So-called witch bottles have been found on beaches in the United States along the Gulf of Mexico near Corpus Christi, Texas, Fox News reports. According to researcher Jace Tunnell of the Harte Research Institute, eight such artifacts have washed up on the shore since 2017. The most recent such find was made on November 15. Judging by the shells that had accumulated, the object had been floating in the ocean for a long time.
According to beliefs, "witch bottles" are intended for the burial of evil spirits.
"I'm not afraid of them, but I'm not going to open them. If they were made to hold spells and stuff, why take the risk?" Jace Tunnell joked to Fox News.
He keeps his occult finds in a well-lit area of his backyard. "My wife says I can bring shells into the house, but not spell bottles," the researcher explained.
"Witch bottles" can be filled with herbs, human hair, nails and bodily fluids. They are found not only on the beaches of the USA, but also in what is now Great Britain.
"Back in the 16th and 17th centuries, people believed in witches and their ability to cause illness through spells. But it was believed that evil spells could be repelled by locking them in a 'witch bottle.' If done correctly, such an object could both repel the spell and torment the witch so that she had no choice but to remove the spell, allowing the victim to recover," Fox News cites reports from McGill University.
As Jace Tunnell noted, some of the creators of the witch bottles may have thrown them into the ocean. However, it is unclear whether the bottles were first thrown into the river and then into the ocean.
Tunnell said the artifacts found on the Gulf Coast were unlikely to have been made in the United States. He suggested they were made in the Caribbean or South America. Some of the bottles were found to be vessels for vinegar, which is made in Haiti.
Fox News, citing the London Archaeological Museum, warns: you shouldn't open such bottles. And it doesn't matter for what reason - because of fear of "evil spirits" or because of possible biological hazard.
Earlier, an international team of scientists, including Elizaveta Kovaleva from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, found evidence of the extraterrestrial origin of yellow glass in a pendant from the tomb of Tutankhamun. The decoration contains a fragment of Libyan glass. It turned out that it was formed as a result of a meteorite collision with the Earth.
