Legend has it, you will have bad luck if you take rocks from Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park. The NYT has a story about people that steal and then return their booty to the park. There's a nice slide show of some of the returned pieces. They are interesting specimens, so it's not too surprising they were pocketed.
“Bad Luck, Hot Rocks,” a book edited by the artists Ryan Thompson and Phil Orr and published in November by The Ice Plant, documents more than fifty specimens from the conscience pile, along with some of the letters of apology that accompanied their return. Collecting petrified wood on park grounds has been strictly prohibited for years. It is punishable by fines, and large signs near the park exits threaten vehicle inspections. Until recently, a display in the visitor center warned that rocks were disappearing at a rate of twelve tons per year, meaning that soon none would remain for future generations. (The park’s current administration has backed away from this estimate.) In case that emotional appeal failed, the display also included letters from repentant thieves, referring to a curse that would strike anyone who moved the petrified wood. The result was a self-fulfilling mineralogical prophecy: people ascribed any post-visit mishaps to their filched rocks, and they returned them by mail as quickly as they could.
