Days later, Hitler and Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Immediately the two events were linked together. How could they not be? The exhuming of one bloody dictator was quickly followed by the appearance of another. The two events became so intertwined that rumors began to swirl about inscriptions on the tomb and casket. The one on the tomb is supposed to read, “When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble.” When the Soviet archeologists ignored that warning, they allegedly found another curse etched into Timur’s casket: “Whosoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.” Adolph Hitler is pretty terrible.
Unfortunately, no evidence of either inscription exists. However, two years later, after the analysis was complete and the archeologists reinterred Timur’s remains, Soviet forces defeated the Nazis at Stalingrad. It was a major turning point in World War II.
Why Timur’s tomb would be cursed in the first place is unknown. Maybe it was wishful thinking on the part of the people of Samarkand who didn’t want either eighteenth-century or twentieth-century warlords disturbing the bones of their hero.
Or maybe it was because Timur was never meant to be interred in that mausoleum. He was supposed to be laid to rest in a custom-built tomb fit for an emperor in Shahrisabz, the city where he was born. Instead, he ended up in Samarkand in a tomb built for his grandson, Muhammed Sultan. When Timur died on the way to China, the roads to Shahrisabz were impassible due to the same snowy conditions that had killed him. So he was buried in the easier-to-reach city of Samarkand instead. And maybe he’s grumpy about that.
There’s something fitting about a warlord so bloodthirsty that not even death could stop his murderous rampage.
The Black Angel
CURRENT LOCATION:
OAKLAND CEMETERY, IOWA CITY, IOWA
MATERIAL:
BRONZE
SCULPTOR:
MARIO KORBEL
CREATED FOR:
TERESA FELDEVERT AND FAMILY
YEAR OF INSTALLATION:
1912–1913
It was once an eight-foot-tall shimmering bronze memorial to a young son and a dear husband. Today it is a blackened horror of a figure with a deathly curse. You can say hi to it during the cemetery’s open hours.
Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, Iowa, was established in 1843. It covers about forty acres, is Protestant, and is full of the usual plain, rectangular tombstones and dead people. Nothing too out of the ordinary and nothing much worth mentioning, as far as cemeteries go. Except for the giant black angel dominating the landscape and terrifying visitors.
Angel statues in cemeteries are extremely common. There are millions of them spreading their stone wings across the dead in America and Europe. So many, in fact, that the wondrous image of a person with feathery wings has become as bland a sight as a rectangular tombstone in a cemetery.
But not the Black Angel. The Black Angel has transcended blandness by going full-on spooky. And being full-on spooky in a cemetery has earned it an abundance of creepy legends. It also, strangely enough, makes the statue better at memorializing the dead beneath its feet. People will forget a boring funerary statue, but they’ll talk for generations about a scary one.
The statue is eight and a half feet tall and stands atop a square pedestal that lifts it to a full thirteen feet. It depicts a winged woman in a flowing dress, her head tilted down so that her face is usually in shadow. Her massive wings are at odd, asymmetrical angles — one extended out perpendicular to her body and the other drooping like it’s broken. Her arms are aligned with her wings, giving the strange impression that she’s wearing fake wings strapped to her arms. There’s something rounded and clay-like about her features. She looks like she belongs in a fantasy cemetery in a Tim Burton movie instead of in a real-death cemetery in Iowa.
The bronze artwork was crafted by Mario Korbel, a Czech sculptor based in Chicago. When it was placed in the cemetery in the early 1910s, it shone golden and glorious. Rodina Feldevertova is inscribed on the front of the stone pedestal, which means “The Feldevert Family” in Czech. It is accompanied by a tall stone carved into the shape of a tree trunk.
This Iowa plot is the lasting work of Teresa Feldevert, a Czech midwife. The stone tree came first, and was planted to memorialize her son from her first marriage, Edward Dolezal. He died at age eighteen after contracting meningitis. It was the second son she lost; the first, Otto, died two weeks before she moved to the United States.
Childless and husbandless, Teresa left Iowa City and lived in a few different places before ending up in Eugene, Oregon, where she met Nicholas Feldevert, whom she eventually married. He preceded her in death and left her somewhat wealthy. One of the first things she did with that money was commission the angel sculpture. She ended up fighting with Korbel because she wanted the tree trunk gravestone to be incorporated into the sculpture of the angel, but in the end they were kept separate. Regardless, the angel became the repository of the remains of both her son Edward and her husband. Finally, in 1924, Teresa herself was laid to rest beneath the angel she had commissioned, although the memorial bears only her birth date. It’s a beautiful story, each family member succumbing to the inevitable and then being reunited beneath a shining statue for all to see.
But then the angel aged, and the red-gold bronze oxidized to deep black, as if dark forces had tainted it. Corrupted it. Cursed it. Normally, we call those forces time and weather. But in this case, because of the stature of the statue and the strange angle of its wings, and the fact that it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the cemetery (and because it’s in a cemetery in the first place), the change in color seems malevolent.
Some say it was the addition of Teresa’s ashes that cursed the statue, that she had cheated on her husband and that the glowing angel looming above the ostensibly loving family could no longer take part in the ruse. However, the angel started turning black within ten years of being installed — while Teresa was still alive.
The Black Angel has accrued as many stories as there are paranormal books and websites. The most common story is that if you touch the statue, you’ll die. And for whatever reason, “touching” is often specifically called out as kissing. Also, if a pregnant woman crosses through the shadow of the Black Angel, the woman will miscarry. (It’s a common enough legend that pregnant women in general might want to avoid rot-yards.) A man is said to have gone mad after breaking off the statue’s thumbs. And, in fact, she is missing a few digits. Another myth is that if a virgin is kissed in front of the statue, it will restore the Black Angel to her previous glowing form, although we can probably guess why that legend started. It’s also said that every Halloween, the statue grows blacker.