Top 5 Cursed Books of All Time

5 Cursed Books That Science Still Can't Explain

There are a handful of cursed books floating around history that nobody has ever fully cracked. Not scientists, not linguists, not the people who've spent entire careers staring at them. Some are written in a language nobody recognizes. Some come with warnings printed right on the first page. And more than one has a body count attached to it, at least according to the people who tell these stories.

I want to walk through five of them — what's actually documented, and what's just legend that's grown up around the object over time. Because with books like these, those two things get tangled fast.

The Voynich Manuscript: A Book Nobody Can Read

This one's probably the most famous mystery book in the world, and for good reason. The Voynich Manuscript was written sometime in the 15th century, and it takes its name from Wilfrid Voynich, the book dealer who acquired it in 1912. Ever since then, people have been trying to figure out what it actually says.

Here's the strange part: nobody has succeeded. Not fully, anyway.

The manuscript runs 240 pages, filled with a script that matches no known language and illustrations that don't line up with anything familiar — strange plants, odd diagrams, figures that don't resemble typical medieval art. Some research has dated the physical pages to the 15th century, which at least tells us roughly how old the object is, even if the content remains locked.

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Nobody knows who wrote it. Nobody knows why. And that gap — the not-knowing — is exactly where the legend grows. Popular belief has tagged the book as cursed, and there's a persistent (and entirely unproven) claim that researchers who tried seriously to decode it lost their grip on sanity in the process. That's folklore, not documented fact — but it's the kind of folklore that sticks. Some corners of the internet have gone as far as suggesting the book was written by something other than a human being entirely — a creature, or even visitors from somewhere else.

Fear of the unknown might be the oldest fear there is, and this book runs on it. And here's the part that still catches people off guard: you can go online right now and buy a reproduction of it. No curse required at checkout, apparently.

The Untitled Grimoire: A $14,000 Warning Label

Not every dangerous-sounding book is centuries old. Some are practically modern.

The Untitled Grimoire, a spell book credited to Persephone Adrastea Eirene and dated to 1960, surfaced for sale in 2013 with an asking price of nearly $14,000. It runs about 250 pages. The exact contents aren't widely documented, but the detail everyone repeats is the warning printed on the very first page — sellers reportedly told buyers, in effect, that this was not something to be read casually, that there was real risk involved in even opening it.

Whether that warning was a genuine belief held by the seller, a marketing tactic, or something in between — that's not something that can be verified from here. But it's a good example of how a price tag and a warning label can do more to build a book's reputation than its actual pages ever could.

Codex Gigas: The Devil's Bible

This is where the story gets genuinely wild, even if you strip out the supernatural parts.

Codex Gigas is a real, physical manuscript, and it's enormous — about 92 centimeters long, which is part of why it earned the nickname "the Devil's Bible." According to legend, the book traces back to the 13th century, to a monk who broke his vows and was sentenced to be sealed inside a wall as punishment. Facing that fate, the monk supposedly bargained his way out by promising to write, in a single night, a book so complete it would advance human knowledge further than anything before it.

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Partway through, realizing the task was physically impossible for one person in one night, he's said to have called on the devil for help — and the book got finished anyway. Hence the name.

Here's the twist worth sitting with: modern researchers who've studied the manuscript estimate that producing it by hand, writing continuously, would take roughly 20 years. So either the legend is exactly that — a legend, no devil required — or somebody actually did spend two decades hunched over this thing. Either way, and this part matters, there's no credible evidence that the book itself is dangerous to read. Whatever's inside its pages, it isn't cursed content. The devil angle is entirely a story about how it was supposedly made.

The Book of Sacred Magic: A Father's Dangerous Gift

Not every family heirloom is a good idea to pass down.

Abramelin reportedly gave his son a book called The Book of the Sacred Magic — and depending on which version of the story you hear, that gift came at a real cost to the people who later read it. This one dates to the 15th century and carries a reputation as one of the more dangerous texts on this list, at least in the folklore surrounding it.

The claim is specific: reading the book is said to invite trouble from devils, and to mark the start of a run of bad luck for whoever cracks it open. The text itself reportedly makes the case that every person carries something demonic inside them, and that reading it can "unleash" that inner presence.

People have apparently tried it. The story only ever ends one way in the retelling — death. Paranormal researchers, at least the ones cited in this kind of account, argue that deliberately provoking whatever's inside a person is a genuinely reckless idea, one that could cause real harm if taken seriously. That's presented as their interpretation, not as something anyone's actually measured or proven.

The Orphan's Story: A Feel-Good Book With a Body Count

This last one doesn't sound cursed at all, until you hear the backstory.

The Orphan's Story was written in the 16th century but wasn't published until 2018 — a gap of roughly 450 years. In between, multiple people reportedly tried to edit and publish the manuscript, and, according to the legend, every single one of them died in some unexplained way before they could finish the job. Car accidents. Sudden illness. Nothing that connects cleanly, nothing that's been formally tied back to the book itself — but a pattern strange enough that it followed the manuscript around for centuries.

Belinda Palacios, the person who eventually did publish it, apparently knew this history going in. She'd heard about the string of deaths tied to earlier attempts. And she published it anyway.

Today, it sits on shelves as a lighthearted, feel-good adventure story. Readers enjoy it without a second thought. Which is almost funnier than if it actually were dangerous — a supposedly cursed manuscript's final form is a book people read for comfort.

So, Are Any of These Books Actually Cursed?

Short answer: there's no verified evidence that any physical book carries a curse in the way these stories describe. What's real, in every case, is the object itself — a manuscript, a price tag, a publication date. What's speculative is everything wrapped around it: the devil, the madness, the deaths tied to a single title.

Are Cursed Objects Real or Just Coincidence?

That gap between documented fact and inherited legend is basically the whole appeal. A slightly damaged 500-year-old book is interesting. A slightly damaged 500-year-old book that supposedly drove people mad trying to read it? That's the one people can't stop talking about.

Do you know of any other books with a reputation like this? Drop them in the comments — we're always looking for the next one to dig into.

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