This was sent in by a ScaryPlace reader who credits Reuters.
Greek monks have agreed to lift a century-old curse on an island village to "never sleep again" for bringing the wrath of the Ottoman empire on their monastery, the village's mayor said on Monday.
"This will be a relief for many people here, who did not want the curse still hanging over their heads," Kostas Adamidis, mayor of the Moudros village on the Aegean island of Limnos, told Reuters. Monks in the Mount Athos monastic community have been chanting the curse on August 23 every year since Ottoman forces killed almost all their brothers on the island, blaming them for attacks actually launched by the villagers. While most of Greece revolted against the Ottomans in the 1820s, Limnos remained a part of the empire for about another century.
"Villagers had killed some Turks and threw them down a well on the property belonging to the Mount Athos monastery. The Turks, believing it was the monks who did it, took revenge by slaughtering them and torching all buildings," Adamidis said.
Two monks managed to escape and return to the Koutloumousi monastery, where they imposed a curse on the villagers to "never sleep again."
A delegation of villagers now living in Athens recently
visited the monastery and asked its leaders to lift the curse. "On August 23,
a delegation from the monastery will come to the village of Moudros to lift
the curse," the mayor said. "Villagers here as well as those living away from
Moudros will be happy when this happens."
Now who are the insomniacs going to blame?