 Hello people, I'm Ginny Metherill, I'm a fourth generation witch and I'm here today with my True Scary Stories series about the Hope Diamond or the Blue Diamond. Now before we start I'm just wanting to say I am indebted to the information or some of the information in this video to the great and rather magnificent Tom Sleman who is one of the finest writers of true scary stories true horror stories that you can find living today. So I'll put a link to his Amazon author page in the description and should you want to read his books you can take it from there and believe me they're well worth the trouble. So I hope you liked this video and if you do please do give me a thumbs up button and subscribe to my channel so I can make more videos like this for you. Well let's get straight into this video with the very beginning of the story which starts in India. So a huge gem weighing 115 carats which is about the size of my fist was mined out of Collier Mine sometime before 1660. It was bought or possibly stolen depending on who you believe by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier who was a Frenchman and explorer and merchant and he returned to his homeland and promptly sold this jewel to the French king Louis the 14th. Louis the 14th had a bit of a thing for large gemstones and so he immediately bought it and then spent the next two years instructing a jeweler to cut it down to about 67 carats which is still quite a sizeable gem and he used it as part of his royal insignia and he was very fond of it apparently. He loved it. Louis the 14th liked to keep this vast gem in the cabinets of his room at Versailles where he would produce it and show it to his guests saying look at this vast gem that I've acquired. So it became known as the blue diamond of the crown of France or the French blue. So Louis the 14th loved this diamond and had it set and he used it in his state occasions and when he died it passed on to his son Louis Kans and Louis Kans also adored this diamond and he had it made into this rather ostentatious and slightly hideous pendant that you can see here. On his death it then passed on to the very glamorous Louis the 16th who was married to the equally glamorous Marie Antoinette. Now we are all I'm sure completely familiar with the fate of Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette who were guillotined by the National Assembly of France and the Republic therefore was sprung from their deaths. It seems that Marie Antoinette was rather obsessed with the stone and used to spend some time just staring at it in her rooms and kindly Louis seeing how much his wife loved it therefore gave it to her. She is alleged to have worn it at a very grand fancy dress ball in the Tuileries. She loved it because she thought the blue of the diamond matched the blue of her eyes which were well known for being a lovely clear sparkling blue. Her bosom friend was a lady called the Princess de Lambele and the princess also had these amazing blue eyes and so Marie Antoinette used to let her borrow the stone to hang around her neck to complement the blueness of her eyes. As we know though life could not go on in this manner for any longer so the jewel was confiscated with many of the other jewels that were held by Louis the 16th at the beginning of the revolution by the National Assembly. Now this is where they were rather naive because they believed quite rightly so that the French people owned all these jewellies and should be able to see them so they put them on display in the royal stall house which is the Guard Merbler and they posted guards to stand around the front. However they were a bit lax on security because there was a first floor window around the back which a band of robbers discovered and climbed in and they pilfered over six nights the Guard Merbler of the royal jewels and it stole the lot and nobody noticed and at one point there was 50 people climbing in through that window. The jewel may be lost but we do know the fate of Marie Antoinette and King Louis the 16th. They were taken and guillotined by the National Assembly and so the Republic sprang from their deaths. The Princess DeLombale had a much more terrifying fate in my opinion. On the 19th of August 1792 she was jumped off into a kangaroo court where she was asked to denounce the monarchy but with tears in her eyes and in a broken voice she said I will not denounce the king the queen and the monarchy. Very bravely she was then descended on by the mob. They ripped her clothes from her. They took her into the centre of town and gang raped her whilst surrounded by everyone else. Someone produced a knife and sliced off her breasts. She was then disembowelled. She was still alive and finally someone produced a sword and chopped off her head. The head was then styled apparently whether this is true or not I don't know about the styling that is but it was certainly put on a pike and paraded around Paris. Then they carried on parading the head up and down beneath Marie Antoinette's window to jeers and catcalls. A bit horrific isn't it? This is when the Rumamungas really went to town they claimed that Tavernier the person who'd originally bought the stone to France had actually stoned it from the crown of a deity in a temple in India and therefore they had incurred the wrath of that temple. It was also claimed that the blueness of the stone meant it was a curse on all those blue eyes such as the French monarchy. There were many other rumours that surrounded it including one which I particularly like which is that it admitted a reddish glow at night. That last one is actually true for 1965 the curators of the stone knew to glimmering phosphorescence of red light coming from it at night. They didn't understand what it is and no one really does but it seems that the stone reacts with any ultraviolet light that is out there and causes this glimmering red crimson glow to come from it. After the theft of the stone from the guard murmur it disappeared it was paradou before 20 years or so until it popped up in London with a diamond dealer who promptly sold it to King George IV. King George IV also was a rather keen on having very fine large gems but it is not part of the crown jewels of the United Kingdom. George IV himself believed that the stone held a curse and was unlucky. When he started to own it he developed a compulsive eating disorder and became absolutely vast with the stomach expanding to 50 inches. He also started drinking extremely heavily and then furthermore developed a drug addiction to Lordenham which is a form of opium. Paul King George used to wear these specially made large reinforced corsets because he was really quite vain. I mean bearing in mind he was a morbidly obese man and any pictures and portraits that we see of him made him look as slim as possible but he was vast and that his fatty heart could not cope and gave out in 1830. Now he was a compulsive gambler as nothing else and so discreetly the Duke of Wellington got his hands on the jewel and decided that he'd better sell it off to pay for the monarch's gambling debts which were not unsubstantial and this is where it was bought by the very rich banker Lord Henry Philip Hope. It takes its name from this gentleman. He was an immensely wealthy banker. He'd inherited something along the region of 75 million dollars in today's money and he was a good looking, very flamboyant and rather beautiful young man who liked to indulge his taste in fine art and especially diamonds. He was very keen on them and had a built up huge gem collection. On the 26th May 1834 Hope held a ball for the glitterati of Georgian society at his incredible mansion on Mansfield Street in central London. He opened 11 of his 14 state rooms and each room was decorated with a particular theme of his fine art pieces. During the party a young 16 year old serving girl called Meg was revealed by one of her colleagues to be a real life Roman egyptian with the power of foresight and she was also pretty good at tassie amounts which is the reading of tea leaves. Meg blushed and stuttered but eventually the guests around her got her to read their palms. The first person to produce his palm for her investigation was a great lord, a peer of the realm. What Meg saw in his hand she immediately realised she could not reveal at all because it was a list of all the women that he had ruined by making love to them and leaving a trail of illegitimate children throughout the land. He was a depraved and slightly lechie soul to say the least. However she did say to him that he had three beagles and had recently had a very great loss. The lord of the realm did have three beagles and had just lost his beloved mama so he was mightily impressed. The next person to produce his palm for Meg to read was a general and as soon as she took hold of his palm she had visions of all the battles that he'd ever been in and all the traumatic details of those times. She also had a foresight that he was going to be shot in battle with a bullet through the head. Realising that she could not reveal this to anybody really because you know it's a bit much isn't it. She then told him that he had a sister who played the piano beautifully but had long passed and now looked down upon him as a guardian angel. The general with tears in his eyes thanked her and turned away. Talk of the girl finally reached the ears of Henry Hope and he decided to have a word with her after the party. So when the guest had left at about four o'clock in the morning he dismissed the rest of the servants who were clearing up the house and asked Meg to join him in his own personal drawing room. He invited to sit down on the sofa which he did quite nervously because he would be wouldn't you if were only 16 and he said to her could you explain your talents to me. She blushingly told him that she did have foresight in reading palms in reading tea leaves but she also had the power of psychometry which is where you hold an object in your hand and you can tell its history. On hearing this Henry Hope jumped up ran out of the room and returned a short while later bearing a case within which was the blue diamond. As he opened the case Meg looked at the blue diamond she then turned and looked at Henry Hope and started to stare at something over his left shoulder. Her eyes began to bulge she jumped up and backed away from him and then suddenly turned and ran from the room. Henry Hope put the blue diamond back in the case and tracked her down in the servants quarters. When he asked her what was wrong she started to cry and shake and said that she had seen a tall at least seven foot turbaned black robed gentleman with a skull face standing behind the left shoulder of Henry Hope as soon as he revealed the diamond. She explained that she felt that the being was ancient and it controlled all those who possessed or held that diamond. She grasped Hope's arm and begged him to get rid of it as it would cause such great death and destruction for him if he kept it. Meg left Lord Hope's employment to that point and she left a note saying that she was too scared to remain with him because she did not want to see that blue diamond ever again. Needless to say Hope's health now deteriorated and he suddenly died in 1839. His nephew Henry Thomas Hope inherited the stone on his death and he decided to display it at the great exhibition of 1851 in Crystal Palace in London. Now Queen Victoria toured this exhibition and she came upon the Hope diamond and asked to hold it and as she pulled it out and turned the diamond through her hands she could see galloping horses in its facets. Later her husband Albert had a very very serious crash with some runaway horses and a coach which killed several people that left him without a scratch. Lord Francis Hope was the next person to inherit the stone. Lord Francis Hope was a fast drinking gambling bon vivur who had a penchant for fast ladies and slow horters. He married the American show girl who was at the epitome of her career, May Yohei. She enjoyed living the lavish lifestyle just as much as Lord Francis and together they galloped through his fortune. Sadly once the fortune was gone so did May. She always claimed however that the duel was haunted and she said she was once approached by a psychic who told her that the stone was part of a common root of all evil that stretched back to ancient times causing death and destruction in its wake. She wore the blue diamond with great pride and swandered about showing it off to the guests in society wherever she was. She was once wearing the blue diamond on a cruise ship in the evening as she was taking air on the deck and round the corner came a blind man leaning on his carer and as soon as he turned the corner he went what's that there's a devil before me and cringed back. May tells the story of Greater Plom obviously. The duel now passes through the hands of a variety of gem dealers some of whom go bankrupt some of whom die. Eventually the stone ends up with Pierre Cartier the famous Julia and he very cleverly lends it on approval to Ned and Evelyn Walsh McLean saying that it's got a curse attached to it and why don't they just hold it and see whether they want to buy it. Ned was heir to the Washington Post publishing empire and Evelyn was heiress to a huge mining corporation. They threw incredibly lavish parties they were young they were good looking they were super rich and they bought the hope diamond. The way it happened is that Evelyn took the hope diamond back and put it on her dresser. She sat there brushing her hair and she had this overwhelming urge to put the stone on and she sat and stared at it for a few hours and eventually took the jewel and hung it around her neck and as she says it was from that point that her dread curse was linked to the stone. It can be fair to say that Evelyn almost became obsessed with the stone she wore it to every society event and high class ball that she attended. She went around saying that the curse didn't affect her she did believe that things that are unlucky for others weren't necessary for her. This was not to be in May 1919 their firstborn son their beloved Vincent who had been nicknamed the hundred million dollar baby by the press when he was born due to the fact that he would inherit both of his parents fortunes ran away from his body guards and crossed a street and was knocked over and killed by a passing Ford car. Evelyn then became addicted to morphine whilst dealing with the grief of losing her eldest son and she went to a priest and asked him to bless the stone and the priest commented that no blessing would remove the sinister evil that he felt was inherent in that stone. It was just after the death of their son Vincent that a Sri Lankan seer claimed that in ancient times when the world was one great land mass an ancient race of beings made from pure energy lived upon that land. However some of these beings turned to the dark side of the occult becoming obsessed with destruction and death and a battle was fought. The good beings won and the remaining dark ones took refuge in the stones under the earth. When continental drift occurred these stones were found in the minds of Kallur. The Sri Lankan seer claimed that sometimes these beings manifested themselves as at least seven foot tall, skeletally boned, black-robed and turbaned beings just like the one that the 16 year old serving girl Meg saw. Evelyn Walter McClain did not believe the story and said the seer was trying to get her stone through deception and so ignored it. Things went from bad to worse for the Walter McClains. Their marriage broke up when Ned left Evelyn for a younger prettier model. The Washington Post Empire went bust leaving Ned practically bankrupt. He started drinking and then developed psychiatric problems and ended up in a sanatorium where he finally died. Poor Evelyn couldn't kick her morphine habit. Then their eldest daughter also named Evelyn died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. You know that's pretty much disaster after disaster for the McClain's divorce death destruction. A famous jury dealer eventually bought the stone from a claim estate and exhibited it throughout America and it became known as the American Crown Jewels. Since then it's been donated to the Smithsonian Museum where you may see it and the Smithsonian are brilliant with it. They say that they've had greater numbers of visitors ever since they got the stone and that there is no curse. So good for them. So that is the story of the Hope Diamond. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did please give me a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe. And in the meantime watch out for my next true scary stories.