Many years ago, while working in the mail room of a marketing firm outside of Detroit, the woman who headed up one of the divisions of our company came down to the mail room with a lava rock and an address for Madame Pele. She embarassedly told me about the curse and instructed me to ship the rock back to Hawaii - which I did.

AAHAHAHH! So that is what has been going on w/me the last three yers since I took that rock from the peak in Sedona! It's been sitting on my mantle giving me the evil eye! I'm going to ebay right now to put it up for sale.

I'm wondering if this "curse" would also apply to the piece of the Berlin Wall my father brought back to the states and gave to my children back in the 80's? Lots '0 bad things have happened to all of us since then!!! But, we've also had a lot of good things happen!! Hmmmmm...

All those suckers who bought Pet Rocks in the 70's must be dead by now or at least burned out of their houses a few times.

I nicked a piece of <i>aa</i> lava (great Scrabble word BTW) years ago on the BI and got sciatica the next day. Didn't know about Pele's curse then. However, I put it on a windowsill at home next to a stone from Masada, and my back pain vanished. I do believe Pele's force has been well and truly neutralized. ;)

Speaking of the Berlin Wall. back in 1989 I packaged a Christmas gift for my boss with professional graphics on the box that said it was an authentic chunk of cement from the Berlin Wall. She opened the box in front of everyone and found an old red brick from my back yard stamped Alamo Brick Co. Didn't get fired. Got points for creativity!

Good story, Jor.

Mine (piece from Berlin Wall) is authentic. My father and step-mother moved to Germany in 1982 (my step-mother worked/works for the DoD. They just luckily happened to be (don't know exactly where) there when the wall came crashing down. They picked over the pieces and brought back several for us kids and our kids.

Mine actually is broken in such a way that the remnants of the graphitti and the way the chunk is shaped makes it look like a blue peace symbol. It's way cool.

Bad part is the wall contained asbestos, so I no longer openly display the chunk out in the open. Still, it's priceless to me.

DD

There is a pile of rocks and sand sitting just outside the mail room at the park, from people sending rocks back to Hawaii.

I don't keep any lava rocks, but I do have a piece of the asbestos Berlin Wall, and my husband's Pet Rock--still in the box, and I'm still alive!!!

I was born and raised on a working farm (not a hobby farm). There's this thing called &quot;rock picking&quot; that every pre-teen farm boy has to do. You drive a tractor with a little trailer behind it through the fields before planting and pick up all the rocks that surfaced that year and haul them off to the &quot;rock pile&quot;.

I am pleased to inform everyone that the family home has not burned down and that I which I would have thought of that Pet Rock thing and became a millioneir from all those rock picking days.

Any other ex farm boys out there will know exactly what I am talking about.

You can't take the farm boy out of the man even when he's been around the world.

LOL Jor!! We were in Volcano Nat'l park a few years ago and negleted to pick a rock for the same reason. I've bent down for enough rocks in my time!

I am leaving for Oahu tomorrow, and plan on only bringing back happy memories and many pictures.

The ABC stores do not sell real lava. If u ask, they will tell you it is clay made to look like lava. Also, the lava in Kona or Hilo or wherever you are on the Big Island is not yours to take. Why would anyone want to bring a rock home? I've never heard of the Berlin Wall curse...but I would keep a piece if someone brought me one.

It is not illegal depending on the location. http://www.state.hi.us/dlnr/chair/pio/piofaq.htm

aloha from Kauai...not just illegal(national park) yet immoral and bad manners. Sand too...can't take truck load of sand from a beach to fill in your garden here. or take live shells.coral,lava rocks,etc...

ABC stores/International market place/souvenir trinket stores sell Indonesian/Thailand/Philippines shells taken with unethical practices, ravaging their own reefs for profit isn't frowned upon. Very very few shells in stores are from hawaii. check mandatory labeling

We all find individual shells washed up at Polihale. Not allowed to scuba dive for live specimens offshore at your will.

The "superstitions" attached to lava rocks are in appropriate reverence to Pele. When building a rock wall, the contractors here need special use permits to "farm" first then utilize. Cannot just go dig up roadside lava rocks. Same adage...if all did as they pleased, we'd be like easter island= used up finite resources. although seemingly plenty around, just not good manners.
Its not just local folklore...plenty of stories throughout the years of visitors returning "stuff" back to the aina.

I can understand regulations about use of natural resources.

But what it has to do with fantasies about "good luck" - I just don't get. Who beleive in this nonsense. It's as bad as ghosties and ghoulies and fairies and thinking Freddy Kruger is hiding in your basement.