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Demon House & The Hands Resist Him
72 Plays3 years ago
We're back boys & ghouls! In this new episode, it's a good old classic haunted house ghost story as Felicia investigates the Ammons haunting case aka the "200 Demons House." Infamous ghost hunter Zak Bagans even purchased the notorious Gary, Indiana house and filmed a documentary about the paranormal activity that occurred there.
Meanwhile, Lauren combines her fear of creepy dolls with a cursed painting as she covers Bill Stoneham's "The Hands Resist Him." This '70s-era painting, depicting a young boy and a female doll standing in front of a glass paneled door, became an instant urban legend and internet meme when it was posted for sale on eBay along with an explanation that it was haunted.
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Transcript
Summer Recap: Weddings, Events, and Return Plans
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff. And we are aware you have not heard from us in a while. In some time. I do like Felicia that we posted. We will be back in June. Now we're hitting the last week of June. Hey, but it's still June, baby. And this is the best we could do.
00:00:41
Speaker
We had very busy summers. We've been traveling. We've been getting stuff done. It's been good. It's been great. Lots of, I don't know about you, but this is the summer of just everything coming at once where it's like all the weddings that got postponed, all the family events.
00:01:01
Speaker
I graduated. It's just like every possible thing happened this month. But now I'm winding down. So I feel like I'm finally like coming back to my internet life.
TV Shows and Movie Talk: 'The Office' and More
00:01:14
Speaker
Is that a weird way to say it? But yeah. I love it. Are you back on YouTube too? Are you recording stuff again? I'm about to be. Yeah. Working on it.
00:01:24
Speaker
I'm excited. There's so many horror movies I need to see right now, so I'm hoping I'll have a lot of recommendations next week. I made a big list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I made a big list. I'm just starting to check out some of the stuff that came out this past month. But yeah. I love it. Do you have anything to recommend this week?
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, so what I wanted to give an office update because yeah listen to the podcast asked for that Yeah, I am almost done. I have I just have the Finale. Oh my god. I'm saving. Yeah
00:01:58
Speaker
Oh, I'm impressed you got through some of those rougher seasons. They're a little painful. I mean, there was a few that I might have been a little sleepy through or might have been doing work while I watched. But overall, I mean, just great. And and I really something in particular that I really appreciated in this last season.
00:02:18
Speaker
is the camera crew sort of becoming a character, finally, and the documentary that they've been filming. It's like the form of the show finally comes into the show in a different way. I was like, I'm glad they did that. But it's been a very enjoyable experience. How sad were you when Steve Carell left, though?
00:02:37
Speaker
Oh, I was very sad and just like kind of was like, how will they keep going? And then it kind of took a while again for me to like get used to these new characters and like start to care about them. Totally.
00:02:54
Speaker
But it's fun. It's a fun show. And I like that like, I mean, I haven't watched the finale yet, but they try to give everyone like a happy ending so far. Like they're trying to like give everyone what they've been wanting for nine seasons. And I thought that was also like a nice like shows can just be happy sometimes like and I like that.
00:03:12
Speaker
I will say that as much as there were some seasons in there that I was like, what's going on? I really do like James Spader, Robert California. I was like, please get out. You're ruining it for me. It's very annoying. Yeah. But besides that, I do think they do a good job of finally wrapping it up in a good way and having you get everything you want.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah. For sure. Absolutely. I love that. I do have a horror movie recommendation, but I'm going to save it. OK. We'll hear it next week. Because we're preparing two episodes today. So you all know for another week.
00:03:46
Speaker
Yes. So my recommendations are the sinner. I finally finished season one. So good. Oh my God. You hadn't seen that. I'd never seen it. I'd never seen it. So I finally watched it and it was so good. I loved it. It's so intense. All the seasons are good. Are there three now? I think so. I know I watched them all. I just can't even remember. I think there's three because there's definitely, I know there's obviously season two.
00:04:14
Speaker
but I think there are three. But then I've also been watching, this is sort of a mixed review, I've been watching Under the Banner of Heaven that Andrew Garfield show about Mormons and murder. And I just like, I think he's so good, which is keeping me and like the story itself is interesting. It's just like a little slow for me.
00:04:36
Speaker
But if you're, I would say watch it during the day, or watch it when you're more awake than I am. Oh, OK. Oh, oh, I also started the new season of Stranger Things. Oh, yes. That was going to be my recommendation next week. Oh. We'll talk about it next week. We'll talk about it next week. I'm only one episode in any way. OK. But the horror elements, I said, wow. Yes. Wow, wow, wow. We'll talk about it next week. OK. I love it.
The Amens Family Haunting Case: A Deep Dive
00:05:02
Speaker
All right. So you're going first this week, right? Yes, I am.
00:05:07
Speaker
So a good old-fashioned demon house. Yay! That's where we're going. So I'm going to be covering the, I think it's Amens, the Amens family haunting. And this takes place in Gary, Indiana, a La Music Band. And it turns out Gary, Indiana, not a happy place. Not a happy place.
00:05:35
Speaker
Not like the music man. I was gonna say, what about that song though? Exactly. Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, not Louisiana, not Louisiana, Paris, France, New York or Rome. You nailed it. I couldn't have done all those. Thank you. Thank you. But yeah, it's a city that has like a lot of poverty and a lot of crime issues and just very rundown to this day.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, like right now. Right now, it's happening. Right now. Yeah, so this haunting actually happened in 2011, and it got a lot of media attention. And then, and I'm going to go back and talk through the case, but here's a little bit of an overview. Your favorite, Zach, is it baguins or baguins?
00:06:23
Speaker
I always said baguins, but I don't know if that's just because I wanted it to be like Lord of the Rings. That's exactly how I felt. But I think it actually is baguins. Probably. It looks like baguins, right? It does. But on my notes, I wrote baguins. Anyway, so the paranormal investigator of ghost hunters, he actually purchased the home.
00:06:48
Speaker
so that he could investigate it and then created a documentary called Demon House that came out, I believe in 2019. And it was, I mean, I don't know, I kind of believe it. This is like one of those documentaries that like is very, you know, a la Zack Bagan's, where it's a little cheesy in the editing and in the lighting and even in some of the voiceover, it's like,
00:07:17
Speaker
And the demon has arrived. Like, it's just it's very cheesy. But all the interviews were just so compelling. And he basically starts the documentary out saying this is a demon house and this is a cursed film. And throughout the film, he kind of explains that why it took him basically three years to even get the film out, because so many people that were involved
00:07:47
Speaker
had health issues and all these issues from being in the house, including himself, and that there was just like a darkness over the making of this film that was very scary and has had a lot of, yeah, long-term effects on those involved. I mean, if that's not true, that's pretty smart. Like, it took us a long time to make the movie, but it was just because it was cursed.
00:08:13
Speaker
It was cursed, baby. It was an artifact. Yes. So let's talk about the original haunting. Wait, maybe that's what we should do with this podcast. So sorry we're behind. It's cursed. I know we've been gone a while. This is now a cursed podcast. OK, so this is overall a demon possession case versus a poltergeist or a ghost haunting.
00:08:39
Speaker
So the Amens family, Latoya Amens, her mother, Rosa Campbell, and her three children moved into a rental home in Gary, Indiana in 2011. And while they were there, the kids were, by the way, ages 7, 9, and 12.
00:08:57
Speaker
And the first thing they noticed when they moved in was they had moved in in the winter, I guess. And all of these flies kept swarming their screented porch, which was strange because flies typically don't come out in the winter. And so that was sort of their first clue that something was strange. And then they started having, you know, kind of the classic things happening in the house.
00:09:26
Speaker
They would hear footsteps in the basement, doors creaking. They saw shadowy figures pacing. And then they had a couple of incidents that feel straight out of a movie. So one being that one of the daughters was having a sleepover. And during the sleepover, somebody started screaming, the mom runs in, and the daughter is levitating above the bed, passed out.
00:09:56
Speaker
Oh, so not good. Yeah, not good. Not good. The kids started kind of talking to nobody, saying like, they're gonna kill, they're gonna do these terrible things. The kids would like often attack each other like randomly, like just get very like angry. And all of these things that were happening, you know, obviously the levitation, but even the other like behavioral issues, according to the family were just very out of character.
00:10:22
Speaker
And to the point that they ended up having their family doctor come and check out all the kids, and he said that he believed the kids were just having delusions of some sort. Oh, man. And it got so bad at one point that the family called 911 one night and all the kids went to the emergency room.
00:10:45
Speaker
And the kids were very violent. And in this instance, this is where other people in the town started coming into the picture and experiencing things. And this is where, for me, I start to lean towards believing if there's enough people that saw something that weren't just in the family. Because obviously, with every kind of haunting, there's always this skeptical, the family made it up for media attention, or they made it up
00:11:13
Speaker
to get out of their lease or they made it up for blah, blah, blah. And that's definitely probably happened in many cases, but this one, I don't know. The 911 and the doctor being involved, like that kind of like medical, I don't know, seeking medical attention or help, really. Absolutely.
00:11:30
Speaker
And also, if you're trying to get attention, I don't know, looping in your seven-year-old, what was it, seven, nine, and 12? Yeah. Those are hard ages to just say, aren't you- To convince you to do something like that. Aren't you feeling unwell over there? That's hard. Yeah. So eventually also, and this is along with the emergency room visit. So the Department of Child Services also got involved, one, because
00:12:00
Speaker
the kids were, their attendance in school was very bad. And so like a CPS worker had come to like figure out what was going on. And apparently it was like the kids were not sleeping. They were having all these issues in the house. So the kids were just exhausted. They like weren't going to school all the time. And so that's how CPS workers got into it. And at the emergency room, a CPS worker,
00:12:26
Speaker
and a doctor, and I think a child psychologist were all in the room when one of the young children, and this is reported on, and all these people were interviewed in the Demon House documentary, the child was screaming and started walking up the wall backwards. Oh, God. So that's bad. I mean, that's not even possible.
00:12:54
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. And like they interviewed the CPS worker about this, they interviewed all these people. And they're like, Yeah, that's what happened. And all of them, most of them, a lot of them had, and this is something they go through at the end of the documentary, they like literally go down the list of all the people that were involved in this house, like had been in the house, and it had issues from it. Like the CPS worker, like
00:13:20
Speaker
left the profession, moved far away and like went into therapy. Oh gosh. I think the psychologist like immediately developed cancer. Like there's like a lot of health issues. One of the guys that helped out on the documentary was like put in the hospital shortly after. There's just like a lot of health issues that is very interesting. That's really scary. Yeah.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, including, including Zach Bagans, like he ended up getting this like eye issue called like Diplioma or something where it's basically like you see your vision is like doubled, you can see. And he got it immediately after like spending a night in the house and it's like a long term, like he will have it forever. Oh, gosh. So there's a lot of things like that.
00:14:05
Speaker
So in shape to like, I mean, he's not that old. No, no. And it's literally in the documentary. Like he spends a night in the house by himself and it's towards the end of the documentary. And he starts having this like pain behind his eyes while he's there. And then like right after that, like he's diagnosed with this thing and like he needs to have eye surgery. It's very, very scary.
00:14:28
Speaker
That's super scary. Yeah. So, so the family, sorry, going back to the family for a second, they eventually got out of the house and yeah, and they ended up moving like far away, like I think to like Indianapolis or something like that. And Zach Bagans had tried to like, interview them. Oh, they moved in 2012.
Paranormal Experiences: Personal Stories and Events
00:14:50
Speaker
So they were there for less than a year.
00:14:53
Speaker
And basically, they said that once they moved, everything was fine. And I'm pretty sure they actually moved in with her with Latoya's brother, I think is I'm understanding that correctly. And as soon as they moved, all the paranormal stuff pretty much stopped. And oh, but before that, sorry, I skipped one part.
00:15:12
Speaker
And that's, of course, they had to bring a priest into this. So they had already brought the doctors, they brought the CPS workers. And the family eventually hired Father Michael Magnet to do exorcism. And he believes that they were tormented by demons in the house. He did three different exorcisms, including on Latoya, Amens herself and on the house. And
00:15:39
Speaker
It didn't, even though the family was able to leave, the issues in the house definitely remained. And that's, so after, so Zach Bagans bought the house, starts doing the documentary.
00:15:50
Speaker
And the things that they first experience when they're filming the documentary in the house, I just have to bring up my own personal story quickly. Oh my gosh. Did you get a life-threatening illness from watching Demon House? No, I didn't. Though I thought about it, I was like, should I be watching this? But no, so something that a lot of them experience, particularly in the basement and in the house in general, is this feeling of like you kind of get disoriented and you start to feel sick.
00:16:19
Speaker
And I recently, or not even that recently, so I did a show at this bar. And there was a basement in the bar where we were storing stuff. And the first time I went in there, I was like trying to put stuff away. And I started like looking around, I was like, Oh my god, I don't I don't feel good. And I like couldn't get my thoughts in order or something. It was like very strange. And and I immediately it was like, okay, there was like bad energy in here. And so I
00:16:48
Speaker
you know, I dropped the stuff and I left. And I was like, Okay, I might have just been like having weird moment. And then I've had to go to that basement several times. And every time I feel the same exact way. And it's only in one room in the basement, it's in one particular room, I walk in, I and if I stand there too long, I feel disoriented. And I feel sick.
00:17:07
Speaker
and I have to leave. That is so scary. It is. It was so immediate. Even though I had never experienced like that before, it was such an immediate reaction in my brain to say something bad has happened here and I am sensing bad energy. It's making me feel sick. Did you tell anyone?
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, I told some other people, well, basically I was like, I don't know, y'all, there's some bad vibes in here. Like, eh, like, I don't know. Can we store it somewhere else? Yeah. And then, and then when I was watching this documentary, the things they were describing, I was like, that's exactly how I felt in that room. That is too ity. I watched this documentary yesterday and I was like, that is too ity how I felt in that room. That's freaky. It's so freaky. I hope you don't have to go in there anymore.
00:18:00
Speaker
Hopefully not. Hopefully not. So some other things that they got in the documentary at the house, they got some recordings of some different voices saying things that they didn't experience while they were in there, but they're on the recording. One thing that I thought was very strange is that there was kind of this like oil all over the blinds.
00:18:25
Speaker
and they couldn't find like where it was coming from. Like it wasn't dripping from anywhere, but it was just like kind of all everything was like oily and a new CPS worker after the old one quit and was like, I'm out of here. The new one, she touched it with her hand and her whole hand went like white and they have like photos of it, like half where her, she touched it. Like it's like all the blood drain. Do you know what like Raynard's is? No, like it's, it's a thing where like, um, it's like a circulation issue, but it's basically fingers and toes, like,
00:18:54
Speaker
get like whites or blue because like your circulation isn't going to be there. Like that happens just like half of her hands from where she touched it. And I was like, what is all of this? So they basically, you know, decided that the bad energy in this house was coming from
00:19:12
Speaker
the basement and particularly under the stairs of the basement. There was some things like buried in there and there was like an altar with some crucifixes that I assume the family had set up in the basement. I'm not exactly sure. But they couldn't really, they just couldn't find the information.
00:19:29
Speaker
But they weren't sure if this spot was, as some people would say, a portal to hell. Is that what they say in the documentary? Or if somebody at some point of living in the house had done some sort of ritual in this house that had called upon some demonic entity.
00:19:46
Speaker
And so they're not really sure which it was, but ultimately Zach Bagans decided to tear the house down because Oh my God. I didn't even tell you the scariest part. Oh my God. So that is so scary. I know that it's even gets worse. So
00:20:05
Speaker
I don't know if you, how much ghost hunters have you watched? I don't know. I've never tracked anything. I always just put it on his background noise. Did you ever see Deborah and Mark Constantino on there? I don't think so. So they are like kind of regular, they were sort of regulars on the show for a while, I guess. And when he had bought the house, Deborah had contacted him
00:20:35
Speaker
being like, I'm trying to like, from afar, get in contact with the entity in the house and figure out like what's wrong. And she basically said like, this is a really bad, bad demon. I can't remember exactly what she said, but she's like, it's really bad. It's very bad energy.
00:20:51
Speaker
And she, this is so sad. I feel bad even telling this, but, so basically a little bit after that, she and her husband were found dead and he killed her and killed himself. Oh my God. And these were like Zach Bagan's friends that were like on his show very often. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm sure I've seen them on the show.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah. And it was like a, yeah, murder, suicide. And he talks about the documentary and he was like, you can, that's the other thing about the documentary. You could tell how horrible he feels for everything that happened to everyone. Cause he feels, I think he feels responsible. I mean, not that he should, but like I could see myself feeling that way in a similar situation. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um,
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, and also he had a friend, Chris Fleming, I think also appeared on Ghost Hunters and he's like a psychic. But he had sent a text to Zach that basically said, I've seen visions of the demon. It's very large, like a hulking type figure. Horns turned black and like goat feet.
00:22:08
Speaker
Be careful. It's an eight out of 10 on the demonic scale. And when it comes to possession, he's like, I can draw you a picture if you want. But basically, so he describes this like tall, like, you know, what Zach eventually says, like a 10 foot tall, like goat demon thing. And Zach says that he had had like nightmares of this, like after he purchased the house.
00:22:31
Speaker
like of this figure. And then he got a text from his friend who's like a psychic being like, this is what's in the house. And he was like, well, great. So it's pretty crazy. It's an interesting documentary. All the people that are interviewed, it's just so many like just normal people from the town that happen to be involved in this case, because they're just family workers or police officers or like they were called to the house for various reasons. And hearing all their accounts is just like
00:23:01
Speaker
So crazy. Wow. But yeah, so ultimately, he ended up tearing down the house. And I don't know what's there now. At the end of the documentary, they said some people try to go do satanic rituals there. And I'm like, please don't. Yeah, maybe don't bring it back. Maybe don't. And of course, there's plenty of people that think it was a hoax. They think the documentary is ridiculous and all that. Oh, there was one thing that was brought up, too, that the house had mold and asbestos.
00:23:31
Speaker
And so they were trying to figure out at one point if the delusions that the kids were having, where it's due to like exposure to mold, but ultimately they decided it wasn't because the mold was only in the attic and the kids were never really up there. But I don't know. So that's another bit of skeptical stuff. It's, it's either like, it was a mold issue. It was the family trying to get out of their lease, you know, all those types of things. I don't know the kid walking backwards up the stairs.
00:24:01
Speaker
Up the wall. I mean, wall, wall, sorry. Why do I say stairs? I don't know. But the wall, it's horrifying. And so many people saw it. And they were like, yes, I saw that. That to me is like multiple people seeing a kid walk up a wall. I don't know. I don't know. Seems bad. How do you explain that? But yeah, that's the story. The house is gone now. And Demon House is on 2B if you want to watch it.
00:24:29
Speaker
Oh, I might, or maybe I'm too scared, but that was a good one, Felicia. That was definitely scary.
00:24:47
Speaker
All right, so I am kind of going back to what I had talked about. Now I feel so long ago, but the last episode I talked about the black paintings, which I had sort of hoped were cursed. And so I decided to look into actually cursed paintings and I did find a story about one.
Haunted Art: 'The Hands Resist Him' Painting
00:25:08
Speaker
So yes, this painting is called The Hands Resist Him.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I really thought that maybe I had seen it when I saw it. So you might have also seen it. And we'll obviously put it on our Instagram. Maybe I'd come across it before in research, or maybe I did see it just out in the wild. But it was a painting created by artist Bill Stoneham in 1972.
00:25:35
Speaker
And it's a picture of a young boy just, you know, dressed very normally in a t-shirt and shorts and a kind of creepy black eyed female doll who's almost the same size as the little boy standing in front of a glass panel door. And then there are multiple sets of hands pressed up on the glass behind her. So I'm looking at it now. I've never seen this in my life.
00:26:05
Speaker
Well, there you go. It's very creepy. Isn't it weird? It looks almost like it should be a happy little painting, but it's not. The doll's holding this, what is a broken dry cell battery in her hand. We'll get into that later. It's a little weird that this doll is holding this battery. The artist claimed that this was a painting based on a photograph of himself at age five.
00:26:32
Speaker
So obviously not with the hands in it, but that it looks, you know, the hem and the doll are this photograph of himself. And the artist described the, you know, glass, the doorway as a representation of the line between the living world and the world of fantasy and impossibilities.
00:26:52
Speaker
And then the doll was kind of a guide that would lead the little boy through it. And then the hands represent alternate lives or possibilities or, you know, I guess universes or anything like that. And he was also inspired by a poem that his wife wrote about the fact that he never met his biological family.
00:27:14
Speaker
So I also like like what an idea that you write a poem about your husband's not meeting his family. But anyway, this is the poem. He is of the seeing visions. His strokes reveal them in a rush of color, of madness, of mystics. And his head is the highest center. It must confront its enemy. The hands resist him like the secret of his birth. His presence is the sanctum heartbeat felt in darkness and in passion.
00:27:44
Speaker
it sound the sole gift to that silence. So very pretty poem. He named- It's funny because all the things you say, once again, sound like it would be a hopeful thing, but when you look at it, it does not feel hopeful. No, which I still think it's interesting. I think he, the artist really felt like it was, or that was he was trying to depict, but it became the title, you know, The Hands Resist Him, which is the title of the
00:28:13
Speaker
poem also became the title of the painting. And as I said, he chose the picture from a photo of himself that his adopted grandmother had in Chicago. So the painting was first displayed at the Fine Garten Gallery in Beverly Hills, California during the early 1970s.
00:28:33
Speaker
There was a Stoneham show there of several different pieces of his, and it was reviewed by an art critic at the time, in the Los Angeles Times, sorry, at the time. No, it's okay. In the Los Angeles Times.
00:28:47
Speaker
And during that show, the painting was actually purchased for a rather expensive price by actor John Marley, who's in The Godfather. So he was a pretty famous actor. And a few years after this painting was sold, the art critic who had reviewed the painting, his name was Henry Seldes, he died.
00:29:11
Speaker
Then, relatively soon after that, the gallery owner died. Then, in 1984, actor John Marley died. Were these old people or no? Relatively. Henry, let me look up their ages just while we're here. It's okay. It doesn't matter, but I'm just always curious. I'm like, did they die of natural causes? John Marley, I felt like was
00:29:38
Speaker
relatively old. Okay, so Henry Seldes was, now you're asking me to do math, 53. That's not great. Oh, that's young. Yeah. And John Marley, the actor, he was older. Well, yeah, he was 77. Okay, that feels
00:30:05
Speaker
were acceptable, I don't know. Yeah, more, oh, actually 76, but hadn't hit his birthday yet. But so they were, you know, a little bit older, but still weird that it was kind of like bam, bam, bam. Yeah, definitely. So sometime after this, after John Marley died, who owned the painting, it was found at an old brewery. So I always am curious about like how, I don't know, paintings end up places or how objects end up places.
00:30:33
Speaker
but this elderly Californian couple bought it from the brewery. And then the painting appeared on eBay in February of 2000. So according to the couple that was selling it, this painting was cursed. Their eBay description made a series of claims proving that, you know, they really felt like it was cursed or haunted. And their four and a half year old daughter claimed that the boy and the doll were fighting
00:31:03
Speaker
and coming out of the painting and into their bedroom at night. So it's freaky. So the father of the young girl, I think to kind of prove that there was nothing for her to be scared about, I do feel like when we have children, this is something that I'm going to be nervous about is like when your kids say, there's a monster under my bed, there's a man in my room, any of that stuff, it really is scary to me.
00:31:32
Speaker
I'm going to be like, is there let's Oh my god. Like that silly just go back to sleep. We're gonna be like, well, let's investigate and call Zach begins. Okay. Exactly. What do we need to do? So this father set up a motion sensitive camera in her room to, you know, show her that there was nothing that they weren't coming out of the painting.
00:31:55
Speaker
And instead, it captured a boy crawling from the painting. No, no way. No one has seen this footage but still. They also included a series of photographs that were supposed to be evidence of an incident in which the doll in the painting threatened the character, the little boy, with a gun she was holding, which caused him to try to leave the painting.
00:32:25
Speaker
I don't know if obviously you can edit things on Photoshop, whatever else, but it is freaky. There was also a disclaimer in the eBay listing that was absolving the sellers from all liability if the painting was purchased and the new owners were terrorized.
00:32:47
Speaker
So it blew up on the internet. Yeah, right. You got to protect yourself. It blew up on the internet pretty quickly. People were, you know, sharing it all over the place. And some people claimed that even viewing the painting online caused them to feel ill or have terrible experiences. So even just looking at the eBay listing,
00:33:08
Speaker
So one person commented and claimed that he fainted at the site of the painting. Another said she felt like her throat was being tightened by an external grip. And another buyer said that his monitor went white and emitted a blast of heat. As soon as he looked at the painting, he also started crying for no reason.
00:33:33
Speaker
What I'm imagining is that it's all in the comment section of the eBay listing. I think that's probably about what was happening, but someone heard an exorcist type voice. Another reported a new Epson printer that ate and mutilated page after page when the user tried to download images of the painting.
00:33:54
Speaker
Viewers also mentioned difficulty breathing, becoming ill, or general discomfort. Some parents said that their children grew unruly or started to scream at the site of the painting. But eventually, the auction page was viewed over 30,000 times, which doesn't sound too crazy to me. But maybe back in 2000, that was pretty insane. That seems like a lot. Yeah.
00:34:19
Speaker
I don't really know what's a lot on the internet. I know, right? But I'm like, I don't know. I feel like now when something's viral, it's like millions of views. Oh, true. Yeah. But I don't know. Maybe at that time, that was very impressive. But there was an initial bid of $199. Ultimately, of course, it received 30 bids, but was only sold for $1,025. But the purchaser, who was Kim Smith, who was buying it for the Perception Gallery and Grand Richard
00:34:48
Speaker
Grand Rapids, Michigan hasn't experienced anything herself. So people checked back with her and she spoke with paranormal website that's surfingtheapocalypse.com about her experience with the painting. And she said, I wish I could report a bizarre happening or mind possession type of thing. But the unusual things started happening with the first email and counting.
00:35:12
Speaker
So she said she's mostly gotten people reaching out to her, but nothing that's happened to her herself. So she got prayers and quotes from the scriptures from a man of faith, advice as to how to cleanse my residents of this evil thing from a Native American shaman in Mississippi.
00:35:32
Speaker
reports of people being repulsed, made physically ill, or suffering from a blackout or mind control experiences. So I think she had planned to show it more, but after receiving all these people reaching out to her saying that they had had such terrible experiences, she ended up putting it in a storage pocket in her gallery. They also, you know, I don't know if this was her or actually it might have been surfingtheapocalypse.com.
00:36:03
Speaker
reached out to the original artist and the artist was very surprised by the stories and all the interpretations of the painting. Some people had talked about the gun that this doll was brandishing and he said that was a dry cell battery and some wires. But Kim Smith still owns the painting and has only been asked to show it six times and hasn't had anything, as I said, intense happen to her herself.
00:36:33
Speaker
She's also had several offers to, you know, from other people to buy the painting, but she's turned them down, which I think is super weird. Because I'm like, if she is not showing the painting, she's also like not- How does she wanna have it? I don't know. Maybe she's hoping it'll go up in value or something. Like maybe she's hoping like in 10 years, she'll get like way more or something.
00:36:58
Speaker
Which makes sense. I mean, she was offered, you know, a six figure offer for the painting and didn't take it at the time. But I'm like, I bet now it probably would be even more. Yeah, I'm not going to lie, I would have taken the offer.
00:37:11
Speaker
You would have taken it. I think I would too. I think I'd be like, well, I'll be like, yeah, take the scary thing off my hands. Right. Right. Let me see what else. So it's kind of cool. Someone who saw this cursed eBay listing did reach out to Stoneham and commissioned him to create a sequel. So he painted resistance at the threshold and this painting features the same characters 40 plus years later.
00:37:40
Speaker
So an adult man. And then he also made a second sequel called Threshold of Revelation. So maybe we'll put those paintings up too, so you can see those.
00:37:49
Speaker
But several years later, there was a prequel that was commissioned that was called The Hands Invent Him, depicting the artist as a boy, even younger. And the last one called What Remains was created in 2021 by Stoneham. So now this has become kind of a whole series of paintings just based on seemingly this eBay listing and this couple kind of blowing it up in that way, which I think is really, I don't know,
00:38:18
Speaker
I just think it's like an interesting thing to be like they didn't get a ton of money for this painting. Yeah. They didn't actually benefit, I guess, from this, you know, from the original purchase at least. But it's become this crazy, you know, urban legend. But I don't know that there's really any proof or evidence of, you know, any of these things. As I said, you can't really, there's no video of the kid coming out of the painting like they claimed they had.
00:38:46
Speaker
But it might just be a fun internet thing that spiraled on itself. But hey, you never know. It's a very strange painting. It's unsettling for multiple reasons, I feel. Yes.
00:39:03
Speaker
I totally agree. I think it's very unsettling and I think it's an interesting thing that as we talk about people that try to get money, the eBay couple seemingly didn't get a ton of money. Even the artist, it's not like the artist spun that it was cursed so that he could be commissioned to make all these other paintings.
00:39:22
Speaker
But those are the, you know, this new owner of the painting is probably the one that would benefit and also the artist, but they weren't behind the like spiraling out of control. So I think it's interesting. It definitely is. Yeah. Wow. Man, we've been doing a lot of curse stuff. I know. Well, now our podcast is cursed, so we'll just roll with it. Yeah. Dang it. Yeah.
00:39:49
Speaker
But thank you all so much for listening and we appreciate your patience as we had to take a break. We should have more consistent episodes this summer. And yeah. We hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.