It’s that time of year again- Halloween! Okay, technically Halloween doesn’t come until the 31st of October, but it’s much more fun to consider all of October as “Halloween” to keep the spooky times going strong. Now, these spooky times can’t be celebrated without your normal, everyday objects, right? No, we’re talking the normal, everyday objects that are most definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, cursed. Come with us as we look at those seemingly innocent items you might have laying around at home that can actually be your worst nightmare! Boo!
The Unsuspecting Book
(New Line)
Reading is groovy. Well, usually when the book is not a Book of the Dead and can summon evil entities. Tip for you, dear reader: If you find an old book in a basement cellar in a wood cabin in the middle of the woods, don’t open it. Don’t try to read it. Most of all, definitely don’t listen to an audiotape that comes with the book. That’s exactly what the cast of The Evil Dead did and well…look what happened to them. 100% not groovy.
It’s Playtime!
(MGM/UA)
To be honest, most children’s toy or dolls are terrifying, even without the idea of a curse upon them. Have you seen the blank stare on some of those porcelain dolls out there? One look gives us the creeps. But when you add the possibility of one of those things getting cursed…yikes! For example, take the porcelain doll from Anabelle or that iconic “Good Guys” doll from Child’s Play. Those two dolls should not have been anything terrifying, but when you combine them with a killer instinct and a need to well, kill, the fun is quite over.
VHS! The Horror!
(Dreamworks)
Admit it- you were scared to put a VHS tape into the VCR after watching The Ring. We might be dating ourselves a bit with this one, especially in the day and age of digital content, Blu-ray, and streaming video, but the cursed consequences of watching the VHS tape from The Ring are nothing to joke about. Plus, you had to share the tape with others to get the curse to pass on from you? That’s almost as bad as the late fees that come along with not returning a videotape. Talk about cursed.
Not My Television!
But wait, there’s more! When looking at the overall scope of cursed everyday objects, it is pretty easy to find that some of these objects fall out of the scope of being included in a horror film. Some of the examples below fit that everyday object description without bringing on the levels of fear horror film objects do. They should still be considered though, as they are terrifying in their own right
Board Games can be Scary
In the jungle, you must wait, until the dice read 5 or 8.
While the 1995 film Jumanji is not considered to be a horror film, the game lives up to the idea of being a cursed everyday object. Being a completely unassuming board game, players have to face the actual real-life challenges of man-eating plans, hunters, wild animals, and all sorts of things that bump and crawl in the night.
(Sony/TriStar)
From games that come to life to the possibility of contacting the afterlife, the Ouiji board is something that you would find most likely to contain some aspect of a curse. The Ouiji Board, otherwise known as a spirit board or talking board, was introduced originally as a parlor game (no spooky things yet) but then later picked up steam in being related to the Occult. Have you used the Ouiji Board to reach out into the beyond?
Precious, sort of cursed, Jewels
(Warner Bros./New Line)
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
When a ring or piece of jewelry is regarded as a “[blank] of power,” it’s best to leave that piece of jewelry alone. It’s only going to cause you heaps of trouble. In the case of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the heaps of trouble falls into the lap of one Frodo Baggins and his quest to destroy the ring basically destroys him as time passes by. Take our advice on this: leave the pretty but deadly rings alone you silly Hobbitses.
Treasures from the Past
(Paramount)
From shiny but deadly jewelry to treasures untold, the curses continue on. It would be silly to not include the treasure from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark on this list when comes to cursed everyday objects. Okay, it’s hard to define the Ark of the Covenant from the film as an “everyday object,” but it’s a placeholder for the normal things, showing that anything that is treasure-esque can be ideally cursed and be a generally bad time.
