TikToker Bri Mattingly (@bri.mattingly), who regularly shares spooky encounters and paranormal stories on her channel, recently described the “family curse” that nearly claimed all of their lives—and it’s enough to make you wonder if there really is something to it after all.
Stitching with fellow TikToker @giveitamoment, who asked people to share times they should have died but didn’t, Mattingly starts by reminding her viewers about the existence of the family curse. Apparently, the curse is in effect the entire month of February, and one year it tried to wipe them all out at once with a bad case of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The difference between life and death was her mom’s morning shift at work and the alarm she’d set to make sure she woke up. Struggling to wake, and with the “worst headache of her life,” Mattingly’s mother realized something was very wrong and woke the rest of the family before calling 911.
Suspecting a carbon monoxide leak, the usual advice would be to get out of the house until the fire brigade comes and checks it out. Unfortunately, they were also afflicted with -40 degree Fahrenheit temperatures at the time, and waiting outside that long could have been equally deadly. The 911 operator instead told them to stand in the open doorways of their house while their car warmed up, and then wait in there instead until help arrived.
When the firefighters measured the levels of carbon monoxide in the house, Mattingly’s family were apparently told that the “numbers were insane,” and that if their mom hadn’t woken them up and got them out when she did they’d have “all died in their sleep.”
Mattingly then produced a follow-up video, offering more details on both the events of that day and the curse itself. Because they’d just moved into their new house, they hadn’t had a chance to install carbon monoxide monitors yet, and because it was so cold, they kept all the doors and windows shut while heating their house with a wood stove. That, coupled with a heating oil leak all over their basement floor, led the carbon monoxide levels in their house to just build and build.
Luckily, Mattingly and her family, as well as all their pets, were absolutely fine. But this isn’t the only time February has tried to kill them. Apparently, everyone on her mother’s side of the family has died during the month of February, and other near-death experiences happened around then as well.
From her grandparents’ near-fatal car accident, her grandfather’s death due to medical error a year later, the unexpected death of her uncle, and her grandmother’s death during heart surgery, it really is starting to look suspiciously like February is out to get them. Add in her mother’s near-death, also during surgery, a few years ago ago, the carbon monoxide incident, and this year’s death—her grandfather’s best friend, basically if not legally family, who passed away on the 34th-anniversary of her grandfather’s death—and you really start to wonder if there is something supernatural going on.
Mattingly says she has no idea who laid the curse or why, but that after this, she’s decided to look upon it as a blessing instead, saying “it’s pretty special to be reunited with your best friend on the same day.”
Mattingly has been contacted and the Daily Dot will update if she responds.