Episode 7: Cursed in Flames: The Crying Boy Paintings

When a simple piece of wall decor is the only thing to survive several house fires, can anyone blame the rumors of a curse abounding? Featuring a mysterious painter, a boy nicknamed Diablo, and a flaming Pizza Parlor, this week we delve into the curse of The Crying Boy Paintings. 


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Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the Odder Podcast. I’m your host Madison Paige and today we are taking a foray into a cursed painting that was said to set houses ablaze, leaving nothing but the portrait itself behind. Today on The Odder we talk about The Curse of The Crying Boy Paintings. Grab your paintbrushes and your fire extinguishers and let's go!

Welcome back everyone. I hope you all got a good night's sleep following our trek into sleep paralysis. I hope none of you had a visit from the hat man or had the misfortune of a ride from the hag. But if you did, know I would love to hear that story. You can still send any and all sleep paralysis experiences to theodderpod@gmail.com. I will be collecting them so we can revisit it in a future episode and I can tell all your stories too. I am relieved to report that my cold seems to be clearing up and while I was able to happily edit out all the coughs from last episode, I’ve now entered the stage where I’m randomly sneezing every few minutes. So if you catch the tail end of one on this episode, I do apologize. Today, we crawl out of bed and head to the breakfast kitchens of several homes in the mid 90s in London where the possession of a teary eyed painting was liable to leave your house in ashes. We take our first cautionary dance steps into the hall of cursed objects and we start with The Crying Boy. 

It’s late at night and you’ve just gotten off work. You’re tired, you’re hungry, the boss was riding you all day, and damn could you use a beer and a soak in the tub. You trudge along the familiar streets thinking of your partner and children, all home waiting for you. But as you turn the corner, you are met with a horrific sight. Your home was ablaze. 

Fire is consuming the structure from the inside out as firefighters and neighbors frantically work to put out the flames. You run forward and are filled with relief when you find your family shaken but unharmed. It takes hours but finally the blaze is contained. You venture into the wreckage but the fire has consumed everything. All the furniture is charred, your curtains are in ashes, and the wallpaper is peeling off in flakes. However, amongst the chaos you find an item untouched. As though it had been put into the house after the fire was put out. A painting you had bought not long ago and had proudly displayed in your living room. As you hold it up to the light, from behind you you hear a firefighter say “Oh no, not another one”.

While I hope none of you ever experience a situation like this in reality, this setup happened to several families in the 1950s. London, under the reproachful gaze of Margaret Thatcher, was hit by a rush of house fires in which the only item left standing was a copy of a portrait that quickly became so reviled and feared that it birthed The Curse of the Crying Boy. 

Now we all have our own tastes when it comes to home design. Your nest is yours to feather and what you place in it is completely up to you. Some people prefer to have every inch of wall and shelf covered with a collection of oddities, trinkets, or art. Some prefer the sleek modern look with minimalist design and naked spaces. In the mid to late 1900’s, UK citizens seemed to gain quite the taste for a specific collection of prints called The Crying Boy. It was a portrait depicting a boy, although some also depicted a girl, dirty cheeked with large puppy like eyes that swelled with tears. The child looks despondent and upset, on the verge of breaking down into sobs or just finishing a meltdown. These paintings were mass-printed and available in several stores where shoppers browsed for something to really jazz up their bare walls. 

Now speaking from personal taste, a picture of a crying child hardly seems like the warm welcoming picture to hang in one's home. While I don’t have walls covered in motivational sayings and sunny scenes, this painting seems just a bit too sorrowful and mournful to have sold as well as it did. 

Because it did very well, particularly among young couples. In the UK alone, over 50,000 copies were sold. 

These patrons who chose this picture, brought it home, wrapped in paper and string before proudly displaying it in living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. A few copies even made their way into business like banks and Pizza Parlors. 

Just hold on a minute. Now maybe I just completely missed that fascination but I’m posting pictures of the Crying Boy Paintings on the socials and just tell me what you think made this so popular. Like a pizza parlor? A PIZZA PARLOR? I would take that weird early 2000’s style chucky cheese animatronic any day over this painting hanging over my pizza. Like I just cannot understand why this was so popular especially with new couples. You know they just got married, they are setting up house, probably talking about kids and you hang The Crying Boy? For what inspiration? To be reminded of all the coming temper tantrums? 

Instead these unwary patrons were reminded just how flammable their homes were. 

Ron and Mary Hall were two of these unlucky people. Their house was consumed by flames leaving everything they owned and loved in cinders except for a painting of the Crying Boy who had not even been marred by the smoke. They were far from alone in this frightening discovery. A woman in Surry lost her home in a fire six months following the purchase and display of her own copy. A pair of sisters in Kilburn had each lost their home to a fire following the purchase of this arsonistic art. One of the sisters even claimed to see her painting swaying back and forth on the wall right before the fire started. A man in Nottingham not only lost his home but also suffered the injury of members of his family after he picked up a copy. 

A house in Merseyside that contained several Crying Boy pictures burned and to the shock and horror of the family and the firefighters, these portraits were found to be untouched and still hanging on the walls where even the wallpaper surrounding them had been rendered to ash. The father of the family proceeded to smash every single one. 

Even those businesses who eagerly displayed the weepy wonder weren't safe, The Pizza Parlor i previously mentioned who fed their patrons appetites with the sight of a tearful toddler succumbed to a blaze of its own that destroyed every painting in the joint except for The Crying Boy. The Owner of Parillo’s Pizza Palace had been warned shortly before this of the bad luck the painting would bring. Following the fire, the owner smashed the picture in an attempt to keep its presumed curse from spreading to anyone else. 

This painting was not just surviving these fires, It was surviving unharmed. Firefighters report finding one print on the ground, on its face, in its frame completely untouched in a home that had been totally consumed by flames. 

But, but but, but , fire wasn't the only risk people were taking. One woman on the Isle of Wight, scared and nervous by the rumors surrounding the copy of the painting she owned, attempted to burn it. However, the painting refused to burn and the woman suffered a run of bad luck following the attempt. 

Psychics began to claim the paintings were haunted by orphans and their misery and despair was attached to the prints. Those that owned prints became too frightened to remove them in case something bad to happen or their own string of bad luck. This led to the painting being hung in sheds and garages or hung so they faced the wall where nobody would be able to see it. Later, rumors would take even farther turns when people would claim that if you were kind to the painting that it would protect you or if you placed a crying boy next to a crying girl, they would bring you good luck. 

Now, Listen, with a lot of supposed cursed objects, It can really feel like people are grasping at straws. Someone claims that they have a haunted birdcage who has caused every parrot they’ve owned to die or a cursed railroad spike that causes their foundation to shake but really the person is out of their depth in the bird care department and the house is infested with termites. However, the amount of fires this painting is living through and the fact that it is untouched is so bizarre. It’s canvas, one of the easiest things to burn but it’s not even getting smoke damage? And how can a curse cover a series of prints? Curses generally come from a horrific tragedy. A young girl dies in a collapsed building and the doll she was grasping becomes possessed by her spirit and causes those touching it to feel like they are choking. A curse can come from a “spell” (Air Quotes) placed upon an object that is meant to harm an intended victim. A jilted lover pays someone to place a curse on a locket that she gifts to her exes bride and the couple become infertile. A cursed object can also come from a more praternatural origin. A demon or other supernatural entity inhabits an object in order to find a host or a soul. I don’t even need an abstract example of this, have you seen Annabelle? The perfect example. There are several different ways an object can become cursed but a series of Objects is rare. Especially because they are prints. It’s almost like the very concept of the crying boy was cursed. But how did this happen?

 All these paintings proudly featured the Signature of one Giovanni Bragolini. But who was this painter who captured the likeness of so many sorrowful lambs? Well, nobody knew. This name was practically unheard of and any information someone tried to dig up on him led to dead ends. Of course this mystery opens the floodgates to a rash of rumors. They said he had painted hundreds of crying children who had been left penniless and on the street with no one to care for them. They said he skulked the alleyways in Italy and Spain to find them. Some said he terrified the children to get the tearful effect he wanted. In 2000, a book titled Haunted Liverpool, claimed that a school teacher named George Mallory discovered who the painter truly was. Now, this Mallory character is shady at best. The book said he was well respected and you can’t see me but I'm putting air quotes on that. Mallory claimed that the painter’s true name was not Giovanni Bragolini but Franchot Seville. 

 The Most widely accepted backstory for the true artist is a frankenstein of reports both from Mallory and The Sun, a newsprint publication that is really credited with feeding the flames of The Crying Boy Curse. Supposedly, the curse on the paintings comes from one boy in particular. An orphan named Don Bonillo. He is the boy featured in the most prominent of The Crying Boy Pictures. The story goes that Don Bonillo accidentally started a fire in which his parents were killed in Spain. From then on, wherever he went, fires would randomly begin. This prompted the nickname Diablo. It was said he was in the care of a priest who warned the painter against interacting with him. The painter then forcefully adopted Don Bonillo and abused him. Don Bonillo is supposed to have died later on in 1970 when he was caught in a fire resulting from a car crash. The abuse is said to be the source of the curse as the spirit of the child is getting revenge against the painter that wronged him. 

Now this is a very sensational story and it likely sold tons of papers but it also has so many holes in it you might as well call it Swiss Cheese. First of all, this reported respected, air quotes again, school teacher who unearthed this terrible truth? Mr. George Mallory? Nobody knows who that is. Journalist Dr. David Cook researched the crying boy legend for Fortean Times and could find no evidence that George Mallory or the supposed victim Don Bonillo ever existed. 

Here is where The Curse of the Crying Boy is going to start to fall apart. Now if you love mystery and you want to stay in the reality where the curse is real and not up for debate, I respect it and I invite you to skip ahead some. However, like most cursed objects and in the words of Ebenzeer Scrooge, “There’s more gravy than grave” in this haunted painting. 

So Dr. David Cook found no proof of anyone named George Mallory with an obsession with the Crying Boy existing. Nor did he find the actual crying boy. Was it possible that these characters were just a fiction made to sell more books and newspapers? Absolutely. 

However, what he did find is that Giovanni Bragolini was a real person. Franchot Seville was also a real person. In fact, they were the same person and that person's real name was Bruno Amadio. Bragolini and Seville were both pseudonyms for Amadio and he used them just like most artists do. Cook also found no real basis for the flashy story of orphans and intervening priests and curses caused by abuse. Instead he found that crying children were common subjects for practice and that Amadio likely painted 20-30 of them while training in Venice after WW11. These paintings were then converted into prints and were sold in department stores through the 1970s. Funnily enough, other artists also made and sold Crying Child pictures that soon gained a similar rumor of being cursed. Her name was Anna Zinkeisen. 

Ok so the artist isn't a boogeyman. But the paintings survived the fire. Yes they did and we actually have video footage of that. Comedian and writer Steven Punt found himself as intrigued about the crying boy as the rest of us. He took it upon himself to do his own digging for his radio show Punt PI. he tracked down a woman named JAne McCutchin who owned a print in the 1980s and had displayed it in her home. According to Mccutchin, she was cleaning her kitchen when she turned to see her hand-made drapes, blinds, and curtains engulfed in flames out of nowhere. Her family escaped alive but her home was lost.The only thing that survived was the painting of the crying boy. She soon got rid of it after she learned of the legend surrounding it. Punt took this story to heart and purchased a Crying Boy picture of his own. He joined with construction researcher Martin Shipp and the two attempted to set the painting alight on camera. Even with a flame pressed directly to the canvas, it refused to burn and the most damage suffered was to the string the painting hung from. After a good look at the barely there damage, the pair surmised that the canvas was covered in a fire-resistant varnish. The painting was also printed on a Compressed board, a material that was very difficult to burn. The combination of these two would give the painting the ability to resist the burns that the rest of the house endured while appearing to be something more than natural. IT also should be noted that the fires were all eventually found to be from normal sources, a forgotten cigarette or an unwatched cooking pan. So the pictures were not surviving the flames due to spirits or curses but simply because they were made of fireproof materials. You can still see the video of Punt trying to burn the picture on Youtube. 

So what is the truth? Is the crying boy truly cursed or is it just a painting in the wrong place at the wrong time? Certainly this explanation of the fire-proof varnish came too late for the frightened readers of The Sun who in 1985 called for all those in possession of the painting to send them in. They promised to rid the people of the curse and did so in a bonfire where they burned the paintings by the sackful. The inferno burned near the River Thames and with the rise of the smoke brought many believers in the curse a breath of fresh air. This of course did not destroy The legend of the curse of the crying boy. IT has survived into the modern age and is now a widespread creepy pasta of the internet. It even garnered a fan club which has since dissolved. There is an artist named MArio Klingemann who became so fascinated with the legend that he purchased his own copy of the painting and put red LEDs through the eyes of the boy. Klingemann claims to hold no belief in the curse. 

Gail-Nina Anderson, a lecturer, wrote in her paper about art folklore that the crying boy legend grew so quickly because it was something everyone could be involved in. The prints were cheap and readily available. The legend quickly encompassed all paintings containing a crying child. Even if you had no fire to speak of, the bragging rights and the spooky thrills that accompanied the ownership of such a piece led many to participate in spreading the rumors of its fire-causing curse. 

Of course, not everyone was afraid of it. One man in particular actually made the collection of this sobbing specter a lifetime hobby. In 1985, Arthur Webster of Norwhich decided he would begin a private collection of the pieces. He scarrowed dumpsters, papers, and sidewalks for any abandoned or for sale Crying Boy Pictures. He of course was running against the clock as people were rushing to burn or smash them up. He said that he did not believe the paintings were cursed but that quote “I think that if that boy is in his room by himself and is crying then he is crying to the Lord. If the paintings are surviving the Fires, then it means the Lord has answered the boys prayers”. He also remarked he has received 30 replies to people keen to pass on their cursed paintings to him but I was unable to find any follow up with him and exactly how many he was able to obtain. 

Now if you feel the way the Mr. Webster does and you want to own your own copy of The Crying boy. You, yes you, can purchase your own copy! That’s right, the bonfire did not claim all the paintings and a good handful of them have found their way onto Ebay! Now unlike 1985, you are no longer going to find people willing to throw them at you and these are not cheap. I found one framed canvas print for 164.99 cents with 26 dollar shipping. Another print which features the more iconic picture and also signed by Dr. Lee Roberson (Although I don’t know who that is) is on sale for 199 dollars with 41 dollar shipping. IF you don't need a canvas but still want a copy of your own, it is available from various sellers as a poster or other print for as low as 99 dollars. So come on over to ebay and invite the flaming curse of the crying boy into your home today!

Well, that's all for this episode. So what do you think? Do you hold with the curse of a little Spanish orphan setting fire to people's homes in revenge for the mistreatment he experienced in life? Or do you think it is simply a coincidence mixed with a fire resistant canvas and a lot of overhype. Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and leave a review. Thank you to everyone who left reviews on the last episode. Please please please continue to review us and let us know how you like the podcast. I’ll actually be in San Francisco when this episode airs but be sure to follow The Odder on Tiktok as I’ll be posting some videos from my trip to Alcatraz and The Winchester Mystery House. The Odder Podcast posts every other Thursday. If you have a suggestion for a subject on the podcast you can email us at the theodderpod@gmail.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time on The Odder side.