Lots of real-life events include creepy stories about things being cursed. These tales get passed around, told again and again, and pretty soon they grow into legends. As the story grows, people add more wild details until—BOOM—a full-on mystery is born. Some of these legends talk about items that bring bad luck to anyone who dares mess with them. People say these items cause injuries, accidents, and even worse. Places like King Tut’s Tomb, movies like The Wizard of Oz, and shiny things like the Hope Diamond all have spooky stories around them. These aren’t just any regular bad-luck charms—these are full-blown cursed objects. The Hope Diamond, for example, is a big, beautiful, blue gem wrapped in a mystery of theft, kings, queens, and a whole lot of trouble.

Some diamonds are really rare, and the Hope Diamond is one of the rarest. It’s blue—a color that almost never shows up in diamonds. These gems are made way down deep inside the Earth. If you dug up 10,000 diamonds, you’d probably only find one that’s blue. Not many places have them, and right now the only mine in the whole world digging up blue diamonds is in South Africa. Not only that, the Hope Diamond is huge—about the size of a golf ball! And get this: if you turn off the lights and shine a black light on it, it glows a spooky, glowing blood red. Pretty creepy, huh?

Now, you might not believe in curses, but some parts of the story will definitely make you say, “Whoa.” The red glow is just the beginning. Long ago, a king and queen owned the diamond—and both of them were killed during the French Revolution. Later, a super-rich guy named Henry Phillip Hope bought the gem, and that’s how it got the name “Hope Diamond.” But guess what? The Hope family lost all their money and had to sell it. Then, a rich lady named Evalyn Walsh McLean bought it from a fancy jeweler—and her family had terrible luck. Eventually, a man named Harry Winston bought the diamond and donated it to the Smithsonian Institution, the biggest museum in the world.

If you want to see the Hope Diamond in real life, it’s on display in Washington D.C., at the Smithsonian. Today, it’s worth almost 300 million dollars—$300,000,000! But the museum says it’s priceless and not for sale, ever. It’s also locked down tight. The diamond sits inside a display that’s also a high-security vault. During the day, people can see it through the glass. But at night? It gets lowered into the vault, safe and sound. Even if I could steal it, I’m not sure I’d want to mess with a jewel that might just be cursed. Nope. Not risking that.