Posted by Did you know that one of the most haunted objects in the world is Italian? It is the Basano vase, and because of its curse, it has been hidden in an unknown location… let’s hope we never find it!
The Basano vase is a silver vase that, according to a legend spread mainly on English-language websites, was cursed in the 15th century by a bride murdered on her wedding night near Naples. Rediscovered in 1988, it supposedly killed its new owners one after another before being hidden again. There are, however, no names, documents or contemporary reports to confirm the story.
The story
This vase was made in the second half of the 15th century and is made of silver.
Legend has it that it was a gift for a bride from a village near Naples, but the woman was murdered on her wedding night.
She was found clutching the vase and swearing revenge before she died. The vase was passed down from family to family, and in each family, deaths occurred in circumstances that were never clarified.
It was therefore decided to bury the vase so that it would not claim any more victims, and indeed, once it was placed in a safe place, there were no more deaths.
The discovery of the Basano vase
This was until 1988, when someone noticed something shiny in their garden and decided to see what it was.
When he unearthed the find, he realized it was a silver vase. Inside was a note that read
“Beware, this vase brings death.”
But instead of destroying it or burying it again, he decided to sell it. It was put up for auction, where a pharmacist bought it for the then considerable sum of 4,000,000 lire.
Three months later, the pharmacist died. His family decided to get rid of it, and a surgeon who was rather skeptical about the curse decided to buy it.
This was a huge mistake, because two months later, he also died at the young age of 37.
Once again, it was sold, this time to an archaeologist who wanted the splendid vase for his collection.
He too died three months later from an unknown infection. The archaeologist’s family tried to sell the vase but, after all these gruesome events, it was really difficult.
Despite this, they found a buyer, although he paid less than the 5 million lire paid by the archaeologist. This unfortunate buyer also died within a month and his family, exasperated, took the vase and threw it out of a window.
The vase almost hit a policeman on the head and the person who threw it was fined.
The family paid but did not want the vase back.
The police then tried to donate it to museums, but no one wanted it after its bad reputation.
They therefore decided to put it in a safe place so that no one would ever find it.
It is said that it was placed in a lead box and buried in an old cemetery in the hope that no one would ever find it.
Legend or reality?
For an “Italian” object, the Basano vase is strangely unknown in Italy. Its story circulates mostly on English-language websites and books, almost always repeated in the same words, and even when it is mentioned in Italy the sources are nearly always translations of those accounts.
Above all, there is no verifiable data. The bride’s name is unknown, as is the village’s, and no place called Basano near Naples is linked to the story. No one knows who found the vase in 1988, or where; there are no names for the pharmacist, the surgeon, the archaeologist or the police officer, and no newspaper reports of the auction or the deaths. The only dates are the 1400s and 1988. Even the vase’s appearance is a mystery: every site describes it differently, and the photos circulating online are never of the real vase.
There is also a curious detail: in folklore silver is usually a metal that protects against evil, think of vampires and werewolves, not a material for cursed objects. All this suggests the Basano vase is a modern legend, born and raised on the internet. But, as with all good horror stories, no one is keen to go digging in that old cemetery to check.
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