Cursed...ish

Daniel Stevens and Angela Mattes

Cursed...ish is a podcast about misfortune, mystery, and the stories we tell when bad luck stops feeling random. Have you ever thought, “I don’t believe in curses… but I feel cursed”? A project that keeps going wrong. A string of strange coincidences. A disaster that, in retrospect, feels almost inevitable. That’s when people start reaching for a bigger explanation. It’s not just bad luck, but something more sinister. Hosted by Daniel Stevens and Angela Mattes, Cursed...ish explores stories in which misfortune is framed as more than mere happenstance: as something malevolent, approaching the macabre with curiosity, skepticism, and the occasional dark joke. From King Tut and the Dybbuk Box to the Avada Kedavra, and even your favorite four-letter word, each episode pulls apart the history, folklore, and media hysteria surrounding the human impulse to explain chaos. Sometimes a curse is a supernatural claim. Sometimes it’s a metaphor. And sometimes it’s just what people tell themselves when the universe keeps kicking them in the teeth. Welcome to Cursed...ish.

  1. 22h ago

    The Cursed Life of Robert T. Lincoln - Ep. 31

    Some people seem to live charmed lives. Robert Todd Lincoln did not. In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel dig into the strangely cursed life of Abraham Lincoln’s eldest son, the only one of the Lincoln children to survive into adulthood, and a man who somehow found himself repeatedly brushing up against presidential assassination. Robert endured the deaths of three brothers, the murder of his father, and a lifetime spent in the shadow of one of the most famous men in American history. Then things got even stranger. He was nearby when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, just feet away when President James Garfield was shot, and arrived in Buffalo on the same day President William McKinley was attacked. Along the way, we talk the Lincoln family, Mary Todd Lincoln, the Civil War, presidential assassinations, grief, historical reputation, political life, terrible coincidence, and what it means to spend your whole life wondering whether misfortune is simply following you around. Was Robert T. Lincoln actually cursed, or was he just born into exactly the wrong family, at exactly the wrong time, with a front-row seat to some of the darkest moments in American history? Maybe cursed. Maybe not. Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com. The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes. *Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

    The Cursed Life of Robert T. Lincoln - Ep. 31

  2. Sep 16

    The Demon Core - Ep. 30

    Some cursed objects are ancient, mysterious, and covered in centuries of folklore. And some are a softball-sized hunk of plutonium that very smart people kept poking at until it tried to kill everyone in the room. In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela dig into the terrifying story of the Demon Core, the radioactive plutonium core created during the Manhattan Project and later involved in two deadly criticality accidents at Los Alamos. Originally known as Rufus, the Demon Core was meant to be used in a third atomic bomb after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Instead, after Japan surrendered, scientists kept it for research, which is a polite way of saying they decided to keep testing one of the most dangerous objects on Earth with deeply questionable workplace safety protocols. We talk Harry Daghlian, Louis Slotin, blue flashes of radiation, “tickling the dragon’s tail,” tungsten carbide bricks, beryllium reflectors, the infamous screwdriver experiment, acute radiation sickness, Los Alamos, Project Y, nuclear hubris, and why maybe, just maybe, nobody should ever be that casual around plutonium. Was the Demon Core actually cursed, or was it the inevitable result of brilliant people becoming way too comfortable with forces no human being should treat like a desk toy? Maybe it was science. Maybe it was hubris. Maybe the real curse was building the apocalypse and then thinking, “Let’s see what else this thing can do.” Maybe cursed. Maybe not. https://nuclear-news.net/2022/12/12/a-the-demon-core-the-14-pound-plutonium-sphere-that-killed-two-scientists/ https://thedebrief.org/tickling-a-dragons-tail-the-physicist-who-tangled-with-the-demon-core-and-lost/ https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/manhattan-project-scientists-harry-daghlian.htm https://losalamoshistory.org/the-slotin-accident-inside-the-archives/ https://home.nps.gov/people/manhattan-project-scientists-louis-alexander-slotin.htm https://losalamoshistory.org/the-slotin-accident-inside-the-archives/ https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/08/16/the-third-cores-revenge/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2024/ph241/granowitz2/ Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com. The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes. *Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

    The Demon Core - Ep. 30

  3. Sep 9

    The Pella Curse Tablet - Ep. 29

    What do you do when the person you're convinced is the one for you is about to marry someone else? If you are Degina, a woman living in ancient Macedon, you carve a curse into lead, roll it up, and place it in a grave so the dead can carry your romantic crisis to the underworld. In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel dig into the Pella Curse Tablet, an ancient Greek binding spell found in Pella, the former capital of Macedon. The tablet appears to capture one woman’s attempt to stop Dionysophon from marrying Thetima and make sure he ends up with her instead. Along the way, we talk ancient curse tablets, love spells, binding magic, graveyard delivery systems, Daimones, Doric Greek, translation drama, judicial curses, erotic attraction spells, and why humanity has apparently always been jealous, dramatic, and deeply committed to putting bad decisions in writing. Was the Pella Curse Tablet real magic, a desperate love curse, or just the ancient Macedonian version of a burn book? Maybe Dionysophon was cursed. Maybe Thetima was cursed. Maybe Degina was just fully unwell. Maybe cursed. Maybe not. Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com. The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes. *Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

    The Pella Curse Tablet - Ep. 29

  4. Sep 2

    Cursed Colors: Green - Ep. 28

    Green is the color of nature, luck, life, and fresh starts. But it's also the color of poison, decay, jealousy, sickness, toxic sludge, unlucky race cars, suspicious theater costumes, and one beautifully-deadly pigment some people decided to put absolutely everywhere. In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela embark on a new technicolor cursed journey with Cursed Colors: Green, exploring why green has been treated as eerie, unlucky, dangerous, and maybe just a little bit cursed throughout history. From Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare’s green-eyed monster, fae folklore, and theater superstitions to Carl Wilhelm Scheele’s vivid arsenic-based pigment, we follow green from myth and symbolism into the very real poison hiding in Victorian wallpaper, artificial flowers, clothing, books, cosmetics, toys, and more. Along the way, we talk Scheele’s Green, poisoned wallpaper, Matilda Scheuer, William Morris, Queen Victoria, the Poison Book Project, Oscar Wilde’s green carnation, and why humans keep looking at beautiful dangerous things and asking, “Can we put this everywhere?” Maybe green is life. Maybe green is death. Maybe green is mold, magic, jealousy, and wallpaper that can quietly gas you in your own home. Maybe cursed. Maybe not. https://hyperallergic.com/death-by-wallpaper-alluring-arsenic-colors-poisoned-the-victorian-age/ https://www.slam.org/blog/arsenic-in-victorian-wallpaper/ https://www.jalopnik.com/how-the-color-green-became-a-deadly-bad-luck-superstiti-1763008917/ https://vaulteditions.com/blogs/news/poisoned-pages-the-lethal-legacy-of-19th-century-book-design https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3179678/ https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/2021/05/30/poor-little-greenie-faeries-and-little-green-men/ Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com. The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes. *Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

    Cursed Colors: Green - Ep. 28

  5. Aug 26

    The Mandela Effect - Ep. 27

    Is it the Berenstein Bears or the Berenstain Bears? Did the Monopoly Man have a monocle? Was there ever a cornucopia in the Fruit of the Loom logo? And, most importantly, has reality always been this wrong? In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel take a hard left into the strange, brain-breaking world of the Mandela Effect, the phenomenon where large groups of people collectively remember something that apparently never happened. From Jif versus Jiffy, Looney Tunes, Curious George’s missing tail, Febreze, Skechers, Pikachu, and the infamous Fruit of the Loom cornucopia, we dig into the pop culture memories that make people wonder whether they misremembered, swapped timelines, or accidentally got patched into the wrong universe. Along the way, we talk about paranormal researcher Fiona Broome, the origin of the term Mandela Effect, false memories, confabulation, shared childhood culture, Reddit rabbit holes, the Large Hadron Collider, CERN conspiracy theories, and why the human brain is so confident even when it is absolutely making things up. Is the Mandela Effect proof of alternate realities, time travel, parallel timelines, or experiments with the fabric of reality? Or are we all just walking around with deeply unreliable brains and a shocking amount of confidence? Maybe it is science. Maybe it is memory. Maybe it is CERN. Maybe we were all just cursed into oblivion by a missing underwear cornucopia. Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com. The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes. *Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

    The Mandela Effect - Ep. 27

  6. Aug 19

    The Hands Resist Him - Ep. 26

    Link to Cursed Painting - Open with Caution - https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSAq5NbAyoMu1Rb8ohN-tb2d5WriWF_EOruRTMKj9QxxQ&s=10 In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela investigate The Hands Resist Him, the allegedly cursed painting by artist Bill Stoneham that became one of the internet’s earliest viral cursed-object legends. The painting itself is unsettling enough: a young boy, a life-size doll girl with black eyes, disembodied hands pressed against a glass door, and the general feeling that maybe you should not be looking at it too long after dark. But the real legend begins when the painting appeared in an early eBay listing with claims that the figures moved at night, the boy left the frame, and the artwork had to be removed from the seller’s home. From there, the story spiraled into reports of dizziness, fainting, printer malfunctions, supernatural panic, and the kind of internet folklore that feels very familiar to anyone who remembers the wild, lawless energy of the early 2000s internet. Along the way, we talk cursed paintings, creepy art, the Dybbuk Box, haunted eBay listings, Bill Stoneham’s sequels to The Hands Resist Him, whether art can become cursed through collective belief, and why a painting does not need to be supernatural to make people feel deeply, deeply weird. Is The Hands Resist Him actually cursed, or did the internet just take a compelling, unsettling piece of art and build a legend around it? Maybe there is no ghost crawling out of the frame. Maybe the real curse is what happens when the internet decides your artwork belongs to the haunted corners of history forever. https://stonehamstudios.com/haunted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hands_Resist_Him https://www.bbc.co.uk/derby/unexplained/2002/haunted_painting/ebay_haunted_painting_01.shtml Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com. The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes. *Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

    The Hands Resist Him - Ep. 26

  7. Aug 12

    The Basano Vase - Ep. 25

    Some cursed objects come with centuries of documentation, terrified witnesses, and a long trail of bodies. The Basano Vase mostly comes with vibes. In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel investigate the legend of the Basano Vase, an allegedly cursed silver vase said to have been made in 15th-century Italy as a wedding gift. According to the story, the bride died on her wedding night while clutching the vase, and from there the object supposedly passed from owner to owner, leaving mysterious deaths behind it until someone finally had the good sense to bury the thing. But when the vase allegedly resurfaced in 1988, things got even stranger, and also much, much sketchier. A pharmacist, a surgeon, an archaeologist, a police officer, a secret burial, an auction, a littering fine, and absolutely not enough names, records, or details for Angela’s liking. So is the Basano Vase one of the world’s most dangerous cursed objects, or is it a modern urban legend that desperately needed a better writer? Along the way, we talk cursed objects, internet folklore, the Dybbuk Box, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, 90s kid urban legends, roller coaster rumors, cannibal make-out stories, and why some fake stories feel more believable than allegedly true ones. Maybe the Basano Vase is cursed. Maybe it is not. But if this is modern mythology, we are simply asking everyone involved to step up the storytelling. Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com. The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes. *Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

    The Basano Vase - Ep. 25

  8. Aug 5

    Cursed Creatures: Werewolves Part II - Ep. 24

    The full moon is rising again, Accursed Ones. In Part 2 of Cursed Creatures: Werewolves, Daniel and Angela return to the woods to finish unpacking one of the most enduring monsters in folklore, mythology, horror movies, and our collective fear of what might be lurking under the skin. This time, we follow the werewolf legend beyond ancient myth and medieval trials into the Beast of Gévaudan, the rougarou of Louisiana folklore, Irish wolf-warriors, Argentina’s lobizón, Romanian vampire-werewolf hybrids, and other strange shapeshifter traditions from around the world. Along the way, we ask how a creature once tied to divine punishment, mob hysteria, and moral panic became the full-moon monster we know today. Spoiler Alert: a lot of it comes from Hollywood just making stuff up until we all decided it was ancient lore. Silver bullets, full moons, tragic transformations, cursed bites, and the tortured wolfman all owe more to movies like The Wolf Man and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man than most of us probably realized. Apparently, our deepest monster mythology was heavily shaped by sequel logic. Naturally. We also dig into possible real-world explanations for werewolf stories, including rabies, clinical lycanthropy, ergot poisoning, and the very human need to explain horrifying behavior by turning people into monsters. Are werewolves cursed creatures, misunderstood victims, sexy supernatural love interests, or just one of humanity’s oldest ways of asking what separates man from beast? Maybe the real curse is not that a person could become a wolf. Maybe the real curse is that we invented the wolf to explain what people were already capable of doing. https://www.shetlandmuseumandarchives.org.uk/blog/the-real-story-behind-the-shetland-wulver https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/29/argentina-kirchner-adopt-child-werewolf https://paulsullivan216.substack.com/p/howling-at-the-moon-a-complete-history https://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/the-rage-of-the-wolf-metamorphosis-and-identity-in-medieval-werewolf-tales/ Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com. The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes. *Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

    Cursed Creatures: Werewolves Part II - Ep. 24
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Ratings & Reviews

4.4
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

Cursed...ish is a podcast about misfortune, mystery, and the stories we tell when bad luck stops feeling random. Have you ever thought, “I don’t believe in curses… but I feel cursed”? A project that keeps going wrong. A string of strange coincidences. A disaster that, in retrospect, feels almost inevitable. That’s when people start reaching for a bigger explanation. It’s not just bad luck, but something more sinister. Hosted by Daniel Stevens and Angela Mattes, Cursed...ish explores stories in which misfortune is framed as more than mere happenstance: as something malevolent, approaching the macabre with curiosity, skepticism, and the occasional dark joke. From King Tut and the Dybbuk Box to the Avada Kedavra, and even your favorite four-letter word, each episode pulls apart the history, folklore, and media hysteria surrounding the human impulse to explain chaos. Sometimes a curse is a supernatural claim. Sometimes it’s a metaphor. And sometimes it’s just what people tell themselves when the universe keeps kicking them in the teeth. Welcome to Cursed...ish.

Information

  • Creator
    Daniel Stevens and Angela Mattes
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    31
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Cursedish
  • Show Website
    Cursed...ish

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