From the
mysterious painting The Anguished Man to the works of serial
killer John Wayne Gacy, the stories behind these allegedly cursed paintings are
excellent fodder for a dark and stormy night — and the pieces themselves are
quite creepy, too.
Keep reading to learn all about these 9 reportedly haunted paintings and
the stories behind them. Just don’t stare for too long.
1-
The Hands Resist Him: The Haunted Painting That Moves
When You Look Away
From first
glance, it’s clear there is something deeply disturbing about William
Stoneham’s 1972 work, The Hands Resist Him. The painting depicts a
young boy stood next to an eerily lifelike doll with a downturned mouth. Behind
him, in the darkness beyond the glass door, the hands of children reach for
him.
The art is terrifying enough on its own, but the alleged hauntings that
plagued its owners make the eerie painting even creepier.
According to The Lineup, several prominent figures in the art world who
came into contact with the painting died shortly after it was sold, including
the art critic Henry Seldis and actor John Marley, who purchased the painting.
Marley died in 1984, and the painting seemingly disappeared for nearly two
decades.
But in 2000, it resurfaced on eBay, of all places. The new owners were looking
to sell the painting as soon as possible because, they claimed, it was haunted.
Allegedly, in the middle of the night, the boy and the doll in the
painting would fight, terrifying the couple’s four-year-old daughter. The
sellers also claimed that they captured footage on motion-sensing cameras of
the boy in the painting physically leaving the frame and stepping into the
room, running away in fear.
The owners warned that those who were “faint of heart” should not bid on
the painting. More than 300,000 people viewed the listing, and many reported
that simply looking at the painting made them feel ill or upset.
Stoneham eventually came forward to speak about his inspiration for the
painting, revealing that the boy in it was himself, that the hands in the
background represented other lives, and that the doll represented his guide between
two worlds. Stoneham was adopted, and the painting is meant to serve as a
representation of his adoption.
He even created a sequel painting, The Hands Invent Him, which
depicts the scene on the other side of the door.
2-
The Anguished Man, A Haunted Painting From An Unknown
Artist
Often called
one of the world’s most haunted paintings, the story behind The
Anguished Man is like something out of a horror movie. Its current
owner, Sean Robinson, detailed how he came to be in possession of this
horrifying painting in an email to Dread Central.
“The Anguished Man painting was given to me by my
grandmother,” he wrote. “The artist of the painting is unknown, but we do know
that the artist mixed his own blood into the paint and committed suicide not
long after the painting was finished… I can guarantee you that the original
haunted painting is locked away in a secure location, and I have no intention
of selling it.”
Robinson added that it would be “dangerous” to sell the painting, as it
“is really active and really strange things happen for people who are in the
same room, or even in the same house with the painting.”
Blood-infused paint and suicide are certainly excellent fodder for a haunted
backstory, but what exactly are these “really strange things” Robinson
mentioned?
Well, Robinson detailed these alleged hauntings on his YouTube
channel, where he claimed he could hear crying and moaning noises in
his house. He also claimed that he once saw “the figure of a man” stalking him.
3-
Love Letters, The Driskill Hotel’s Haunted
Painting
The Driskill
Hotel in Austin, Texas has a rich history. Throughout its time in operation, it
has hosted presidents, rock stars, and all manner of prominent guests. There
are also claims that the Driskill Hotel may have one permanent guest in the
form of a ghostly little girl, but it’s not a room she is said to haunt — it’s
a painting.
The painting
in question is a modern replication of Charles Trevor Garland’s Love
Letters, done by Richard King. The painting shows a little girl with a
bouquet of flowers in one hand and a love letter in the other.
According to Texas Hill
Country, the story goes that in 1887, U.S. Senator Temple Lea
Houston’s four-year-old daughter Samantha tragically died at the Driskill
Hotel. The young girl had been chasing after a runaway ball when she tripped
and fell down the Driskill Hotel’s staircase.
She
reportedly looked similar to the girl depicted in the Love Letters painting,
leading paranormal enthusiasts to believe that her spirit now inhabits the
painting.
Guests who visit the Driskill Hotel have claimed that they witnessed the
girl’s expression change when they stare at the painting, or feeling as though
the girl’s eyes were watching them move. Some have also reported feeling ill
when looking at the painting, or experiencing the strange sensation of being
lifted off their feet.
Of course, the girl in the painting is not Samantha Houston, and given
that the artwork is a modern recreation of an older piece, it wasn’t actually
around during Samantha Houston’s time.
It should be
noted, however, that in 2016, rights were acquired to make a film based on the
story of the painting — and without anyone else to verify Robinson’s claims
about the painting’s origins and purported curse, it’s likely that this story
is purely fictional.
4-
The Crying Boy, The UK’s Most Haunted Painting
In the 1950s, artist Giovani Bragolin created a series of paintings depicting
young, teary-eyed children. For some reason, mass-produced prints of these
paintings proved to be incredibly successful all over the world — more than
50,000 copies of the paintings were sold in the UK alone.
One painting in particular, known as The Crying Boy, seemed
to be followed by tragedy. In 1985, The Sun published an
article called “Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy.” It detailed the experience of
May and Ron Hall, whose home in Rotherham burned down. The cause of the fire
was a chip pan that overheated and burst into flames, destroying nearly
everything on the ground floor — except for a print of The Crying Boy.
The Halls claimed it was not a chip pan that had started the fire, but The
Crying Boy himself.
Normally,
such a claim would have been a one-and-done occurrence for The Sun,
who frequently published tabloid news stories. In this case, though, one
firefighter said that he had been at the scene of 15 different home fires where
everything was destroyed. In each instance, the only thing that remained was a
print of The Crying Boy.
The Sun soon
published a series of articles reporting on this strange phenomenon. They
claimed that a home in Surrey had burned down six months after the owner
purchased a copy of The Crying Boy; a pizza restaurant in Norfolk
was destroyed by a fire, leaving only a copy of the painting; and that a woman
on the Isle of Wight had unsuccessfully attempted to burn her copy of The
Crying Boy, after which she was plagued with terrible misfortune.
Bragolin was known to paint children from poor circumstances, so
countless theories surfaced that attempted to explain why, exactly, The
Crying Boy was cursed. Some claimed the boy had died in a fire, and
now his spirit was trapped within the painting.
Whatever the truth may have been, The Sun certainly riled up
the public’s fear around the painting, and on Halloween 1985, the newspaper
gathered hundreds of copies of the painting and set them on fire.
5- The
Stagecraft, An
Allegedly Haunted Painting Based On A Photograph
In 1994, commercial photographer James Kidd and an oil painter identified only
as Laura P. each displayed their works at a gallery in Tombstone, Arizona.
There, Kidd displayed a photograph he had taken at an old stagecoach stop in
Tombstone — a double-exposure shot that bizarrely featured a figure on the
left-hand side, seemingly lacking a head.
Laura was so fascinated by the photograph that she
asked Kidd if she could do an oil painting of it. But as she was working on the
painting, Laura began to have a strange feeling that she should not have
started at all. Suddenly, odd things began to happen around her.
“I do not believe in ghosts,” she wrote for LiveAbout, “but I cannot for the life
of me explain how or why these strange things have happened. I cannot attribute
every one of these events directly to the painting, but they have all taken
place since it has been in my house — and are totally unexplained.”
It began innocuously enough. Laura framed the painting and hung it in an office
at a business location, but no matter how often the office workers straightened
the painting, it would always be crooked the next morning.
Laura took the painting back, and she and her husband
moved into a new home in 1995. When it rained, the roof of their garage would
leak, and even though the roofers came to look at it three separate times, they
could find no explanation as to why it was leaking.
That’s when Laura’s husband realized The
Stagecraft had been leaning against the wall between the living room
and the garage. Once they moved the painting, the leaking stopped.
Things started to ramp up, though. Objects began
flying off the wall. Even people who simply looked at photographs of the
painting began to experience strange things in their homes. When Laura’s
neighbor borrowed the painting, he swore he saw a white, hazy figure creeping
around the corners of his home.
“I still don’t actually believe in ghosts,” Laura concluded. “Yet if I had it
to do over, I would not have created this painting.”
6-
The Rain Woman, The Painting That Haunts
Your Dreams
Created in 1996 by Ukrainian artist Svetlana Telets, The Rain Woman is
a fairly straightforward piece. It depicts, as the title suggests, a woman
standing in the rain. Her features are distorted and elongated. She is dressed
all in black and wears a large, wide-brimmed hat that extends to the edges of
the frame.
It certainly has an eerie feeling to it, but it’s the
alleged lingering effects on its owners that have led people to believe this
painting may be cursed.
According to The Ghost In My Machine, there are
certain people who, upon seeing The Rain Woman, feel a compulsion
to purchase the painting. Those who bring the painting into their home soon
begin to experience a litany of things, including insomnia, nightmares,
misfortune, and the feeling of constantly being watched. In rare circumstances,
owners of The Rain Woman have reported seeing or hearing
someone moving about their home.
Telets herself claimed to have a strange experience with the painting. Six
months before she began the painting, she told a local newspaper that she
“always felt that someone was constantly watching me.” When she began work on
the painting, she said she felt as if someone else were behind it, merely using
her as a tool.
In total, she said it only took her “about five
hours” to complete most of the work and that “it seemed like someone else was
controlling my hand.”
The first buyer returned the painting to Telets,
saying she could not sleep and felt like someone was in the apartment with her.
The second buyer returned the painting as well, saying that the woman in the
painting plagued his dreams.
“Every night, she appears and follows me like a
shadow,” he said.
It was purchased in 2008 by Sergei Skachko from the band Zemlayne, who held
onto it for a few years. However, his wife later got rid of the painting, as
she said the two began to argue more after it came into their possession.
7-
Death And The Child, A Chilling Creation By A
Tortured Artist
Edvard Munch is perhaps best known for his famous piece The Scream,
but it is another one of his works that many people believe to be haunted. This
piece, Death and the Child, depicts the tragic moment in which a
young girl discovers her mother dead in a bed.
Some have claimed that the eyes of the child follow
them as they move about the room. This, however, can be attributed to a fairly
common painting technique. In truth, much of the reason why many consider this
painting to be haunted is due to the tragic circumstances of its painter.
As Kunsthalle Bremen wrote for Google Arts & Culture, Edvard Munch had to grapple with
death from a very young age. His mother passed away when he was just six years
old, and his sister died a few years later. When his father died in 1889, Munch
fell into a deep personal crisis.
Near the end of his life, he wrote of his childhood: “My home was the home of
illness and death. I have never gotten over the calamity there. It has also
influenced my art.”
The themes of death and grief are pervasive
throughout Munch’s work, but Death and the Child is widely
regarded to be one of his most searing portrayals of grief. The painting
focuses solely on the young girl’s pain — and perhaps, for some viewers, it is
simply too much to handle.
8-
Man Proposes, God Disposes, The Painting Inspired By The
Lost Franklin Expedition
Just two decades after Sir John Franklin’s expedition was lost on its way to
the Northwest Passage, artist Edwin Landseer unveiled his painting Man
Proposes, God Disposes, which depicts the aftermath of the lost Franklin Expedition as two polar bears tear into the
crew’s remains.
Today, the painting is on display at Royal Holloway
University of London, where there is a tradition of covering the painting
during exams. According to the BBC, many students believe that looking at the painting during
exams will cause them to fail — or possibly even drive them mad.
The superstitious practice came about due to an urban
legend that claimed that in the 1970s, a student who viewed the painting felt
compelled to die by suicide during her exam. Supposedly, after staring into the
polar bears’ eyes, the student fell into a trance-like state of madness and
etched onto her paper, “The polar bears made me do it.”
This, of course, never happened, but the urban legend spread and eventually led
to the ritual of covering the painting during exams. Given that the painting
itself depicts a horribly gruesome historical tragedy — and that it was
completed while Sir Franklin’s wife was still alive — the piece is perfectly
suited to paranormal speculation.
9-
Pogo The Clown, A Self-Portrait By Serial
Killer John Wayne Gacy
If any painting were to be haunted by a malevolent spirit, one created by a
serial killer would fit the bill. John Wayne Gacy was one of the worst serial killers in
American history, known as the “Killer Clown” due to the fact that he performed
as “Pogo the Clown” during the day. At night, however, he prowled the streets
of Chicago and murdered young men.
John Wayne Gacy’s first kill — which had allegedly
been a mistake — gave him a “mind-numbing orgasm” that he described as “the
ultimate thrill.” It began a six-year-long killing spree that left 33 young men
dead, all the while Gacy was presenting himself as an upstanding member of
society, performing at parties and hospitals as “Pogo the Clown.”
Gacy also created a series of paintings, ranging from images of Walt Disney’s
Seven Dwarfs and portraits of Elvis to landscapes and illustrations of Jesus
Christ. But none are as eerily terrifying as Gacy’s self-portrait, Pogo
the Clown, which depicts him in his daytime clown costume.
The paranormally inclined, of course, believe that the spirits of particularly
evil individuals can attach themselves to their belongings. In that case, the Pogo
the Clown painting certainly seems to fit the bill for a potentially
haunted object.
In 2001, musician Nikki Stone purchased Pogo
the Clown for $3,000. Not long after the sale, however, Stone said his
dog died and his mother was diagnosed with cancer — events he believed may have
been connected to Gacy’s chilling painting.
Hoping to rid himself of the supposedly cursed
object, Stone lent the painting to a friend to store it. That friend’s neighbor
would be killed in a car crash soon afterward, and a second friend who offered
to keep the painting attempted suicide.
“I just want to get rid of it,” Stone said of Pogo
the Clown in 2005.
According to a report from Newsweek, the infamous self-portrait
now belongs to Ghost Adventures star and paranormal
investigator Zak Bagans, who owns and operates his own Haunted Museum.
Alongside Gacy’s painting, Bagans owns a number of other items that once
belonged to serial killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer’s glasses, Charles
Manson’s hospital gown — and his bones, along with John Wayne Gacy’s brain.
After reading about these haunted paintings and the
stories behind them, check out these creepy stories that almost seem too disturbing to be
true. Or, explore these 9 haunted houses across America and
the terrifying legends behind them.
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