This is an anti-chain letter. It was written by Jed Hartman, not a missionary and not from South America or Asia, in November of 1994, and modified slightly several times since then. There’s no way to tell how many times its been “around the world” or even what that phrase means though at the time of writing it has never been around the world in any sense.
You are under no obligation to forward this letter. Nothing bad will happen to you because of failure to forward it Furthermore, this letter absolves you of all bad luck you might otherwise have experienced through failure to forward other chain letters. That means you never again have to write “I’m not superstitious but…” on a chain letter and send it on; you never again have to worry that if you don’t forward a chain letter Bad Things will happen to you. You may wish to keep a copy of this letter around for future use, but you may also dispose of it immediately without ill effects.
If you do pass this letter on, please send only a single copy of it to any given recipient; never send multiple copies of anything to anyone. Mailbombing someone with this letter is every bit as bad as any other form of mailbombing.
Please note that by forwarding a standard chain letter to someone, you are saying, in effect, “If you don’t do what I tell you to do, something bad will happen to you.” Would you make such a threat under any other circumstances? Would you be upset if someone else made such a threat to you? Just say no, don’t be a victim of bad luck wished on you by others.
In 1994, Liz Berry received a chain letter. She sent it on, with this note attached: “Fully aware of the perversity of perpetuating this silly superstitious nonsense, and sharing the annoyance I know you now feel upon receiving it, I nevertheless feel compelled to hit you with the following… besides, who knows?” Don’t be like Liz, don’t feel compelled to forward arrant nonsense (in the form of a patently false letter which, after blatantly lying, insists that you obey it or suffer). Any potential bad luck resulting from failure to forward such a letter is negated by the letter you’re reading right now.
Gloria Acosta received the same chain letter. She sent it on too, adding, “I’m very sorry, I hate to do this but I’m not about to break this also…” Don’t apologize and don’t feel bad; break the chain and demand to know why your friends are threatening you. If they’re worried about bad luck, give them a copy of this letter. Don’t threaten people just because you’ve been told that you must or else.
Please feel free to modify or excerpt this letter to suit your circumstances. Its in the public domain. Nobody ever modifies the standard chain letters (have you ever known anyone who’s changed them? If you changed one, you wouldn’t be forwarding it exactly, so you might get bad luck, right?), so how did the testimonials get into them? You know the ones “Mikhail Sarnikov received this letter and didn’t forward it. In ten hours he was pummeled to death by thugs. Two days later he remembered the letter and sent it on; he instantly won the lottery and was elected President of the US.” I got news for you: those testimonials are fakes, written by the original authors of the chain letters. Consider this: how could the information about what happened to a recipient get into the letter, after the person forwarded the letter (or failed to)?
And while we’re dissecting chain letters, how does a chain letter know how many times ifs been around the world? Does it come with a map? Does it have a visa? No; the author simply thought it sounded good to say it had been around the world a bunch of times. (Does it count if the letter only makes it halfway around the world and then gets sent back? What exactly does “around the world” mean here, anyway?) Besides, the most popular chain letter in circulation claims to have been written by “a missionary from South America” and says it “comes from Venezuela” if so, then why is the “original” of it “in New England”?
Good Luck but please remember: In ten years of receiving chain letters, I have never once passed one on. I’ve never once experienced bad luck because of not passing one on. I’ve never known anyone who’s experienced good luck because of passing one on. Others I know have also refused to propagate the chain, and have never experienced bad luck because of it. You can do it too; disbelieve those letters and break the chain. And if you can’t disbelieve, just remember that this letter will prevent any bad luck you might experience from breaking any chain letter. This is no joke.
