The Deadly Allure: 6 Cursed Jewels That Ruined Everyone Who Touched Them

It’s unthinkable how a little beautiful stone can cause terrible deaths, bloody battles, career failures, horrible diseases and more. Undoubtedly, many of the famous “cursed jewels” legends was fabricated in order to generate more fame for a certain stone. And you have the right to believe or not to believe in curses of gemstones, but you can’t ignore the legends and history facts behind these famous ones.

The Hope diamond is one of the most famous (and very dangerous) stones in the world. It reportedly has an Indian origin, and has been cut from the French Blue presented to King Louis XIV. The French Blue gem adorned several French monarchs besides Louis XIV. In 1792 the French Blue was looted shortly after the start of the French revolution and disappeared for 20 years. In 1812 the diamond, or one that was suspeciously similar to the French Blue, was noticed and documented with the ownership pointing to the London diamond merchant, Daniel Eliason. The next registered owner was the London banker and jewelry collector Henry Philip Hope, but no background information accompanied this ownership. The diamond stayed in the Hope family for many years and then it found it’s way to several intermediate owners until it was finally sold to Pierre Cartier , the world famous jeweler, around 1900. To sell the diamond for a higher price, Pierre established (fabricated?) the legend of a “cursed gem” as a trademark – and sold it to to the Washington D.C. socialite and heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean. She loved the story and the diamond affirming that unfortunate things brought her only fortune.
But if I were her, I wouldn’t be so sure about this statement. Things went completely wrong for the McLean family: her son died in a car accident, her daughter died from a drug overdose, her husband left her for another woman and died from a serious brain disease. The family business went bankrupt and the next year MClean died. Her gems collection was sold and became the means to paying off all the family debts.