‘The Crying Boy’ is significantly one of the most memorable series of artworks finished by the famed Italian artist, Giovanni Bragolin in the 1950s.
Each of the collection depicted young teary-eyed innocent children who were often represented as the poor and really beautiful. The series became so much famous all around the world that alone in the UK, over 50,000 copies were bought on its own.
Bragolin painted over sixty portraits in his ‘The Crying Boy’ collection and up until the early 80s, these were printed, reprinted and widely distributed by using mass productions.
On September 5, 1985, the British tabloid newspaper, ‘The Sun’ posted a startling article entitled ‘Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy’. The tale defined the horrible experience of Ron and May hall after their Rotherham home had destroyed by a terrible fire. The purpose of the fire was a chip pan that overheated and burst into flames. The hearth spread swiftly and destroyed everything that was on the floor. Most effective one item remained intact, a print of ‘The Crying Boy’ on the wall of their dwelling room. Distraught at their loss, the devastated couple made a bizarre claim that the picture was actually a cursed object and its real cause was not that chip pan which turned into the motive of the fire. In the very next articles ‘The Sun’ and the other tabloids went on to declare:
- A girl in surrey misplaced her residence to fire 6 months after buying the painting…
- Sisters in Kilburn had fires of their houses after shopping for a copy of the portrait. One sister even claimed to have seen her painting sway forwards and backwards on the wall…
- A concerned female on the Isle of wight attempted to burn her portrait without fulfilment after which she went on to go through a run of terrible worst fortune…
- A gentleman in Nottingham lost his domestic and his whole circle of relatives have been injured after he bought one of these cursed paintings…
- A pizza parlour in Norfolk was destroyed together with each portrait on its wall except that ‘The Crying Boy’…
When ‘The Sun’ published that some rational firefighters even refused to have a duplicate of ‘The Crying Boy’ in their homes and a few even claimed that they experienced terrible bad luck if they tried to destroy or eliminate those alleged paintings, therefore the reputation of ‘The Crying Boy’ paintings become damned for all the time afterwards.
By the end of October in that year, belief in “the curse of the Crying Boy portraits” became so popular that ‘The Sun’ established mass bonfires of the paintings collected from frightened public and readers. On that Halloween, hundreds of paintings were burnt under the supervision of the Fire Brigade.
Steve punt, a British writer and comedian, investigated the allegedly cursed paintings of ‘The Crying Boy’ series in a ” BBC radio 4″ production known as ‘Punt Pi’. Though the layout of the programmes is the comedian in nature, Punt had researched the history of ‘The Crying Boy’ portraits giving his utmost effort to decipher its mystery.
The realization reached through the programme which told about some tests of the research in which it was found that the prints have been treated with a varnish-containing fire retardant, and that the string holding the portrait to the wall will be the first to become worse, resulting in the portrait landing face down at the ground and consequently being covered. However, no rationalization was given as to why the different artworks have not been turning up unscathed.
The story of the cursed Crying Boy Paintings was also broadcast in an episode on curses in the television collection “Weird or What?” in 2012. Some say ‘fate’, some say ‘coincidence’, whereas some others claim, “it’s a hidden curse that breathes in these paintings,” and the controversy still continues.
What did this story of cursed Crying Boy paintings make you feel? Is this paranormal?? Share your own opinion or such odd experience in our comment box.