INEngland once found a painting called "The Crying Boy", copies of which became very popular. Later, all copies of the painting were burned by the British.
The picture turned out to be not simple or even "cursed", in the houses where there was a copy of it, there were fires. There were so many fires that it was hardly a mere coincidence - everything burned down except for this picture ...
The artist and author of the painting, the Spanish artist Giovanni Bragolin (also known as Bruno Amadio), the father of the child depicted on it, mocked his son by lighting matches in front of the baby's face.
The fact is that the boy was afraid of fire to death, and the man, thus, tried to achieve the brightness, vitality and naturalness of the canvas. The boy was crying - the artist was painting. Once the kid shouted at his father: "You yourself burn!". A month later, the child died of pneumonia. And a couple of weeks later, the charred body of the artist was found in his own house next to a painting of a crying boy that survived the fire.
The picture came to the owners of one of the printing houses, who, having not found the copyright holder and after doing a little marketing, found out that they could make a good business on it. And indeed, copies of "Crying Boy" began to disperse like hot cakes. Unfortunately, the consequences of such a business have become no less “hot”.
The famous English specialist in the field of paranormal phenomena, Richard Lazarus, who was "in the thick of things", conducted his own investigation on this matter.
After a series of unexplained fires in several homes in Britain, it was discovered that every room that started a fire had a reproduction of a painting depicting a crying boy. This detail, perhaps, would have gone unnoticed if not for one circumstance: in all cases, without exception, the picture remained unharmed, while all other things burned down.
The phenomenon became known to the public in early September 1985, when Yorkshire firefighter Peter Hall went to the press with a story that fire brigades in the north of England had experienced repeated fires over the past summer that destroyed everything in the building except for a cheap reproduction. pictures of a crying boy. The causes of the fires in these cases remained undisclosed.
Hall talked about this miracle after his own brother Ron, not believing the story, bought a reproduction and hung it in his room to prove it was all fiction, and returned from work the next day to find that his house was almost completely burned down. Seeing how the completely undamaged painting of the Crying Boy was taken out of the ruins of a burnt house, Ron Hall began to cry himself.
After this interview, a huge number of letters rained down on the editorial office of the newspaper, in which victims of the fires wrote about a picture of a crying boy lying unharmed in the ruins of their burnt houses.
Dora Brand of Mitcham, Surrey, saw her house reduced to ashes six weeks after she bought the painting, and although she had over a hundred others, this one survived.
Sandra Kraske from Kilburn reported that she, her sister, mother and their friend all got burned after each had a matching copy. Other reports came from Leeds, Nottingham, Oxfordshire, and the Isle of Wight. On the twenty-first of October, Parillo Pizza Palace, at Great Yartmouth, Norfolk, was burned to the ground, though The Boy remained in excellent condition. Three days later the Godbers of Herrinthorpe, in South Yorkshire, also lost their home; in the fire, the reproduction that hung in their living room remained intact, although all the other paintings burned to the ground.
The next day in Heswople, Merseyside, a couple of paintings that hung in the living room and dining room of the Amos family home survived as the entire building was blown apart by a gas explosion. Barely a day later, there was another report of the Crying Boy fire, this time from the home of former firefighter Fred Thrower of Telford, Shropshire. One newspaper suggested that all the owners of the painting arrange for its mass burning.
While most in Britain thought the whole story was a long running joke, others were less sure. By November, some of the former owners of "The Boy" had acquired nervous illnesses, because it seemed to them all the time that the "spirit" of the picture they had destroyed was now intending to take revenge.
On the twelfth of November, Malcolm Vaughan of Gloucestershire helped his neighbor burn another "Weeping Boy". He returned home to find that the entire living room was already on fire, flaring up inexplicably.
A few weeks later, mysterious flames swept through a house in Weston nad Maroy, County Avon, killing its occupant, sixty-seven-year-old William Armitage, and the case hit the headlines because the painting was found completely intact next to the charred body of an old man. One of the firefighters who tried to put out the fire later said: "I never believed in curses before. But when you see a whole picture in a completely burned room, and it is the only thing that was not damaged, then you understand that it has crossed all boundaries" .
Another of the victims of this painting was the famous art collector Dora Brand, who said that after the fire, from her entire once large and beautiful collection of paintings, only one painting remained - “The Crying Boy”.
After all these cases with the picture, an advertisement appeared in the newspaper, which called on everyone who has a reproduction of this picture to burn it immediately.
This year in Great Britain was the year of mass burning of paintings. Only in this way did the British get rid of this unusual phenomenon, which is still unsolved. By the way, the original of this painting has not yet been found. Many English people still believe that the picture was a curse. And in Northern England it is officially forbidden to have a picture of "The Crying Boy" in your home.
The Crying Boy phenomenon remained unexplained.
In addition, there are other masterpieces of this kind - "Insomnia"
and "Demon Defeated" by Vrubel
, "Water Lilies" by Monet
, "The Adoration of the Magi" by Pieter Brueghel the Elder,
"Troika"Vasily Grigorievich Perov
, "Gioconda" Da Vinci.
.. And of course the magnificent Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez and his Venus with a Mirror.
Curse of the Crying Boy
In the early 1980s, a painting called The Crying Boy was found in England, and copies of it immediately became very popular. But soon the picture was declared cursed - the story about it did not leave the front pages of newspapers throughout the UK in the summer and autumn of 1985.
The incredible fate of the painting is explained as follows: after a series of inexplicable house fires, it was found that the same painting - a cheap reproduction depicting a crying boy - was present in each of the rooms where the fire started. This detail might have been dismissed as an absurd coincidence, if it had not been revealed that in all cases without exception only this painting escaped damage, while everything around it burned to the ground.
The unusual phenomenon became known to the public in the summer of 1985, when Peter Hall, a Yorkshire firefighter, told a newspaper interview that fire brigades across Northern England had found countless copies of this very painting that remained untouched by fire.
Hall let it slip only after his own brother Roy, who did not believe the story, deliberately bought a copy of The Crying Boy to disprove its curse, and shortly thereafter his house in Swallonest, in south Yorkshire, burned to the ground for unclear reasons. Seeing that the painting was lying in complete safety among the charred ruins, Roy Hall hurriedly crushed it with his boot.
Following this publication, a flurry of letters and calls hit the British media from the owners of the Boy, who suffered in the same way. So, Dora Brand from Mitcham, in Surrey, saw how her house turned into ashes 6 weeks after she bought the painting. And although she had more than 100 other canvases, this is what survived. Sandra Kraske of Kilburn reported that she, her sister, mother and their friend were all burned out after each purchased a copy of The Boy.
Information also came from Leeds, Nottingham County, from Oxfordshire and from about. White. On October 21, Parillo Pizza Palace, in Great Yartmouth, Norfolk, burned to ashes, but The Boy remained in excellent condition. Three days later, the Godbers of Herrinthorpe, South Yorkshire also lost their home. During the fire, the reproduction that hung in their living room remained intact, although everything around was completely burned down. The next day in Heswop, Merseyside, a couple of "Boy" paintings that hung in the living room and dining room of the Amos family home survived while the entire building... was blown apart by a gas explosion. The "Boy" then announced itself with another fire at the home of Fred Thrower of Telford, Shropshire.
One of the newspapers immediately suggested that all the owners of the painting arrange for its mass burning. And although most in Britain believed that the whole story was a long-running joke, the former owners of the "Boy" did not agree with this. By November 1985, some of the former owners of The Boy had acquired nervous illnesses from the fact that it always seemed to them that the spirit of the picture they destroyed was going to take revenge on them. And mysterious fires, meanwhile, continued throughout the country. One of the firefighters later admitted: “I never believed in curses before. But when you see a whole picture in a completely burned room, and it is the only thing that was not damaged, then you understand that it has crossed all boundaries. And on the night of November 5, 1985, bonfires blazed all over England, on which residents burned thousands of reproductions of the Crying Boy.
What was it? How can a painting cause a fire that burns everything but itself? The mystics pointed to the poltergeist or evil spirit that lived in the Crying Boy. But why, then, did copies of this painting have the same effect? Here, paranormal researchers suggested that the picture itself, or rather, its image, was the cause. Perhaps the drawing itself contained the key, and it was the image that caused the phenomenon, as a result of which almost everything burned down, except for the painting itself.
In turn, psychics and dowsing experts argued that all works of art retain part of the energy of their creators, and this energy can be both positive and negative. However, this did not explain the terrible phenomenon of the "Boy". According to psychics, paintings can only affect the mood and well-being of people, but not cause fires.
Some researchers of the phenomenon insisted that the artist who painted the picture mistreated the model, and the boy cursed in retaliation. But skeptics, who saw in this story only random coincidences and manifestations of prejudice, rejected such an explanation. And the Crying Boy phenomenon remains unexplained to this day.
"Scream" brings death
Another mystical story is connected with the famous painting by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch "The Scream". It is considered one of the most recognizable in the world of painting and is even called canonical, like Van Gogh's Sunflowers or Malevich's Black Square. 
The painting depicts a hairless suffering creature with a head resembling an inverted pear, with its hands pressed to its ears in horror and with its mouth open in a silent scream. The convulsive waves of this creature's anguish echo through the air around its head. This man (or woman) seems to be trapped in his own scream, and, in order not to hear it, he covered his ears.
A mystical curse is associated with this painting, which, according to art historian and Munch specialist Alexander Prufrock, is confirmed by real stories. Dozens of people who somehow came into contact with the canvas, which is estimated at $ 70 million, were exposed to evil fate: they fell ill, quarreled with loved ones, fell into severe depression or died suddenly. All this created a bad reputation for the picture, and visitors to the museum in Oslo looked at it with apprehension.
But even here there was no escape from her. Once a museum employee accidentally dropped the canvas. After some time, he began to have terrible headaches, although he had not suffered from them before. Migraine attacks became more frequent and stronger: the poor fellow, in the end, could not stand it and committed suicide.
On another occasion, a museum worker dropped the painting when it was being hung from one wall to another. A week later, he was in a horrific car accident, which resulted in broken legs, arms, several ribs, a fractured pelvis, and a severe concussion. And somehow one of the museum visitors decided to touch the picture with his finger, and a few days later a fire broke out in his house, in which he burned alive.
The life of Munch himself, born in 1863, was also a series of endless tragedies and upheavals: illness, death of relatives, insanity, from which he was treated with electric shock. He never married because the thought of sex terrified him. The artist died at the age of 81, leaving a huge creative heritage as a gift to the city of Oslo: 1200 paintings, 4500 sketches and 18 thousand graphic works. But the pinnacle of his work remains "The Scream".
Other works of the artist:
Wave
Self-portrait with a bottle of wine
Melancholy
“People with a weak psyche do not watch!”
No less scandalous is the painting Hands Resist Him by the American Bill Stoneham, painted by him in 1972 from an old photograph, where he was photographed at the age of 5. In relation to this picture, there is even a special recommendation, which reads: "People with a weak psyche do not watch." The scandal surrounding the canvas began after one of the exhibitions where it was exhibited. Mentally unbalanced people who looked through it suddenly became ill - they lost consciousness, began to cry for no reason, convulsed.
And for the first time, the picture was shown to the owner and art critic of the Los Angeles Times, who later died. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe not. The painting was then acquired by actor John Marley (died 1984). Then the fun begins: the picture was unexpectedly discovered in a landfill among a pile of garbage. The spouses who found her brought the canvas home, and already on the first night their little 4-year-old daughter ran into her parents' bedroom screaming that the children depicted in the picture were fighting. The next night, the daughter reported that the children in the painting were outside the door. Then the head of the family put a motion-sensing video camera in the room where the picture hung for the night. To his amazement, the video camera went off several times!
The painting was then put up for auction on eBay. Soon, eBay administrators began receiving emails complaining of worsening health, loss of consciousness, and even heart attacks. The painting was sold for $1,025, with a starting price of $199. It was bought by Kim Smith from a small town near Chicago for his art gallery.
That would have been the end of the story, but letters of complaint now began to arrive at Smith's address. Many of them were, as before, with stories of feeling unwell after watching the picture. But there were also those who wrote about the evil emanating from the canvas, and therefore they demanded that it be burned.
Smith was offered his services by American psychics Ed and Lorraine Warren, who became famous after the exorcism in Amityville House in 1979, but nothing helped. Mediums associate the picture with the well-known in the USA murder of Satillo in the hills of California. The ghosts of the two children, they claim, still haunt the house in the hills. “We saw the boy. He wore a light T-shirt and shorts. His sister was always in the shadows. He seemed to be protecting her. Their names were Tom and Laura, and they, like two drops, look like the children depicted in the picture, ”psychics say.
Evil rock Repin
Mystical evil fate haunts the well-known painting by Ilya Repin "The Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan." This picture was the largest discovery of the late nineteenth century. and is recognized as a masterpiece of world painting. It was called the most optimistic and most cheerful work of Russian painting. Critics wrote: on this canvas there are all varieties of human laughter - from loud laughter to a restrained smile. The work caused a sensation at international exhibitions in Chicago, Budapest, Munich, Stockholm. The painting is still kept in the St. Petersburg State Museum. Repin himself considered it perfect and said: “On this canvas, you can neither remove nor add a stroke ...”
At one time, the picture struck the Russian Emperor Alexander III. He did not hesitate to pay 35,000 rubles for her. It was an unheard-of amount at the time. But then everything turned upside down: the picture was suddenly called cursed. What happened to her?
Repin worked on the masterpiece for over 13 years. The prototypes of the main characters of the picture were ... the artist's friends. If only they knew how it would turn out for them! So, the head of Kiev, Mikhail Dragomirov, who posed in the image of the ataman Sirko, turned from a sweet cheerful person into a drunkard and domestic tyrant. After a quarrel with him, two of his sons committed suicide, and his only daughter went mad.
A brilliant scientist, philanthropist Vasily Tarnovsky (in the picture of Repin - a gloomy Cossack with a settled man) went bankrupt and ended his days in a shelter for the poor. Another hero of the picture, a smiling clerk with glasses, the famous historian Dmitry Yavornitsky, was declared politically unreliable and spent several years in exile in Tashkent. After a series of these misfortunes, the frightened Repin hastily removed from the canvas the figurine of a little Cossack, painted by him from his own son ...
By the way, Repin finished the portraits of the surgeon Pirogov and the composer Mussorgsky literally the day before their death. And Russian Prime Minister Stolypin was shot dead the day after the artist finished work on his portrait. Premature death befell 8 other models of the artist.
Portrait of Pirogov
Portrait of Mussorgsky
What was it - an accident or evil fate that dominated Repin? Alas, the answer to this question remains unanswered.
Prepared by Oleg Lobanov,
The Crying Boy is a painting by the Spanish artist Giovanni Bragolin, also known as Bruno Amadio. A reproduction of this picture is considered cursed by superstitious people, and it causes a fire in those rooms where it is located.
It is no secret to anyone, even the most skeptical person, that there is such a thing as a “curse” in the world. There are many so-called cursed places on the planet. But the curse can also contain items. The reasons why this happens are still unknown. An example of this is the cursed painting "The Crying Boy". Until now, everything connected with this picture instills in people an incomprehensible feeling of anxiety and misunderstanding of what is happening ...
What is it - a cruel curse or the most inexplicable coincidences in history? Everything described below gives reason to believe that the curse that some items contain may still exist. I think that everything that happened with the painting “The Crying Boy” can hardly be called a coincidence ...
Damn picture.
In the middle of 1985 across the UK front-page stories related to the fires and, mysteriously surviving in these unrelated fires, a cheap reproduction of the painting "Crying Boy". A reproduction of this painting was located where the fire started. This could well be explained as an absurd coincidence, but she alone remained unharmed, while everything around was destroyed by fire.
The Crying Boy is a painting by the Spanish artist Giovanni Bragolin, also known as Bruno Amadio. A reproduction of this picture is considered cursed by superstitious people, and it causes a fire in the rooms where it is located.
The artist of this picture, the boy's father, terribly mocked his son. The boy was very afraid of fire, and his father, in order to give the picture brightness and mystery, lit matches in front of his face, thereby making him cry. Unable to bear such bullying, the child shouted to his father: "You burn yourself." The child died of pneumonia a month later, and a couple of weeks later, the charred body of the artist was found in the burnt house next to the only thing that survived the fire - the painting "Crying Boy". Such is the history of this canvas ...
This unusual phenomenon was brought to the fore in early summer, when Yorkshire firefighter Peter Hall, in an interview with a major newspaper, reported that all the fire brigades in Northern England began to find countless reproductions of this painting, which remained untouched by a fire that started for completely incomprehensible reasons. Peter Hall let this fact out in an interview only after his brother, who completely refused to believe in this mythical story, bought a reproduction of The Crying Boy, and thereby decided to refute that this picture was cursed. Shortly thereafter, his house, which was located in the south of Yorkshire, in Swallonest, burned to the ground, for unknown reasons. Seeing that the cursed painting was the only thing that survived the fire, Roy Hall angrily crushed it with his boot.
After the publication of this interview, a British daily newspaper received a huge number of calls and letters from the owners of the reproduction of the painting, who suffered in the same way. The house of Dora Brand, who lives in Mitcham, Surrey, burned to the ground six weeks after she purchased the painting. Although there were more than a hundred other paintings in the house, only one painting survived the fire ...
Sandra Kraske, from Kilburn, recounted how her sister, mother, their friend, and herself were all affected by the fires after they each had a copy of the cursed painting. Similar information also came from the counties of Nottingham, Oxfordshire and the Isle of Wight. On October 21, Parillo Pizza Palace, located in Great Yartmouth, burned to the ground, leaving only the Crying Boy in excellent condition. Three days later, the Godber family, who lived in Herrinthorpe (South Yorkshire), also lost their house in a fire. And only the reproduction of The Boy, which hung in the living room, miraculously survived, although all other paintings burned down.
The next day, in the house that belonged to the Amos family in Heswople, Merseyside, literally torn apart by a gas explosion, only a couple of pictures of the Crying Boy, which hung in the dining room and living room of the house, remained unscathed. A day later, a new message was received, this time the fire occurred in the house of a former firefighter from Telford (Shropshire) Fred Thrower. Only one reproduction survived.
One of the newspapers suggested that all owners of reproductions of the cursed painting organize a mass burning of this painting. By autumn, some of the owners who had destroyed the painting had acquired nervous illnesses. It seemed to them that the damned picture, which they destroyed, now intends to take revenge on them.
Several fire brigades, who were approached for comment on the growing hysteria surrounding the painting, flatly refused to discuss it or participate in any of the mass burnings of the painting that were taking place across the country. Meanwhile, the tragedy continued...
November 12 Malcolm Vaughan, who lives in Gloucestershire, helped his neighbor destroy another "Crying Boy". After he returned home, he saw that the entire living room of his house was on fire, which broke out for some unknown reason. A few weeks later, a house in Weston nad Maroy (Avon) was destroyed by flames, which also killed its occupant, 67-year-old William Armitage. This incident hit the front pages of the newspapers because the cursed painting was found completely intact next to the charred body of the old man. One firefighter who took part in putting out the fire said: “I never believed in a curse before. However, when you have to see a whole picture in a completely burned-out room - the only thing that was not damaged, then you have to understand that this goes beyond all limits.
Since then, in the press, and then on the Internet, the old story periodically comes to life, and in completely different versions. For example, it is argued that, subject to good handling of the reproduction, the “Crying Boy” is able, on the contrary, to bring good luck to its owner. You be the judge...
It all began, probably in September 1985, when the British newspaper The Sun was contacted by the Rotherham couple, Ron and May Hull. The British decided to tell reporters the story that happened to them. According to the couple, their house recently burned down for an unknown reason, but a reproduction of The Crying Boy remained on the black, charred wall, almost untouched by fire. The brother of the head of the family worked as a firefighter and not only confirmed this information, but also noticed that portraits with a red-haired child were also found intact in other burnt houses.
The newspaper staff conducted their own investigation. It turned out that two months earlier, one printing plant had printed more than fifty thousand reproductions of the canvas, which quickly dispersed in the workers of the northern regions of England. The journalists found out that during this time there were more than forty fires in the houses where this picture was hung, and each time the work turned out to be intact, as if the flame deliberately did not touch the portrait.
THE SAME MYSTICAL PICTURE DOES NOT BURN
An article published by The Sun was sensational. After reading it, many Britons began to call the editorial office, claiming that they also purchased this painting, and they also had fires. One man said that he bought a reproduction on purpose and tried to burn it in the fireplace, but the portrait, after lying on fire for an hour, was not even slightly burned. The buzz around The Crying Boy was so great that representatives of the South Yorkshire Fire Department issued an official statement, explaining that there was supposedly no mysticism: they say that there were too many prints printed, and statistically there is nothing unusual in the fact that paintings with a gloomy child sometimes they end up in houses where fires break out.
The owners of The Sun also had to make a statement. Newspapermen reported that they were tired of calls from readers, and agreed that everyone who wanted to send them their copy of the picture. A week later, the editorial office was inundated with thousands of portraits of the Crying Boy. Editor Calvin Mackenzie, who turned out to be a superstitious man, demanded that the paintings be destroyed as soon as possible. Some time later, the newspaper published a new article stating that all copies of the canvas received were burned outside the city. However, many Britons did not believe this, including because the article did not include photographs of the mass burning of paintings.
Almost all fire officials also turned out to be superstitious, to whom the picture began to be presented as a comic gift. People who claimed that there was no connection between the portrait and the fires completely refused such presentations. Some said that the picture would not suit their interior, others claimed that they did not like painting in general, and others did not even name the reasons for their refusal.
Sometimes, the horror of mystical phenomena is caused by strange paintings, as if they were cursed by the brush of the artist himself. In this case, we are talking about the paintings of "crying children" by the artist Bruno Amadio, also known as Giovanni Bragolini.
Bragolini's "Crying Children" paintings illuminated by the Devil
The legend of the damned paintings of this artist should be highlighted, since in those houses where the “crying boy” Bruno Amadio is located, things not only of a mystical nature, but also of an extremely sinister hue, take place.
The owners of the “crying boy” paintings are haunted by all sorts of misfortunes, houses burn down in fires turning all property into ashes, and only paintings are taken out of the fire incorruptible. This is a classic and immortal legend about mysticism and otherworldly forces, where even reproductions from paintings bring horror and fear to their owners.
— By the way, according to firefighters, reproductions survive in the fire, not because they are cursed, or something else, as there is an opinion among the people, they are simply made of hard and non-combustible paper. Cosmic characteristics of the material for paintings, right?
According to a myth from a bygone century, mystical phenomena cover the places where paintings with "crying children" are located, attracting a series of suffering and misfortunes to the inhabitants of the house. But they also say that if you stand in front of the picture with the “crying boy” at exactly midnight, you can
Who was Bruno Amadio?
Despite the terrible curse of the paintings, little is known about the Italian artist Bruno Amadio, although he was initially considered a mediocre artist born in Venice between 1890 and 1900. A faithful admirer of Mussolini's ideas, many say, referring to the artist as bearing a fascist stamp in his heart.
Presumably, during the Second World War, Bruno translated into portrait images the faces of those orphans whose horror from life he met on his way, fantastically capturing fear and sadness, using canvas and paints showing children's tears.One can only assume that during the war, the artist decided to create a collection of paintings called "crying children", postponing in the canvases the image of children's suffering and pain. In particular, a collection of 27 paintings is well known - all of them are marked
The first work of the artist was created with a child from an orphanage as a model. The name of the crying boy is unknown, but this is the first work in a series of cursed paintings - it is believed that the fascist master of colors deliberately “brought” the children to the image he needed. Further, Bruno Amadio changes his stage name, signing his works already as Giovanni Bragolini.
There are references that the artist fought at the front, although it is not known exactly where. After the war, Bruno Amadio settled in Spain, in Seville, where he spent several years of his life, later moving to Madrid, where his trail was finally lost.
- At the same time, some believe that he lived out the years allotted to him along with, although both assumptions may be incorrect.
A great demand for the artist's paintings appeared in Chile, where people bought reproductions in bulk. However, in the 1980s, rumors about the curse of the paintings became so strong that the company, which had been successfully selling copies for many years, stopped producing them - no one wanted to buy the curse of the "crying boy" anymore.
The legend of the cursed "crying boy" paintings.
According to the mystical part of the legend, Bruno Amadio is tired of being an unknown artist, he desperately wants great popularity and world recognition. This obsessive thought painfully devours Bragolini so hot that he turns to the devil's advocate with the sale of the soul. It is not known whether they succeeded or not, but since then his paintings have been known, their popularity has been growing.
It is said that the first painting was painted by the artist in an orphanage that burned down after the work was completed. The flames devoured the building, spitting out ashes. The fire could not destroy only one object - the painting "crying boy".Of course, everything that comes to us from legends is subject to serious doubt, but considering strange cases, we find that this is true. Part of the legend speaks of the appearance of the image of the devil, and there are people who claim that this is absolutely true: if we stand in front of the picture at midnight, we can make our own pact with the devil.
Perhaps the most popular part of this story is the place where the mystical properties of the paintings are told: houses will burn, property will turn to dust, but any of these paintings will remain intact, the flame does not damage Bragolini's works in the least. The inhabitants of the houses suffer bad luck and an endless series of misfortunes, besides, they start all kinds.
Bruno Amadio left 27 paintings of "crying children", after the first work he signed already as Giovanni Bragolini. Did the cursed paintings really reflect the crown pact with the devil, spreading evil to the owners?
Rebecca's story.
Rebecca purchased a couple of "crying boy" paintings from a shop in her area. From the moment the paintings appeared in the house, the fire often began to “visit” the dwelling. And although it was never necessary to call the fire brigade, the situation is alarming, because we are talking about more than thirty small fires in ten years of ownership of the works.
In addition, as Rebecca is surprised, the pots and pans removed from the fire continue to fry or boil food for some more time, as if they were still standing on a live fire. The trouble also affected the store, whose owners went bankrupt after the sale of paintings.
In addition to the rather unpleasant incidents, other strange phenomena are going on in the house. Particularly frightening are those incomprehensible incidents when objects or things disappear without a trace, never to appear again. Once, before going to the shower, the woman left her shirt on the bed - the clothes disappeared without a trace, and when this happened there was no one in the house.
Similar events with things have already happened many times, and the loss has never been found. This is a very old, but still strong house, where other types of phenomena happen: incomprehensible noises and steps are heard from the attic, and this place is completely uninhabited.
The most interesting story of Rebecca and her paintings is that the household members suffering from the curse knew nothing about the legend of the “crying boy” of Bragolini. It was later that the owners of two amusing paintings, having learned the history of the curse, connected the fires and strange phenomena with the works in their home.
The cursed painting emerged from the fire untouched.
Other incidents with Bragolini's "weeping boy/girl" paintings can be considered officially recorded. It must be said right away that there is no rational explanation for these incidents, but in September 1985, the British edition of The Sun reported on property on fire.
The Yorkshire firefighters have indeed encountered some hell when intact copies of the painting are often found among the ruins of burnt houses. According to one of the firefighters - who gave an interview to the newspaper - the houses were attacked by flames due to a safety violation, and the curse of the pictures had nothing to do with it.
At the same time, no one could explain a reasonable explanation why the paintings of “crying children” are taken out from the ashes untouched by fire, only saying that the reproductions are made of hard paper that does not suffer from the effects of fire. Strange explanation, isn't it? But even stranger, no firefighter would keep a copy of the painting in their home, one of the firefighters told the publication.
Over the following months, The Sun and other tabloids published several articles about burnt houses whose owners had Amadio's painting. An incredible thing, but the property turned to ashes, the only thing that survived the fire was the pictures of Bragolini's "crying children"!
The passions around the works became so strong that at the end of November, belief in the curse of the painting spread widely, and the publication organized mass arson of replicas sent by readers - this is how educated people tried to remove
Tom Ballarger - according to him, he bought an original by Giovanni Bragolini at a crazy price, intending to decorate a country house with a novelty. A small old-style estate near Yorkshire has never been a problem.
The Briton received the first “call” about the curse from a room with a fireplace, where, in some unknown way, an ember that escaped into the wild almost destroyed the house. But this time everything worked out. Another trouble was the shorted outlet in the kitchen - apparently old wiring, the owner who did not believe in legends probably thought so.
Some time after the acquisition of the cursed painting, when various incomprehensible things were happening in the house, Ballarger was informed by phone that your house burned down. In a strange way, the picture of the “crying girl” survived in the fire. The firefighters explained that it hung in the corridor, little affected by the fire, although for some reason other paintings were not saved.
To be honest - as they say - the house really didn’t suffer so much. However, the curious thing about this story happened when part of the property was temporarily placed in an outbuilding. Just a week later, the building where the painting was stored burned to the ground. The old wiring turned everything to ashes except for the damned painting - the frame burned down, while the canvas itself, which was rolled up, was practically not damaged.
“Perhaps all this is superstition and absurdity, where in most curses we are faced with the phenomenon of urban legends, when reality and fiction are mixed into one leaven and fed into the market of glib rumors.But in this particular study, we found a lot of testimonies on the Internet, telling about the failures, misfortunes, strange situations that relate to the images of Bragolini. Most of these witnesses associate the “curse of the pictures” with non-needs in the house, although without losing objectivity it should be noted: all situations can be explained by an unfortunate coincidence.
In conclusion, we note that there are no reliable tests capable of destroying the legend about the curse of Amadio's paintings. Perhaps all this is fiction, but the possibility of risk remains ...
The risk that a curse and misfortune is introduced into the house. But as compensation, those who wish can acquire mystical phenomena. And even at midnight to talk to the Devil's lawyers.
