One of BF's exGF used to buy pendants of "idols" (different Buddhas and gods), wear them, pray to them, then subsequently toss them aside for another. (Which from what I understand is a no-no because they get upset as it is considered disrespectful.)
I almost forgot about this post, but I think I know where her tossed aside idols ended up.
I was at the university looking at some very nice wooden bracelets an this kiosk. He also sold some small metal Buddhas and the like. He had a sign advertising these as 'Good Luck Buddhas.'
As I was looking, I saw 2 of my friends come around a corner. They stopped dead when they saw me perusing the kiosk and screamed 'BLUEBERRY, NO!' in literally one vioce. They ran over, grabbed me, and carried me away as the kiosk guy yelled at them (I am a very small Asian girl. One of them was a big soccer player guy and the other a tall, very athletic girl, so I was easily lifted up between the 2 of them.)
When they finally put me down, after much protesting and amused bystanders, we were pretty far from the kiosk and in a completely different part of the campus.
Then they proceeded to tell me about the Buddhas.
Last month, while looking at that exact same kiosk, they decided to buy Good Luck Buddhas for gifts for each other. They each put their new Buddhas into their respective backpacks and went merrily away.
And it all went to heck.
The guy's car was broken into, and his radio stolen. She sprained an ankle getting up from a couch. They failed their midterms. Then one of them got the stomach flu. The other one got food poisoning. They both felt a general feeling of malaise constantly and everything was going wrong.
Most terrifying, was suddenly this creepy old man with no legs in a wheelchair starting following them around. It was only when they were together that he appeared, and not when they were apart. He would appear to them when there was no route for a wheelchair to have access. They could constantly hear a SQUEEEAKKK from his old wheelchair. Now the main thing was only THEY could see and hear him. The rest of us couldn't. They would yell and point 'THERE HE IS! Can't you hear him!?!?' And no one else could.
I would have thought they were making this all up, but in the space of 2 weeks, they really did have all those awful things happen. And the rest of us could almost feel an aura of something bad around them. It was just a general feeling of depression, and that there was something wrong, coming off of them, it was weird.
Somehow, they traced this to the purchase of the Buddhas. They went back together, and wanted an exchange, something, anything, just for the kiosk guy to take back the Buddhas.
He gave them a big grin and said NO REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES.
While they are desperately trying to think of something to do, they hear the squeak of the wheelchair and just bolted.
They run to their cars and suddenly the old man in the wheelchair is coming around from a nearby parked car. He could not have gotten there that quickly, and how did he know where they were going?
She drives to the nearest post office, and tosses the Buddha in this package she was mailing to a friend in Tokyo.
He drives to a nearby Buddhist temple, runs in and gives the Buddha to the first person he sees.
The old man in the wheelchair disappeared completely after they got rid of the Bad Luck Buddhas.
The general feelings of unhappiness disappeared and their bad luck did too.
The kiosk guy disappeared soon after they warned me about the Buddhas.