Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
Hey, Happy New Year to you all. When I was a young child, my parents had a painting of a faceless man, I think he was holding a sword. It really frightened me and when I was a teenager I came across it again in a cabinet and nearly jumped out of my skin. It still gave me the shivers. I have never seen it since thankfully.
Hey, Happy New Year to you all. When I was a young child, my parents had a painting of a faceless man, I think he was holding a sword. It really frightened me and when I was a teenager I came across it again in a cabinet and nearly jumped out of my skin. It still gave me the shivers. I have never seen it since thankfully.
Many years ago while watching ‘This morning’ (back in the Richard and Judy days) a woman phoned to say that whilest having finished the first man in a painting of three men, she had a phonecall to say a family member had died. Sometime later, she took up the picture again and upon completion of the second man, another phonecall to say someone had died. She said she was too scared to paint the third man.
My friend also told me that her sister bought a print of ‘The Crying Boy’ painting which is believed to be haunted, and they had a run of bad luck afterwards. Eventually they tried to set fire to the print in the garden but it wouldn’t catch so her dad poured parafin on it.
I’m not saying any of these paintings are haunted or cursed but I wonder if any of you have had or heard of any experiences with paintings that people believe may be responsible for unfortunate events or even the opposite. I would be interested to hear your experiences.
Thanks………….Nicky
Re: Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
Hi Nicky, I’ve been trying to remember where I came across a story of a haunted painting in Ireland. It is the only one that springs to mind and as soon as I find the reference again I will let you know.
Re: Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
My mother owns two small oil paintings from the XVIII century, one representing a young man with a hat and the other a woman in a black dress sitting in a chair.
She is adamant they should always be kept together because if they are separated great misfortune will follow. As much as I believe curses to be nothing more than coincidences and the human mind playing tricks I can assure you bad things did happen when she tried separating them many years ago… I have a scientific education but I would never dare separating them, just in case. I am not ashamed to say that.
If I remember correctly it was the nobleman who sold her the two as part of a lot who told her never to separate the pair. I am sure there’s an interesting story behind but right now I cannot remember it.
Re: Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
That’s interesting Mauro. Who was the artist of the two paintings? Do you know anything about him/her?
Re: Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
The anthropomorphic Jester painting.
In the early 1980’s I acquired a painting of a jester figure. The figure was anthropomorphic, of a furry mammal faced figure dressed in a striped jesters’s suit and hat. The dressed up animal figure was carrying a musical instrument and was seated on a stool. When my daughter was aged four, I thought that the picture would be better suited to a child’s nursery. The painting was removed from the hallway and hung on my daughter’s bedroom wall.
Shortly after that, my daughter had recurrent bad nightmares and awoke in a distressed stated screaming. For some days she would not reveal what was distressing her, but requested that her best friend at the time, Basil our large cat should be allowed to be in her bedroom at night.
Reluctantly we allowed ‘Basil’ to stay in a corner of her room tucked in his own ‘cat bed’ to see if it stopped her recurrent nightmares. It did the trick and the nightmares ceased.
After some weeks my daughter confided that the cause of her bad dreams was the ‘scary man in the painting’ The painting of the jester figure was removed, Basil the cat was turfed out of the house at nights once again, and all was well. In fact my wife and me had completely forgotten all about my daughter’s great discomfort with the picture of the anthropomorphic ‘jester’ figure until some years later.
My wife had borrowed some video films and although I am not a film fan, I sat down to watch a routine B-movie Drew Barrymore film called ‘Cats Eyes’ made circa 1985. The film is a Stephen King horror trilogy. In one of the stories a child is troubled by an evil furry-faced troll-like creature that appears from the skirting board in a child’s bedroom. My heart missed a beat and my wife recoiled in shock when the troll appeared in the film . It was seen to be wearing a jester’s suit, of stripes, a hat with bells, having a rodent-like furry head, in fact an identical figure to that of our jester painting that I had hanging on the wall, apart from the film version which had an evil grin. Oddly the girl in the film is saved by the presence of her pet cat who was in her bedroom
The creepy jester painting was removed and put in the garage out of the way and my wife and me attempted to try to rationalise the odd set of coincidences we had experienced. Firstly the painting had been acquired years before ‘Cats Eyes’ was made or released. The painting was not a film poster. We only saw the film ‘Cats Eyes’ some years after it had been released and years after our daughter had been ‘spooked’ by the figure in the painting on her bedroom wall. The furry faced rodent that was portrayed as a jester in the painting carrying a musical instrument, had the same coloured and striped suit on, as the ‘bedroom troll’ in Cats Eyes, even the same typical? standard? jester hat design.
It was set of coincidences that remains etched on our memories some decades years later.
Re: Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
Wow, that is really creepy. Did you get rid of the painting or is it still stored away somewhere? Do you know who painted it? I wonder who had the painting before you and if anything strange happened to them.
Thanks for your reply, both yours and Mauro’s accounts have given me the shivers 🙂
Re: Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
It’s fictional, but maybe you’ll want to read "Fever Dream" by D.Preston&L.Child. A good portion of the story plays with the idea of a painting…
In the same line, try Dorian Grey’s…
Re: Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
My aunt had a weeping boy picture which was promptly thrown on a bonfire after the stories of it being cursed came out.
The creepy thing was it’s eyes burnt first.
Theres an interesting article here about The crying Boy pictures:
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/1308/the_curse_of_the_crying_boy.html
Re: Haunted/ cursed or just plain creepy paintings.
Apologies for the two year late reply to your query I kept the ‘Jester’ picture. It has been in storage in the UK since 1994 when I ‘temporarily’ moved overseas for employment reasons. In ‘arabia felix’, time passes quickly.
I had not been aware of a ‘signature’ on the painting, but that is only because I had never looked for one. I am due to retire in a few years and retrieving that work of art from its storage box is something to look forward to?…. Or not?