The Curse of the Crying Boy

On September 5, 1985, tabloids got word that similar pictures of a “Crying Boy” were regularly found amidst the ruins of house fires of unknown origin. In numerous instances, The Crying Boy was found intact within the ashy remains. By the end of November, mass bonfires were taking place to eviscerate the various versions of the paintings. Even then, it appeared the pictures didn’t want to burn. Some say the pictures show images of the dead. Is there a darker tale associated with this phenomena?

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Transcript

SHELLY PRUITT
Good evening, everybody, and welcome to Everything Vaguely Paranormal. I'm Shelly Pruitt and my partners in the paranormal, Mr. Blake Smith and Mr. Ryan Roberts. Good evening, gentlemen. How are you? 

BLAKE SMITH
I'm doing pretty good. Just this dad gum time change is killing me. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Oh, man, you and me both, man. I was up until 4 o'clock in the morning the other night, just laying in bed, wide-ass awake after the time change. I'm like, I know I should be asleep right now, but I just cannot go to bed. 

BLAKE SMITH
This flipping time change. 

SHELLY PRUITT
It's messed with all of us. Do you know how upset I was to learn that I lost an hour worth of rewriting time? Oh, my God. 

BLAKE SMITH
I know, you were super upset. 

SHELLY PRUITT
And how in the world did I end up with episode 123? 

RYAN ROBERTS
That is interesting. 

BLAKE SMITH
I don't know. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I guess it had to go to somebody, right? So guys, our topic tonight is over the crying boy and the curse of the crying boy specifically. So have you guys heard anything about the crying boy? Do you know anything about him or about his story? 

RYAN ROBERTS
I know a little bit, but I know that you did a real deep dive into this and you even found out some stuff that you didn't know. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I did. I found some interesting things. 

BLAKE SMITH
I know enough just to get me in trouble. We'll put it that way. But this is a very interesting topic to me. I always love cursed objects. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I do too. 

BLAKE SMITH
Because it really makes you kind of start thinking whenever you start throwing in the stories, the elements of the story. Like, oh, you know, I don't believe in curses. And you're like, wait a minute. Could this be cursed? So yeah, I love me some cursed objects. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Well, then let's get right into talking about the curse of the crying boy. So throughout history, unexpected events have often been interpreted as omens, both good and bad. In daily life, we encounter numerous situations that pique curiosity or might evoke a sense of fear. If the situation is traumatic or ongoing, it might lead one to believe that they might have been cursed. In folklore, a picture falling from a wall is an omen of impending death, particularly if it's a portrait. And this remains one of the most widespread modern superstitions. Now, a skeptic might argue that the picture was poorly mounted or had faulty construction. But those not willing to tempt fate heed the mystical warning of potential danger and misfortune, and at least for that day, are more cautious about their decisions and actions. Perhaps because pictures hold emotional significance, moments frozen in time that you want to remember. Some cultures believe that a picture captures the soul of the subject and trapping part of them forever. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Fear and anxiety continued to surround a series of eerie portraits that literally blazed a trail across England, prompting them to be labeled as cursed. Now, late in the evening in a home in Rotherham, England, the house succumbed to a fire. The living room was charred black. Curtains and furniture were reduced to ashes. The owners of the home, Ronald and May Hall, lost nearly everything in the blaze, except for one item, a painting of a crying boy that hung on their living room wall. The picture had fallen from the wall during the fire, and only the frame was just slightly charred. The picture itself, completely undamaged, not even blackened by smoke. And as the Halls stared at the destruction, the boy in the picture with his tear-stained face and wide eyes stared back at them from the debris. 

SHELLY PRUITT
And the couple became convinced that the painting was cursed and that it was to blame for the destruction of their home. 

BLAKE SMITH
Well, yeah. 

RYAN ROBERTS
So they lost everything else. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Everything else was burned, except for that. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So in 1985, an article in the Sheffield Star newspaper reported that fire. They reported that the fire had burned to the ground. And it might just have been skimmed over or gone relatively unnoticed to readers, but the title of the article grabbed attention. The fire was allegedly caused by a curse. Columnist John Murphy wrote, "Family hit by a curse". The distraught Hall family from Swallownest, believed the curse of the crying boy print has struck their home. Their original home in Paginal Drive, Swallownest, was wrecked by fire, and they are kicking themselves for not following the advice of a fireman relative who had told them to get rid of the framed print of the little boy crying. Ronald Hall's brother, Peter, works at the Erskine Road Fire Station, and he told the family that every house fire he's been called to, there's been the same sad print. When he told us, we just laughed, said 53-year-old May Hall. It's not going back in the house. It's going in the bin. It's a lovely print, but it's got to go. I'm not superstitious, but this makes you wonder, added May. The print was not damaged in the blaze, and May said this was the case with the other prints that had been in fires. Ronald Hall, a 59-year-old redundant miner, said, I want to burn it to make sure it doesn't come back, and if I found out who painted it, then I'll sue him. 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay. 

SHELLY PRUITT
The house suffered extensive smoke and heat damage after a chip pan full of fat started the blaze. The kitchen was completely gutted. The Hall's 25-year-old son, David, was trying to cook chips when the fire started, and the Keaton Park Colliery Theater said, it was very frightening, and I'm upset about the whole thing. David burnt his hands when he tried to put out the fire with a damp towel, but he has not been detained at the hospital, and the Halls are now having to stay with relatives. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So that is the entirety of the story. So now if you don't know what a chip pan is, because I had to look this up, what it is, is it's basically a pot. Okay. That you basically fill with oil and you lower it down and you put your French fries in it, basically. So he had that full of oil, lowered something into it, and it caught on fire. But... Instead of that being blamed, then he tries to put it out with a wet towel. You don't put out grease fires with towels, wet towels especially. You put them out with flour. Or fire extinguishers. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Do not dump water on it. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So he was up in the kitchen with the Fry Daddy. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Exactly. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yeah. 

BLAKE SMITH
And... 

RYAN ROBERTS
...say, this is why we have Fry Daddies. 

BLAKE SMITH
Yeah, right. Exactly. Hey, I love my Fry Daddy. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Man, I went to a wedding one time, and I swear to God, every gift was a Fry Daddy to somebody. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, normally, this would have been the end of the story. but it found its way to Kelvin McKenzie, legendary editor of the Sun newspaper tabloid. And during the mid-1980s, the Sun was engaged in a battle for readers with its fleet street rival, the Daily Mirror. The war was wicked, and both papers were more tabloid than news, like a kind of like a cross between People magazine and the Weekly World News. That was their genre. But both fought for readers with salacious headlines and sometimes outlandish stories, and neither let the accuracy or believability interfere with providing a good story. Uncanny, strange, and supernatural events were served to the public, and they devoured every morsel. 

SHELLY PRUITT
The story of the crying boy arrived at a time when McKenzie was on the lookout for what journalists called a great splash. Now, what a splash meant to McKenzie was that it was an exclusive story that none of his rivals would ever dream of publishing first and that it would ripple out and not only retain readers, but siphon off a few from his competitor. His moment of genius was to spot the potential of the story buried in the routine copy from a regional news agency. And after reading the story, he confidently announced to his staff, this one's got legs. That was his phrase for a story that would run and run and run. 

SHELLY PRUITT
On September 4th of 1985, British residents opened their copies of The Sun to find an astonishing story. That on page 13, a story headlined, "Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy," and it told how Ron and May Hall blamed the cheap painting of a crying toddler for a fire that gutted their terrorist council home in Rotherham, a mining town south of Yorkshire. And according to the story, the blaze broke out in a chip pan in the kitchen at their home of 27 years. And it spread rapidly, destroying the downstairs room of the home. And everything was gone. But the framed print of the crying boy escaped unscathed. And it continued to hang there, undamaged and surrounded by a scene of devastation. 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay, so this is another one. 

SHELLY PRUITT
This is how Kinsey rewrote that story. So this is the same story he found in the local paper. This is how he rewrote it for The Sun. 

RYAN ROBERTS
He punched it up a little bit. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Right. And normally a grease fire would merit nothing more than a couple of paragraphs in a local paper. But what transformed this story into a page lead in Britain's leading tabloid was the intervention of Ronald Hall's brother, fireman Peter Hall, based in Rotherham. Peter Hall stated that he had witnessed many fires in which everything was ruined except for the crying boy painting. The response to this article was overwhelming. And within a day, hundreds of readers had reached out to the newspaper claiming to be jinxed by the painting. On September 5th, the very next day of 1985, a follow-up article was written with the headline, "Curse of the Crying Boy," and it showcased new and terrifying stories that readers claimed to be victims of the curse. And the stories, oh, they were harrowing. They included fires and injuries and deaths. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Some accounts included supernatural occurrences as well. Some readers alleged that they saw the print sway from side to side before settling back against a wall before a fire started. Some claimed that after a fire and they had disposed of the painting, that the painting returned to its original spot in the home. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Deborah...oh yeah... it's like a magical painting.

RYAN ROBERTS
It's like the Christine of paintings. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Exactly. Now, Deborah Mann from Mitchum Surrey claimed that her house was gutted six months after she bought the print. Sandra Kasky of Kilburn, North Yorkshire, claimed she, her sister-in-law, and a friend had all suffered disastrous fires after acquiring copies of the print. Brian Parks of Nottingham blamed the print for a blaze which left he and his family homeless. His wife and three children needed treatment for smoke inhalation at the hospital. He said he had destroyed the copy, but when he returned from the hospital, he found it hanging undamaged on the blackened wall of his living room. 

BLAKE SMITH
Oh, no. See, all this. No, just get rid of it. Just go ahead and burn the rest of the house down. 

SHELLY PRUITT
House was gone. The picture was fine. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Either that or somebody's playing a really good joke on these people. 

SHELLY PRUITT
That it's all these different locations, you know. 

BLAKE SMITH
The ones that get me are like, talk about a case of mass hysteria, let's be honest here. I saw it swaying and then the kitchen went up in smoke. No, Edgar probably bumped it on the way to put out the Fry Daddy fire. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now you are not far off of some theories. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Let me ask, and maybe if I'm jumping, forgive me. Do we know that this painting is not made of some sort of fire resistant material? 

SHELLY PRUITT
We'll get to that. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Okay. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So now this tale would have disappeared into the archives of the strange and mysterious stories that littered the pages of the sun, except for one other thing. Firefighter, Peter Hall, that was quoted... and he had said that there were at least 15 fires among the charred rubble was always the remaining print of the crying boy. 

BLAKE SMITH
Right. 


And then, he then said that unscathed copies of Crying Boys had been found frequently at scenes of fires. He and his colleagues were serious enough about this to vow to never allow the paintings into their own homes. 

BLAKE SMITH
This is a firefighter. 

SHELLY PRUITT
This is still the brother. The brother's kind of yappy. Okay. Now, the son also included commentary from fire station officer Alan Wilkinson. And this is Peter Hall's associate. Wilkinson claimed that he had documented over 50 fires dating back to 1973, where the picture of the crying boy was the only thing left undamaged. Wilkinson, who had 33 years of experience, had said he wasn't superstitious and was satisfied that most of the fires had been caused by human carelessness. But despite his pragmatism, he could not explain how they had survived the inferno, which generated heat sufficient to strip plaster from walls. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Hmm. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, Wilkinson's wife, she had her own theory. She said, I always say it's the tears that put out the fire. 

RYAN ROBERTS
She did not. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, the Sun was definitely not interested in finding a rational explanation, and it ignored Wilkinson's comments and claimed fire chiefs had admitted they have no logical explanation for a number of recent incidents. That was what they ran with. 

BLAKE SMITH
Ryan, do the voice. Fire chiefs... 

RYAN ROBERTS
Fire chiefs have revealed they have no explanation for... 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah, exactly. 

RYAN ROBERTS
...supernatural incidents. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah. See, I can't do it as good as you can, but that was my, that's what I was going for. Thank you, Ryan. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Thank you. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So the article in the sun carried a photograph of the popular print signed by G. Bragolin, and they captioned it "Tears for fears: The Portrait that Firemen Claim is Cursed." Wilkinson had not used the word cursed, but nevertheless, the newspaper report said that they gave the story a certain level of credibility. Just the fact it was firefighters gave this story legs and it was able to run. The paper then added that an estimated 50,000 crying boy prints signed by G. Bragolin were sold in British department stores, particularly in the working class areas of Northern England. And examples could be seen hanging in living rooms of family homes across England. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, readers were left with an overwhelming impression of a supernatural link. Words and phrases used like cursed, feared, and jinxed were laden with sinister feelings of foreboding. And the stories just kept accumulating. With new details emerging, it just encouraged the idea that the prints might actually be possessed, putting the owners at risk of fire and serious injury. A lady from London claimed that she had seen her print swing from side to side on the wall before her fire. Another said that after she bought the picture, her 11-year-old son had caught his private parts on a hook. 

RYAN ROBERTS
What the? What? 

BLAKE SMITH
Trigger warning. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Miss Rose Farrington of Preston, in a letter published by The Sun, wrote, quote, Since I bought it in 1959, my three sons and my husband have all died. I've often wondered if I had a curse. 

BLAKE SMITH
Hmm. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, another reader attempted to destroy two of the prints by fire, only to discover they would not burn. Her claim was tested by security guard Paul Collier. Paul tossed one of his two prints into a bonfire. And despite being left in the flames for over an hour, the print didn't even scorch. He told The Sun, it was frightening. "The fire wouldn't touch it. I really believe it is jinxed. We feel doubly at risk with two of these in our home and we're determined to get rid of them." 

SHELLY PRUITT
The Perillo Pizza Palace in Great Yarmouth burned to the ground and laid blame on the picture of the crying boy. An explosion destroyed the home of the Amos family. They had two crying boy prints and both were retrieved unharmed. 

RYAN ROBERTS
What the hell? 

BLAKE SMITH
What? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, 61-year-old William Armitage of Avon died in a house fire, which the room was gutted. Firefighters found his charred body and next to him an unscathed picture of the crying boy, leading the fireman to only be quoted as saying, "It was extremely odd." 

BLAKE SMITH
What? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Who wants one? 

RYAN ROBERTS
Hell no. I believe, I mean, if it don't burn, just take it to the damn garbage can and put it on the curb. 

BLAKE SMITH
So all of these, all of these so far that you've been telling us about, I mean, these rooms where these paintings are at are just decimated by fire. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Right. Reduced to rubble. 

RYAN ROBERTS
And don't forget, Paul Blart Mall Cop tried to burn one, too. 

BLAKE SMITH
And yet, in every single instance, the only thing left was... 

SHELLY PRUITT
...is this painting. 

BLAKE SMITH
...painting. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Right. Now, soon after, it was discovered that the cursed prints were not all copies of the same painting. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Oh, okay. 

SHELLY PRUITT
They weren't even all prints from the same artist. The Rotherham Fire that literally sparked the story was signed by G. Bragolin, who the son claimed was an Italian artist. Some of the other prints associated with the fires were painted by a Scottish artist named Anna Zinkeisen. Her print of the crying boy became the center of the next mysterious fire reported by the son. It allegedly destroyed a house in Rotherham. The story quoted the fire brigade spokesman reassuring the owners of the print that although there was no cause for alarm, These incidents are becoming more frequent. 

BLAKE SMITH
You think? 

SHELLY PRUITT
The only common denominator was that they were all cheap, they were all mass-produced prints, and they were sold in great numbers in the 60s and the 70s. But the widespread anxiety that the story generated prompted the South Yorkshire Fire Service to issue a statement which aimed to debunk the connection between the fires and the prints. They pointed to discarded cigarettes, overheated chip pans, and faulty wiring as reasons for the fire, not some supernatural curse. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Chief Divisional Officer Mick Riley pointed out that the most recent blaze was started by an electric fire, which would be considered a heater, was started by a heater left too close to the bed. He also stated that a large number of prints had been sold, and any connection with the fires is purely coincidental. Fires are not started by pictures or coincidence, but by careless acts and omissions. Then Riley revealed the service's own explanation. The reason why this picture has not always been destroyed in the fire is because it is printed on high-quality, high-density hardboard, which is very difficult to ignite. At last, a voice of reason in a storm of hysteria came. 

SHELLY PRUITT
However, the fire services statement failed to have much effect on dowsing the flames on which The Sun was happily stoking. The journalists turned to experts in the field of folklore. and the occult for a more suitable explanation. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yeah, let's disregard the scientific explanation. 

BLAKE SMITH
Let's jump straight to the paranormal, peeps. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Right. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So when a journalist approached Folklore Society member Georgina Boyes, the interview floundered when she refused to provide a suitably satanic explanation for the fires. 

RYAN ROBERTS
That's my new band name. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah. Suitably satanic. 

BLAKE SMITH
Suitably satanic, yep. 

SHELLY PRUITT
And according to Georgina, the journalist ended the interview and went off in search of a witch or somebody in the occult who might make a better headline. 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay, but wait. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yeah. 

BLAKE SMITH
I have a better headline in the comments. Somebody just said, "Hear me out, one wild story from The Sun created one big crazy egregore." 

RYAN ROBERTS
I mean, yeah, possibly. 

BLAKE SMITH
That's a pretty damn good theory. 

SHELLY PRUITT
There you go. So the secretary of the Folklore Society, Roy Vickery, he weighed in by speculating. The original artist might have mistreated the child model in some way. All these fires could be the child's curse and his way of getting revenge. So this guy was willing to go, oh, let's go supernatural and go trapped soul, get revenge. Now, for six weeks, stories about the crying boy flooded the pages of The Sun. And with each story published, the frenzy and hysteria grew and the legend grew bigger and imaginations ran wild. By the end of October, panic had reached an all-time high and people became desperate to get rid of their copies of the painting, and many looked to the sun for an answer and to solve their problems. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, editor Kelvin McKenzie came up with an idea and announced the solution in a column of the paper. "Enough is enough, folks," announced McKenzie to his readers. "If you're worried about a crying boy picture hanging in your home, send it to us immediately. We will destroy it for you, and that should see the back of any curse. Send them in, and we will do the job for you." 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay. 

SHELLY PRUITT
That was what was in. "And if you have one hanging in your home," and that's all capitalized in the column. Within days... 

BLAKE SMITH
I was just going to say, you don't think that there's these people who are like, we have two of them. And there was an explosion at our neighbor's house who also had two of them. But yes, please send us thousands of copies of this thing. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Truck carrying crying boy panties explodes on the highway. 

SHELLY PRUITT
And within days, the Bovary Street office of the son was swamped. Crying boy paintings were soon stacked 12 feet high in the newsroom, spilling out of cupboards and entirely filling a little used interview room. Readers had sent over 2,500 copies of the print to the newspaper offices. Now, what in the hell was McKenzie supposed to do? 

RYAN ROBERTS
My God, we're sitting on a powder keg. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Up to that point, McKenzie's staff couldn't quite figure out how much credence their boss had attached to this story. He'd always denied being superstitious, and just for fun, the paper's assistant editor took down the picture of Winston Churchill, which had been hanging in the newsroom since the Falklands War, and replaced it with a crying boy painting. The mystery was solved when McKenzie, bustling into the newsroom on his normal half-run, stopped dead in his tracks and went white. "Take that down," he snapped. "I don't like it. It's bad luck." 

BLAKE SMITH
But sir, we have... 

SHELLY PRUITT
...2,500 copies of them. 

BLAKE SMITH
We have like 2,499. Just take a look behind the green curtain, sir. 

RYAN ROBERTS
You'll love this, sir. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So the editor didn't even want one hanging in his building. Now, at the end of this six-week crying boy campaign, McKenzie had to dream up a suitable way to dispose of over 2,500 copies of this painting that was sent in by the readers. And then he came up with another stroke of genius. He decided to destroy the paintings in a bonfire. His initial plan was to burn them on the roof of the paper's Bovary Street offices and...

RYAN ROBERTS
Hold on. 

BLAKE SMITH
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Trust me, that was quickly vetoed by the London and Thame's fire brigades. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Of course. Let's burn paintings on the roof of a paper. There's paper everywhere. 

BLAKE SMITH
Talk about sitting on a fucking powder keg. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Let's put cursed paintings that won't burn on top of a whole bunch of paper. So the London and the Thame's fire brigades very quickly went, no, sir. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Are you daft? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah, are you daft? Are you daft, man? And both refused to cooperate and denounced the whole campaign as a cheap publicity stunt. But McKenzie was determined to have his event, and he decided to hold the massive bonfire near the Thames River on Halloween. 

BLAKE SMITH
Oh, of course. 

RYAN ROBERTS
That's cool. 

BLAKE SMITH
Of course. I mean, yeah, that's cool. 

SHELLY PRUITT
This guy's brilliant. He's brilliant. 

RYAN ROBERTS
At least you're close to a water source. Should it get out of hand, you can do something. 

SHELLY PRUITT
The night of the event, reporter Paul Hooper, along with a photographer, And page three girls in tow left the paper's headquarters with two van loads of prints. Now, if you don't know what a page three girl is, in The Sun, on page three, there was always this local beauty who was usually topless. She had a centerfold right in the middle of The Sun. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Naked. Yeah. No, not naked, just topless. But anyway, just kind of like whoever. 

BLAKE SMITH
She was naked. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So, you know, old Paul Hooper, to cover the story for The Sun, went ahead and brought along some page three girls. Who knows? Maybe they get topless. So they loaded up the two van loads full of prints and they headed out to this bonfire. In a highly publicized event on Halloween, the paintings were doused with an accelerant and set alight and they burned under the supervision of the fire brigade. The photographer snapped a picture of a scantily clad, red hot page three beauty, Sandra Jane Moore, tossing pictures into a bonfire as bemused firemen look on. So the page three girl got into on the mix. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Did she, did something happen to her afterwards? 

SHELLY PRUITT
I don't know. I did not follow her story. Okay. So as the bonfire blazed on the River Thames, the curse released its hole, dissolving into smoke. The Sun put out an article with the headline, Crying Flame. "Sun nails curse of the weeping boy for good." The story claimed the curse was ended once and for all. They even printed a reassuring quote from one of the police officer chaperones in which he stated, "I think there will be many people who can breathe a little easier now." Strangely enough, not one picture remained. All were destroyed by the fire. 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay, wait. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Alright. 

BLAKE SMITH
You may not have looked up to that. Do we know if any of the paintings that were brought to this bonfire were part of any of the houses that had burned down previously? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Oh, I do not know that. I do not know. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Well, we also said, if you remember earlier in the article, not article, but earlier in the story where they said they use an accelerant. We don't know what kind of accelerant they use because certain things burn hotter. Maybe that accelerant burns hotter and is able to engulf those things in flames when the house fires were not able to. Does that make sense? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Very possible. Very possible. That could be a deciding factor. 

BLAKE SMITH
Mm-hmm. 

SHELLY PRUITT
The Halloween burning was widely believed to have exercised the curse of the crying boy and the number of tabloid stories began to decrease. And as tabloid interest waned, the crying boy stories began to morph into nothing more than a modern legend. But questions still remained. Who was the child in the picture or pictures? Who was the artist? And why was the child so sad? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, The Crying Boy was one of a series of paintings by artist Giovanni Bragolin that he completed in the 1950s. All of the paintings in the series depicted children with tears streaming down their faces. The prints of these paintings were popular worldwide and were sold at department stores like Woolworths, and they sold over 50,000 in the UK alone. But the artist himself is shrouded in mystery. Giovanni Bragolin allegedly was born in 1911 in Italy and fought in World War II on Italy's side. Okay, history buffs, if you don't know, that was the wrong side to be on. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Oh, yeah. 

SHELLY PRUITT
That was the wrong side. 

RYAN ROBERTS
110%. Yeah. Yeah. 

SHELLY PRUITT
It's thought that the suffering of children influenced his artistic direction. Perhaps it was some kind of guilt he was trying to release. Attempts to trace the artist were unsuccessful as art historians said he did not appear to have a coherent biography. Oh, and one more thing. Giovanni Bragolin didn't exist. 

RYAN ROBERTS
What? 

BLAKE SMITH
What? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Tom Sleeman attempted to research the artist for his book series titled Haunted Liverpool. Sleeman's books are presented as nonfiction, but they're largely unreferenced and really lack solid documentation. Allegedly, Tom Sleeman discovered a story from a well-respected, and this is in quotation marks, "well-respected" occult researcher and retired schoolmaster from Devon named George Mallory in 1995. Okay, history buffs one more time. George Mallory is also the name of the famed UK mountaineer who disappeared on Mount Everest. Just so you know. Okay. 

RYAN ROBERTS
He ain't telling nobody nothing. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah. Anyway, retired teacher... Sorry, I just laugh. Retired teacher, George Mallory, claimed that he had found and spoken with the artist known as Giovanni Bragolin. And he had been told the entire story of the artist, the paintings and the boy. So this is the story that that was told. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Giovanni Bregolin was a pseudonym for the Spanish born portrait artist named Bruno Amadio. Amadio had several aliases and also painted another name, Franchot Seville. Some stories claim it's the other way around, that Seville was the given name and Amadio was another alias. 

BLAKE SMITH
Oh, God. 

SHELLY PRUITT
But regardless, he never signed the crying child paintings with his real name because, to be honest, he was embarrassed by them. He didn't feel as if they were his best work. He sold the paintings to tourists as a reminder of the orphans of World War II. Oddly enough, people in England, especially young couples, grew fond of these paintings. And Amadio painted over 60 portraits. Some say 60, some say 65, some say it could be more in the 80s or 90s. Let's go with 60 and say 60 plus pictures. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Okay. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So he painted over 60 portraits in the Crying Boy collection from the 1950s through the 1980s. and mass prints were sold everywhere. And as the story goes, he signed them with the name of his uncle, Giovanni Bragolin, who was allegedly also a painter. And let me tell you, he must have painted houses because I could not find him on any art registry, okay? 

BLAKE SMITH
Wait, wait, wait. He painted houses? Or you HEARD he painted houses? 

SHELLY PRUITT
I don't know. I'm just speculating. I don't know. I couldn't find him on any art registry. Even art historians say the name Giovanni Bragolin does not exist. This artist, this man, this painter does not exist. He's not in any art history registers. So if he was really a painter, he had to have been painting houses somewhere where they didn't keep track of it. 

BLAKE SMITH
I don't know. I made a really, really good mom joke that Shelly should have been proud of. But no. Continue with your fabulous story. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Thank you. So all of this satisfied George Mallory, the retired schoolmaster. And then the retired teacher questioned who we're going to call Amadio now. We're going to call him Amadio because that's supposed to be his given name. 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay. 

SHELLY PRUITT
He questioned Amadio about the child. And the story goes like this. In 1969, the artist was painting in Madrid and saw a child about 12 years old crying on the steps of a church. The sadness in the child's eyes captivated the painter. The expression was sad and beautiful at the same time. He began to paint the child's portrait, and as he worked, he noticed that the child never spoke. While he was working, a Catholic preacher approached to ask what he was doing, and the artist explained that the young boy's sad eyes seemed to reflect his soul, and it tugged on the heartstrings of the artist. The priest then told the story of his own. The child's story was truly tragic. His parents had died in a mysterious fire, leaving him an orphan. 

SHELLY PRUITT
The child's name was Don Bonillo, and the priest had found the child wandering the streets, crying but unable to speak. The little boy was taken in by the church, and every effort was made to ease the child's suffering, but he just continued to cry. Shortly after, there were a series of fires that started in various areas of the church. Now, no one was sure who started them or even how they started. but many laid the blame on little Don Bonillo. No one in the village wanted to take in the child for fear of the consequences of their kindness. It seemed wherever the child went, fires soon followed. The members of the church and the village were so convinced that some had started calling the little boy El Diablo, the devil. 

BLAKE SMITH
That's fucked up. 

SHELLY PRUITT
The priest gave a stern warning and advised the artist to move on and have nothing to do with the child. Because wherever he settled, fires of unknown origins would mysteriously break out. 

BLAKE SMITH
That's some bullshit. I'd take him in and just be my little fire starter. That's what he would be. 

SHELLY PRUITT
But Bruno Amadio... Bragolin, whatever, could not ignore the child. Against the priest's device, the painter took the child in. He brought Don Benillo home to live with him and created the Crying Boy series of paintings. And for a while, the artist considered little Don Benillo his good luck charm. Everything was going well. His paintings were selling and his work was gaining popularity. But the unique relationship between the painter and his favorite subject was came to a sudden and fiery end. Amadio's studio and apartment mysteriously caught fire and everything in it was lost. He remembered the priest's warning and accused the child of arson and kicked him out. Don Bonillo ran away in tears and Bruno Amadio never saw him again. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Then the story of the curse of the crying boy hit The Sun newspaper. From all over Europe came reports of the Unlucky Crying Boy paintings causing places. The artist was regarded as a jinx, and he was ruined. No one commissioned him to paint. No one would even look at his paintings. The Crying Boy series was the only artwork of Amadio's that saw success. However, it was a double-edged sword. The images depicting the horror, suffering, and despair of the innocent brought about speculations of abuse. Some questioned whether or not Amadio significantly frightened the children, terrified them, and then painted them. And this led to speculation that perhaps Bruno Amadio was the devil himself, the real El Diablo of the story. 

SHELLY PRUITT
The artist had been destroyed by his creation. Now in 1976, the police responded to a report of a car crash on the outskirts of Barcelona. The car had exploded after crashing into a wall and was engulfed in flames. Once the fire was out, the officers discovered the body of the driver burned beyond recognition. As the police searched the car, they discovered a few scraps of paper in the glove box that had survived the flames. One of those scraps was a part of a driver's license, and upon examination, the name on the license was that of 19-year-old Don Bonillo. 

BLAKE SMITH
No. 

SHELLY PRUITT
He was the only one in the car at the time of the crash. 

BLAKE SMITH
Oh, wow. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Died in a fire. 

BLAKE SMITH
Wow. 

RYAN ROBERTS
That's very interesting. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, according to journalist David Clark, who researched the crying boy legend for the Fortean Times, and I'm guessing it's Fortean, it's F-O-R-T-E-A-N, or Fortean, maybe. I'm going to guess on that because I really don't know. This legend has more than a few holes. Clark could find no evidence that George Mallory, the retired teacher, or Don Bonillo, the child, ever existed. Also, the Crying Boy Curse was not exclusive to the Bragolin/Amadio/Seville paintings. Anna Zenkeisen's series of crying children paintings were regarded as equally cursed. 

SHELLY PRUITT
He also discovered that the paintings were printed on compressed board, making it difficult to burn, which is what the firefighters told the press in 1985. But sometimes you got to tell them, then you got to tell them again. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Right. 

SHELLY PRUITT
In 2011, comedian and writer Steve Punt also explored the legend on his show, Punt P.I. The worst name for a show ever, Punt P.I. What are you watching tonight? Punt P.I. Sounds like a... never mind, never mind. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, Mr. Punt, be careful how you say that. I've got to make sure I pronounce that correctly. He wanted to test the myth of the nearly unbelievable ability of the paintings to resist fire. And he bought a crying boy picture for himself. After being inexplicably delayed to his destination several times, Punt began to feel a little nervous about the possibility that the painting might actually be cursed. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Mm-hmm. 

SHELLY PRUITT
He took the picture to the building research establishment, the BRE, near Watford. There, punt and construction researcher Martin Shipp attempted to set the painting on fire. Other than the string breaking in the fire, they found that the picture didn't really burn. The lapel of the boy's jacket was singed and the painting suffered a hole, but otherwise there was very little damage. The men surmised that the picture must have been coated with a fire-retardant varnish. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, Tina Booth, owner of a Crying Boy painting, claimed that the art caused two fires in her home. And so what do you do? You bring it to Zach Bagans so he can put it in his cult museum. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Oh, okay. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yes. There's one of those out there. 

BLAKE SMITH
I was going to say, I guess I didn't realize he had one in his museum. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yes. It is housed in the Zach Bagans Occult Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. The painting is featured in Season 1, Episode 5 of the series Deadly Possessions, where Tina turns over the picture. 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, in 2012, the series "Weird or What," with William Shatner examined the legend of the paintings. Season three, episode four enlisted the help of Michael Goldner, a fire researcher at the University of California in San Diego, to help and explain the mystery. Goldner explained that a painting surviving a house fire is not as unusual as one might think, and he set up a controlled experiment to prove his theory. Several things contribute to the survival of a painting in a fire. The stage of the fire in the room, What was actually burning? And at what point did the firefighters engage? Even more importantly is what is it made of? 

SHELLY PRUITT
According to Goldner, hard particle board is almost fireproof, making them extremely unlikely to burn even in a room full of fire. The way the picture was mounted could also contribute to the picture surviving the fire. In a room fire, the heat and gases rise, causing the items to flash and ignite above it. If the picture had a string hanger and the string burned, causing the picture to fall to the ground amidst the cooler air, it might survive the fire. And if it fell face down, the picture itself would even be further protected by the insulation of the frame, making it even harder to ignite because fire does not burn downwards. It burns upwards. 

SHELLY PRUITT
He explains that the curse is a mere coincidence. Over 50,000 paintings and fires that happen every day make the likelihood of discovering an intact painting in the fire very likely. Now, ultimately, the decision of curse or coincidence falls to the individual. Even with the cold glare of light of science shining on the story, many still believe in the curse. The power of suggestion is frequently stronger than science. The power behind the curse comes from the telling of the story. Kelvin McKenzie, genius editor of The Sun, is also known as the father of the crying boy curse. Now, Kelvin McKenzie granted an interview to a journalist who thought it would be funny to bring along a picture of the crying boy. Yeah, McKenzie was not amused. He agreed to complete the interview, but only if the painting remained on the porch and was not brought inside his home. McKenzie stated that he absolutely believed that the curse was real. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, Alan Wilkerson said, the fireman we mentioned at the beginning of the story, Alan Wilkinson, the fireman who documented over 50 fires, proclaimed disbelief in the curse. However, when he was presented with a frame print of the crying boy at his retirement party, he politely declined the gift. Now in the paranormal world, cursed objects, possessed dolls, and even eerie paintings whose eyes seem to follow you from room to room are not uncommon. Stephen King released the book Firestarter on September 29th of 1980 about a little girl who could start fires with her mind. And in his book, he actually is responsible for coining the term pyrokinesis to describe the girl's ability. So if you're about pyrokinesis, that is Stephen King's word. And it is a word that is used to describe that ability to this day. Now, fact or fiction, curse or coincidence, accident or intent, we might never know for certain. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Prints of the crying boy can still be found on the internet. If you're daring enough to bring him into your home, please take precautionary measures. Treat the picture well, speak kindly to him, and maybe hang a companion crying girl print next to him so he isn't lonely. And make double sure you have fire insurance because it's just a picture, right? I mean, it's creepy, but it won't harm you, right? But it might just burn down your house. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yeah, how about no? 

BLAKE SMITH
Shelly said, hang a picture of a crying girl. 

SHELLY PRUITT
That was actually one of the things that they said might...

RYAN ROBERTS
That's what they suggested huh?

SHELLY PRUITT
...that might offset the bad luck of the crying boy, is to hang a picture. Because there were crying boys and crying girls. But the crying girl ain't no problem with her. She behaves. It's this little shit that runs amok. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I mean, you know, I'm going to be more on the scientific side of this, but I also... I'm not going to tempt fate. Why have it if it's linked possibly to some of this stuff? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Exactly. I have to tell you, I left out one little story and blurb in there because literally when you start looking at all of these stories that were sent into The Sun and...and not only The Sun, the Sheffield Star got some. I mean, all over the region, local newspapers were getting reports from people. Probably my favorite that I found was that a male stripper's fire-eating act went terribly wrong after he taunted his wife's crying boy painting. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Oh, my God. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I didn't put that one in there. I figured I'd save that till the end. 

RYAN ROBERTS
That's a hell of a headline. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I mean, I'm going to say it's probably... It's not really a curse because you said there were two different paintings that were linked. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Oh, there were 60 paintings. It is funny because every time The Star ran a picture of the family that was holding a print, the print was different. And so it wasn't just Amadio or Bragolin, whichever one you want to call him. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Uh-huh.

SHELLY PRUITT
It wasn't just his prints. It was... Zinkeisen's prints. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yeah, the Scottish artist. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yes, Anna Zankeesian. It was her prints, too. Any child crying basically was hanging in a house. 

RYAN ROBERTS
First off, why do you want to have a picture of a kid crying hanging on your wall? 

SHELLY PRUITT
You know, that was one of the main questions that I kept seeing pop up over and over in articles. Why would you want... a picture. Now, probably the most famous one is in that one that's on the trash heap. Or actually, I think it was the last picture we showed. That's probably the most famous one. That's the one that I think everybody probably knows the best. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Right.

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, something that was stated about this picture is that if you look at this child's face, one side is very dark and the other appears to have an orange glow, almost as if he's standing in front of a fire. So this one, that's kind of why this one kind of is the poster child, for lack of a better word. for these cursed paintings. This is the one you see the most often, but the fires were not exclusively caused when this painting hung in the house. Any picture of the crying children seemed to cause the fires. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yeah. You know, well, you had the one fire that was started by the guy who was frying, who was making French fries. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah, he was frying French fries. 

BLAKE SMITH
With his Fry Daddy.

SHELLY PRUITT
He got a grease fryer. 

RYAN ROBERTS
And then think about, too, a lot of these houses in England. They've been around for a long time. So the wiring may not be the best. And then when you have these paintings that are made of particle board or whatever material they're made of, they're really hard to ignite because the intensity of the fire can also cause you know, it can also be whether or not the painting, you know, goes up in flames. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Right. 

RYAN ROBERTS
So I'm just going to say, I think whatever the painting is, it was made of some sort of, like you said, like the fire retardant varnish and the poster board. So it makes it hard for it to burn. So... 

SHELLY PRUITT
Right. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I don't necessarily think that it's really a curse either, because these are all different prints as well. So why are all of these different prints... A cursed painting. I don't know. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So you'd like one for Christmas? 

RYAN ROBERTS
I would not. No. I didn't say that, no. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Why not? 

RYAN ROBERTS
I don't want to tempt fate. 

BLAKE SMITH
But it's science, Ryan. It is science, my friend. You'll be all right. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I also don't want a picture of a crying child in my house. I think I'm good on that. 

BLAKE SMITH
Shelly, we're going to get him a 16 by 20 on pressed particle board. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Oh, hell yes. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I will beat you with that painting. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Now, Ryan, you actually are right on about some of the houses. You got to remember, some of these houses are like 300, 400, 500 years old. It's like some of these houses are very, very old. And some of them had to be retrofitted for appliances. That could have caused fires. Some of them had electricity added that they never had electricity. That could be a source for the fire. And some of them actually probably still had thatched roofs because, you know, these beautiful English country sides with these beautiful thatched roof cottages. That also is not necessarily lending itself to fire safety. 

RYAN ROBERTS
No. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So now it also has, I saw it discussed about, Blake, I think you were right on about the case of mass hysteria. Because the more it printed and the more that the stories ran, and again, this was six weeks. Of these stories being told. 

BLAKE SMITH
Yeah. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Every day there was someone else's a tale of woe and terror based on a crying child up to and including people dying, you know, because they had this picture in their house. So that leads you to question, you know, you know, there's... everybody's heard of the placebo effect, right? Where in a control group, one person is given actual medicine. Another person is given a sugar pill. The person that takes the sugar pill somehow or another seems to get better as well. That's the placebo effect. Now there's an opposite effect of that called the nocebo effect, which is the thought of if you anticipate bad things, bad things happen. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Right. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So could this be a case of the nocebo effect? I expect this pain to catch on fire in my house. So now it does kind of like manifesting it. So the opposite of the placebo effect. 

BLAKE SMITH
It's a tulpa. The tulpa. I blame the aliens. 

SHELLY PRUITT
You blame the aliens? 

BLAKE SMITH
Yep. Yep. That's my theory. It's a tulpa brought in by the aliens. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I mean, if you look at this week's episode and last week's episode, one thing is for sure, the British tabloids do not let the truth get in the way of a good story. 

SHELLY PRUITT
No, they do not. And I also found it interesting that the editor's name was Kelvin McKenzie. Kelvin is a measurement of heat. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Oh, you're right. 

BLAKE SMITH
I didn't even think about that. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I didn't think about that either. 

BLAKE SMITH
That's a really good point. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I found just the synchronicities I found interesting. 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay, so here's my thing. Kind of combining what I said earlier and what you're saying now with this placebo effect plus, you know, the mass hysteria and all that stuff. If you're thinking it and it happens, is that not in a way some type of a curse or tulpa or egregore effect? 

SHELLY PRUITT
You're manifesting it...

BLAKE SMITH
You're manifesting it to happen, so therefore it happens because you're freaking out because you're like, fuck, I got this painting of this little orphan dude crying and my house is going to burn down and your husband goes to make chips in his chip fryer, Fry Daddy pan... 

SHELLY PRUITT
In his fry pan, his chip pan. 

BLAKE SMITH
And he burns the house down. 

RYAN ROBERTS
And two, if you come in there with that intention, all of a sudden, if any little weird thing that happens, you're going to start...

SHELLY PRUITT
Attribute to it.

RYAN ROBERTS
...chalking up to whatever, you know, that painting. Yeah. 

BLAKE SMITH
See, my question is, my question is, is at that point, like... are you giving it the power to be able to do it? So again, see, this is where my brain goes because I'm like, you know what? Okay, yes, there's a scientific reasoning behind it. I get that. I get that. But if all these people and all this mass hysteria is happening and they're like, oh my God, my house is going to burn down, my house is going to burn down. And all of a sudden, poof, your house goes up in smoke. Did you give it that power? Is there then a paranormal or supernatural aspect to it? Not just you owning the picture. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I mean, there could be. 

BLAKE SMITH
This is why I love curse objects. 

RYAN ROBERTS
It's like what we've talked about several times. If you have so many people focusing their intent on something... 

BLAKE SMITH
That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. And if you have the tabloids, the media, who is printing this crap and causing all this mass hysteria, all this focus to be on these pictures, to be on this story... And then all of a sudden, boom, there goes Mary's house. And then boom, there goes Sally's house. 

SHELLY PRUITT
And The Sun was the number one paper in England. It was read by damn near everybody. 

BLAKE SMITH
So it's one thing like it's one thing. Sorry, I get off on this shit. 

SHELLY PRUITT
No, it's fine. 

BLAKE SMITH
I mean, I mean, on multiple ways, I get off and just take that for what you want, dirty or not. But like, seriously, OK, so you have the painting scientific reason behind it, why it will not burn. But what's causing the fires other than human carelessness? Other than they just need to teach a class back then on how to work a Fry Daddy or a chip pan or a bed pan, whatever the fuck it's called. 

SHELLY PRUITT
And how to install a smoke detector and how not to fall asleep with a cigarette in your mouth and how to not put a heater right next to a cover on a bed. 

BLAKE SMITH
I don't know. It's just... I don't know. It's... I don't know. Do you believe... I don't know if I believe it's cursed. I believe that it's got to be some... Something with the thought. You're like, I own this fucking painting and my house is going to burn down and then boom, your house burns down. 

RYAN ROBERTS
And from the Firefighters perspective where they were talking about how they went to respond to all these houses that had all of these paintings. Well, the painting was mass produced. So more than likely, if everybody bought the painting in 1970... 

SHELLY PRUITT
It was very likely it was going to be there. And they basically sold these paintings pretty much up until... you know 1985 whenever this you know one of The Sun ran with this story.

BLAKE SMITH
I got fire elementals having a field day. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeap, they were I like that answer 

BLAKE SMITH
Thanks jenny for that that was uh that's pretty good. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I like that one I don't know let's go with that the fire gods were angry yes I'm all about that. 

BLAKE SMITH
I'm going to go... Sorry, I just scratched my nipple on live air, but... 

SHELLY PRUITT
That's all right. 

BLAKE SMITH
Anyways, I'm going to have to go with that. I don't know... I don't know if it's the painting themselves or if it is this mass hysteria mixed with some type of manifestation of some sorts because we say it all the time speaking into the universe and it will happen right you got all these people that are like my house is going to burn down then poof your house burns down and then all of a sudden you know they're on the six o'clock news going, "I just don't know what happened. Oh, that painting." 

SHELLY PRUITT
So... So, let me equate it to this you know how whenever there's a skeptic that comes on an investigation and suddenly something happens and now they're a believer I think I'm going to go with curse because I don't want anything to try and convince me. 

BLAKE SMITH
Hmm. Hmm. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Well, I don't think you also have pictures of crying children hanging in your house. 

SHELLY PRUITT
No, I don't. That's morbid. 

BLAKE SMITH
Okay. So, so I do have to say this because this was brought up by, by Chad earlier in the comments that, um, Zach Bagans museum, he believed that it had a fire as well. And I couldn't remember... I thought I remembered hearing something like that. So I just Googled it. Um, apparently there was a man who started a fire.. at his museum. Wasn't that his fire had. Well I mean I guess his fire had a museum at that point. But it didn't like burn or anything like that. Obviously I guess a man started a fire, at his museum. So that's kind of interesting. That the building per se didn't burn. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I actually neglected to write down. When that episode aired. I realized that in reading it. That I don't know when that episode aired. Of Deadly Possessions. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Was the fire in the same room, as the crying boy? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah. I don't believe so. You're probably not going to get that much detail on it. They'll probably just say a lunatic started a fire in a museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

BLAKE SMITH
Yeah. You know. Pretty much. So I do find it interesting that maybe... 

SHELLY PRUITT
But I don't know if it was before or after the acquisition of the painting. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Hmm. 

BLAKE SMITH
Oh, that's true. Well, that was in – no, it had to be after because that was dated 2022, and you're talking about season one of whatever of Deadly Possessions. Deadly Possessions was on in like 2015. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I think it was season one, episode three. 

BLAKE SMITH
Yeah, but Deadly Possessions was on like way back in like 14, 13, 14, 15, something like that. So this article was written in 22. 

SHELLY PRUITT
If I still had my papers in order – But you see, I drop them on the ground. 

BLAKE SMITH
Shelly throws them on the ground. She just does like this. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Makes it rain. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah, I just drop them on the ground. Okay, it was... Oh, look at that. I just happened to pick it up to the exact right page. It was on season one, episode five of Deadly Possessions. If you look up what that air date was, you can see whether or not... That's when she gave... She gave it to, I mean, they filmed it, obviously. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yeah. 

SHELLY PRUITT
But season one, episode five of Deadly Possessions... 

BLAKE SMITH
Season one, episode five, April 29th, 2016. 

SHELLY PRUITT
2016. When did the man start the fire? When was there a fire in 2022? 

BLAKE SMITH
That article was written October of 2022. 

SHELLY PRUITT
So it was after the painting was acquired. Interesting. Thank you, Chad Wandel. 

RYAN ROBERTS
It is interesting. 

BLAKE SMITH
Yeah, now that is interesting. Hmm. 

SHELLY PRUITT
It never gave a time frame. Some people said that they had owned the painting for years and then suddenly they had an issue. Some of them had bought it and had it for six months. Some of them had it for like weeks. You know, one man had it since 1953 and it didn't catch on fire. His house didn't catch on fire until 1970... Eight. Again, there were so many. There were so many stories. 

BLAKE SMITH
But see, as it was said in the comments, if it happens more than three times, that's not a coincidence. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I agree. I agree. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I don't know. 

BLAKE SMITH
I think there's got to be something behind. Maybe not the painting itself. It's just the amount of energy that's being put... the intent. 

RYAN ROBERTS
The intention. 

BLAKE SMITH
Yeah. That's being put behind the thought of this painting. 

SHELLY PRUITT
What I would be interested in is knowing that because Amadio painted more than 60 pictures of crying children, what percentage of child showed up in the houses that caught on fire? Because if there's one little fucker that suddenly is showing up more often, just take that one out of circulation. You might be all right. Excuse my language. Sorry. We're not on pre and post broadcast. 

BLAKE SMITH
We an 18 plus show. It's all right. One little hell goblin causing all the chaos. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Yeah. So that's a bit that... I don't think there's any way to know which one, if you can even quantify that. 

RYAN ROBERTS
But remember too, it wasn't just his painting. There was another artist that made a crying boy painting and all this stuff also followed that. 

SHELLY PRUITT
And she created, her series was called... was called the the... the collection... I can't remember. Anyway, uh, she did also a series she didn't just paint one she painted several in a collection so...

BLAKE SMITH
Maybe you shouldn't maybe you should just not paint children crying and photos maybe... maybe, that's the... the takeaway from this if we have any artists people on this watching us right now don't be painting pictures of crying children. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Of sad children. 

BLAKE SMITH
Think of all the torment and the sadness and all that crap that has to go into that painting. And then you're like, here, I'm going to sell this sadness so I can make profit and profit off the sadness of this child. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Well, we thought that an artist, whenever they're creating, is breathing life into their creation. And so if that's why you if you're going to be creative, you should always try to be in a good mood when you're doing it to that... old wives tale... like, if you're happy when you cook, your food is supposed to taste better. You know, if you cook when you're angry, your dish is going to turn out awful. It's just all these little wives tales. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Well, I mean, it kind of just follows that same line. What intent are you using when you're making something like that? 

SHELLY PRUITT
Which means I got to throw out a bunch of my pictures because that's the way I get a lot of stress out is I get pissed off and I go sling paint. That makes me very happy. I do. 

BLAKE SMITH
No, I mean, that's why all my meals from here on out are going to taste horrible because I freaking hate cooking. I mean, they're like stirring the meat. I'm like flipping DoorDash this shit. Yeah. And that's why all my food tastes bad. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Brown motherfucker.

SHELLY PRUITT
Well, gentlemen, final thoughts on the crime war. Fact, fiction, curse, or coincidence? 

BLAKE SMITH
Aliens. All about the aliens. No, my final thoughts is... I don't think the series or the picture of these crying children itself are cursed. I think there has to do more with... if you're going to look into a paranormal or supernatural aspect to it, I think there has to do a lot more with the thought form behind it... the manifestation of the fires, um, that some little hell goblin is running around lighting houses on fire you know. So, that's what I'm gonna go with I don't think it's necessarily the painting I just think it's the manifestation of the fires.

SHELLY PRUITT
Okay.

RYAN ROBERTS
I think on the paranormal element, Blake, I think that you're right as far as that goes. But as far as the scientific element goes, I think it's, like I said, it's got some sort of flame retardant material. It's really hard for it to catch on fire. So I think maybe that is why the paintings were unburned, but... 

SHELLY PRUITT
That is why the paintings were unburned. They've proven it. 

BLAKE SMITH
Good job for paying attention, Ryan. 

RYAN ROBERTS
I was. I'm saying this, but that's why they're unburned... 

SHELLY PRUITT
Michael Goldner proved it. 

RYAN ROBERTS
If we're going the scientific route. But yeah, I don't want to test fate. I don't want to buy one. I don't want to have one hanging in my house. 

BLAKE SMITH
We're still unsure three years later what we put Ryan on the screen. You're going with coincidence. You're going with coincidence. 

RYAN ROBERTS
Yeah

SHELLY PRUITT
Both of you? 

BLAKE SMITH
No, I'm going with like a manifestation of some sorts. 

SHELLY PRUITT
You're going with intent. 

BLAKE SMITH
Yeah, I'm going along the lines of intent. I don't think this shit's coincidence. You got too many of these damn fires where these pictures are associated with, you know, not causing it, but just mass hysteria and people thinking it. Yeah, that can't be coincidence. I'm sorry. There's some manifestation intent behind it. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Okay. Well, my final thought is that I really love this story, and there will never be a crying child in a picture hanging in my house. I believe in the curse. I believe that it absolutely could be cursed. 

BLAKE SMITH
So you think it is cursed? 

SHELLY PRUITT
I do believe it is cursed. I do believe that the sadness of the children... The fact that it's such a sad painting, I believe that that can prey on your mind walking by it every day. And I think that you could, in fact, get the nocebo effect. Where suddenly, because you're seeing something sad every day, you begin to get down and suddenly things begin to happen. So, yeah, I'm not having one in my house. I like puppies and butterflies. So... 

BLAKE SMITH
Well, you know what? I'm going to have beautiful puppies and butterfly wrapping around. Bam! That photo right there. 

SHELLY PRUITT
I'll beat your ass. On that note, why don't you tell them everything they need to know, Blake? 

BLAKE SMITH
All right. Sounds good. Well, a couple of announcements here. After Dark with EVP Season 2. There we go. Let me get that right. After Dark with EVP Season 2. No. We'll premiere exclusively on PARAFlixx Paranormal Plus on March 28th, 2024. And in my notes, I wrote 29-24. That's funny. 2024 at 7 p.m. All of season one is now streaming on PARAFlixx Paranormal Plus with our paranormal interviews and evidence you won't see anywhere else but that platform. PARAFlixx is available on Amazon Fire, Roku TV, Apple TV, iOS, and Google Play. Make sure you use our link to sign up. which will be posted to our Facebook page Wednesday morning and is also in the show notes for you audio listeners. Use the code "AFTERDARK25" for 25% off your annual subscription. Wednesday morning, we are going to post that LinkTree link to our Facebook, so make sure you head over there and check that out. That is going to include all of the links that you need to get to Wherever you want to get for everything Vaguely Paranormal, including PARAFlixx Paranormal Plus, our social media channels, we're on every single one of them, our online merchandise store, our public investigations, and our Patreon page. 

BLAKE SMITH
Our Patreon page is the fastest and easiest way you can directly help support the show. For just $5 a month, you will gain access to over 350, I think now, additional Patreon-exclusive videos. Your support from this goes directly to the show and all the ghostly adventures that we get to bring you week after week. This price will never change. And with that, you currently get our pre and post broadcast, which is the 30 minutes before and the 30 minutes after this live broadcast, where we discuss things further, fight, debate, act stupid, share horrible nicknames of ourselves. Why I did that tonight, I don't know. And just show a lot more personal side of things than what we truly believe. 

BLAKE SMITH
So it also includes our Patreon-exclusive raw and unedited investigation footage. We've recently been posting up a lot of that, and y'all are enjoying going to watch that. So we're going to be putting some more out. So if you've ever wanted to review our raw and unedited footage, now's your chance. That's only on Patreon. And we are offering that seven-day free trial for anyone who wants to check it out before you purchase. Make sure you're following us across all our social media platforms so you can get all the up-to-date information on everything Vapor Paranormal. If you're just following us on one channel, you're only getting a small portion. These are all the ways you can help directly support Everything Vaguely Paranormal, but we also appreciate your love and support for us through dislikes, comments, shares, views, and downloads. And remember, as always, any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us, those can be submitted to us at theevppod@gmail.com. That is T-H-E-E-V-P-P-O-D at gmail.com. 

SHELLY PRUITT
Like, share, and subscribe. So we want to thank you guys for joining us tonight on Everything Vaguely Paranormal. I'm Shelly Pruitt. My partners in the paranormal, Mr. Blake Smith and Mr. Ryan Roberts. Thank you for being here. And as always, we will see you next Tuesday. Bye.

RYAN ROBERTS
Bye. 

BLAKE SMITH
Bye, y'all.