Rhode Island – The Fountain, Providence Athenauem
If you really enjoy Rhode Island, this isn’t such a bad curse for you. If you’re not a fan, stay away. Supposedly if you drink from the fountain that was put in in 1873, you are guaranteed to always return to Rhode Island. The Athenauem (which is a fancy word for library or place of study) is also where Edgar Allen Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman would hang out when they were courting.
They were engaged, but a condition of the engagement was that Poe stopped drinking. Anyone who knows anything about Poe knows that didn’t stick, and Edgar and Sarah were sitting in the Athenauem when some jerk, who couldn’t mind his own business, delivered Sarah a note telling her that Edgar had been drinking.
Engagement and heart broken, Poe placed a curse on the fountain that whoever drinks from it shall never leave. Though he died a year later, his ghost still visits on occasion.
You missed the boat on New Jersey! THE JERSEY DEVIL is most definitely the official haunting creature of the Garden State. Long before NJ was even a state, the legend of the Jersey Devil began. It was the 13th child of Mrs Leeds, who had no desire for another baby. According to legend, she cursed the baby even before it was born. At its birth, the creature assumed otherworldly dimension and flew up the chimney of the home. Since then, the Devil regularly haunts the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, frightening all it encounters. On the eve of a National tragedy, the Devil is said to appear at many varied places in the state to warn of evils to come (most notably in December 1941, just before Pearl Harbor.)