What a twist to hear the curse was a created myth, sounds like the same myth from Petrified Forest national Park in Arizona. Pretty sure it was a Brady Bunch episode too. Apparently the myth was somewhat encouraged by staff for a long time to prevent theft, but apparently most people are now following the rules.
Nice to se you spent time in Bodie! I was nearby much in the 1980s doing my field work near Bishop, I remember visiting Rhyolite ghost town in Nevada. On looking it up in Wikipedia, I found the article for all ghost towns (like ~100+) and then fell into the lost for the USA. It looks like ghost towns all the way down.
They are definitely worth exploring and places for stories, curses or not.
I've long wanted to visit the petrified forest! There's a lovely book about the letters they received with some of the returns (Bad Luck, Hot Rocks). The park did a neat little experiment there too about the wording they put on signs. I disremember the exact phrasing but it was something like 'please stop damaging the forest by taking items' - and thefts went up! So they swapped the wording to something like 'everyone looks after this forest, thanks for leaving it preserved in its natural state' and thefts dropped massively. Just about the behaviour they were normalising.
I did a similar thing, I've ended up with a shelf of ghost town books! I've not had chance to return to the USA since that visit, but I'd love to head back and tour some more of those abandoned places.
What a twist to hear the curse was a created myth, sounds like the same myth from Petrified Forest national Park in Arizona. Pretty sure it was a Brady Bunch episode too. Apparently the myth was somewhat encouraged by staff for a long time to prevent theft, but apparently most people are now following the rules.
Nice to se you spent time in Bodie! I was nearby much in the 1980s doing my field work near Bishop, I remember visiting Rhyolite ghost town in Nevada. On looking it up in Wikipedia, I found the article for all ghost towns (like ~100+) and then fell into the lost for the USA. It looks like ghost towns all the way down.
They are definitely worth exploring and places for stories, curses or not.
I've long wanted to visit the petrified forest! There's a lovely book about the letters they received with some of the returns (Bad Luck, Hot Rocks). The park did a neat little experiment there too about the wording they put on signs. I disremember the exact phrasing but it was something like 'please stop damaging the forest by taking items' - and thefts went up! So they swapped the wording to something like 'everyone looks after this forest, thanks for leaving it preserved in its natural state' and thefts dropped massively. Just about the behaviour they were normalising.
I did a similar thing, I've ended up with a shelf of ghost town books! I've not had chance to return to the USA since that visit, but I'd love to head back and tour some more of those abandoned places.
I recently learned that a small town I've known all my life has a ghost town nearby. The ghost town is on private land, so you can't go explore it.
Ohhh, that must be so frustrating, I would definitely want to go exploring!
Oh yeah because my gut reaction was, "I want to go see that."