The Cursed Pigeon: A Terrifying True Story of Black Magic and Possession
A listener shared this story about something that happened on the rooftop of his home, about a year and a half before he told it.
He'd kept pigeons as a hobby for years, raising them on his rooftop. One afternoon, while letting his flock fly, an unfamiliar pigeon joined the group and landed on his roof along with the others. It mixed in naturally with his birds, and when he set out water for the flock, the newcomer drank thirstily, clearly exhausted, as if it had traveled a long way.
It was a white pigeon with reddish-orange coloring on parts of its body. When he picked it up to look closer, he noticed something odd around its neck — slightly swollen, with what turned out to be old, worn thread wrapped around it, the kind used to mend old fabric, tied around a small folded piece of paper.
It looked exactly like a taveez — a small amulet, often containing a written charm or prayer, used in some South Asian traditions either for protection or, less commonly, for harmful purposes. He opened it and found Hindu religious script with what appeared to be instructions of some kind, written in a way that suggested this was no ordinary protective charm — it looked like it had been used for a curse or black magic ritual, possibly tied to the pigeon deliberately and released to carry the curse elsewhere.
The bird was severely malnourished, clearly having flown a long distance. He removed the amulet, threw it away, washed the pigeon, and put it back with the rest of his flock.
Shortly after, the other pigeons in the coop started acting sick and listless.
The next day, his young nephew — about six or seven years old, normally calm and well-behaved — came to visit. The boy was scheduled to go up to the rooftop with his uncle that afternoon, even though family members usually discouraged rooftop visits during early afternoon and early evening hours, considered inauspicious times in local folk belief. Despite the warning, the visit went ahead, with a household guard accompanying them to help watch the boy while his uncle fed the pigeons.
Almost immediately, the boy began behaving erratically — running, jumping, acting unusually restless, almost as if he wanted to leap from the roof. It was unsettling enough that the guard urged everyone to head back downstairs. Sensing something was wrong — and with construction work happening on a neighboring building that made the rooftop more hazardous than usual — the uncle agreed and began packing up to leave.
As they headed for the stairs, the boy suddenly yanked free of his uncle's grip and bolted — not away from the house, but toward it, sprinting through the gate into the room where the birds were kept and throwing himself into the arms of a cousin who happened to be there, clinging to her tightly.
A short while later, that same cousin went to freshen up in the bathroom. Moments after, the family heard a loud crash — a metal cup hitting the floor — and rushed in to find her collapsed on the bathroom floor, unresponsive, with a thin trail of drool at the corner of her mouth.
They carried her out and laid her on a bed. She was extremely agitated, groaning, unable to speak clearly, gesturing with her hand as if asking for a pen and paper. They brought her both, and despite being right-handed, she wrote — left-handed, eyes still closed — something only partially legible.
The family had a small brass bowl at home, inscribed with a protective Quranic verse (Ayat al-Kursi, a well-known verse used in many Muslim households for spiritual protection), originally brought back from a pilgrimage. They used it to bless water with recitation and offer it to her, hoping to calm her down.
Instead, her condition worsened dramatically — thrashing, crying out in pain, eyes rolling back, unable to open them. Several family members struggled to hold her down as she convulsed. They continued reciting protective verses and, after finishing, clapped three times near both of her ears — a traditional gesture believed to help break the episode.
Gradually, she calmed and fell into a deep sleep.
It happened to be a Friday, so most nearby pharmacies were closed. A family friend who was a doctor was called in to check on her. By the time he arrived, she was sleeping peacefully, and her vitals were normal. They told him only that she'd had a brief episode of distress that morning and had since calmed down.
When she woke later that afternoon, she was in significant pain, and the family noticed small, fingertip-sized bruises across her back — as if something small had repeatedly struck or pinched her.
When they asked what had happened, she explained: as the little boy ran toward her earlier, just before he reached her, she'd seen — for just a moment — something with the boy's general size and shape, but with an unnaturally large head, like a small, twisted figure, rushing toward her. As it got close, she felt a gust of cold air pass through her — and after that, she remembered nothing until she woke up screaming.
That's when the family remembered the paper she had scrawled on earlier. Deciphering the broken handwriting, it seemed to read something like a warning that misfortune was coming to the family, with instructions to recite the call to prayer in all four corners of the house — and a mention of an amulet hidden somewhere in a child's pocket.
When they checked the laundry from the boy's clothes earlier that day, sure enough — tucked into his pants pocket was the very same paper amulet the uncle had removed from the pigeon and thrown away the day before.
Realizing the connection, the uncle burned the charm completely. The following day, when he went up to the roof, he found the pigeon dead — with no visible injuries, no signs of attack by a cat, rat, or bird of prey. It had simply died.
The family had no further trouble after that. The man closes the story with a reflection: stray animals — birds, cats, and others — sometimes wander onto our property carrying things we don't understand, and how we treat them might matter more than we realize.
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