The eighth "witch bottle" to wash up on a beach close to Corpus Christi, Texas, since 2017 was discovered earlier this month by Jace Tunnell, a researcher for the Harte Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies.
Similar bottles containing plants, herbs, metal nails, hair, or even bodily fluids have been found in walls or underground spaces in the UK in the past.
According to the McGill University Office of Science and Society, during the 16th and 17th centuries, there was a "strong belief in witches and their ability to cause illness by casting a spell," which led people to attempt to ward against the spells.
"The evil spells could be fended off by trapping them in a ‘witch bottle,’ which if properly prepared, could reflect the spell itself while also tormenting the witch, leaving the witch with no option but to remove the spell, allowing the victim to recover," the society explains.
Despite the bottles' seemingly beneficial purpose of blocking bad spells, Tunnell told Fox News Digital he won't take the chance of popping one open.
"I don't get creeped out by them, but I'm also not going to open them," he said.
"I mean, they're supposed to have spells and stuff in them – why take the chance?"
Tunnel, on the other hand, has chosen to showcase every bottle he has discovered along his backyard fence.
"My wife says I can bring shells inside, but no spell bottles," he explained.
Compared to the UK, the US has far fewer examples of witch bottles, and Tunnell believes the bottles that wash up on the Gulf of Mexico coast come from "somewhere in the Caribbean or South America."
Some of the bottles he's discovered come in real thin yellow vinegar bottles, made in Haiti.
Though it's unclear whether the bottles were dumped in the water in the first place, or whether they were washed into a river before being conveyed to the ocean.
"A lot of the stuff we find, even if it's way inland, gets into the nearest waterway if it rains. Where does that go? The ocean," Tunnell said.
The risk of spells is the researcher's justification for not opening the bottle, but there's also a chance the bottles contain biohazards, which can be harmful to humans.
Aside from the witch bottles, Tunnell also displayed an abandoned drone, supplies from a lost ship, and several messages in bottles that had washed up on the Gulf of Mexico coast.
Watching the video:
