CURSE:  from the Angleo-French meaning wrath.  A calling on God or the gods to send evil or injury down on some person or thing.  Syn- a curse, to damn, ecerate, imprecate or anathematize.

PRAYER:  from the Latin precarious meaning to obtain by begging.  A treaty, an earnest request...supplication, a humble entreaty addressed to God , to a god, etc.   Any spiritual communication with God.

LITHO:  from the Greek lithos: meaning a stone

BOLIS:  also from the Greek meaning missile or arrow.

DUDLEYTOWN:  An abandoned village in the northwest corner of Connecticut near Cornwall first established in 1741.  Alleged to be haunted and or cursed.  Don't go there after dark.

1.  Swearing:  a word or words, used emotionally with vision and sincerity.  Need not be a vulgarity.   Ex:  Oh Shoot!.  You're not excused, you didn't say the vulgarity, but you used the same emotion for it.

2.  Vulgarity:  improper adjective usage, i.e.:  I forgot my f***ing keys.

3.  Profanity:  to belittle something or someone higher then yourself.  I.e.: Goddamn it!

4.  Obscenity:  to use speech, the printed page or physical action to describe a practice (violent, sexual, Etc.) that is unsettling and creates a negative mental image.

     To do further harm, hair, bodily fluids or clothing of the targeted person act as an antenna for the curse.  To have these things, in essence you have the person.  If forensic experts can identify a specific individual by their DNA or blood type using a single strand of hair through the scientific method, then think of what an upset witch can do.

     I've added the definition of prayer for contrast, for indeed they are opposites.  Where a curse is a demand, done without a shred of humility, deeply fixed in the emotions of arrogance, anger and lust.  A prayer is softer, humble, done on bended knees, begging for help that may come but not in the way one expects.  Mick Jagger was right:  you can't always get you want....but you get what you need.

     Does one have to be a witch or even have 'power' to lay a curse? No.  If the emotion is strong enough, the hate repetitious enough and there's enough people feeling the same way, then a curse can be sent.  So what has this got to do with Dudleytown and what the heck (OOPS! I swore) is Lithobolia?

     Stone is what ties them together.  It's something that seems to hold vibrations better then any other material, even wood and water. There is something about the vibrational hum of rock and stone the supernatural can more easily match and became a part of .  As you might remember from physics class or somewhere else; Nicholi Tesla proved that all matter is made up of smaller matter and held together on a vibrational hum.  Find the hum of an object, alter or mimic it and you can change it's structure or became part of it. Plastic, however being man-made holds vibration badly and spirits can't seem to attach themselves predominately to it. Make them melt in the short term, yes, but make them haunted...no.

      Which provides the best reason why castles, brick buildings and mountains appear to be more haunted then most other places.  Dudleytown, CT as most know, is mish-mash of paranormal activity that is caught up in that niche between the Coltsfoot and Bald Mountains and Dudleytown Hill.  Which also explains part of its problem, the energy is trapped and has nowhere else to go and so is continually recycled into the ground.  Unlike Dibble Hill, (the Dibbles, a particularly large family in the Cornwall area who had their own community similar to Dudleytown, but no where near as notorious.  Check out the local cemetery, it's loaded with them.) who had a creative cast of moon-shiners and witches living there, but didn't have the close surrounding hills to keep the energy in.  So today there are people living on Dibble Hill Road with absolutely no interesting stories of ghosts and haunts.

     So glad you asked and by the way, 'damn it' is a vulgarity.  Put GOD in front of it and it's what?  An obscenity.  Very good, you were listening.  To speak, or to verbalize causes vibration in the air, to pass your hand through the same air to make a gesture ( hands together in prayer or  tossing of the bird) and the movement of paper, either to be written upon or read. It all causes vibration, travels through the air and changes not only the target but  everything in its vicinity.

     The Dudley family was cursed over in England.  The vibrations of that proclamation went deep into their being and (if Tesla is to be believed) could have altered their DNA.   So like any recessive genetic trait could have lay dormant several generations until, kicked alive by a similar vibration.  Gideon, Barazilli and the rest go up into the mountains, where it's  already preset in the stones to be negative power place, the vibrations go out and activate the curse that lay quietly within them all of their lives.  After which you get Dudleytown...land of enchantment.   A kind of Disneyland for the demented dead.  Being that stone is so easily influenced also  explains why it tends to be the weapon of choice for the supernatural. Which explains Lithobolia.   Lithobolia was a 16 page booklet written by  Richard Chamberlain and published in 1698. It chronicled the the misfortunes of one George Walton, of Portsmouth, providence of New Hampshire.  In 1682 George laid himself wide open for a whammy, when he laid claim to a strip of land adjoining his property from a neighbor, an old woman who had the repetition in the neighborhood of being a witch.   Not being a believer, George ignored her ranting that 'he would never peaceably enjoy the land he taken form her.'  He should have.  Shortly thereafter, one balmy Sunday night in June (blasphemy being God's day of rest) the sound of rocks bouncing off the roof and sides of their home was all the Walton family could hear.  Curious to see what was happening outside, the family walked outside, only to run back in, chased by a second hail of stones.  It was not only the stones which suddenly appeared to take a disliking to the family, but a hammer, cheese press and any household utensil that wasn't nailed down.

     Nowadays, such phenomena would be known as poltergeist activity, but at that time, the terrified Waltons called it a 'rock throwing devil.'  The phantom villain also had a sense of humor, one day the beleaguered family woke up to find the trees in their front yard had become unintentional haylofts.  The hay they'd cut the day before now hung on the straining limbs.   The showers of rocks continued for the next several months and finally on August 1st 1682, the family tried a remedy to rid themselves of this supernatural pest.  The cure was a pot of boiling urine with pins in it.  Urine, oddly enough, is the main ingredient to many a tribal recipe for clearing negativity.  No one drinks it, its boiled into the air or poured over a smudge of herbs.  In this instance, the cure wasn't strong enough and the pot was hit by the rock throwing devil.

     It appeared that Mr. Walton never fully escaped the wraith of his neighbor.  All the pamphlet said was that he tried to seek help through the court system from witch's curse. But not a judge could convince the old woman to lift the curse, so the stones continued fall  following him until the day the unfortunate man died.

(Have you ever seen this look?)

     Words, gestures, vibrations and stone, what a wide variety of things they create.  From the majesty of Notre Dame cathedral, to the horrors of the brick crematoriums of Auschwitz.  A curse can be shouted as thunder or spoken as gentle as "may you live in interesting times." Or be as hard as stone or soft as a 3 week old potato with 3 nails stuck in it and tied with a red ribbon.

     Which will bring us to Part 2 of Curses:  Sleeping with the fishes with a side order of fries.

Copyright © 1995-2001 Donna Kent/Cosmic Calendar.