CURSED ITEMS
A possessed fridge containing the soul of a nagging mother, Swedish glassware posing as an occult vessel and a dead man’s cuddly toy
CURSED FRIDGE
During July and early August several posters appeared in the area around Old Street tube station in London advertising a “cursed fridge – free to collect” and explaining exactly why the owners were giving the fridge away. “My stepmother had a heart attack on our kitchen floor in the middle of an electrical storm, and her soul was transferred into the computer unit of our smart fridge,” and, it seems, this has caused the owner some serious problems. “She has been subtly undermining me ever since, commenting on how many slices of cheese I’ve eaten, or whether I’ve properly put the lid back on something.” After putting up with this for a while, the owner appears to have reached the end of their tether: “I’m starting to feel it is completely unreasonable that she’s decided to live in our fridge, judging me on my culinary decisions. She has to go.” They are optimistic that the possessed nature of the appliance will not be a problem for future owners saying: “Aside from the soul within, the fridge itself is in complete working order, and I’m sure the unit would be far more agreeably housed with someone who hadn’t forced their ‘perfect child’ into a life of ‘mediocre servitude’.” The number given, though, does not belong to an individual, but to a kitchen showroom in Vauxhall, south London, who report receiving “maybe 100 calls” about the possessed fridge, but deny that it’s a publicity stunt to drum up business. londonworld. com, 6 Aug 2022.
VESSEL OF THE RITUAL OF DAMNATION
Blogger Max Read recently highlighted an unusual item his friend Sam discovered while buying a vintage mouse mat on eBay. The seller, a tech charity called Not 4 Profit Inc., that says it recycles old tech for the benefit of disadvantaged communities, was largely selling a mixture of unremarkable old electronics, but in among this there was a listing for something described as “The Vessel of the Ritual of Damnation – a Sorcerers Lens”, with a “buy it now” price of $13,333.33 (an 80% reduction on its initial price of $66,666.66). The listing details the purpose of the vessel. It seems that it was created for a specific ritual that places three permanent marks on the lateral and medial muscles of the right eye as confirmation of the bearer’s commitment to serving “the master’s commands” forever. It also claims that the biblical imprecation “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out” is a reference to the spell cast using this type of ritual object. The listing then goes on to helpfully promise that while the information provided on the site does not go into the full details of its purpose and method of use, these will be provided to the purchaser with the Vessel.
It seems that Sam was not the first person to notice and take an interest in the item; a YouTuber named Erik Markham also spotted the Vessel and made a short video about it, having, he claims, been given access to the object by the owner. In the video, Markham is seen visiting a remote, gated estate and being shown the Vessel, which, he says, is kept in an ammunition box lined with Bibles and only handled with tongs, as anyone touching it risks falling under a curse. He also claims to throw light on the origin and use of the item, which he says was “commissioned by the Grand Orient of France” but actually created in Italy in the 1970s to carry out a ritual that can be traced back to Roman times, and that its manufacture was an arduous process that included child sacrifice. The vessel was apparently placed in front of a film arc light so that light shone through it into the supplicant’s eye, burning the marks into it. Later, by staring at the Sun through the Vessel, they would see their master, Satan, to complete the ritual. Once so marked, and their supplication accepted, they were guaranteed fame and fortune.
Read’s attempts to find out more about Not 4 Profit Inc. proved harder than he expected, as he found their web presence surprisingly elusive; but he did find a link to a no-longer-active Indiegogo campaign called “Excellence in Education Program – Crossing the Digital Divide”. This initially lays out a fairly standard description of what one might expect a digital education charity to do, but then, partway through, it heads into more esoteric territory, saying its courses “will enhance the knowledge of all mankind, and demonstrate how everyone can photograph what is hiding in plain sight! The information and evidence produced can be evaluated to perfect the knowledge that one may already possess with The Secret of the Ages”. Read managed to find a contact named David Moriyama, who eventually explained that Not 4 Profit inc. “gets old laptops, installs Linux on them, gives them to students, and then teaches them some combination of IT and occult skills. Graduated students can be both highly effective Linux sysadmins and can photograph the spirit world, identify demons, etc.” He went on to explain that they’d given “over 5,000 laptops” to students, adding that, “The students who are within the research project have a good understanding and grasp of what we’re telling them. Most youth today are not interested in Armageddon.
They’re only interested in the next TikTok or the next date that they have.”
Asked how they had obtained the Vessel, Moriyama said, “I have friends within the Hollywood industry, very famous friends, and many of them are bodyguards,” and it was apparently one of these who provided the Vessel. “It was used upon elderly Hollywood celebrities whose careers were diminished,” Moriyama said. “And you saw many of them on, you know, Tic Tac Toe7, What’s My Line… entertainment venues that were broadcast during non-primetime hours. To draw in an audience, to continue receiving a check, they had to submit. And that submission was to the Vessel of Damnation.” Submission to Satan does seem to be a steep price to pay for an opportunity to eke out the dregs of a career on afternoon TV, though. However, it is entirely possible that the Vessel of the Ritual of Damnation originated from a much less esoteric source. An image search using the picture of the object in the sales listing turns up an identical bowl manufactured by the Swedish glassware company Flygsfors in the 1960s under the name “Coquille”, several of which are available from antique dealers online for a much more modest price of £400 to £500. boingboing.net, 5 Oct 2022.
GOODBYE KITTY!
In Thailand, after a road accident in May in which the driver was killed, the written-off car was taken to a scrapyard in Kamphaeng Phet province, complete with a giant Hello Kitty soft toy that remained unscathed in the back seat. Some weeks later, CCTV footage showed a man and a woman pulling up at the scrapyard, opening the wrecked car’s door and taking the toy. It also showed them returning hastily at 2am the following morning and throwing the Hello Kitty face down on the ground beside the wrecked car. The scrapyard owner reported the incident to police, who tracked down the toy thieves. When questioned about the incident they told them that the night after they got the Hello Kitty home, the woman saw the shadow of a little girl in the bedroom where they had put the soft toy, and that when she was in bed, she felt something choking her. As a result, the couple had got up and rushed back to the scrapyard, where they dumped the Kitty and fled, after which the disturbances did not recur. thethaiger.com, 14 July 2022.