In one of the small English towns, there is a pub with a carved wooden chair hanging from the wall. It would seem that the most common piece of furniture, but why was it hung on the wall? Maybe this is a local exhibit that cannot be used for its intended purpose due to its high historical value?
Yes and no. The Busby chair is indeed a famous exhibit, but sitting on it is prohibited for a completely different reason. The fact is that a strong curse lies on it, which takes the life of everyone who decides to touch the seat with their soft place. And the fact that several dozen people really went to their forefathers soon after they sat down on the unfortunate chair does not allow this story to remain an ordinary bar story.
The legend of the appearance of the supernatural chair
According to legend, at the end of the seventeenth century, Daniel Otti and his daughter Elizabeth came to the provincial English town of Crickby for their permanent residence. The family acquires an old farm, repairs the house left by the previous owners. You might think that there is no more ordinary story, but in fact, the man was a major counterfeiter who moved to the boondocks in order to carry out his illegal activities away from law enforcement agencies.
Otty had built a real paper counterfeiting workshop in the basement of his new house, and Daniel was doing just fine until he got an accomplice named Thomas Busby. Of course, working together is much easier, but Busby quickly became imbued with feelings for his colleague's daughter and began to strenuously seek reciprocal love from the girl. As you might guess, this was not the best idea - Otti, who was distinguished by a very stern disposition, loved Elizabeth very much and did not allow any garbage to even approach his daughter.
One autumn evening in 1702, there was a major conflict among men on this basis, during which Busby grabbed a hammer and beat his beloved's father to death. Justice caught up with Thomas very quickly, and, despite the fact that the murderer's victim was the undoubted criminal, Busby, who now hung two atrocities, was immediately sentenced to be hanged. When the gallows was already ready, Thomas expressed his last holy desire to drink whiskey before his execution in the nearest pub, which he had visited every day before.
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The convoy took the murderer into a drinking establishment, and the criminal, in deathly silence, under the gaze of other regulars of the bar, knocked over the last glass of intoxicating in his life. Standing up, Busby suddenly shouted: “Now I will be gone, and I will never appear here again. But let everyone who sits on my favorite seat die!"
Quite a vicious statement for the last words, isn't it? In addition, Thomas was entirely to blame for what had happened, and he had no reason to send curses on the other inhabitants of Crickby. But, nevertheless, the visitors of the pub were very impressed and frightened by these words. A few minutes later, the killer was already dangling with a broken neck on the gallows, and for ten years no one dared to touch the fifth point to the chair on which Busby sat before his execution.
Victims of the curse
The first victim of the curse was a visiting chimney sweep in 1712, who knew nothing about this story. He walked into the pub in the evening, sat down confidently in the Busby Chair, and ordered himself a few pints of beer. Other clients of the institution, who did not have time to warn the guest about the potential danger, learned a day later that the chimney sweep had crashed, falling off the roof. Thus, the legend of the cursed piece of furniture has become noticeably stronger in the minds of the townspeople, and especially of the pub visitors.
However, since those distant times there were also daredevils who wanted to refute this urban myth, but suddenly died after that. From 1712 to the present, the Busby Chair has claimed the lives of at least sixty people. Here are just the last, most reliable cases.
In 1967, two pilots died, who had recently visited the bar and, to the horror of other drunks, took turns sitting on a chair to prove to the audience that the legend was unfounded. On the same night, the pilots crashed their car into a tree and died on the spot.
In 1969, an elderly cleaning lady in this drinking establishment accidentally, just stumbled, sat down on a chair and died three days later from a cerebral hemorrhage.
In 1972, a young construction worker fell victim to the curse, who, like the aforementioned chimney sweep, used the Busby Chair out of ignorance. A week later, a concrete mixer collapsed on him.
In 1974, a thirty-seven-year-old American accountant Ann Conelatter who was on vacation in England came to Crickby. Before traveling abroad, the lady boasted to her friends that she would definitely sit on the damned chair and then tell them how she felt. Unfortunately, Anne never managed to tell her friends about her reckless antics, because just half an hour after visiting the drinking establishment, where she committed her reckless act, she died in a broken elevator.
Only after that the pub owners decided to put the chair behind the fence out of harm's way. However, in 2009, a new and currently the last victim of the curse appeared. Melisa Dolman, who turned eighteen that day, drank a fair amount of alcohol on the occasion of her birthday and, deciding to show off in front of her friend, quickly jumped over the fence, demonstratively sitting on the damned chair. The bartender did not have time to save the unfortunate, although he rushed after Melisa. That same evening the girl was bitten by a pack of stray dogs …
Busby chair today
Today, the pub is called "Stooped Busby" in honor of the hanged murderer and the terrible legacy he left behind, and the same ill-fated chair flaunts on the sign. The latest incident forced the owners of the bar to firmly fix the cursed object on the wall of the establishment a meter and a half from the floor, forbidding anyone to even touch it with a finger.
When the owners of "Stooped Busby" are asked why they have not yet destroyed the mystical chair, they answer that they have no right to destroy such a historical exhibit. But, most likely, the real reason for this lies in the banal human greed (or rationality). The city is small, its sights can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And then there is no, but a tourist attraction, even so ominous and dangerous. It's good at least that all kinds of skeptics and amateurs are no longer allowed to tempt fate with a chair to attract attention at any cost.