Before you look, read the description.
The picture was painted by Bill Stoneham. The scandal began after one of the exhibitions. Mentally unbalanced people viewing this picture became ill, they lost consciousness, began to cry, etc...
It all started in 1972, when the picture was drawn by Bill Stonehan from an old photograph of him at the age of five found in the Chicago house where he lived at the time (first photo).
The painting was first shown to the owner and art critic of the Los Angeles Times, who later died. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe not. The painting was then acquired by actor John Marley (died 1984). Then the fun begins. The painting was found in a landfill among a pile of garbage. The family who found her brought her home and already on the first night the little four-year-old daughter ran into her parents’ bedroom screaming that the children in the picture were fighting. The next night the children in the picture were outside the door. The next night, the head of the family set the video camera to be activated by movement in the room where the painting hung. The video camera went off several times.
The painting was put up for auction on eBay. Soon, eBay administrators began receiving alarming letters with complaints about deteriorating health, loss of consciousness, and even heart attacks. There was a warning on eBay (as well as in this post), but people are notoriously curious and many ignored the warning. The text of the message is shown in one of the images.
The painting was sold for 1025 USD, the starting price was 199 USD.
The page with the painting was visited over 30,000 times, but mostly just for fun. It was bought by Kim Smith, who lived in a small town near Chicago. He was just looking for something for his newly renovated art gallery on the Internet. When he came across "Hands Resist Him" he initially thought that it was painted in the forties and would be perfect for him as an exhibit.
This would have been the end of the story, but letters now began to arrive at Smith's address. Many of them were, as before, with stories about feeling unwell after viewing the film, but there were also those who wrote about the evil emanating from it.
Others demanded that it simply be burned. Even Ed and Lorraine Warren, famous for exorcizing demons at the Amityville House in 1979, offered his services. Some even recalled the famous Satillo murder in the forested hills of California. The ghosts of two children are said to haunt the house in the hills. Psychics claimed: “We saw a boy. He wore a light T-shirt and shorts. His sister was always in the shadows. He seemed to protect her. Their names were Tom and Laura and they looked exactly like the children depicted in the picture.
What's wrong with this picture? Maybe it's all about the distortion of proportions and shape, slight, but intrusive, forcing you to look closely. Look at the boy's head: his top is flat, his face is flat and shapeless, as if covered with a piece of raw dough. Look at the door. Don't you have the feeling that the boy is taller than an adult, and that the door is huge? Hands behind an invisible barrier seem very small. The boy’s legs, there’s something wrong with them too.
There is a terrible wrong. She's scary.
Of course, to understand this picture you need to think like an artist, because he painted himself.
Imagine that you are standing at a locked door, squinting from the bright sun. THEY won’t let you in the door and it makes you want to cry (you bit your lip), but you won’t, because you’re already adults.
The girl next to you is not an enemy at all, but your only companion behind this door. Even though she is a doll, and has no eyes, and is empty inside, she knows where to go - after all, she is a resident of this world-behind-the-door. She will lead you along a path where hands cannot drive you away. Everything is fine, it’s just a little disappointing that they didn’t let me in right away.
The street is a dream, the house is our world. The door is the border between sleep and reality, and the hands are “other living ones.” Or maybe it’s not THEY who don’t let their children in, but the children who don’t let THEM in? Children are afraid, especially the boy. but he's an adult and doesn't show it. A girl cannot be afraid because she has no feelings. But they, the boy and the girl, know for sure that HANDS from THAT world will not get through to them, will not break in, because this is a completely different world. But there is something to be afraid of... at least the unexpected. but what if?...
The artist himself writes about her this way:
The boy in the picture being himself, the hands being other lives, the windows/door being a thin veil between waking and dreaming with the small doll like girl being the guide through.
HOW? NOT SCARY?
Then scroll down!
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