The Jinx

"There are people, then, who seem to be magnets for destruction. Although rarely touched themselves, things happen all around them. One man in a trucking firm was on the scene of seven fatal accidents. As soon as he was removed from the firm the accidents ceased! And yet he had never been a direct or even indirect cause of those accidents so far as physical fact went. His helper, for instance, was in a truck body while this accident-prone stood on the walk. A man fell from the twenty-eighth floor and killed the helper. At another time a motorist ran thirty feet off a road just to strike this accident-prone's truck and kill himself--with no damage to the accident-prone. Seven incidents like that, one after another and the jinx still follows. According to this, then, there is some basis for the maritime Jonah--and in the Navy there is a man who has survived every major sinking in the past twenty years! And was twice the sole survivor."

- from L. Ron Hubbard's letter dated Sep 14, 1939, while staying at the Hotel Knickerbocker, New York City.