Have you ever heard about the story of the cursed book?
Once in a while, a book would appear in random bookstores or libraries. The unnecessarily luxurious cover was made of soft velvet and decorated in golden ink.
Why did people call the book ‘cursed’ when its appearance was the farthest from it?
It was simply because each person who had read the book mentioned different titles from the other, with full conviction, as if the title they mentioned was the real one.
— and many others. Some were very ridiculous, and some were lovely to the eyes and ears.
But the bizarre thing wasn't just the infinitely changing title.
The content?
No. The story was a standard romance fantasy trope with a predictable plot line, like another copy of a typical story of the same genre that one could find in any bookstore.
Was it the velvet cover?
The style of the cover was uncommon, but couldn't be said to be unprecedented or bizarre.
In another word, no aspect of the book could be called odd — at first glance.
A comprehensive summary from the testimonies regarding ‘The Cursed Book Incident’ had been attempted, on the grounds that every bizarre event needed to be researched for them to be understood in an academic sense. The result was as follows:
First, was that no matter how boring and predictable the story was, no one could ever stop reading it, until they reached the end of the story. They described the situation as if being under a spell, enthralled by what should be a very basic story without any twist, like a straight, honest path deprived of obstacles.
Second, everyone who had read it had either fallen into delusion of living inside the book or gone crazy for an unknown reason, believing that they descended from a lineage of nobility.
And third, there was an uncertain and inarticulate testimony — unintelligible, one might say, given by one of the readers. During the night after they had read the book, they would experience a long, vivid lucid dream, in which they watched how the plot of the story unfolded like they were watching it in reality.
The summary itself was baffling and hard to believe. And it made one wonder whether the book and testimonies were just a nonsensical story created by a delusional disorder patient.
It could be safely concluded that one should never read a random book that appeared out of thin air, especially one without a barcode.
And never, ever, complied with anyone who told you to read the book. Even if they were shoving the book in front of your nose. And even more so — if those ‘people’ happened to be deceitful and boisterous phantoms.
— an excerpt from “A Complete Guide and Analysis of Bizarre Events and Ghost Stories", by Elias Crowley.
