In this BLAM episode, Kate and I discuss the mystery surround the 'crying boy' portrait. Were all of these fires linked? Would you hand this portrait in your house? Is the mystery surrounding the portrait real?
Listen and find out!
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In this BLAM episode, Kate and I discuss the mystery surround the 'crying boy' portrait. Were all of these fires linked? Would you hand this portrait in your house? Is the mystery surrounding the portrait real?
Listen and find out!
Thank you for listening. If you would like to see any of our videos and photos please check out the links below. If you like what you hear please be sure to like and follow as it really helps us keep doing this!
Please follow us @ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089047737544&sk=about https://www.instagram.com/perplexedpodcasts/ https://www.tiktok.com/@perplexedpodcasts?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
Please subscribe to our channel @ https://www.youtube.com/@perplexedpodcast/featured
Please support the show @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2115848/support
Buy us a coffee @ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/perplexedpod
Use this link & code to start your first podcast and grab your voucher. Using this code will support our show too so it's a win win!! https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2096726
Much love
Speaker 1:
Hello Blamers Morning.
Speaker 2:
Good morning Blamers. This one's been a little bit delayed in coming, but you will always get your two a month, so apologies about that Sauce, sauce about that. I agonised over this one for ages because I really wanted to do something different, because a lot of our episodes at the moment there are true crime. So I wanted to do something a little bit different. So I finally found something and it was really interesting and you know I'm a skeptic of most things. This one really got me going. Yeah, I know, really interesting. So, um, random Blam go.
Speaker 1:
My Random Blam is a murder statistic. Go on, the majority of homicide, homicide. Is it homicide, homicide, no homicide. It's sort of true podcast, true crime podcast host are you? I just fucking fell out my mouth. Homocide Easy, easy, getting on the homo. The majority of homicide victims in England and Wales are male. In the year ending March 2022, 72% of victims were male and 28% were female. Blam Blam.
Speaker 2:
So my Blam pertains to the episode and my Blam is about a pot and it is called the Psycho Pot and it once belonged to Ed Gean. Oh, and for those very select few that don't know who Ed Gean is, he's obviously a very famous serial killer From the 50s that murdered people, skinned them, cut up their body parts and then turned them into clothing and wore their skin and stuff.
Speaker 1:
He was famous for the nipple belt, wasn't he? He made a belt with everyone's nipples.
Speaker 2:
So this pot, dubbed the Psycho Pot, is the pot that he actually used to hold some parts of his victims, and it was sold to Zach Baggins, who's. It was Zach Baggins from Ghost Adventures, and he spent $2,800 to buy it from a woman who had previously used it as a flower pot to be honest, that's not much money, considering what it is and how famous it is Well it's supposedly haunted, which is why, obviously, zach Baggins has got it, but don't know whether it is or not.
Speaker 2:
It's been holding flowers for a little while instead of body parts.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I think holding flowers is a nicer thing for the victims. I think that's a little bit more respectful than it being on display. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Well, that is, that is the random blam, that. Thanks for that Blam Welcome. Blam done.
Speaker 1:
Blam done.
Speaker 2:
So today's Blam episode is called the Curse of the Crying Boy.
Speaker 1:
Oh, that sounds sad.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I know, I don't know why I sound so happy about it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I know, yeah, I know. Sure, it's a great one. Yeah, it's a tragedy.
Speaker 2:
It is such tragedy. Actually it's. It's very English and apparently it was quite popular. You might even know of it because it was from your era, not my era. How dare you? I do apologise, but the facts are the facts, weaves, weaves. So on September, the 5th 1985, popular British newspaper, the Sun, which for those living in England you know, off the Sun newspaper it's, you know you can hear all the Brits going oh yeah, oh the.
Speaker 2:
Sun. Yeah, so they actually published an article called Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy. Oh goodness, I know. The article told the story of Ron and May Hall after a devastating fire broke out their family home that they'd lived in for 27 years in Rotherham, south Yorkshire. Now the fire started in the kitchen after a chip pan of oil caught fire, and I don't know if that's a British thing to so it's an 80s thing.
Speaker 1:
It's an 80s thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
Definitely To fry your chips in a massive saucepan full of oil and then it gets too hot and it catches fire. So chip pan my mum used to do it before deep-fried fries were no, luckily, because chip pan fires always were something that me growing up, I was terrified of. Yeah, the same as quicksand. I thought that was going to be more of an issue than it has been in my life. And stop drop and roll. I thought I was going to need that a lot more than I've ever done. So chip pan.
Speaker 1:
Maybe a day just hasn't come yet, maybe it'll just be like one day I will need to I knew that would come in handy Stop, drop and roll.
Speaker 2:
So chip pan fires are in a different league of fires because in most fires you chuck some water on them. However, have you seen the videos of chip pan fires where they chuck water on them? Of course, they immediately escalate.
Speaker 2:
Explode A hundred times worse than what they were. So it always really terrified me a chip pan fire because they were devastating. And the fire for run and mate was absolutely devastating and it completely gutted the entire downstairs of their home. So the curtains were reduced to ash, the furniture was completely destroyed and the couple lost many of their treasured items. However, one item did remain completely unharmed Amongst the devastation. Hanging on the blackened living room wall was a painting completely unaffected by the blaze that had destroyed so many other of their items in that home.
Speaker 1:
What was it made of Heflon?
Speaker 2:
Well, you'll see, years prior to this, may and Ron had bought a cheap print of a famous painting called the Crying Boy. The painting is thought to have originated in Italy in the 50s and was created by artist Giovanni Broglin, but actually when I researched it, it suggests there's various sources and they suggested actually it was a Spanish artist called Bruno Amadia who actually painted under the pseudo name Giovanni. But regardless, it is said that Giovanni in the 50s met an orphaned boy named Don Bonillo, whose parents had died in a house fire and he was actually nicknamed the Devil Child or Diablo due to the fact that mysterious fires seemed to start wherever he was. But despite this, giovanni took pity on the orphan and he cared for him. But before long the artist's house burned down. Giovanni disowned the boy and in 1970, the orphan boy, don, who was no longer a boy. He was kind of into his early adulthood. He actually tragically died when his car got into an accident and caught fire.
Speaker 2:
But while the orphan had been in Giovanni's care, he had painted this portrait and named it the Crying Boy, and the portrait actually depicts a very young boy who looks probably about three or four, possibly five at a push, and he's kind of in what you can only describe as orphan clothing. He looks quite sort of disheveled and it's a very, very sad looking painting. The boy is very sad and there are tears, visible tears running down his face. And for whatever reason, the portrait gained popularity in the UK with over 50,000 copies sold between 1950 and the mid 70s 80s. Another source actually said it was more like quarter of a million so 250,000 copies were sold and there was variations of this Crying Boy picture. It wasn't just the one, it was kind of like a series, but all of the pictures depicted a very sad young boy.
Speaker 1:
So the song, I'm just looking at it now, oh are you?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's right, it's a sad looking boy, isn't it? Very so. The Sun newspaper wrote this article in 1985 and the article alone didn't really gain a huge amount of attention because it was just predominantly about this house fire and it probably would have died in that edition of the newspaper had it not gained the attention of a firefighter that contacted the newspaper with his story. The fireman told the Sun that I mean the Sun newspaper, not like his son or a son. I'm here, sun, he told his son. Beyond the mountains lies the Elephant Grave.
Speaker 1:
Don't go there. He held him up at the edge for clues. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So the fireman actually told the Sun newspaper that during his course, the course of his career, he'd actually attended at least 15 house fires where the house had been completely devastated but a picture of the Crying Boy remained untouched on the walls of the homes. So then the Sun then ran this story and they was very excited and they actually named it Tears for Fears. The portrait that fireman claimed is cursed, and you can look up these articles. They are 100% real and they were published in the Sun newspaper. So this article, Tears for Fears the portrait that fireman claimed is cursed. In today's era you would kind of say that that article went viral. It gained a lot of popularity. Loads and loads of copies were sold and the newspaper was flooded with calls and letters from owners of this portrait with very similar stories. Here are some of those stories All good.
Speaker 2:
Dora Mann from Mitchum, Surrey, claimed her house was gutted just six months after she bought a print of the painting and she says all my paintings were destroyed except the one of the Crying Boy. Sandra Kask of Kilburn, North Yorkshire she said that her sister-in-law and a friend had all suffered disastrous fires since they had bought a copy of this picture. Another family from Nottingham also blamed the print of the Crying Boy on a blaze which had left them completely homeless. Brian Parks, whose wife and three children needed treatment for smoke inhalation due to the fact that their house had caught fire, said that he had destroyed the copy of this crying boy after he returned home from hospital after needing treatment and found it hanging on the wall completely undamaged. So the wall was blackened and charred, the wallpaper was burnt off and there was this picture completely undamaged, and he was like fuck this shit and destroyed it.
Speaker 2:
On October 21st 1985, the Perillo Pizza Place in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, was gutted by a fire, Although the print the crying boy remained in pristine condition. On October 24th there's actually a Sun newspaper article released that titles crying boy castrax again and it shows a family of four quite a young couple, sort of 20s and early 20s, and their two young children, With their picture of the crying boy stood in front of them, and it tells of how they came home to find their council house on fire and everything in their home completely ruined, apart from this picture that they have in front of them, which is completely undamaged.
Speaker 1:
My goodness.
Speaker 2:
On the 25th of October 1985 in Heswell, merseyside, a pair of the paintings hanging in the living room and dining room of a house belonging to the Amos family were found intact after a gas explosion destroyed the building. What I know? In November 1985, one woman from Leeds destroyed her picture of the crying boy after she blamed it for the fire that actually caused the deaths of her husband and three children. Oh my goodness, mrs Woodward of Forest Hill, london, who destroyed her picture, believed it to be responsible for the loss of her son, daughter, husband and mother in separate fire related incidences. Oh my God, on November 12th 1985, malcolm Vaughan of Church Down, gloucestershire, helped to destroy his neighbour's picture after he returned home to find his living room ablaze for reasons which firemen were unable to explain.
Speaker 1:
I wonder if firemen now go into houses and look like they're saying about looking at the damage left by the fire. I wonder if they go straight in and go. Have you got one of these and holed up like the crying boy picture? We know what it's like.
Speaker 2:
Instead of looking for arson and looking for all these things, they just look at the walls and go. That's that fucking pain in again. Where'd it go?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I bet people like home insurance companies have got something against that, where they're like do you have a copy of that? And people go, oh yeah, I do, yes, I do. And they're like OK, we can't insure you. Yeah, your insurance is 500,000. Or screwed mate.
Speaker 2:
December 1985, 67 year old William Armitage died in a mysterious fire that swept through his house in western Supermere in Avon, and it was discovered that a crying boy picture was found intact lying beside his child body. Get out of it. One of the firemen who dealt with the blaze was quoted afterwards saying I've never believed in the jinx up until now. But when you actually come across a painting in a gutted room and it's literally the only thing that hasn't been touched, it is most odd. And that is. That is quite nice.
Speaker 2:
It is most odd Because of this kind of popularity of this article and things like that.
Speaker 2:
It caught the attention of comedian and writer Steve Punt and he was a radio show host as well when he had this radio show called Punt PI and he took one of these paintings and set it on fire because he was like, obviously it's a painting, it's got a wooden frame and you know it's made of paper, it's going to burn.
Speaker 2:
And I've watched this footage of him setting this painting on fire and it's quite a. It's not just a little bit of a fire, it's quite a fire that kind of like starts at the corner of the painting and then kind of goes right up the painting. There's quite a lot of flames and things like that and then after a little while it just starts to settle down and you can hear him saying it's not spreading, it's kind of just staying in that corner, it's not spreading, it's not kind of catching a light. But this paint, this fire, eventually settles down and the painting is completely on damage, like the fire links right up the page, right up the page, and it's not even like charred or blackened or anything. How can that?
Speaker 1:
happen, why you tell me it's a technical diagnosis Fire, fire nose.
Speaker 2:
Brilliant. People obviously were saying that it was made on some sort of flame retard material. But you know so there was obviously a lot of fear mongering from the media, as you can imagine, and people were writing into the Sun newspaper saying what should I do with my copy? I've got a copy of this in my house. I don't want to catch fire, I don't want to ruin my house. So the Sun newspaper actually wrote an article and it said that anybody that wants to get rid of their copy of the crying boy should send it to them and they will do a mass burning of the pictures. So they received thousands of these pictures and they were stacked 12 feet high in the newsroom and they were spilling out of cupboards and they entirely filled a little used interview room and, as a joke, one of the news crew actually put it on the wall and the guy that had been writing these articles was like absolutely not take that thing down.
Speaker 1:
Yeah you would, wouldn't you Get that a hell away from me?
Speaker 2:
So it is thought I couldn't really find much information, but it's thought that they actually done this mass burning on Halloween and they got all these pictures together and they done this mass burning and after that the stories began to decrease of these burning, of these house fires, and a fireman, alan Wilkinson, who himself had been called to over 50 house fires that involved the crying boy painting. He, even though he'd been to all of these house fires and seen that you know over 50 of them had this painting, he believed it as just superstition. You know, a lot of these paintings were sold, so the chance saw that they're going to be in some houses and he said that actually all of the house fires had an explanation as the reasons why they had been caught on fire, like the chip fire and things like that. Yeah, but that wouldn't make me feel easier. No, no, but it didn't make him feel easier either, because when he retired they actually, as a joke, presented him with a picture of the crying boy and he said absolutely not, am I taking that home?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, even though give him a presentation, give him a fire extinguisher, don't give him painting.
Speaker 2:
Even though he'd said that it's a you know, it's a superstition, it's not, there's no way that this is cursed. Whatever else, he still would not have that picture hanging in his home, and so he left it kind of in the star frame for the day and, coincidentally, that evening the oven in the kitchen overheated and it burnt the fireman's dinner. Well, there you go, there you go, yeah, absolutely proof. So today, up until today, I couldn't find any sort of recent mentions of the crying boy causing any house fires. So it is thought that actually this mass burning of the portrait has actually broke the curse.
Speaker 1:
I don't risk it.
Speaker 2:
No, I know, that's one of those things that. I don't believe it but am.
Speaker 1:
I having that pain in my house? No, that's how I feel, I'm like, because I'm scared about things like that anyway, like we turn all the power off and everything when we go out, and I think, god, it'd just be the worst thing, wouldn't it? If you said you know, I don't believe in it. And to prove that, I'm going to put one of the pictures in my house, and you did, and then your house burnt down.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's just not worth it, is it?
Speaker 1:
It's not. No, I mean, it's a good painting but it's not particularly nice, as in. I wouldn't choose it because I wouldn't want to look at it and see, you know, little boy with such a sad face.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, a crying boy. It's a very sad picture and I don't want to gain so much popularity in the UK. It's not going to bring me joy. It goes to show the UK doesn't it oh that nice picture of that really sad little girl. Yeah, probably crying. Yeah, but yeah, so that is the story of the crying child and it's thought to be one of the most cursed paintings in the UK Blimey, so yeah, it goes without saying.
Speaker 1:
Go to the number of listeners have one or get one or anything like that. I did have a look and you can get them for like 20 quid off eBay.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, don't do it. I did read a story actually of a man that had written this story about himself as a little boy and he said that he was obsessed with this painting. His nan had it up in the house and he was obsessed with this painting because of the sadness in this boy and he was like why is he so sad? He was really obsessed with it and he gave him a name and everything and then he said his nan's kitchen caught fire and afterwards she destroyed this picture and he never understood why she destroyed this picture until this article come out and he thought, oh my God, my nan had one of those and she had a house fire.
Speaker 1:
God, that's mad, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
How you'd think back and be like I mean, in the 80s we had some say disturbing paintings, but we had paintings in our house that mean my sister, like we didn't want to walk past. Oh really, they're eyes follow you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and we used to say to mum, like there's one of I think there was one of a cat that was kind of peeping through the curtains, oh gosh, and that used to freak us out. And we used to say to my mum can you put it in the spare room, Because we never go in the spare room, can you put it in the spare room? And she'd take it off and put it in the spare room. We're like, don't like it, scary, yeah, oh goodness, that is creepy. And I don't know how you would explain the fact that they can't actually destroy the actual picture, not with fire no, but I mean they must have destroyed this mass burning of the fires, they must have destroyed them.
Speaker 2:
I don't know whether they just none of them burned. And then they was like oh, let's not tell anyone.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, they've just all buried in a bit. They're still in the newsroom. Yeah, created so much fire with having 8,000 of them all burned and put in a pit together. Yeah, maybe it's opened up the gate to hell. Maybe Freaking myself out? Okay, well, you're welcome for that. Yeah, thanks for that Blam that was. I've never heard of it, never.
Speaker 2:
I know, when I found it I was like, oh my God, I sent to Josie because I couldn't find a story that I wanted to do. And when I found it I was like, oh my God, this is the one. This story Crazy.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that is mad. Yeah, oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:
Oh, thanks for that you are welcome and we'll see you on the next Blam. Yeah, bye, bye. If you have enjoyed listening to our episodes, make sure you rate us and leave us a review, on whatever platform you are listening.
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
You can also email us your stories at perplexedpodcastscom.
Speaker 2:
And you can find all the relevant links in the episode descriptions. Thanks for listening, bye, bye, bye.