How to Tell and What to Do About It

You’ve started suspecting something is wrong. Bad luck has piled up in patterns that don’t make statistical sense. Every time you’re about to break through — a job offer, a relationship, a financial recovery — something falls apart. Your family seems to repeat the same patterns generation after generation, no matter how hard anyone tries to break out. You’ve been feeling watched, drained, or targeted, and you can’t put your finger on why.

You might be carrying a curse.

That word gets thrown around in dramatic movies and casual jokes, but real curses are a real category of energetic interference, and they’re more common than most people realize. They show up in specific patterns. They can sit on a person for decades or move down a family line for centuries. And they don’t go away on their own.

Here’s how to tell whether what’s happening to you might be a curse — and what to do about it if it is.

Does Any of This Sound Like Your Life?

You’re probably here because some of this is going on:

You’ve had a chain of bad luck that doesn’t quit — not just one rough patch, but years of unrelated things going wrong in different areas of your life.

The same patterns keep repeating across different areas: relationships fail the same way, jobs end the same way, your health collapses the same way.

You get close to something good — a promotion, a relationship, a payment — and it falls apart at the last moment.

You feel watched, targeted, or drained in a way that doesn’t track with anything real in your environment.

You’ve had sudden illnesses or pain with no clear medical cause.

Multiple family members across generations have had similar struggles — addiction, mental illness, early death, financial collapse, broken marriages.

Pets in your home act strange, especially toward you specifically.

You have recurring nightmares featuring the same person, often someone you’ve had conflict with.

A specific person comes to mind when you read this — someone whose energy felt wrong, who threatened you, who you cut off, or who you suspect wished you harm.

After a confrontation, breakup, or interaction with someone particular, your life got noticeably harder and hasn’t recovered.

After a trip — especially to a place with strong spiritual traditions — something shifted that hasn’t come back.

Your family history reads like a script of “bad luck” or tragedy across generations.

A few of those could be coincidence and life being life. Many of them together, sustained over time, in patterns no one in the family can explain, is the kind of fingerprint a curse leaves.

What Is a Curse?

A curse is directed negative energy intentionally or unconsciously placed on a person, family, object, or location. Unlike random energetic parasites that drift into your field through environmental exposure, a curse has intent behind it — even when the person who generated it doesn’t fully understand what they did.

Curses aren’t magic shows. They’re not about candles, incantations, or anything cinematic. The mechanism is the same as the mechanism behind blessings, prayers, and focused healing — concentrated intent producing energetic effect. The difference is direction: positive intent generates positive results. Concentrated negative intent generates concentrated negative results. Sometimes the negative intent is conscious. Sometimes it’s just years of unspoken bitterness, jealousy, or rage projected at someone — and that projection lands.

Once a curse is in place, it doesn’t just sit there. It actively interferes with the person it’s attached to. It feeds on the suffering it creates. It self-reinforces. Without removal, it keeps going.

The Different Types of Curses People Carry

Not all curses work the same way. The most common kinds I see:

Personal curses. Aimed at you specifically by someone with intent, conscious or not. Usually traceable to a specific person and often a specific event — an ex who couldn’t let go, a family member you cut off, a business partner who lost out, a former friend who turned. The effects concentrate on you and tend to escalate when the curse-sender’s emotions intensify.

Generational or ancestral curses. Passed down family bloodlines, often for centuries. Some go back to specific historical events — a betrayal, a violation of sacred ground, a curse placed on an ancestor who passed it forward. Others are layered on through generations of unprocessed family pain. These are some of the most stubborn because they predate the people currently living with them.

Object curses. Tied to a specific item. The item could be an antique you brought home, a piece of inherited jewelry, a gift from someone whose energy was off. The curse is anchored to the object and affects whoever owns or wears it.

Location curses. Tied to land or buildings. The property carries the energy regardless of who lives there. If your problems are concentrated in one specific home or office, this is worth considering.

Self-curses. Yes, this is a real category. Years of intense self-hatred, self-blame, or repeated negative speech directed at yourself can generate something that functions like an externally placed curse. Your own focused negative intent toward yourself produces real energetic effects.

Hexes. Similar to personal curses but typically more reactive and shorter-term — produced by intense flash anger or a specific magical practice. They tend to have a sharper, faster impact and a shorter half-life than a deep personal curse.

The evil eye. A common cross-cultural form of curse generated by envy or covetous attention. Less powerful than a deliberate curse but extremely common, especially after public successes or visible good fortune.

A Pattern I’ve Seen: Curses That Go Back Centuries

One of the most striking patterns in this work is how far back generational curses can trace.

I’ve talked with people who have realized — through their own intuitive work or through someone else’s read on their family — that a specific dark energy in their bloodline goes back hundreds of years. One pattern I’ve heard described traced back to the Scottish Highlands, to ancestors who experienced a specific traumatic event, and the curse moved down through seven hundred years of descendants until it landed on a present-day great-great-grandchild who finally identified it.

The descendants weren’t doing anything wrong. They were just born into a line that had been carrying something for centuries. Each generation felt the effects — the same kinds of marriages, the same kinds of losses, the same patterns of struggle — and almost none of them ever knew the cause.

That’s what a generational curse looks like in real life. Not dramatic. Not Hollywood. Just one family repeating the same patterns for decade after decade after decade, no matter how many therapists they see, until somebody actually clears the source.

How Curses Get Broken — And Why Some Families Break the Cycle

Both of my parents came from a long line of broken homes. Generations of dysfunction, divorce, addiction, and pain on both sides of the family. By any reasonable read of the pattern, my parents should have continued the cycle.

They didn’t. They found their way out through their faith — Christianity, in their case — and broke a multi-generational pattern that was probably energetic in nature long before anyone in the family had language for that.

The path doesn’t have to be religious. People break generational patterns through devoted spiritual practice, through intentional energy work, through deep therapeutic and shadow work, through clearings done by someone trained to find and remove the source. The mechanism varies. The outcome — when it’s actually achieved — is the same: a curse that has been moving through a bloodline for generations stops moving forward.

Most people never break the cycle, not because they can’t, but because they never realize there is a cycle to break. Identifying that you may be carrying a curse is the first step. Doing something about it is the second.

How Curses Get Placed

People sometimes ask how a curse ends up on them in the first place. The most common sources I see:

Someone with conscious intent and the ability to focus it. A practitioner, a person with strong abilities, a person in a tradition that includes curse work.

Someone with intense unprocessed rage, jealousy, or grief who directs it at you over time. They may not know they’re doing it. The effect lands anyway.

Coming into contact with someone or something already cursed. The energy can transfer.

Inherited through bloodline from ancestors who carried it forward.

Generated by your own deep self-hatred. The negative focus turned inward.

Bought, inherited, or accepted as a gift — an object that brings the energy with it.

Visited or moved into a property carrying its own curse.

The original intent matters less than the present reality. Once it’s in place, the source isn’t doing anything anymore. The curse is.

Even Trained Clergy Can Get Stuck With One

A few years into my work I got an email from a man in Canada. He was the head exorcist for the Catholic Church in his region — a man whose vocation was specifically engaging with dark energy and removing it from people and places.

He had performed an exorcism on a family. The exorcism worked — the family was released. But in the process, whatever had been on them attached to him. He had been carrying it ever since. His own training, his own faith, and the resources available to him through the Church had not removed it.

So he reached out to me.

I tell that story because it illustrates a point worth understanding: anyone can pick up something heavy. Even people with deep spiritual training, real faith, and specific tools for this work can find themselves carrying something they can’t get off on their own. It’s not a sign of weakness, lack of belief, or personal failure. Some energetic things require a specific approach that may not be in the toolkit you were trained in.

If reading this is making you suspect that you, your family, or your home is carrying a curse — that’s exactly what Herman’s gifted 15-minute call is for. No pressure, no sales pitch. He’ll listen to what you’ve been seeing, give you his read on whether there’s likely a curse involved, and tell you what removing it would look like. The booking link is at the end of this post.

Why Curses Don’t Just Fade With Time

This is a question I get often. If a curse was placed years or even centuries ago, shouldn’t it have dissipated by now?

The answer is no. Curses are concentrated energetic structures with intent baked into them. Once they’re in place, they actively interfere with the host. They produce suffering. The suffering feeds them. They self-sustain.

Surface tools sometimes help. Daily prayer can soften a light hex. Time in nature can clear surface energy. Smudging and salt can move atmosphere. Religious blessings work for some kinds of curses — though not all, as the exorcist’s case showed.

For deeper curses — personal curses with active intent behind them, generational curses anchored in family lines for centuries, object or location curses with structural integrity — surface tools usually don’t reach the source. The atmosphere shifts for a few days, the curse rebuilds, and the patterns continue.

Cutting a curse at its source typically requires someone trained to find it and remove it directly.

How I Remove Curses

When I clear a curse, the process is the same kind of focused energetic work I do for everything else. I identify what’s there. I find the source — whether it’s a specific person, a generational line, an object, or a piece of land. I sever the connection. I clear the residue from the person, the family, and the home.

The work is done remotely. You don’t need to be present. You don’t need to know the details of how the curse was placed. You don’t need to confront the person who placed it. The clearing happens, and after that, the curse is no longer active.

For generational curses, the family-level clearing matters — because the curse has been moving down the line for generations, and clearing only you while leaving your siblings, kids, or parents carrying it means the energy keeps regenerating from the family system.

For object curses, the object often needs to be identified and addressed specifically. Sometimes that means clearing the object. Sometimes it means removing it from the home.

What Often Changes After a Curse Is Removed

Most people notice changes within days to weeks. Common patterns:

The chain of bad luck breaks. Things stop falling apart at the last minute. Opportunities that would have collapsed actually finish forming.

Recurring patterns stop recurring. The same kind of relationship that’s failed five times in a row doesn’t happen the sixth time. The same job-loss pattern doesn’t repeat.

Mental health often shifts. Anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts that had no clear cause can quiet substantially.

Family dynamics calm. For generational curse removals, multiple family members often report improvements without knowing the work was done.

Money flow can change. Curses on financial life are real, and lifting them often produces noticeable shifts in income, opportunities, or financial stability.

Sleep improves. The 3 a.m. wake-ups, the recurring nightmares, the heavy mornings — these often resolve.

You feel like yourself again. The fog lifts. The sense of being weighed down by something you couldn’t name eases.

Get a Gifted 15-Minute Call With Herman

If your life has been hitting walls in patterns that don’t make sense, your family has carried the same struggles for generations, or you’ve started to suspect that something has been placed on you or your home — you don’t have to keep guessing.

Herman offers a gifted 15-minute consultation — no pressure, no sales pitch. It’s a real conversation about what’s been happening in your life, what’s likely behind it, and whether a curse removal as part of a clearing is the right next step for you and your family.

Tell him a little bit about your patterns — what’s been going wrong, how long it’s been going on, whether there’s a specific person or event you suspect. He’ll listen, give you his read, and tell you straight whether this is something he can clear.

Book your gifted 15-minute call →

Many clients describe the period after a curse removal as the first time they remember life feeling fair.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are curses real?

In fifteen years of energy clearing work, yes. Curses are concentrated directed energy with intent behind them, and they affect the people they’re placed on in measurable, repeating patterns. You don’t have to believe in curses for them to operate on you. Many of my clients walked in skeptical and walked out telling me the patterns in their lives changed within weeks.

How do I know if someone has cursed me?

The clearest signs are a sustained pattern of bad luck that started after a specific conflict, breakup, or interaction with a person whose energy felt wrong. Recurring nightmares featuring that person are another common signal. So is the feeling of being watched, drained, or targeted in a way that doesn’t track with anything visible. None of these are proof on their own — together they’re suggestive.

What are the signs of a generational curse?

The most reliable marker is a pattern that repeats across multiple generations of your family — the same kinds of marriages failing, the same addictions, the same early deaths, the same financial collapses, the same mental health struggles, the same losses. When the pattern is consistent for three or more generations and resists ordinary intervention, you’re likely looking at something running down the bloodline.

Can you put a curse on yourself?

Yes. Years of intense self-hatred, self-blame, or repeated negative self-talk can generate something that functions like an externally placed curse. The mechanism is the same — concentrated negative intent producing real energetic effect. The difference is that you’re both the source and the target. Self-curses are surprisingly common and respond to clearing the same way other curses do.

How long do curses last?

Untreated, indefinitely. Curses don’t typically dissipate on their own. The active interference they create produces the very conditions that keep them fueled. Some curses have been moving through families for centuries and are still going. Once a curse is properly cleared, however, it stays cleared.

Can curses be passed down through families?

Yes. Generational curses are one of the most common kinds I see. They can trace back hundreds of years to specific events involving ancestors. Every generation in the line typically feels the effects, even when no one in the family currently alive knows the source.

What’s the difference between a curse and a hex?

A curse is usually deeper, longer-lasting, and tied to sustained intent. A hex is typically more reactive — produced by sharper flash anger or a specific quick-impact practice — and tends to have a shorter half-life. Both are forms of directed negative energy and both respond to the same kind of clearing work.

Can a curse cause physical illness?

Yes — and this is one of the harder patterns to identify, because the symptoms can mimic real medical conditions and often don’t show up on standard testing. Curses that target health often produce chronic fatigue, recurring pain with no clear cause, immune issues, or sudden onset of difficult symptoms after a specific interaction or event. Always work with your doctor on the medical layer; energy clearing addresses something different.

How do you break a generational curse?

A generational curse is typically broken by clearing it at the family-line level — not just from one person, but from the bloodline source. People also break cycles through deep spiritual practice, focused devotional work, or transformative healing. Most people who break the pattern do so deliberately, after recognizing the cycle for what it is. The cycles that get broken are the ones that someone in the line decides to break.

Can objects be cursed?

Yes. Antiques, inherited jewelry, items from estate sales, and gifts from people whose energy was off can all carry curses anchored to the object. The energy travels with the item. If your problems concentrated after a specific object came into your home or your wardrobe, that’s a real possibility worth taking seriously.

Can a Christian or religious person be cursed?

Yes. Faith provides real protection, but it doesn’t make anyone immune to every form of energetic interference. As the Catholic exorcist case showed, even highly trained clergy can pick up something they can’t get off on their own. Being religious does not exempt you from this kind of dynamic — and energy clearing doesn’t require you to leave your faith.