AnthillMob
Mar 28, 2004, 16:39
sorry, this is rather long but explains the Crying Boy curse. anyone else remember this curse?
The Crying Boy
In 1988, a mysterious explosion destroyed the home of the Amos family in Heswall, England. When firemen sifted through the burnt-out shell of the house, they found a framed picture, entitled 'The Crying Boy', which was a portrait of an angelic-looking boy with a sorrowful expression and a tear rolling down his cheek. But the picture was not even singed by the blaze. Not long afterwards in Bradford, there was another blaze, and again a picture of the crying child was found intact among the smouldering ruins. The head of the Yorkshire Fire Brigade told the national newspapers that pictures of the weird Crying Boy were frequently found intact in the rubble of houses that had been mysteriously burnt to the ground. Journalists asked him if he thought that the picture was evil and could somehow start the fires, but the fire-chief refused to comment.
The reports of the unlucky painting causing fires are still occasionally reported; there was a Crying Boy picture found at a gutted house in Dublin in 1998, but no one as ever found out just who the child is in the supposedly cursed painting. One well-respected researcher into occult matters, a retired schoolmaster from Devon named George Mallory, claimed that to have uncovered the truth in 1995. Mr Mallory claimed he tracked down the artist behind the controversial portrait: an old Spanish postcard artist named Franchot Seville, who lives in Madrid. Seville said the Crying boy was a little street urchin he had found wandering around Madrid in 1969. He never spoke, and had a very sorrowful look in his eyes. Seville painted the boy, and a Catholic priest said the Boy was Don Bonillo, a child who had run away after seeing his parents die in a blaze. The priest told the artist to have nothing to do with the runaway, because wherever he settled, fires of unknown origin would mysteriously break out; the villagers called him 'Diablo' because of this.
Seville ignored the superstitious priest and looked after the boy. The paintings of the little sad orphan made Seville fairly rich, but one day, his studio was mysteriously burned to the ground. Seville was ruined, and he accused the little Don Bonillo of arson. The boy ran off crying, and was never seen again. Then, from all over Europe came the reports of the unlucky Crying Boy paintings causing blazes. Seville was also regarded as a jinx, and no one commissioned him to paint, or would even look at his paintings. In 1976, a car exploded into a fireball on the outskirts of Barcelona after crashing into a wall. The victim was charred beyond recognition, but part of the victim's driving licence in the glove compartment was only partly burned. The name on the licence was one 19-year-old Don Bonillo; could this have been the same Don Bonillo who had been the subject of the Crying Boy painting eight years earlier? We will probably never know, as no friends or relations ever came forward for the body.
If you go to google.co.uk and do a search with the words "Crying Boy" take a look at what it throws up, an interesting read!
also found this...
Something very bizarre surfaced in London in 1985. The "Sun" newspaper-which has a fondness for the absurd-ran a story about Peter Hall, a Yorkshire fireman who was disturbed by the fact that his brigade had been called to a number of domestic blazes in which the entire contents of a series of houses had been destroyed; everything, that is, except a single painting which hung undamaged on a wall. It was not necessarily the same painting, but of a kind always depicting a tearful child-one of a series which portray a boy. Somewhere between two and five years of age, with tears welling up in his unnaturally large and limpid eyes. The kids are not in any obvious pain, but are wistfully, sadly, attractively unhappy in ways calculated to make you either melt or vomit, depending on your taste. They are available in any colour or complexion and have become very successful commercial icons throughout Europe; but there is not a fireman in Yorkshire who will allow one into his home.
With good reason it seems. The newspaper was besieged with calls in response to the story. Dora Mann of Mitcham said: "Only six months after I had bought the picture, my house was completely gutted by fire. All my paintings were destroyed, except the one of the crying boy." Sandra Craske of Kilburn reported that she, her sister-in-law and a friend had all suffered from fires since buying the picture. And Linda Fleming of Leeds and Jane McCutcheon of Nottingham had similar tales to tell. This was on 4 Spetember 1985. Five days later Brian Parks of Boughton destroyed his undamaged copy of "The Crying Boy" after fire put his wife and two children in Hospital. And on 9 October, Grace Murray was admitted to Stoke Mandeville hospital with severe burns after a fire in her Oxford home which left her painting "almost undamaged". On 21 October the Pavillo Palace in Great Yarmouth was consumed by fire, all, of course, except for its copy of the tear-jerking child. Three days later Kevin Godber of Herringthorpe watched his home go up in flames. The painted boy survived, but pictures on either side of it on the same wall were destroyed.And the day after that, the Amos home on Merseyside was destroyed by an explosion which left two "crying boys" intact, one in the living room, one in the dining room. Mr Amos took pleasure in destroying these himself. At the end of that eventful month The "Sun" announced that it was inviting readers to send in their copies of the pyromaniacal painting for mass burning. Thousands did and the supervising fire officer observed that they all burned beautifully: "We listened for muffled cries, but all we heard was the crackle of burning paint."
But that was not the end of the story. Soon after the Suns big bonfire the newspaper found itself embroiled in strike, production turmoil and violent mass picketing at its new plant. William Armitage of Weston-super-Mare was burned to death in his home, where a copy of "The Crying Boy" was found intact, lying on the floor beside his body. One fireman at the scene said: "We have all heard of this jinx, but when you actually come across the picture in a gutted room, it is most odd."
It certainly is. To me the most interesting feature of the story is that it involves paintings which happen to be portraits. Human likenesses. You never hear of jinxed landscapes or haunted copies of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers". The stories, the folkloric elements, are always firmly atached to representations of people. Oscar Wilde mirrored such concerns in "The Picture of Dorian Gray", which did it's owners aging for him, safe in the seclusion of the attic. There are reports of painted images which have actually changed, including a Greek orthodox icon of the Madonna which suddenly grew a third arm. It accomplished this in full view of the congregation in Madaba, Jordan in 1978. The whole thing is absurd until you know that in Orthodox iconography, such portrayal has symbolism which is clearly understood. It means "something out of the ordinary, something universal".
I do not believe such thing are coincidental. They are incidents with an axe to grind. They tend, if one looks carefully enough, to be deeply rooted in culture and belief. I am certain it is no accident that all the children in the "Crying Boy" have preternaturally large eyes. These send the sort of signals ethologists classify as 'supernormal stimuli', playing on the fact that our first responses as infants are directed to the eyes of adults around us. Eyes remain vital social signals for us all, and we share the comon experience of having been at some time in a room with a portrait whose eyes "seem to follow you wherever you go".......
The Crying Boy
In 1988, a mysterious explosion destroyed the home of the Amos family in Heswall, England. When firemen sifted through the burnt-out shell of the house, they found a framed picture, entitled 'The Crying Boy', which was a portrait of an angelic-looking boy with a sorrowful expression and a tear rolling down his cheek. But the picture was not even singed by the blaze. Not long afterwards in Bradford, there was another blaze, and again a picture of the crying child was found intact among the smouldering ruins. The head of the Yorkshire Fire Brigade told the national newspapers that pictures of the weird Crying Boy were frequently found intact in the rubble of houses that had been mysteriously burnt to the ground. Journalists asked him if he thought that the picture was evil and could somehow start the fires, but the fire-chief refused to comment.
The reports of the unlucky painting causing fires are still occasionally reported; there was a Crying Boy picture found at a gutted house in Dublin in 1998, but no one as ever found out just who the child is in the supposedly cursed painting. One well-respected researcher into occult matters, a retired schoolmaster from Devon named George Mallory, claimed that to have uncovered the truth in 1995. Mr Mallory claimed he tracked down the artist behind the controversial portrait: an old Spanish postcard artist named Franchot Seville, who lives in Madrid. Seville said the Crying boy was a little street urchin he had found wandering around Madrid in 1969. He never spoke, and had a very sorrowful look in his eyes. Seville painted the boy, and a Catholic priest said the Boy was Don Bonillo, a child who had run away after seeing his parents die in a blaze. The priest told the artist to have nothing to do with the runaway, because wherever he settled, fires of unknown origin would mysteriously break out; the villagers called him 'Diablo' because of this.
Seville ignored the superstitious priest and looked after the boy. The paintings of the little sad orphan made Seville fairly rich, but one day, his studio was mysteriously burned to the ground. Seville was ruined, and he accused the little Don Bonillo of arson. The boy ran off crying, and was never seen again. Then, from all over Europe came the reports of the unlucky Crying Boy paintings causing blazes. Seville was also regarded as a jinx, and no one commissioned him to paint, or would even look at his paintings. In 1976, a car exploded into a fireball on the outskirts of Barcelona after crashing into a wall. The victim was charred beyond recognition, but part of the victim's driving licence in the glove compartment was only partly burned. The name on the licence was one 19-year-old Don Bonillo; could this have been the same Don Bonillo who had been the subject of the Crying Boy painting eight years earlier? We will probably never know, as no friends or relations ever came forward for the body.
If you go to google.co.uk and do a search with the words "Crying Boy" take a look at what it throws up, an interesting read!
also found this...
Something very bizarre surfaced in London in 1985. The "Sun" newspaper-which has a fondness for the absurd-ran a story about Peter Hall, a Yorkshire fireman who was disturbed by the fact that his brigade had been called to a number of domestic blazes in which the entire contents of a series of houses had been destroyed; everything, that is, except a single painting which hung undamaged on a wall. It was not necessarily the same painting, but of a kind always depicting a tearful child-one of a series which portray a boy. Somewhere between two and five years of age, with tears welling up in his unnaturally large and limpid eyes. The kids are not in any obvious pain, but are wistfully, sadly, attractively unhappy in ways calculated to make you either melt or vomit, depending on your taste. They are available in any colour or complexion and have become very successful commercial icons throughout Europe; but there is not a fireman in Yorkshire who will allow one into his home.
With good reason it seems. The newspaper was besieged with calls in response to the story. Dora Mann of Mitcham said: "Only six months after I had bought the picture, my house was completely gutted by fire. All my paintings were destroyed, except the one of the crying boy." Sandra Craske of Kilburn reported that she, her sister-in-law and a friend had all suffered from fires since buying the picture. And Linda Fleming of Leeds and Jane McCutcheon of Nottingham had similar tales to tell. This was on 4 Spetember 1985. Five days later Brian Parks of Boughton destroyed his undamaged copy of "The Crying Boy" after fire put his wife and two children in Hospital. And on 9 October, Grace Murray was admitted to Stoke Mandeville hospital with severe burns after a fire in her Oxford home which left her painting "almost undamaged". On 21 October the Pavillo Palace in Great Yarmouth was consumed by fire, all, of course, except for its copy of the tear-jerking child. Three days later Kevin Godber of Herringthorpe watched his home go up in flames. The painted boy survived, but pictures on either side of it on the same wall were destroyed.And the day after that, the Amos home on Merseyside was destroyed by an explosion which left two "crying boys" intact, one in the living room, one in the dining room. Mr Amos took pleasure in destroying these himself. At the end of that eventful month The "Sun" announced that it was inviting readers to send in their copies of the pyromaniacal painting for mass burning. Thousands did and the supervising fire officer observed that they all burned beautifully: "We listened for muffled cries, but all we heard was the crackle of burning paint."
But that was not the end of the story. Soon after the Suns big bonfire the newspaper found itself embroiled in strike, production turmoil and violent mass picketing at its new plant. William Armitage of Weston-super-Mare was burned to death in his home, where a copy of "The Crying Boy" was found intact, lying on the floor beside his body. One fireman at the scene said: "We have all heard of this jinx, but when you actually come across the picture in a gutted room, it is most odd."
It certainly is. To me the most interesting feature of the story is that it involves paintings which happen to be portraits. Human likenesses. You never hear of jinxed landscapes or haunted copies of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers". The stories, the folkloric elements, are always firmly atached to representations of people. Oscar Wilde mirrored such concerns in "The Picture of Dorian Gray", which did it's owners aging for him, safe in the seclusion of the attic. There are reports of painted images which have actually changed, including a Greek orthodox icon of the Madonna which suddenly grew a third arm. It accomplished this in full view of the congregation in Madaba, Jordan in 1978. The whole thing is absurd until you know that in Orthodox iconography, such portrayal has symbolism which is clearly understood. It means "something out of the ordinary, something universal".
I do not believe such thing are coincidental. They are incidents with an axe to grind. They tend, if one looks carefully enough, to be deeply rooted in culture and belief. I am certain it is no accident that all the children in the "Crying Boy" have preternaturally large eyes. These send the sort of signals ethologists classify as 'supernormal stimuli', playing on the fact that our first responses as infants are directed to the eyes of adults around us. Eyes remain vital social signals for us all, and we share the comon experience of having been at some time in a room with a portrait whose eyes "seem to follow you wherever you go".......