Something About the Painting

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
What happens when you're a kid, and your parents are the ones that bring home an object that opens the door to something sinister?

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Memento Mori, 1610-1612 Roelant Savery, the actual painting this person is describing cannot be found

This story is allegedly true as told by the person that experienced it:

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This story entails a painting that my mother brought home from an auction when I was about 8. My parents imported and exported antiques and fine wines for many years.

My mother Natasha is Russian born but grew up in the USA from the age of 3, and always had the love of anything old and unusual when it came to furniture and artworks. Something that seems to have rubbed off on me a little.

My parents would regularly go to auctions and estate sales and liked to purchase interesting pieces for their business. It was rare that anything purchased at these sales ever made it home to become part of our house, unless it was out of the ordinary or my parents liked it too much to part with it.

My childhood home looked like a cross between a madman's idea of a yard sale and an antiques market belonging to an insane hoarder. But it made for good fun and interesting conversation. And many a good fort.

None of the furniture or artworks had previously bothered me as far as I can remember, until my mother purchased a painting by an unknown artist (it's never been signed and research has never uncovered who painted it or who the subject actually is). All we knew is that the family who put it in the auction bought the home they had found it in, and didn't like the painting or several pieces of furniture that the last owners had left behind. So off to the sales they went. It was a rather large lot of over 50 items. My mother purchased the painting and a sideboard full of silverware and plates of varying ages locked inside (we got them open after we got it home. It was strange as my mother had been told it was empty. Not so much as it turned out.).

The painting is of a women of about 30 years old (maybe older but it's hard to tell) wearing a long blue-grey gown standing in a veranda of an old house. Next to her is a table with a tea set and kettle and what looks like some cake or sandwiches on a plate. There are some flowers and a chair and part of a window. Whoever did the painting had a lot of talent as the detail is incredible. It was probably painted around 1900-1910, judging by the fashion she's wearing.

My mother brought it home and we hung it in the hallway next to my parent's bedroom between the main bathroom and a little room my dad used to do his paperwork in.

I felt very strange around the painting from the first day it was hanging up. The hallway in summer was comfortable and not too warm but after the painting was hung up the area around the painting turned almost ice cold. Passing the painting I'd get goose bumps on whatever exposed skin I had.

I also started feeling like the lady in the painting was watching me. My twin sisters started saying that they didn't like looking at the painting as it made them feel uncomfortable, and like they weren't meant to be around it. My baby brother would walk on the other side of the hallway to it. And when asked why, he said he didn't like the lady and that he was cold when he looked at her (he was 5 at the time nearly 6).

Soon it went past just feelings in the hallway. At night we'd start hearing whispers that hadn't been there previously. Our house already had its share of spooky behavior we had gotten used to, but this was new.

Movement of a flash of blue-grey like the dress out of the corner of your eye. A strange touch occasionally in the hallway when no one else was around. This may sound like something from Tales From the Crypt but I assure you this isn't something I saw on TV. I only wished sometimes it was.

After my father (6'5", 350 pounds of him) got a cold hand run up his back when he was in the shower, was when any real notice of what we all had said to our parents got attention. Since we were use to other ghosts in the house, we at first thought oh it's just another spirit making itself known to us as its new here.

But then things got bad. Fast!
- My baby brother (let's call him Adam) was tripped on the stairs and pushed by a cold hand when he tried to get up again.
- The big fern we had in the hall next to the painting suddenly started dying. It was over 20 years old and had no previous problems. When we moved it away from the painting it went back to being fine. It's still alive today, but one side of it looks a little mangled (the side facing the painting never was the same. The branches grew back weird like something had infected them. It was checked out and tested by plant specialist and they couldn't find anything wrong with the old plant).
- Our dogs Frankie and Dex (both terrier mixes) wouldn't go past the painting without whining or growling at it. They were normally very placid and gentle dogs. Our aunt's dog Lula (a poodle) had to be carried past it when we used to babysit her; she wouldn't walk past it or even look at it.
- Our cats tried to claw at it one time when it fell off its hook onto the ground. Our normally placid Maine coon cats Sally and Meg both went nuts trying to scratch it until we took it away.
- It started coming off the hook every night and sat against the wall upright every morning when no one touched it.

My mother a very spiritual person who put up with our friendly spirits in the house with a grain of salt as they didn't bother her, decided that this painting had to go and something was wrong with it. To which we all agreed.

So off to the auctions it went. Several times. My mother who knew the buyers found out they only kept it a month (they too heard whispers and their cat also attacked the painting) and gave it to a neighbor who liked it. The neighbor sold it, after her dog freaked out around it.

It kept getting sold on or auctioned or given away until 2014, when a man who collected art in Florida bought the painting and did not know of its history. Having again tried to research it's past. He only found out it was possibly a painting of an artist's wife who died young. I don't know if it's true of not. There is no real record of the artwork anywhere and it's not signed. The man who owned it last I heard keeps it in his basement, as it frightened his grandchildren. He says he won't sell it on, and keeps it locked up. I think too he knows something isn't right with it. I'm worried as he's old; what's going to happen when he dies?

This painting I think isn't safe. Either a ghost is in it or attached to it, and it's not friendly. It really should be destroyed.

I know it probably sounds like a made up story for kids. And a adult man like myself shouldn't be weary of an old oil painting of someone unknown. This painting is dangerous.

People see different and sometimes terrifying images in this painting

Many strange paintings are of the most innocuous subjects. At first glance there is nothing sinister about them, it's only after you study it, that certain things become terrible and all you want to do is run away from it.

Psychic Philip Solomon  owns a portrait with a history of bad luck to its previous owners.

The origins started 30 years before when a friend of Solomon's bought it from a shop in Horseley Fields, Wolverhampton.

He described it this way:

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From the moment she got it home, my friend had problems with the painting. It kept falling off the wall of its own accord and terrifying her children who said people came out of the painting. She asked me if I would take it off her hands which I did. But, I have to be honest, it even unnerved me. I quickly sold it on to a lady who had a bric-a-brac shop on Walsall Road, WIllenhall. But she had big problems with it, too. It scared people and some even fainted after looking at it. Dogs also hate it. Once more, it came back to me free of charge.

It was sold to other owners, even being sent to America, however it did return to Willenhall.

Solomon explained how the painting was still frightening:

"I let a family member have it who actually like it. A month later it was returned to me with the comment 'strange things are happening'. I though the best thing to do was just keep it in my garden shed, wrapped and covered. My dog hated it, immediately growling and barking at it. Staff at the Robin said they were really scared by it. I put it on my Facebook page and from all quarters we had reports of the same visions that were seen in the past."

Now the question remains—who originally painted the picture, which might explain why it's so terrifying.