Happy October Probably Cursed listeners!

For Curse-O-Meter Testing today we head to the ruins of ancient Egypt and talk about the Curse of Tutankhamun’s Tomb

But before that, we’ll discuss how you can’t undo a murder with time travel, how Russia is afraid Elon Musk will cause the Apocalypse, and when you’re photobombed by your drug addiction demon.

THE NEWS

-Man Tries to Undo Murder With Time Travel

-Russia’s Fear of Elon Musk Apocalypse

-Demonic Photobombing

TRANSCRIPT:

Chris: Happy October, Probably Cursed listeners. For Curse-O-Meter testing today, we head to the ruins of ancient Egypt and talk about the curse of Tutankhamun’s tomb. But before that, we’ll discuss how you can’t undo a murder with time travel, how Russia is afraid Elon Musk will cause the apocalypse, and when you’re photo bombed by your drug addiction demon. I’m your Probably Cursed host, Chris.

And I’m Sheryl. As we do at the start of every episode, we calibrate our Curse-O-Meter with news from recent events. This helps us calibrate our Curse-O-Meter for the main topic, our Curse-O-Meter, the device which tells us the cursedness of all things. I will feed it into the first news story now, titled After fiance is found dead, man researches time travel to correct a horrible mistake. And this is from June 23rd by Jennifer Turker for CBS News. In 2016, Repkina was a 26 year old Moscow native who’d recently gone through a breakup.

In search of love, she joined some online dating sites and thought she’d found what she was looking for when she met William Hargrove, a 26 year old Oregonian, who happened to have an affinity for all things Russian. Like a fetish? I guess so.

Okay, just checking. He’s got that red fetish. Their online relationship quickly took off and Repkina decided to fly to Oregon to spend the Christmas holidays with him. After a whirlwind 10 day trip, Repkina returned to Russia with an engagement ring from Hargrove. She made plans to pack up her life in Russia, moved to Oregon, and planned the wedding. This is a whirlwind romance.

Sheryl: I mean, it’s kind of predictable. Most people get engaged around Christmas time.

Chris: Oh yeah, I guess so. What better gift than yourself for the rest of their life? What Repkina didn’t know about was Hargrove’s secret girlfriend. Hargrove was renting a room from a woman named Michelle Chavez. Chavez? Michelle Chavez, who was living with her husband in a loveless marriage. Unbeknownst to Repkina, Hargrove and Chavez were already involved in a passionate affair. And when Repkina moved to Oregon to marry Hargrove, Chavez was shocked and very angry.

Sheryl: Why would he even propose if he was in a relationship with someone else? I feel like that’s unfair to begin with.

Chris: I don’t know either. Maybe he thought he could marry one person and still be adulterous with someone else.

Sheryl: Maybe, that’s still uncool.

Chris: Chavez pressured Hargrove to end his relationship with Repkina with an ultimatum. Choose between her and Repkina. And within days, Repkina was dead. Repkina’s body was found on a remote logging road in Alcea, Oregon. She’d been killed by a single shotgun blast to the back of the head. At first police couldn’t figure out who pulled the trigger. They found several pieces of trash, fast food bags, cigarette cartons, candy wrappers. And one of the pieces of trash turned out to be a clue. Investigators traced the information found on a KFC receipt back to Hargrove.

Meanwhile, in the days after Repkina’s death, Hargrove’s behavior was strange. He went on a bizarre internet deep dive researching time travel. He saved screenshots of webpages showing how to do a spell to travel back in time. Detectives later found communication through WhatsApp where he tries to ask for help in how to time travel back in time to correct a horrible mistake that his best friend had made.

Sheryl: Did he specify what kind of horrible mistake his best friend had made, or is he just saying there was a mistake?

Chris: There was…he made a horrible mistake. Mm-hmm. Okay. It does sound vague.

Sheryl: Yeah, I was just…I was wondering if it would be funny if he was like, hey, so my friend murdered a girl. How do…does he go back in time?

Chris: That might scare off your time travel spell helper. That’s true. Yeah, that’s true. He was so desperate to get this information, he offered his soul as a reward to strangers on the internet who might be able to help him.

Sheryl: It feels like a random gift to offer. Maybe he doesn’t have money. That’s possible.

Chris: He’s like, wait a minute, soul must be worth something. Mm-hmm. Hargrove was also caught on video surveillance at various ATMs withdrawing cash from Repkina’s account and engaged in conversation with employees at a gas station where he ended up hugging one of them and crying about the fact that his girlfriend had left him.

Sheryl: Aw, too bad she left him. Air quotes.

Chris: She left this world. Mm-hmm. And he helped. Mm-hmm. Hargrove withdrew a total of $800 from Repkina’s account with the cash. He made a car insurance payment, went shopping at Walmart for Star Wars themed Legos, and bought candy and cigars.

Sheryl: Sounds like what would happen if a 12 year old ended up with $800. That’s true. Other than the car insurance payment and cigars, the rest of it’s just a kid.

Chris: Maybe he’s just trying to sell soothe with Legos. Mm-hmm. After connecting Hargrove to the crime scene, investigators brought him in for questioning and ultimately charged him with Repkina’s murder. Hargrove was later found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 25 years. Sad, sad man. Mm-hmm. You could just break up with one person.

Sheryl: Yeah, or at least tell the truth. Yeah.

Chris: But you’re already sort of running around behind other people’s backs, but you don’t have to murder to fulfill and ultimate him to choose between one person or another.

Sheryl: Mm-hmm. To be fair, as I mentioned before, with the Lego and the candy and the shopping spree he went on, he may not be mature enough to know what his decision was.

Chris: Oh, this might not be the brightest tool in the shed, sort of. That is correct. Yeah. We’re asking too much of Hargrove. Okay, yep. Well, we have the first story into the Curse-O-Meter. Sheryl will give the second new story.

Sheryl: This title is from ladbobble.com by Olivia Burke from July 16th, and it’s titled People Still Baffled by Disturbing Demon Dog Photo that Had Major Impact on a Man’s Life. So Joe Martinez was trapped in the throes of drug addiction until he was inspired to turn his life around after a photograph chillingly captured the devil on his shoulder. In the photo, Joe and his wife, Paddy, are posing at a relative’s 50th wedding anniversary, but over Joe’s left shoulder, something absolutely terrifies him. It appears like it’s a rabbit-looking dog. Grr. But Paddy knew what it was immediately. I really thought it was Satan, she said. You’re really walking with Satan. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Chris: Did you imagine if, like, I said that to you if something weird was in the photo? It’s like, Sheryl, you’re walking with Satan.

Sheryl: I would probably just shrug, be like, okay. Go about my day. Don’t worry about it. Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe he just likes my fashion sense or my…

Chris: A devilishly good fashion sense. Who knows? You are very fashionable.

Sheryl: Well, thank you. Social media users are spooked seeing the image of the wild-eyed hellhound, hearing over Joe’s shoulder. But they aren’t half as horrified as Joe was himself. He believes it’s a visual representation of the mental demons he is battling while addicted to drugs. He had kept his habit a secret from Paddy, but his dependency on illegal substances was killing his soul.

Chris: Killing his soul. It was being chewed on by that dog. Like a chew toy. Like a squeaky toy.

Sheryl: Joe believes that the camera captured evidence of an evil spirit which was pushing him deeper into his drug problem. And he took it as a sign from God to get sober.

Chris: That’s a good, clear sign from God.

Sheryl: Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you’re going to get a sign from God, regardless of whether it’s a real sign or not, that’s a safe way to interpret a good sign from God. Yep.

Chris: But imagine if he was doing two bad things, like he would be confused. Like which sign is it for? Is it for the drugs or is it for my male fraud organization?

Sheryl: That’s right. He now looks at the photo every day, carrying it wherever he goes to remind himself why he’s sober. Although skeptics may not be convinced, photograph experts have determined that the picture hasn’t been tampered with. They say it doesn’t look like it was double printed or spliced up in any way.

Chris: No tricksy photoshop.

Sheryl: I do wonder how it could have produced that without it being a demon. Like if you go look at the photo online, it’s pretty bizarre for that to just be like a light anomaly or something.

Chris: Yeah. Unless there is like a very particular arrangement of objects behind him or a weird painting on the wall. It’s like, oh, I forgot about their demonic dog painting mural on the wall.

Sheryl: That’s right. Or maybe like a kid stuffed animal, like something. It just feels very weird.

Chris: Or a kid jumping behind him with a Halloween mask.

Sheryl: According to Joe, there are no animals in the home at the time the photo was taken. So it wasn’t just a wayward pet who crept into the back of the couple’s shod. Wasn’t Freddy. But he does have demons.

Chris: That’s true. You can see in our photos.

Sheryl: Uh-huh. Even if skeptics aren’t convinced, no one can deny the profound effect on Joe in his life.

Chris: Got him to quit drugs, so we should just say it’s real.

Sheryl: Yep. As I said before, there are worse things to interpret as a sign from God, but if it’s going to stop you from your drug addiction, have at her. Mmm-hmm.

Chris: Alright, that’s two news stories. I will feed in the third and final one into the Curse-O-Meter here. Russia, or titled, Russia compares musk’s neuralink to antichrist and warns it’ll spark apocalypse. This is from June 20th by Joshua Hormes for NBC News. One of Putin’s propagandists has compared musk’s neuralink to the coming of the antichrist and said it will bring about a biblical apocalypse. Sounds right. Probably just says it even like on the manual. Yep. Beware, it does bring about the apocalypse.

But you will be able to sort of speak Spanish without learning it. Mmm-hmm. During an episode of Russian State TV Sunday evening with Vladimir Solovyev, Margarita Simonian took to the screen in a nonsensical, uninterrupted, five-minute rant in which she made claims and predictions about the future, starting with the advances in technology made under musk and took issue with the Tesla billionaire’s microchips.

Sheryl: I mean, what do you expect from someone whose name is an alcoholic beverage?

Chris: Yep. Margarita, what’s in your glass? Quote. Elon musk microchipped a pig named Gertrude, Margarita says. A chip was implanted into it. Basically, this pig’s brains were replaced with microchips. How long until humanity is microchipped?

Sheryl: I mean, I doubt the pig’s brains were replaced with microchips, but I get where she’s coming from.

Chris: Sort of like a cartoony thought, I guess, where they just opened up the top of the pig, threw away the brain, and just dumped a sack full of microchips.

Sheryl: Yeah, it feels a little bizarre.

Chris: She continued claiming that musk would bring about a number of biblical events in the book of Revelations and compared musk’s microchips to the mark of the beast. Quote. Let’s call it the book of Revelation, the last part of the Bible. The apocalypse. It says the Antichrist will come, and he will cause everyone, the rich and the poor, big and small, free and slaves, will receive a mark on their hand, Margarita said. Without this mark, they won’t be able to buy or sell.

They won’t be able to do anything. Everything is moving in this direction. We should realize that at some point in considering the way that medicine is progressing, which I will also mention, we might live to see these times, she added. Humanity will cancel education. If you need it to find some information, just Google it. Imagine when there’s a chip that delivers information straight into your brain.

Sheryl: Yeah, but it’s fake information. Everyone would just wander around thinking they were getting cancer.

Chris: Yeah, if everyone just beaming WebMD into their brain instead of going to the doctor.

Sheryl: Not just that, but Google searches are biased to whatever you currently believe, so you’re never going to get any additional information other than the crazy that Google thinks you want to see. That’s true. Also that.

Chris: Google already knows your biggest fears and it’s going to send it right back to you. Like an evil boomerang of technology. Schools will be canceled as structures that have lost their relevance. We are moving towards losing ourselves as a species.

We’re moving towards losing the Homo sapiens. Despite her eerie predictions for the future, she admitted she believes the technology will reach a point where it is able to achieve something she describes as medical resurrection. That’s the way it’s written in the Bible, except it’s written metaphorically using other words, Marie-Garita said. On the basis of DNA, people can be resurrected. People will be resurrected, she claimed. 150 billion people will be resurrected, which is more people.

Sheryl: Yes, currently on the earth. On the earth and may exceed the amount of people who have ever lived. Oh, excellent.

Chris: I don’t know who keeps track of that number. Maybe it’s on Google. Let’s see.

Sheryl: If you had a microchip in your brain right now.

Chris: This is where neurolink would come in handy. That’s correct. Okay, according to the World Economic Forum, they estimate that 109 billion have lived and died over the course of the last 192,000 years. Okay.

So if you lived 192,001 years ago, you’re not considered human. Oh, interesting. By the World Economic Forum.

Hmm. Alright, we have the three news stories loaded into the Curse-O-Meter here. We will get it to scan them and give us the results on how cursive they are.

And for the results of the first news story about the man who googled time travel after he callously murdered his fiance, the Curse-O-Meter says. Curses people. Curses definitely people. You can’t really blame this on anyone else but the people involved.

Sheryl: And okay, I appreciate that he regretted his mistake and tried to time travel back to fix it, but like, we already know time travel doesn’t exist, so.

Chris: It’s true.

Sheryl: Or doesn’t exist yet. Yeah, although I am curious as to what kind of spells he tried to go back.

Chris: Yeah, what is a time travel spell? What is it involved? I bet it involves a mirror or running really fast around the earth to spin it backwards. That’s right. Oh well, I probably shouldn’t go down this road.

Who knows what I’ll change in the past that we shouldn’t. That’s right. And the results for the second news story about the man who was curative as addictions by a demon appearing in his photo. Curse-O-Meter says. Probably blessed.

Yep, I think so too. That demon, he slipped up. His whole mission was to drag that man down into the depths of addiction and he just couldn’t stand not being in the camera.

Sheryl: I mean, I don’t think he slipped up. What if it, because at least Joe said it was a sign from God, so God purposely wanted him to see that the demon was there. Oh, maybe. Yep.

Chris: So either God forced the demon out or the demon slipped up. Yeah, correct. Because he wanted to be in the photo too. But either way, it worked out for Joe.

Sheryl: That’s right. He’s turned his life around.

Chris: It’s continuing the workout for Joe as long as he’s got that photo in his pocket. And the results for the news story about Russians’ concerns that Elon Musk will bring about the apocalypse.

Probably benign. I mean, even if they’re right, sure, schools will be gone and maybe homo sapiens will be gone, which will be a break on the rest of nature. But on the other hand, resurrections for everybody. 150 billion resurrections. You know, maybe it’s not all people. Maybe they’ll bring back animals too.

Sheryl: I don’t, I’ve already said this before, but I don’t want to live forever anyway, so. Yeah. I kind of just feel like if the technology is going to kill us all, I don’t need to come back. That’s fair.

Chris: Bring back some extinct animals instead. Yes, correct. Every animal that’s ever died, bring them back.

Sheryl: Yeah, we had our chance. We did some really stupid stuff. Maybe it’s somebody else’s chance. Yep. Birds can take over the world.

Chris: The dodo. Give them a second chance. Yeah. Resurrect them. Maybe give them thumbs so they can use some of our tools while they build up their own society.

Sheryl: I don’t know how Ndural Link is going to cause resurrection, but.

Chris: I’m not sure either. That’s probably a subscription based feature.

Sheryl: How many margaritas did margarita have before she went on her rant? It’s the real question.

Chris: Just enough. Just enough. Same as she does every broadcast. Alright, that completes the calibration phase for our Curse-O-Meter. Before we go on to the main topic, we’re going to take a quick side trip over to the Probably Cursed Museum and Gift Shop to talk about the artifact dropping on our shop today. Today’s addition to the Probably Cursed Museum and Gift Shop I present is the wooden mask. Sheryl and I found this mask during one of our thrifting adventures, and what drew it to me is how visually, or what drew me to it is how visually striking it is. Maybe it drew itself to me too. The expression is of a manically smiling face with large teeth and bulging eyes. The features are surrounded with geometric patterns, but it’s the expression itself that really catches you.

From what I was able to determine through Google searches online, either the origin of the mask is Indonesian or African. I was able to find visually similar examples of both online. Okay, interesting. If it’s Indonesian, it may be a Dayak mask representing a demon. If it’s African, it may be a Pungdudu mask, which are typically worn by warriors, according to one site I found. Although those masks typically have ears as part of the face, so this one doesn’t have ears.

Sheryl: Ah, interesting. So it’s probably a demon mask. Yep.

Chris: Cool. Seeing it on the shelf in the store, something about it drew me towards it, and I had to add it to our collection. If you’d like to see it for yourself, go online to probablycurse.etsi .com to see pictures of it, and if it calls to you, you can order it to add it to your own cabinet of curiosities.

Sheryl: Or to hang on your wall, or to mail to someone you don’t like who maybe needs their own demon on their shoulder.

Chris: It’s true. Do you know someone who needs to be rid of addictions or some other terrible habit they’ve got going on? Maybe they just bother you. Mm-hmm. You can send them this mask. If you would like it, head on over to our shop. Every purchase you make helps fund this podcast and gets Sheryl and I closer and closer to our dream of opening our very own Cursed Museum.

Sheryl: Also, now that we have visited the Probably Cursed Etsy shop, it’s time for our Haunted House update. For our Haunted House update this time, I will defer to Chris to discuss his experience during a Thunderstorm we had recently in July. We record two episodes at a time, typically. So this only happened like a week or so ago, but by the time you’re listening to it, it’s October.

Chris: Finally, a spooky thing happened to me. Yep. So, I wake up in the middle of the night and storms rolling in. Wonderful summer storm. It had been hot all day. The house is like finally cooling off as the cold air blows in. And as the thunder rolls, I hear our dog get up and leave the bedroom because he gets a little uncomfortable around thunderstorms. And he goes in the hall and I don’t really, I’m listening to him because I don’t have my eyes open. I’m just sort of listening to hear the thunder. And I hear what sounds like your voice telling him it’ll be all right. Just basically, what was the word I’m looking for?

Comforting him. Yep. And I know it’s late at night.

I haven’t checked the clock. So I wondered if you had gotten up and you weren’t able to sleep and then you come to hang out with you. And then I hear you kind of like rustle and breathe beside me. And I’m like, well, who was comforting the dog? I didn’t get up to go see. No, wait, I did get up to go see.

Sheryl: You did get up, yep. So I went out. I didn’t see anyone. But I was mostly wanted to check out the storm outside the window and I watched some lightning flashes. But I did not see any ghosts, but I may have heard one. A nice ghost who wanted Fred to feel better about the thunder. So one of the things that we have in our house is an artifact that I picked up when Chris and I weren’t even living at this house.

Even before we were recording the podcast, we were recording our other podcast. Either way, it’s a pair of glasses. And they’re very old glasses and it looks like it says Lois as the name tag on the glasses.

And just some sort of pause of energy. I just saw the glasses and was like, those need to come home with me. And they’ve been with us between our previous condo and the house we have now. And we did see some strange stuff at our previous condo, but it was pretty benign stuff. Yeah. So it could just be Lois is attached to her glasses and she came with us and she’s just accompanying the dog.

Chris: She’s good with dogs. Lois’s glasses will probably be one of the few things we do not add to our gift shop and museum for sale.

Sheryl: Yeah, they’re staying with me.

Chris: And that concludes the house hauntings section of our episode. We’ll now proceed to the main topic.

Sheryl: So for those of you that have been listening to our podcast since the beginning, October 31st this year marks our two year podcast anniversary.

Chris: We need streamers and balloons. Uh-huh.

Sheryl: Yeah. Even though the November episode is technically closer to the actual anniversary, I figured it would be fun to start off October with the story regarding the namesake of her chrysalter.

Chris: Also, this is episode 24. So this is the final of the two years.

Sheryl: Oh, nice. Yep. So I’m going to introduce you the, I guess, protagonist. I had to look up with protagonist mains. I don’t use that term on a regular basis, but.

Chris: He’s the hero. Yeah. Or the person with the goal that we should be rooting for.

Sheryl: That’s correct. George Edward, Stathrop Moldier Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon. That is a name. That is a name, yeah. Most commonly referred to as Lord Carnarvon. If you go look Lord Carnarvon, there’s actually currently a Lord Carnarvon and he and his wife have a fantastic social media presence. They do a whole bunch of interesting stuff. The house was used in some episodes of Downton Abbey, so like they’re doing pretty good for themselves. But that is not the subject of our episode. We’re talking about the Lord Carnarvon from the 1800s.

Chris: The namesake for our Lord Carnarvon charsometer.

Sheryl: Yeah. Yeah. He owned race horses and loved to drive cars. And his love of driving cars led to a car accident in 1903 while he was visiting Germany.

Chris: 1903. It’s probably like four other cars in the world.

Sheryl: I know. I couldn’t find too much other than he was driving too fast, so he may have been driving so fast the car just fell into pieces while he was driving. Oh yeah. I have no way of knowing.

Chris: They weren’t built for speed back then. No.

Sheryl: The accident did leave him permanently disabled. He could still walk, but his doctors told him that UK winters were going to be too harsh for him. And so Lord Carnarvon and his wife decided to spend their winters in Egypt.

Chris: Good choice. Yeah. I bet he was asking the doctor, can I still drive?

Sheryl: There are some photos you can find of him driving like in Egypt.

Chris: I’m going to have to find those for the show notes.

Sheryl: That’s right. He still was driving. While in Egypt, as many people did, Lord Carnarvon became obsessed with Egyptology and started collecting his own Egyptian antiquities. Well, you got it. Yeah. In 1906, however, Lord Carnarvon decided he wanted to start finding his own antiquities and doing his own excavations. So he started his own search for artifacts in Thebes.

He discovered it was much harder than he had originally anticipated. So he asked the director general of excavations and antiquities in Egypt for a recommendation of someone who could help him with his new hobby. And the director put him in touch with Howard Carter.

I’m going to give you a background on Howard Carter as well. He was the youngest of 11 children. 11 children. 11 children. Not to make you feel bad, but his father was an artist. So he could afford to support 11 children on an artist’s salary.

Chris: There’s no way I’m doing that on an artist’s salary.

Sheryl: No, not anymore.

Chris: Not an artist’s and podcaster’s salary. Yeah. I’m barely raising a dog with expensive medical needs.

Sheryl: That is correct. The irony of the whole situation is actually that Howard Carter’s mother’s maiden name was Sans. Sans. Sans.

Chris: So he’s got a in the sand.

Sheryl: It’s clearly destiny. So Howard Carter was a sickly child, but he still managed to pick up his father’s artistic skills. And while attempting to find random things to draw, he found himself at a nearby mansion, which was owned by the Amherst family. Again, artists living in a mansion with 11 children. I promise I won’t bring it up again.

Chris: It seems like a made up story.

Sheryl: I know. So the Amherst family had a large collection of Egyptian artifacts, and so he would just sit down and draw the artifacts from the collection. And it drew the attention of Lady Amherst.

She was so impressed by Howard Carter’s abilities that she actually helped get him funding to send a then 17 year old Howard Carter to the Middle Kingdom tombs to help out an Amherst family friend with his own excavations in Egypt.

Chris: I think I know where I slipped up. Uh-huh. I didn’t go to the mansion next door. That’s right. Hang around and draw all their crazy possessions.

Sheryl: Yeah. That they clearly would have gotten you a job really fast.

Chris: Do you think it’s too late?

Sheryl: I don’t think there are any mansions in our neighborhood.

Chris: It’s true. I’m gonna have to drive around.

Sheryl: Yeah. In his early 20s, Howard Carter was appointed to the position of Inspector of Monuments in Upper Egypt. That’s a heck of a promotion. Yes. At 20 too. Anyway.

Chris: I don’t think I could have done that job at 20. No.

Sheryl: There’s no way. And I also don’t know what qualifications you would need for a job like that.

Chris: You look at it and if you feel like it’s a monument, you put a check mark in the box on the clipboard.

Sheryl: Yeah. 1899 was the first time Howard Carter found himself in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. He assisted with the discovery of a few tombs and then got into a scuffle with some French tourists. Apparently, the tourists were arguing with some of the Egyptian guards at one of the excavation sites Howard Carter was working on and he stepped in to defend the Egyptian guards. I guess the French tourists complained to his boss. Bunch of Karens. Yeah.

Howard Carter refused to apologize, so he was fired from his job. Oh. And he spent the next three years selling paintings and watercolors to tourists while working as a freelance artist.

Chris: He’s no more a monolith inspector. That’s correct. I wonder what random person they gave that job next.

Sheryl: Yeah. No kidding. The other thing is like, can you imagine just buying a random piece of like tourist art and then finding out later that like the guy was a famous archaeologist? Like how many of those Howard Carter paintings are just floating around in the ether of the world?

Chris: If you have a painting on your wall that was handed down to you from your grandparents and there’s a little H Carter in the lower right corner, you probably got an original Howard Carter.

Sheryl: Yeah. Now, that kind of is where things end until we meet back with the meeting of our two leading men.

Chris: The artist and the hobbyist. Yes.

Sheryl: So together they formed a partnership where Lord Carnarvon would fund all the expeditions and Howard Carter would do all the hard work of digging up tombs. You know what? It’s all right. Yeah. I mean, they, they, it’s probably sounded like a pretty good job after working as like a tourist artist for three years to suddenly be slapped.

Chris: Oh, working on the street in the Egyptian sun.

Sheryl: Yeah. Well, now being touted as an archaeologist, he went from artist to archaeologist.

Chris: Like he went from artist to monolith inspector. Yes. Back to artist and now he’s archaeologist.

Sheryl: Yeah. He had just dumped titles back then, no problem.

Chris: This is a sick LinkedIn page he’s got going on.

Sheryl: They found two tombs and thieves and then World War One happened and they took a break from archaeology to resume their search for more dump, more mummies after the war ended. Well, yeah. More important things to do.

Chris: I don’t think you could skip out on the war back in that time. No. Like, sorry, boys, you’re gonna have to pack it up and fight the war. But the moment was over there right back to it.

Sheryl: Then in 1922, Howard Carter arrived at the Valley of the Kings again. This time to search for the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Chris: So he was trying to find it on purpose. Yes. So it wasn’t just he happened to find it looking for any tomb.

Sheryl: He knew that Tutankhamun had a tomb somewhere. They just didn’t know where. And so he had been working to look at maps and whatever else to try to figure out approximately where the tomb would be. So I don’t know how long it took searching, digging, whatever, or how accurate his like figuring out where the tomb would be was. Yeah.

Chris: How callous did Howard Carter’s hands get shoveling in the desert?

Sheryl: Yes. But as luck would have it, in November of 1922, he discovered the exact tomb he was looking for. So Mr. Carter then sent a telegram to Lord Carnarvon on November 4th with the message, at last, we have made a wonderful discovery in Valley. A magnificent tomb with seal intact. Recovered same for your arrival. Congratulations. An excited and elated Lord Carnarvon immediately set sail for Egypt with his daughter.

Chris: He’s like, pack it up. We’re going to go to Egypt.

Sheryl: The thing is, is that like they said that he wasn’t supposed to be there over the winter. When does winter start in the UK? Like in Canada, it starts in like October, November. So I don’t know what he was waiting for.

Chris: There November, I was there in November one year and it was pretty similar to here at home.

Sheryl: So just as cold.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Jacket weather for sure.

Sheryl: Word of the discovery spread quickly. And Howard Carter found himself becoming a bit of a celebrity. He wrote on his diary on November 5th. The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country. An inquisitive inquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily program. Though I was satisfied I was on the verge of perhaps a magnificent find. Probably one of the missing tombs I had been seeking for many years. I was much puzzled by the smallness of the opening in comparison with those of other royal tombs in the valley.

Chris: He was a child, Barrow, wasn’t he? Yes. So the door would be smaller, child-sized.

Sheryl: Yes. I mean, I can get into some of the more stuff about Toot and Common. I’m super fascinated in the topic, but he died so suddenly that there are theories of like, corners that were cut during the description construction of his tomb because they figured he was going to live forever. And then now all of a sudden he’s- They had the rush. Yeah, they had to rush.

So that could be why the opening is so small. So Howard Carter has some amazing information in his diary. The man could write, I’m going to read you a few of his entries throughout this episode because he was a wordsmith. Nowadays you’d get like an Instagram post with a photo of the tomb’s entrance and a few things like hashtag archaeology, hashtag life goals, hashtag new finds.

And I don’t know, it just doesn’t have the same effect. On November 7th, Howard Carter described some of the things he encountered on his journey into the tomb. As we cleared the passage, we found a mix with rubble, broken pot shards, jars seals, and numerous fragments of small objects, water skins lying on the floor together with alabaster jars, whole and broken, and colored pottery vases. Howard Carter believed that this was evidence that Toot and Common’s tomb had actually already been disturbed by grave robbers.

And he was understandably disappointed. Imagine spending part of your childhood dreaming of uncovering an untouched tomb of a feral, and then finally finding one only to discover that it probably was already ransacked. It’s just crushing.

Chris: It’s like if at the end of Goonies, when they get to the pirate ship, it’s just full of like old beer cans and everything’s covered in graffiti.

Sheryl: Yeah, it’d just be awful. And the worst part of the whole thing is the amount of time Howard Carter had to wait to figure out whether or not this had actually occurred, because it took until November 23rd for Lord Carnarvon to finally arrive before he could continue fully unburying the tomb.

Chris: So like three or four weeks.

Sheryl: Yeah, so he basically recovered it and then waited. On November 25th, 1922, Howard Carter wrote in his diary, With trembling hands, I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner, widening a hole a little and inserting a candle I peered in. At first I could see nothing, hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker. Presently details of the room slowly emerged from the mist, strange animals, statues in gold, everywhere, the glint of gold. For the moment, an eternity it must have seen to the other standing by. I was dumbstruck with amazement. And when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, can you see anything? It was all I could do to say the words, yes, wonderful things.

The two men had done it. They had discovered the most intact untouched tomb ever to be found in the Valley of the Kings. And best of all, there were no warnings of a curse or bad things to come. No warnings? No warnings. It’s one of the few tombs you can find in like Egypt that doesn’t have a curse. Oh, crazy.

Chris: Yeah. They must have been on in a rush.

Sheryl: Unfortunately though, the lack of written curse did not stop a curse from appearing. The first victim of the curse was not a person, but it was Howard Carter’s pet canary.

Although some stories have attributed this story to a man named James Henry Breasted, but I’m going to stick with Howard Carter because that’s remember how I remember it from my childhood and the A &E special that I watched over and over and over again. But if our listeners have heard it told differently, it’s not my fault. It’s just the way things happen when they get transcribed into history sometimes.

Chris: This happened a hundred years ago.

Sheryl: Yeah. Anyway, the story goes that Howard Carter had sent a messenger on an errand to grab something from his house in Egypt and the messenger heard what he described as like a faint, almost human cry while he was approaching Carter’s house. The messenger arrived at the door to find the canary had been eaten by a cobra, which was still inside the bird’s cage.

Chris: I thought like the canary just happened to die, but no, a cobra came after it. Cobra came after it. Cursed cobra.

Sheryl: So cobras are a symbol of Egyptian monarchy and many pharaohs are depicted with cobras on their heads, including pharaoh, toothed and common.

Chris: Oh yeah. I remember Stargate. Yep. They had the big cobra helmets.

Sheryl: The death of the bird was just the beginning of the rumors of the curse. So the first human to die that we can find record of is our friend Lord Carnarvon. He was bitten by a mosquito and had accidentally cut the swollen bite on his face while shaving one morning. The bite became infected, very infected. Lord Carnarvon ended up getting blood poisoning and died on April 5th of 1923.

Chris: I don’t know if I’d want to get bit by the cobra or the mosquito and then die a slow horrible death.

Sheryl: Definitely the cobra. I think he’d go faster. I think so too. Yeah. He had a high fever, pneumonia in both lungs, and was in severe pain when he finally succumbed to heart and respiratory failure.

Yeah, the cobra. Newspapers also reported that all the lights in Cairo went out just before Lord Carnarvon died. And Lady Carnarvon, back in the UK, heard Lord Carnarvon’s dog let out a pained yowl before dropping dead at the exact same time that he would have died in Egypt.

Chris: The dog died at the same time. The dog died at the same time. This is a malicious curse. Yes. It’s like, you know what, you’re going down and you’re a little dog too, like hundreds of thousands of miles away. Yes.

Sheryl: Dog didn’t even do anything to anyone.

Chris: You gotta beware. You know what, they should sue Egypt. They should have put a sign up at the entrance of the tomb.

Sheryl: Yeah, there should have been a curse. That’s just negligence. Now, Howard Carter was not a superstitious man, even with all these rumors of a curse, and he continued his excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb. And the body count also started to rise. So a leading member of Tutankhamen’s expedition team, a man named Arthur Mace, complained of tiredness one day, and then suddenly fell into a coma. Doctors were unable to even figure out what was wrong with Arthur before he died shortly thereafter.

Chris: He had the easiest death so far.

Sheryl: So far. A radiologist named Archibold Reed, who was brought in to perform x-rays on the body of Tutankhamen, also felt ill and complained of exhaustion. So he decided to return to England, and he died shortly thereafter.

Chris: So far, these people have it the easiest. Yes, that’s correct. I think the curse used up a lot of its curse powers, killing a dog in a whole other country. And now these other people are like, you will pass away in your sleep in a coma.

Sheryl: Yeah, just easy ones from now on. Then Richard Bethall, who was the personal secretary of the Canarvans during the excavation, apparently was found smothered in the room of an elite London Gentleman’s Club in 1929. The Nottingham Evening Post suggested that this was likely the result of the curse, and pointed out that there was a bunch of mysterious fires at Bethall’s place in the months leading up to his death. Wow. Yeah. Just random fires, I guess.

Chris: And then he was just smothered to death in a Gentleman’s Club. Maybe the curse was like, these fires just aren’t working. You know what, we’re going to get this settled right now.

Sheryl: Yep. Hugh Evelyn White was another British archaeologist who is also said to have helped with the excavation. After seeing many of his fellow archaeologists mysteriously die, Evelyn White apparently went mad and took his own life.

Chris: He wasn’t waiting for the curse. No. He was like, it’s getting everyone and I don’t want my dog to die.

Sheryl: He wrote a suicide note on the wall in his own blood and it read, I have succumbed to the curse which forces me to disappear.

Chris: So he’s blaming his suicide on the curse. Oh yeah, 100%. The curse gave him depression.

Sheryl: Maybe. Within six years of the discovery of the Tomb of Verotude in Common, 12 of the original excavation team had died.

Chris: 12 out of, what was the total number?

Sheryl: They didn’t give us the total number. I should have gone to look, but there was like, I mean, probably hundreds of people because there were Egyptians there as well. There were other British archaeologists. There were, etc, etc.

Chris: It could be a different number depending who you asked.

Sheryl: Yes, correct. You just need to note 12 people died in six years.

Chris: That’s a lot. Yeah. That’s, that does not bode well for the reunion party. No.

Sheryl: This also doesn’t take into account the other people, not directly present, but who were connected to the excavation in some way, who also had their deaths attributed to the curse of Toot in Common. The total count of those who died due to some connection with the excavation is estimated at around 22 people. Interesting. I won’t go into all of them because we’ll be here all night and the episode is already very long.

Chris: I bet by now 99% of those people have died anyway. That’s correct.

Sheryl: But I will talk about the two most notable ones. So Aubrey Herbert was the half-brother of Lord Cinarvan, and he was born with a degenerative eye condition. So he’s going blind?

Yes. And a doctor told Aubrey that his infected cavity-ridden teeth were causing his eye issues to get worse, as you know, doctors did back then. It was probably his eye teeth. And in an effort to restore his sight, he had all his teeth pulled. Now can you guess, did it work?

Chris: Probably not, because the eye was probably already messed up at this point.

Sheryl: Yeah, you’re correct. He did, however, die from sepsis because the dental surgery went terribly, terribly wrong.

Chris: You know what? It was amazing time to be alive. It probably took as much schooling to become a dentist as it was to become a monolith inspector.

Sheryl: Yes. He died only five months after Lord Cinarvan had died. And finally, there was Aaron Ember, who was friends with many of the people who were involved in the discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tune. He died when his home in Baltimore burned down.

Chris: So got him all the way in America?

Sheryl: Ember’s wife encouraged Ember to go back into the house to save the manuscript of the book that he was writing, while she ran to save their son. But unfortunately, Ember and his manuscript did not survive. And why is this manuscript so important? Because he was writing a book called The Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Chris: His house burned down? Yes. And his name was Ember? Yes. This is a mean curse.

Sheryl: I know. And that concludes the tales of Tutankhamun’s curse. Wow.

Chris: Yeah. That is a pretty crazy collection of people who had horrible outcomes.

Sheryl: Yeah. The one thing, though, that surprises me is Howard Carter is not on the list. Like, he lived for quite a while afterwards. So…

Chris: He must have done something great. I don’t know. Maybe he never stepped foot inside the tomb. He just held that candle there. And then, like, he didn’t pass the curse threshold. Yeah.

Sheryl: He just backed away slowly.

Chris: He, like, let all of these aristocrats in, and they’re all, like, walking in and out, and then later on they’re, like, dying. And he’s like, I’m just gonna go over here and paint a sunset.

Sheryl: He did lose a canary, though, which is sad.

Chris: Oh, yeah. Poor canary Carter. That is a really cool tale. I enjoyed it. Let’s see what the Curse-O-Meter, the Lord Canarvon Curse-O-Meter, thinks of the curse of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Please stand by. And the Curse-O-Meter says, definitely cursed. Yeah.

Sheryl: I mean, I’ve seen the title. Yeah. Curse of Tutankhamun’s tomb, so…

Chris: It’s probably a part of the Curse-O-Meter’s inner programming. Mm-hmm.

Sheryl: And, you know, that is a lot of people to die. Actually, it surprises me that more people who weren’t directly related died than the actual people who were related, but who knows?

Chris: I bet the number would have been higher had they found it before World War I. Yeah. Like, it would have been, like, half.

Sheryl: Yes. Probably. That’s actually, yeah, that’s probably a good point.

Chris: But the fact that World War I had already passed and this amount of people had died? Yes. That’s big curse time. That’s right. Thank you very much, Sheryl, for our topic today.

That takes us to the end of today’s episode. Again, if you would like to take a look at our most recent artifact, you can head over to probablycurse.etsy .com and see photos of the most recent artifact and all the other artifacts we’ve released before now. Just remember every purchase you make from our shop helps go fund this podcast and our dreams of owning a haunted museum in the future.

Sheryl: You can check us out on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok. Thank you. YouTube. Thank you. Chris usually does this part of the podcast, so my brain just does not remember.

Chris: I usually write it down on a piece of paper, but we’re also on Facebook, Tumblr. If you comment to us on Tumblr, you will be one of the few people who ever have. That’s right. You could be first.

Sheryl: If you have any haunted artifacts that you would like to send us or any suggestions for episodes, you can reach out to us at probablycurse.cautpodcast .gmail.com.

Chris: And until next month, stay spooky. Good luck, everyone. And just remember, when you’re burying someone in a tomb, you need to make sure you put this message over the front door.

Sheryl: It’s got a death curse. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween.