We need a witch doctor and fast. Someone call Father Merrin. Cincinnati sports is Linda Blair, the bed is levitating, the head is doing a 360. Mother, make it stop.

We are cursed. This is plain. It isn’t hyperbole, it isn’t poor-mouthing. It just is. If Peyton Manning had been a Bengal, he’d have broken his arm falling out of bed the morning of the Super Bowl.

It isn’t enough that UC loses Friday on a made dunk that was made about a hundredth of a second late. No, it has to happen again Sunday, to Xavier, on the sort of shot Larry Bird used to make on the fast-food commercials. Catch a pass, dribble to the corner, launch a prayer, nothing but net.

Nobody likes a whiner, so we won’t cry about it. We’ll try to play it the way James Farr did. Right after the buzzer, after Bronson Koenig’s three-ball ended Xavier’s season, the senior Farr hugged the teammate closest to him, Sean O’Mara, and trainer Dave Fluker. Farr manned up. So shall we.

But this s***’s gotta stop.

Who ya gonna call? Bill Murray was in the crowd Sunday, wearing an X ballcap. He was a ghostbuster, for god’s sake. Do something, man!

It would be one thing if the misfortune began last week in Spokane, where Octavius Ellis’ buzzer jam was dissected and disallowed. We’d even be OK with the playoff disaster against Pittsburgh added to the mix. Stuff happens, improbable and unscripted. It’s why we love our games.

But, come on.

Our personal sports disaster resume began on a Saturday night 27 years ago, which is to say there are lots of sports fans in Cincinnati who have known nothing else. For them, fandom is Wile E. Coyote. One damned anvil after another. In a Plantation, Florida, hotel room the night before Super Bowl 23, Bengals fullback Stanley Wilson dropped his nose into a pile of cocaine, then disappeared until Tuesday. Nothing has been right since.

(With, of course, the notable 1990 exception. I have no idea how we pulled that one off. Beelzebub must have been napping. Ever since, he’s been flossing with our heart strings. Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name …)

It’d be quite impressive, really, if it didn’t make you sick. Other cities have had bad runs: Detroit is fairly miserable. Cleveland is bad enough, it has rarely been good enough for a curse to matter. The Drive and The Fumble were a very long time ago.

Besides, we’re not talking about futility here. We’re talking about heart-rip.

To approximate the Cincinnati sports experience, date a woman for five years, ask her to marry you, then watch her drive off with your best friend. Have your new puppy leave you for the cat next door. Win the Powerball, lose the ticket. Cincinnati’s new sports motto:

Expect the worst, and you’ll never be disappointed.

Do we need to dredge up the Litany of Angst? Do we?

Wilson, Tim Krumrie, Ki-Jana Carter. Kenyon Martin, Junior Griffey’s legs, Carson Palmer, Johnny Cueto.

Game 163 in 1999, forced by the three consecutive losses that preceded it.

The Daves (Shula and Klingler). Akili Smith and Scott Mitchell and everyone else who contributed to the Lost Decade of the ’90s. Gus Frerotte’s left-handed pass that was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. In Cleveland, of all places.

And so on. We are a city of Charlie Browns. Lucy(fer) loves us. When Koenig got that shot off Sunday night, before the buzzer, everyone who has been in town more than 20 minutes knew it was going in. To then, Xavier had led a relatively charmed life, maybe because it didn’t have “Cincinnati’’ in its name.

Over the years, the Musketeers often had overachieved. The Little Team That Could evolved into a national force, seemingly immune to the fates that had swallowed every other team whole. I even joked Saturday with Chris Mack that it was up to his club to get the local sports karma turned around.

Haha.

Mack said after the game “the sun will shine tomorrow’’ and maybe it will. If I’m a Cincinnati sports fan today, I have the sheets drawn so tightly over my head, I wouldn’t know if the planet Mercury were right outside my window.

Most places, you’d suggest that good times are right around the corner. Tough times don’t last, tough people do. And all that.

Here? In the Queen (for a day, 26 years ago) City? I wouldn’t be too sure about that. We are cursed, we are doomed, we are Cincinnati. There’s nothing to do but duck.