PERILOUS POSSESSIONS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 18, 15 July 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

PERILOUS POSSESSIONS

MUMMIES, DAGGERS AND JEWELS WITH TERRIBLE PASTS. Among the many curiosities left by the late Lady Mieux is an Egyptian mummy which is said to have brought ill-luck to everyone who handled it. Now, whether it is possible that a curse pronounced in the dim past can by any means work harm through the ages is a matter of opinion. But such stories and the strange facts connected with them are too numerous to be altogether neglected. We may instance the case of the painted Egyptian coffin-lid, numbered 22,542, which stands in the British Museum, and the remarkable tale of misfortune and death which has been associated with this pictured face of the priestess of the College of Amen-Ra. The story is fairly well known, for two years ago all the daily papers were full of it. It is sufficient to say that from the time of the discovery of the coflin in 1899 the priestess seemed to bring misfortune ou everyone who had anything to do with her coffin. All five of the original finders came to grief, and even the carrier who' took the case .to the museum, the photographer who photographed it, and the well-known writer who described the events connected with it, all died shortly after.wards. Then there was the case of Mr. George Alefounder, who, having discovered a mummy too large to convenienty carry away, deliberately beheaded it, and took the head back to Europe in a bonnet box.

Then everything went wrong with him. Misfortune piled upon misfortune. One day he chanced to meet a medium. The latter at once told him that he could see a figure with high cliffs behind it, and clouds of dust rising about it. The figure, he said, was headless. As it happened, Mr. Alefounder had at the time forgotten all about the mummy head. Now he remembered it, and, much startled, consulted another medium. From her he heard precisely the same story. This was enough. He sent the head back at once to its original resting-place. The late Shah of Persia owned a dagger which is said to make its possessor invincible. But as the superstition is that he who uses it shall inevitably perish by it, it is kept securely locked in a sandalwood box.

A curious parallel to this Persian dagger is vouched for by Mr. C. W. Leadbeater. A certain English family own a stiletto which inspires everyone who holds it with a horrible and almost irresistible desire to kill some woman.

This weapon belonged to an ancestor whose wife deceived him, and drove him mad. He swore revenge against the whole sex, and with the dagger killed his wife, his wife's sister, and another woman before he was disarmed and secured.

In the summer oi 1906 M. Andreef, a well-known business nuin of St. Petersburg, bought at auction, for £2OOO, a beautiful old necklace made about one hundred and twenty years ago by a famous Parisian jeweller for the ill-fated Louis XVI. Nearly all the members of the French Royal family lost their lives in the Revolution, but the necklace was taken by a survivor to Brussels, and there sold. Over and over again its changed hands, and everyone who owned it was unlucky. Finally, a Russian Prince bought it for £4OOO, and gave it to the dancer Tzukki.

Tzukki's health failed, she was reduced to abject poverty, and died. The necklace was sold to M. Linevitch, the collector. He died suddenly at Monte Carlo, and it passed to a relative who lost all his money, and was only saved from beggary by selling the piece of jewellery. Andreef bought it, and almost the first time that his wife wore it he fell into a fit of senseless jealousy, and cut her down with a sword.

Such instances may be multiplied. Count Zborowski, when killed in a fearful motor accident at'NiC- in 1003, was wearing the fatal ring which had helonged to his family for four generations, every head of which had met a violent death.

Still more amazing is a story told by the late head of the Paris Morgue. Five times within his experience dead bodies brought to the morgue were found to be wearing a certain ring easily distinguished by its strange design. It bore in Eastern characters this legend: ".May whosoever wears this ring die a miserable death." M. Mace, late chief of the Parisian police, vouches for the truth of this.