Is there a curse on those who take a piece of Uluru?

At an unremarkable corner of the Cultural Center of Uluru, there’s a binder holding hundreds of sorrows, regrets, and apologies.

Read enough of them and they start to sound the same:

I was so enchanted by Uluru that I wanted to take a piece of it home. I realize now that it was wrong. Please return this rock to its rightful place.

The park’s curators call it the “Sorry Book”. The letters come as far as Europe and North America. Most are stained rust red on the corners from the rock that accompanied them.

Uluru, or Ayer’s Rock, is a sacred place to the Anangu, the native people of the Central Australian desert. They believe this giant monolith, which is strikingly unique in the flat desert, was the site of many of their creation mythologies. As such, it holds special powers to them.

So it’s intriguing that so many letters relate tales of misfortune. “Since I took the rock, I lost two people who were very dear to me,” one of them reads. Others detail car accidents, miscarriages, and illnesses. According to one newspaper article on display, one man suffered stomach cramps that were relieved once he mailed back his rock.

One German man, the same newspaper reported, mailed back a five-kilogram piece.

Some of the letters describe in minute detail where the rock was taken from, and ask the park rangers to return it to the exact spot. But the staff keep the rocks in a box until the Aboriginal land owners can conduct a ceremony to replace them.

Of course, not everyone believes in the rock’s supernatural specter. “Think about it,” one incredulous Israeli told me. “How many people who didn’t take a rock also lost relatives and had bad luck?”