True Story with Lily Verlaine: Cursed to Death?

The following is a true story. It actually happened to a friend of mine‘s mother. She doesn't mind sharing her terrifying experience with the followers of my blog or anyone who may chance upon it. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty!

So in the lady’s own words.

“This all happened a good few years ago. In fact it started about seven years before that. One afternoon I got a phone call from my cousin Barbara and she told me,

“Pat I’ve just found out I’ve got cancer in my lungs!”

And I heard myself say something like, “Oh my god”, because you hear that word everyday but you don’t think it’ll happen to your own family do you? And then I heard her say

“It’s not good Pat, they reckon I’ve got a year or two at most!”

She had to start chemotherapy straight way if she was to even have that, so I found myself at the hospital during these weekly sessions, sitting there with her still not taking it in, for moral support while she had all sorts of needles stuck in her. She was trying to be brave but I could tell that she was terrified and no wonder. Of course the inevitable horrible side effects followed, the sickness and hair loss, which to me would have been the worst of it but she handled it really well, far better than I ever would have.

And a few months passed in that way, she seemed really tired and drawn which was to be expected. She was told there’d be a round of treatment for so many weeks, then a break for her body to recover then it’d start again. The treatment had to be continuous because the cancer could only be continually knocked down, never cleared completely. But then one day I turned up at the hospital, and I was surprised to see that she seemed more positive and despite the grueling treatment more well, full of life, but then she said something that really shocked me,

“I don’t think there can be a god” she began, which left me speechless, but then finished with, “because god wouldn’t give cancer to little children”.

I tried to change the subject but she’d already moved on to something that shocked me further.

“Somebody gave me this little book” she told me, “it tells you things that you can do to help yourself, there’s this brilliant idea that you can rid yourself of diseases by attaching them to something else like a stone, and then throw it into the river!”

And I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, to me that kind of thing sounded like witchcraft!

She didn’t bring up the subject again, but seemed to be more positive and more like her old self each time I visited. She appeared less drawn, and even though all the other patients around her didn’t appear to be faring so well, I told myself somehow she’d convinced herself she was going to be alright by her willpower alone. I didn’t put it down to what she said, that was just mumbo jumbo surely, but then one day I was shocked again. The second round of treatment had began, and she was amazingly buoyant, I sat with her, talking about this and that while the nurse administrated her drip. When the nurse left she suddenly threw back her head and said sounding really gleeful,

“Mrs. Moore is dead, you won’t know her she used to be on the church committee, that I’m a member of. Well she had to go into a place, she couldn’t look after herself, her mind was going. You wouldn’t believe it but she died just after I’d visited her at the care home it seems. The next day I got a phone call from one of her relatives, she told me she’d died the evening before, that was only a few hours after I’d left. I’d just given her one of my brooches, one I’d had for years, I told her it’d look nice on her. I even pinned it on her cardigan, and within a few hours she was dead, don’t you think that’s funny!”

And she was almost laughing as she said it and then she declared,

“Do you know I’m feeling a bit better I might get David, (that was her husband’s name) to take me for a spin later!”

Well I think I barely said a word after that for the whole of the visit, but it didn’t matter, she was in such a good mood, I think she barely noticed.

By the next visit she had some unbelievable news,

“The treatment is working, the cancer count is down, they told me today, I knew it, I actually feel like I’m getting better!”

And she had some more shocking news,

“A neighbour of mine had a tragic accident, poor old Fred Davenport fell off his ladder and broke his neck died out right, and the strange thing is, I was only round there half an hour before with an old ornament for him, a dog figurine, mum gave it me years ago, I never did like it much!”

And so it went on, she was getting better and everyone she visited far and wide were having accidents or ending up dead, after she’d given them something that belonged to her. And then I reached my 60th birthday, and on her next hospital visit she handed me a fancy gift bag telling me it was,

“A special present for a special birthday!”

And she was beaming as she said it.

I got home it was dark and I tripped over something in the hall, I blacked my eye, then I became ill with a virus. On the day of my birthday I went to get up and fell out of bed and banged my leg so badly it turned black. it’s never been the same since, I’m still having trouble, in fact that’s the reason I’m lying in this hospital bed now.

Well when I undid my ‘special present’ I got the shock of my life it was a cardigan, a very familiar one in fact, it was Barbara’s old cardigan, I knew it so well because she’d wore it the first couple of times she’d had her chemotherapy. Why give me a stretched old cardigan, that she’d wore whilst having such toxic treatment? But there was worse to come, as I unfolded it long strands of hair fell out, mixed with short clippings, I couldn’t believe it, how icky, her hair folded in the cardigan.

I felt sick and shocked and horrified all at once, how could she be so rude and nasty to me, I got that sweater and stuffed it in one of those clothing charity bags, ready for collection. It ruined the day for me, to be honest, I was so upset, but then I began to think it wasn’t just being insulting and bad mannered, there was something else behind it. I thought I was being daft but why would someone give me their old sweater if it didn’t meant something?

I wanted to tell somebody but I didn’t know who to ask, but my daughter knew somebody who had a New Age Shop in the city centre, and she took me to see her. I discovered that the young woman didn’t just sell stones and crystals and incense she knew a lot about the occult. I felt really silly as I told her what had happened with the sweater and then, I ended up telling her about Mrs. Moore and Jack Davenport. And instead of thinking I was half mad, she looked quite horrified, and when I’d finished she said,

“You can’t go to see her again”, she told me, “she’s trying to throw off her illness on to you and anyone else, she’s using black magic, she’s too dangerous to go near at all!”

But I couldn’t just abandon Barbara, so she told me about protection, I had to find a photo off her, bind it with ribbon and freeze it in the freezer and say these words three times,

“By the lord and the lady I bid you Barbara Mitchell from doing harm to anyone or anything”.

If she gave me anything I had to burn it saying the same words three times again. The young woman told me that if she wasn’t doing any harm nothing would happen to her, so I didn’t have worry about that, but the very next day after I bound the photograph Barbara rang me up. up. She asked me,

“Is it just me or is it freezing!”

It was June and in the high 70’s.

But still people kept having accidents or dying around Barbara after she had given them her own possessions, it wasn’t long before one of her old friends Janet noticed, because sounding rather concerned she asked me,

“Don’t you think it’s odd that Barbara is giving away everything, don’t you think it’s quite strange?”

Normally I’d have thought maybe Barbara wanted to give the belongings away because she knew she didn’t have long to go and after all you can’t take them with you, but I knew deep down this wasn’t the truth.

Well this particular friend had a mishap herself or rather her husband did, he was involved in a severe car accident and it so happened Barbara had given him something, ironically it was a lucky mascot to hang up in the car. When Barbara heard about his accident all she said was,

“It’s his own fault it was meant to be Janet driving that car!”

This carried on for a good few years, five or six in fact, and then it was Christmas time again. I was just grateful that I’d managed to avoid any more mishaps by burning any note or card that Barbara gave me reciting the protection chant at the same time, but then on my last visit before Christmas, for being such a good friend, she gave me ‘a special Christmas present’. I rushed home and unwrapped it straight away my hands shaking. I was trembling as I saw to my disgust and horror that it was an old silk blouse of Barbara’s, quite worn looking with slight sweat stain marks under the armpits. Disgusted and repulsed that my own cousin would do such a thing to me, I cut up the blouse with scissors then burnt it in an old biscuit tin in the back garden, reciting the verse three times that I now knew off by heart.

Just less than an hour later I received a phone call from Derek, Barbara had collapsed as soon as she had returned home, it was thought that the treatment had caused her to have a funny turn. I found that quite astounding, that morning when I’d met her at the hospital she’d looked the healthiest I’d ever seen her. She’d actually put on weight and appeared to be blooming, she’d been sat eating cakes and biscuits, the treatment was keeping the cancer at bay, why would she suddenly take ill?

It was the beginning of the end, it appeared the cancer had spread so rapidly through her body that part of her lung and one of her kidneys had to be removed, from that point onwards she went into rapid decline. I wanted to go and see her but I’d caught the flu and couldn’t go anywhere near her because of her impaired immune system.

One night I woke up with a terrible feeling that something awful was in the room, but I could see nothing. I managed to get back to sleep, but as I dozed off I felt something claw at my arm, and horrible bony fingers fasten around it, I looked to my left and saw a tiny shriveled up crone like old woman almost bent double. I began screaming and woke up to realise it had all been a nightmare, but still there was a horrible feeling in the room like something had been there.

I was really frightened I felt like I was being attacked again, so I traveled into town to see the young woman for some more advice. She looked worried as well, as she told me,

“I think something has been sent to attack you, your cousin knows it is you that has blocked her, and by burning her blouse you physically attacked her, because it was a garment worn by her with her essence. Even if she is as ill as you say, mentally she could still be cursing you, you have to protect yourself”.

The young woman told me I had to take measures to protect myself. She told me I had to cut a candle into nine equal pieces, and then write Barbara’s name on a piece of paper, then I had to fill a glass with water, and add sea salt. After which I had to put the paper inside the glass, put a saucer against the glass and turn it upside without spilling any of it. Then I had to place a piece of candle on top of the glass and burn a piece of it everyday. On the afternoon of day seven I received a phone call from David, Barbara had passed away early that morning, I wasn’t surprised really, coincidence or not I knew she’d be dead before I burnt that last piece of candle.

On the day of the funeral I met up with Janet, she was of course very upset, she told me,

“You didn’t see her at the end did you, oh it was terrible she was unrecognizable, the illness had really took hold, her weight had just fell off her. I got the shock of my life when I saw her, lying in bed, she tried to sit up and when she did she was almost bent double, she looked she’d aged twenty years over night, she looked just like a shriveled up old woman!”

And my mind went back to that night, when I’d felt something was in my room, and I’d had the horrible nightmare about the hideous old woman, was it Barbara had she really tried to come after me, even if it was only to enter my dream? I never did find out the truth about any of it and in a way I was grateful for that much, it would have ruined all the good memories I had of her.

It was a sunny fine day, when she was laid to rest, well that was right up to the moment we arrived at the cemetery. Suddenly the clouds gathered and moved right over, the sky got darker and darker a breeze sprang up and soon became a stronger breeze, then a wind proper. By the time the vicar was halfway through his sermon, he was fighting to keep hold of his bible!

As the coffin was loaded into the ground, it was almost as if the earth itself was protesting at her coffin being lowered into consecrated ground. But within minutes as the soil was being sprinkled onto the coffin and the mourners began to leave the grave side, the wind dispersed as fast as it had come and the perfect summer’s day returned, don’t you think that’s all very strange?”

I don’t know what to say about Pat’s story, was it all just one long series of coincidences or something more? Was it a case of the occult, spell casting, witch craft or did Barbara concentrate so much of her energy into the possessions that they became charged with her thoughts and became unlucky to the people they were given to? Or was the essence of her thoughts so strong she did actually pass on something of her illness to others?

As for the burning of the blouse, I remember watching a documentary on C5 about The Turin Shroud, where it was discovered that a piece of material can became soaked in somebody’s essence, As part of an experiment a gentleman wore a shirt for twenty minutes and on testing the fabric it was discovered that already the clothing was impregnated with his molecules which had soaked into the fabric in that short space of time. Imagine if that was an old blouse that had been worn constantly, even washing wouldn’t have removed that essence or the memories attached to the garment. So by burning the blouse some of Barbara’s essence, her life energy if you like was burnt. I read once that in Chinese folklore it is believed that the way to destroy a witch is to burn some of her hair or an item of clothing that she has worn,