A Self-Fufilled Prophecy
On a Friday the 13th in 1946, a Georgia midwife was called upon to deliver three babies in the same area of the Okefenokee Swamp. For some malevolent reason, the woman put a curse on all three of the infant girls.
She said that one would die before she was 16 years of age, another would be dead before she reached 21, and the third would not live to see her 23rd birthday. The first two predictions were violently accurate. One girl, at 15, was in a fatal automobile accident. The second was killed by gunfire in a nightclub brawl the night before her 21st birthday.
Two years later, in 1969, the third young woman asked to enter a Baltimore hospital, declaring hysterically that she was doomed to die before her 23rd birthday, which was only three days away. Although there was apparently nothing wrong with her physically, she was obviously under great emotional stress and was admitted to the hospital for observation.
The next morning, just two days before the fateful date, the girl was found dead in her bed - the victim, evidently, of her belief in the power of the midwife’s curse.
Source: Science Digest, 80:45, August 1976
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson, born 1916, is an influential American author who in recent years has gained attention to her work by lecturers and literary critics alike. Her seemingly off-color characters and macabre style of writing is believed to have influenced such great writers as Neil Gaiman, Nigel Kneale, Richard Matheson and Stephen King.
A June 1948 issue of The New Yorker featured Jackson’s most memorable short story, The Lottery. It tells the strange story of a rural American town that participates in a ritualistic “sacrifice” that in turn promises a good harvest, according to the belief of the community. The article spawned immediate controversy and mail began pouring in. An overwhelming amount of horror-filled letters, phone calls and cancelled subscriptions riddled both Shirley and The New Yorker with disbelief. Today, The Lottery is considered a classic American short story, despite the negative feedback it received so many years ago. A film adaption appeared in 1969 and was accepted by the Academic Film Archive as “one of the two bestselling educational films ever”.
Shirley Jackson went on to write more short stories and continued to gain success as an author. Her bizarre tales spooked some and intrigued others. The media called her a “modern-day Poe” when she continued to write such stories as The Sundial, The Witch and The Haunting of Hill House. If I remember correctly, my freshman English teacher once told me that while studying her works during college her study colleagues often refered to Jackson as “Shirley Insane”. Then there was “Sylvia Plath the Psychopath”…
Jackson also presents a unique writing style that I’ve not quite seen in any other author. She tends to choose her words very wisely while writing with an aloof attitude. It gives quite a chilling experience while reading. The following passage from her novel The Haunting of Hill House is a perfect example to that style.
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Shirley Jackson went on to receive three awards before dying of heart failure at the early age of 48. It was then discovered that she had suffered throughout her life from multiple psychosomatic disorders.
I’ve included in this post a link to what is considered to be her best short story, The Lottery. I hope the dark tone and disturbing ending intrigues you as much as it did myself. It’s well worth the read.
