SCIENTISTS NIGTHMARE

I present to you a few cursed artefacts that have defied explanation.

The first on the list is The Grizzly chair. This Busby stoop chair certainly isn't just an average chair that we know? It's been permanently affixed to a wall, out of reach of any butts that might happen to sit on it. But why is this so? Well, Thomas Busby, the chair's namesake, was a criminal who operated in North Yorkshire, England in 1702. He and his father-in-law ran a coin counterfeiting enterprise, flooding the market with counterfeit money. After a heated dispute between the two, Thomas murdered his father-in-law.

There are several variations on what happens next, but one claims Thomas was drunk in his favorite inn and was sitting on his favorite old oak chair when officers came to arrest him. Before they took him away, he blankly uttered, may death come to anyone who dares to sit on my chair. Some very choice last words indeed. His lifeless body was exhibited on the gibbet or stoop that stood at the crossroads where the inn was, which would later inspire its name change. The villagers didn't think much of it at first, but then slowly they realized that some who chose to sit on the chair didn't live for much longer. One of the most dramatic stories from 1894, concerned a chimney sweep.

While drinking at the inn, he opted to sit in Busby's chair and was discovered dead the next morning. Soon later, an apprentice dared a coworker to tempt the curse of the chair. I'm sure he immediately regretted it, as the coworker died soon after. Furthermore, many of the young soldiers who sat in the chair before heading off to fight in World War II never returned. Only in the 1970s, after a delivery driver sat in the chair and died in a car accident a few hours later, then the landlord decided to end the 300-year-old curse by donating the chair to the Thirsk Museum.

Today, there are pins on the wall that are forever reserved for Thomas Busby and are way out of reach of anyone who may try to perch on it. It's worth noting that there have never been any official documents relating the victims sitting in the chair with their deaths. It's almost entirely rumour. Furthermore, a furniture specialist believes that the chair in the museum was created in 1840, 138 years after Thomas Busby was executed, based on the design and wood used. So the only sure way to find out if the Busby stoop chair is cursed is to sit on it. Unsurprisingly, no scientist has dared to attempt. Ulinity with a toxic mask.

Have you heard the expression "turn that frown upside down?" Noh masks, on the other hand, literally do that in Japan. A Noh mask is a traditional wooden mask used in Japanese theatre that is carefully carved to depict either a smiling or frowning face depending on the angle from which the mask is viewed. When you wear the mask and tilt your head downward, it appears more pleased or relieved. However, if you tilt the mask upwards, you will appear dejected or sorrowful.

So, whence did such a heinous curse originate? It could be related to how wearing a mask impacts one's behaviour because being anonymous mentally enables people to do things they would not normally do. Being nameless, however, is not the same as being a possessed husk of a human. Regardless, these masks are ten times scarier than the ones we're all used to wearing.