sister that she hadn’t spoken to in ten years came on the scene, had her declared incompetent due to mental illness and took over control of the family finances. In less than a year all the money was gone and her house had been had sold for a miserably low price during a time when a recession gripped America.

I am still not sure if I believe her problems were related to the curse. I did try to encourage her to make things right with any living relatives of the family who had suffered the loss. She declined to do so and that was about as much as I cared to do. If this was a curse, it was a powerful one and I wanted no part of it. I made that decision after discovering that her famous Great Grandfather had been involved in his scandal shortly after the curse had been placed on the family. For legal and ethical reasons, I’ll withhold the name.

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