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Author
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Comment
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clairvoyantent
Registered User
(8/6/05 5:04 pm)
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Cursed towns
Curious if anyone is aware of any fairy tales or mythic stories in which a curse has been placed upon a town trapping all those who inhabit it, as well as anyone who enters it, inside its boundaries forever.
Would love any examples of the townspeople actually bringing the curse upon themselves.
Thank you kindly.
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(8/7/05 9:08 am)
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Re: Cursed towns
Brigadoon is one of the best know "cursed" towns.
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gails
Unregistered User
(8/7/05 9:38 am)
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Brigadoon...
was purportedly based story of “Germelshausen.”.From Zoetrope’ All-Story:
Friedrich Gerstäcker’s nineteenth-century story “Germelshausen” is widely credited with being the inspiration for the 1954 MGM musical Brigadoon. Though the film renames the enchanted town and relocates it from Germany to the Scottish Highlands, its premise remains the same. In both versions, a traveler happens upon a mysterious village that appears only once every hundred years. There he meets and falls in love with a local beauty, only to discover that remaining with his newfound love means leaving the modern world behind—forever. Not surprisingly, the wrenching ending of “Germelshausen” is happily transformed in Brigadoon with the kind of magic loophole only Hollywood can provide.
The movie stars Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. It was directed by Vincente Minnelli, written by Alan Jay Lerner, and features music by Frederick Loewe. The film’s soundtrack includes such notable songs as “Once in the Highlands,” “I’ll Go Home with Bonnie Jean,” and “Almost Like Being in Love.”
You can find the story online at Zoetrope:
www.all-story.com/issues....ory_id=136
Best,
GailS
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(8/8/05 12:19 pm)
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Re: Brigadoon...
As a note, Brigadoon was a Broadway musical before it was made into a movie.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(8/8/05 12:50 pm)
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Cursed towns
What I thought of first was the Clint Eastwood film, "High Plains Drifter" - a man comes back from the dead to punish his killers and the inhabitants of the town who didn't help him. Also echoes films by Leone and Kurosawa, "A Fist Full of Dollars" and "Yojimbo".
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Lamplighter
Registered User
(8/9/05 4:13 am)
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Re: Cursed towns
Nothing comes to mind from the realms of fairy tales, but I can think of two modern examples in modern story telling.
Cromm Cruac a later episode of HTV’s Robin of Sherwood has the eponymous town claimed by a demon on a specific date because they sacrificed their own children in exchange for years of prosperity and longevity. The outlaws are almost tricked into joining the doomed inhabitants by their adversary Gulnar, played unforgettably by Richard O’Brien, who tries to trap them in the town on the night of repossession. It is in the era of Jason Connery’s Robin, which would place it in one of the last two series.
Not so much a punishment: "Ramadan," is a comic-book story from DC Comics' Sandman (#50), written by Neil Gaiman. In this fable Haroun el Raschid, caliph of the fabulous city of Baghdad, bargains with the master of dreams. Fearing that his glorious realm will pass away, Haroun persuades the Sandman to take the city into dream, where it will live forever. We last see this Baghdad confined to a bottle in the Sandman's arms.
This does seem to be an idea that should have a past, as it were. It seems more likely that local folklore may provide more substantial examples of doomed settlements if fiction does not.
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(8/9/05 8:56 am)
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Re: Cursed towns
The mention of Bagdad reminds me of Shangri-La (which is considered to be an interpretation of Tibet), although it wasn't exactly cursed. The movie "Lost Horizon" used it, but in their version people's age would catch up with them when they left.
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redtriskell
Registered User
(8/9/05 10:28 am)
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Re: Cursed towns
I may be going out on a limb here, but isn't there a town in English lore that appears randomly in remote countryside that
tries to lure weary travelers? It seems I recall it being associated with the plague- if the traveler managed to escape, he would be contaminated with the Black Death...of course, I guess that would make it more of a ghost town rather than a cursed one...
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Sarcastic
Unregistered User
(8/9/05 6:41 pm)
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hmm
1001 Arabian Nights had a Kingdom that was turned into a Lake, and it's people into fish.
There is also a greek story that after being turned away from the greedy residents of a village and being invited in by an eldery couple, Zeus and Mercury (in guise) turned the village into a lake, and people into fish, until the nice couple beg them to reverse it
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(8/9/05 7:22 pm)
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city under lake
This may be way off the cursed towns thread, but I've wondered about a mechanised city under a lake which appears in one of the Oz books, one of the Tarzan books, and one of the Xanth books. In each case the city operates by mechanisms, not by magic, especially in transporting people from the land to the underwater city.
In the Oz books, at least some of the inhabitants had been transformed by magic, whether as punishment or by an enemy I don't recall.
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aka Greensleeves
Registered User
(8/11/05 1:33 pm)
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Re: city under lake
I'm almost certain I read an overview of such legends in Simpson & Roud (DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH FOLKLORE), but of course I can't find the entry now (it's not under "towns" and it's not under "curses").
Would the Biblical story of Soddom and Gomorrah fit your pattern? You could also interpret "Sleeping Beauty" by the same criteria.
In the realm of modern versions, there's a "Star Trek: Next Generation" episode about a planet that believes it has sold itself to "the devil" for a thousand years of peace and prosperity. "The Twilight Zone" featured a classic episode where William Shatner is unable to leave a small town where his car has broken down (remembered best for the demonic table-top fortune telling device in the cafe).
I'm hazy on the details, but I believe Patrick O'Leary's novel THE GIFT has an Arabian-inspired city that has disappeared beneath the sands. The whole book is full of dark magic of the first (and creepiest) order, so there could well be a curse involved.
Edited by: aka Greensleeves at: 8/11/05 1:36 pm
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(8/11/05 1:54 pm)
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Re: city under lake
Is that the Twilight Zone episode where the whole town has been transported to some closed-off dimension by this horrible child with all-encompassing psychic powers? That was based on a short story, but I'm drawing a blank on the title.
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aka Greensleeves
Registered User
(8/11/05 4:08 pm)
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Re: city under lake
Veronica, you're thinking of the one with Billy Mumy. The short story was called "It's a Good Life," but I'm drawing a blank on the author! Good example, though. In the story, the child (who actually was described as looking quite monstrous) actually destroys the entire universe outside the borders of his town.
The one I was thinking of is where William Shatner's car breaks down, and they stop for lunch while it's being fixed. Sitting on the table at the cafe is a little fortune-telling machine (like a Magic 8 Ball) with a demon bobble-head on it. He asks it these yes-or-no questions, and becomes transfixed on its "advice," to the point where he can't make a move without its input.
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Dark Siren
Unregistered User
(8/12/05 2:19 pm)
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Re: Cursed towns
"Lost Horizon " sounds a bit like this made-for-TV movie I saw a couple of months ago called "Springville",where this guy(Kyle whatever,he looked like Hope's husband out of Hope and Faith)and his son stop on their holiday across America in Springville,and his son breaks his leg so they have to stay.Turns out the town is located near the Spring of Eternal Youth,and the inhabitants are told the secret on their 18th birthday,and start drinking soon after.They stop occasionally to age a few years - like the doctor he falls in love with,she goes off to medical school in the city and takes enough water for a small drink every day.But so as not to cause suspiscions,they drown themselves in the fountain on the dawn after their 100th birthday,with a friend holding them under.You can't run away,because without the water you age 70-80 years in a day,and really can't move.
So he decides to stay in Springville,because his wife died when his son was five and his mum a few months ago,and he's sick of it,but someone asks him to hold them under the water,and he can't do it,so they leave.He asks the doctor,Sophie,to go with him,but she can't,because she's 96 and she's the only doctor that's had outside trainign - she's the one who signs the death certificates with "Natural causes" - and without the water she'll die in a week.
So in a way,the town is cursed by their gift,because they can't leave,and their single-mindedness aout it.They have brought it on themselves.
That any help?
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harleygirl
Registered User
(8/12/05 8:49 pm)
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cursed towns
There is also a Stephen King short story called "Rock and Roll Heaven" about this couple who get lost driving backroads and end up in a town called Rock and Roll Heaven. They stop for lunch and eventually start to realize that almost everyone they see in the town is a dead rock star, Janis Joplin, Elvis, The Big Bopper, etc. The town "collects" people who drive through and keeps them. They need an audience. There are concerts every night and sometimes those nights last for days. No one is ever allowed to leave.
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dlee10
Registered User
(8/13/05 7:06 am)
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Re: cursed towns
In The Waters of Kronos by C. Richter the main character visits his hometown. He sees all the people and shops that he grew up with. After a while we discover the town could not actually exist any longer. Not sure that this fills the bill as a cursed town but it was a good book!
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Crceres
Registered User
(8/15/05 2:51 pm)
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Re: cursed towns
The land where no one can leave lest age befall them surfaces in Irish myth, with the Tuatha de Danaan, and in other variations of the Oisin story around the world.
Then there's Haggard's town in the Last Unicorn, where the people will be prosperous until King Haggard dies. Of course, they can't have any children for fear that one will grow up to bring down the king, and the one time a baby does show up it's left out in the snow (to be saved by cats and adopted by Haggard himself...ah, irony!)
In Tepper's True Game series there are a number of cursed towns. One is struck with plague due to eating the flesh of 'shadow people', indigenous creatures of the area. Another town is haunted by the ghost of an unborn child, due to a drunk necromancer who got the summoning mixed up.
The town of Hamelin was cursed in a way--first with rats, and then with the loss of their children. For another example from older literature, "the Man who corrupted Hadleyburg", by Twain, in which the townspeople all try to claim a bag of gold left by a 'grateful traveler'.
In most cases the curse comes from breaking a taboo or succumbing to greed.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(8/15/05 3:38 pm)
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Re: cursed towns
Of course, Thebes, was it, was under a curse of plague which prevented all living things from reproducing in punishment for Oedipus's murder of his father and marriage to his mother.
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lilly0608
Registered User
(8/15/05 9:28 pm)
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Re: cursed towns
I seen in the recent movie "Big Fish" a town, people entered and everything was perfect and so nice they ended up forgeting all the stuff in their lives and stayed, after throwing their shoes, on the telephone wires tied together. the perfectness was a trap.
Lily
"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito."Bette Reese |
Otherworld
Registered User
(8/16/05 2:23 pm)
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Re: cursed towns
hi
it may not fit the trapped aspect but Pied Piper of Hameln would seemed to be cursed all be it the people could leave.
Going back to Brigadoon.. relocating it to Scotland was, for once, not a bad idea for Hollywood as the Highland Clearances at the start of the 19th centuary left whole towns and villages deserted
There is a film, i'll look it up in a mo.... think its italian... B/W A group of middle class dinner party guests, for no reason they can figure out.. can not leave the room they are in, and no one can go in. They are trapped there for days.. just when they think all is getting better it spreads to the whole town.
Its called "The ???????????? Angel" might me avenging
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Otherworld
Registered User
(8/16/05 2:34 pm)
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Re: cursed towns
the film is >
The Exterminating Angel
Starring: Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, See more
Director: Luis Buñuel
Format: Black & White, NTSC
well worth checking out
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