For over 200 million years, ancient trees lay buried in northeastern Arizona, slowly turning to stone through a process called permineralization. Today, Petrified Forest National Park guards these fossilized treasures — but many visitors have learned the hard way that taking even a tiny piece comes with a terrible price.
Since 1930, the park has received over 1,200 “conscience letters” from people returning stolen petrified wood along with tales of catastrophic bad luck.
The Curse
According to Navajo tradition, the petrified wood pieces are Yei-bits-in — the sacred bones of Yei-tso, the greatest and fiercest of the alien gods. Those who steal these bones invite disaster: divorces, job losses, serious illnesses, car accidents, and even death.
One desperate thief wrote: “I saw the letters, but I didn’t believe it and I took the rocks anyway. And now I’m cursed.” Another confessed: “My life has been destroyed since we’ve been back from vacation. Please take these so my life will get back to normal.”
The Haunting
The park maintains a “conscience pile” of returned rocks — a growing monument to regret. The returned pieces arrive with letters detailing the misfortunes that followed: broken bones, house fires, failed businesses, failed marriages. The rocks are mailed from all over the country, sometimes decades after the theft.
The Campy Detail
After Netflix’s Dead to Me mentioned the curse in 2019, the park was flooded with 900 return letters in just 4 months. The curator noted this “Dead to Me effect” proves the curse is alive and well in pop culture — though the rocks clearly don’t need television to do their work.
Historical Context
The Petrified Forest area became a National Monument in 1906 under President Theodore Roosevelt. The legend of the curse may have originated from a Hawaiian park ranger in the 1940s who warned visitors about cursed lava rocks at a different national park, with the myth eventually finding its way to Arizona. Whether imported folklore or ancient truth, the 1,200-plus letters speak for themselves.