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Carter Roy
Foreign It's 1982 in Nottingham, England. Jane McCutcheon is cleaning the kitchen. In the other room, her two young daughters are watching cartoons and giggling along. The happy scene was contrasted by the haunting portrait that hung above the fireplace in front of them. It's of a young boy, about 11 years old. He has blonde hair and wears a ragged, oversized shirt. There's a sadness behind his crystal blue eyes. Teardrops roll down either side of his face. Then Jane's two year old daughter runs into the kitchen and tugs at Jane's shirt. She points back to the living room, trying to vocalize something. The room is on fire. The ceiling, the venetian blinds, the furniture. Within minutes, Jane's home is an inferno. Jane grabs her daughters and flees for safety just as firefighters arrive. As she passes some of the men, one of them exclaims, oh no. Not another. He was referring to an item, the painting of the crying boy amidst the flames and the ashes. It was left unscathed and it wasn't the first time it had happened. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify Podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. You can listen to the audio everywhere and watch the video only on Spotify. And be sure to check us out on instagram @the conspiracypod. Stay with us if you're interested in crazy stories from the wild world of organized crime. Scams, gangs, cartels, mafias, drug dealers, and everything fun like that. Have we got a podcast for you. The Underworld Podcast is hosted by two conflict journalists, Danny Gold and Sean Williams, who have reported on all sorts of dangerous people in dangerous places. Every week they bring you a new episode on International Organized Crime from a new corner of the globe. You can find the Underworld Podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We've all heard stories about bad omens and superstitions, like how a broken mirror can lead to seven years of bad luck. An open umbrella can insult the home's guardian spirit. Stepping on a crack can break your mother's back. But it's unlikely you've heard that hanging a portrait of a young crying boy can cause your house to catch on Fire. In September 1985, the Sun, a British tabloid, published a shocking article that caught the public's attention. The headline read blazing Curse of the Crying Boy. The story detailed the curious case of Ron and Mary Hall, a couple living in Rotherham, England, about 80 miles east of Liverpool. They had purchased an inexpensive painting at a department store some months before. It was a medium sized illustration of a young blond boy with pale blue eyes and tears streaming down his face. But shortly after hanging the portrait of the Crying Boy, their kitchen went up in flames. The first floor of the home was completely destroyed in the blaze, and yet the Crying Boy remained perfectly intact, just waiting to be discovered in the ash. Ron's brother Peter was a firefighter in Rotherham. Peter knew that one of his colleagues, Alan Wilkinson, had been logging fires exactly like this one since 1973. 12 years, 49 fires. A painting in every home. And after each blaze, the haunting image of the young Crying Boy left pristine, almost as if he had caused the damage himself. The day after the article's release, the Sun's editor, Calvin McKenzie, was bombarded by phone calls. His story had estimated 50,000 paintings had been sold in the UK in the 50s and 60s. Thousands of homes had the Crying Boy in their living rooms. Some of the callers claimed they too had been a victim of the portrait's curse. Mackenzie published the stories in the next issue of the sun, each more horrifying than the last. A woman in Surrey claims she lost her home to fire six months after she purchased one of the portraits. A kitchen fire in a pizza parlor destroyed an entire building. The Crying Boy portrait was the only thing that didn't turn to ash. Sondra Caskey and her sister in law each purchased a copy of the painting while shopping together outside of London. They hung them in their respective homes and both had a devastating fire shortly after. But it wasn't just fires that people associated with the painting. Many claimed they had experienced other strange and haunting occurrences as well. Someone in London claimed they'd seen the painting inexplicably swinging from side to side. Rose Farrington blamed the image for the deaths of her husband and three sons. Another woman said her 11 year old son caught his private parts on a hook shortly after purchasing the portrait. Although the hook was from a non related object, she believed it had to have something to do with the portrait's curse. In the same article, MacKenzie wrote that firefighters couldn't find any logical explanation for the fires, which lent credibility to the belief that the painting was cursed. As the number of fires increased, so did the anxiety. People who still owned the Crying Boy images wanted to see them destroyed and their bad luck put to rest. So in October 1985, the sun offered a solution. Editor Kelvin McKenzie made a formal announcement to if you are worried about a Crying Boy picture hanging in your home, send it to us immediately. We will destroy it for you. And that should see the end of any curse. The sun promised to collect all unwanted Crying Boy paintings. They would stage a sort of exorcism on Halloween night, where they'd document the whole event and publish it as their spotlight piece. But then more than 2,500 copies of the Crying Boy were sent to the paper's headquarters in London. People wanted them out of their homes, and Mackenzie was drowning in portraits, though he himself wasn't particularly superstitious. Something told him that they shouldn't be kept in the building much longer. Who knows what would happen? He wanted to burn them all on the roof of the London office, but the local fire department wouldn't allow it. After all, the point was to avoid structural fires, not cause them. Once they couldn't use the roof, they found a new location, a makeshift in the city of Redding. They arrived just before nightfall on October 31st. Portrait after portrait was piled high to make a massive heap. Then a match was lit. The bonfire blazed into the night. They stoked the whole thing with continuous gasoline to ensure it burned the next day. The headline read, sun nails Curse of the Weeping Boy for Good. In the coming months, calls regarding the portrait slowed down. It appeared that the sun had finally put the commotion to rest. The story of the Crying Boy's curse became relegated to urban legend. But what about those who suffered, who lost their homes? Where was their explanation? The sun certainly sensationalized the story, but they never provided an explanation. In fact, Mackenzie was even quoted saying, some stories are just too good to check. For many, a bonfire wasn't enough. They wanted the truth. Was it a coincidence? Or a curse? And, of course, how had the Crying Boy always managed to survive? This episode is brought to you by AMC and amc. Embrace the darkness. In the new season of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches, Rowan Mayfair, played by Alexandra Daddario, must reckon with the powerful demon lasher, now in human form, who threatens the entire twisted Mayfair clan. Will she protect her family or protect her power? Mayfair Witches Sundays at 9pm exclusively on AMC and AMC Plus Stream. Mayfair Witches, now exclusively on AMC. The Sun Burned what was left of the Crying Boy curse. But now people wanted to get to the bottom of the mysterious fires. The key had to be in the painting itself. Some found the portrait's subject matter disturbing. A small young child with darkness in his eyes and two giant tears rolling down his cheeks. They wanted to know why anyone would buy it in the first place. The painting was sold at popular retailers like Woolworths. Young women and couples were some of the most common purchasers. Jane McCutcheon claimed that she was hypnotized by the image of the Boy. During an interview with BBC Sounds, she said that she fell in love with his expressive nature. Nature. McCutcheon didn't think twice about buying it. She had the perfect place to hang it, right above the fireplace in the family's living room. Like Jane, many became attached to the boy's portrait, so much so they couldn't bring themselves to part with it, even after rumors of its curse started to spread. At the Cube Gallery in London, director of exhibitions Tim Marlow expressed his own theories on the painting's attraction. He believed that the little boy may remind people of the cycle of life, loss of innocence and the inevitability of death, themes known to influence art buyers. Many others, of course, credited the hypnotic nature of the image to something more supernatural. Which leads to the theory that the Crying Boy painting was cursed. And its mesmerizing appeal was a tactic you used to rope in unwitting victims. But what caused the curse? The theory didn't fully fall into place until the public knew more about the painting's backstory. Though people weren't familiar with the artist's name, they did note his pronounced signature, G. Bregolin. After the Sun's article, people took to public records to find out what they could. The story originally claimed that the portraits came from an Italian artist by the name of Giovanni Bragolini, but researchers had a difficult time corroborating. It wasn't until 1995 that English schoolteacher George Malory finally discovered more information on the enigmatic Italian artist. Mallory found that G. Bragolin was actually a pseudonym for an Italian artist named Bruno Amadio. He was said to be a classically trained painter who spent time in Venice after World War II restoring old paintings. During this time, Amadio released an estimated 65 different works of art, all under the name Giovanni Bregolin. Somewhere down the line, someone caught sight of his work and decided to reproduce the paintings for mass distribution. According to mallory, as of 1970, Amadio was still painting the city of Padua in northern Italy. He died in September 1981, just a few years before the stories of the fires began. It seemed Amadio was free from any curses or bad omens in his background. So sleuths turned their attention to the boy in the painting. Roy Vickery, the secretary of the Folklore Society in London, suggested that all these fires could be part of the child's curse, his way of getting revenge. But revenge for what? Who was the child? Was there any connection to Bruno Amadio? Unfortunately, we don't have many details surrounding the claims that have been made their legitimacy, or even who made them. But some believe the boy was an orphan who dealt with trauma in his childhood. Trauma that manifested in the portrait and spread to its owners. Then in 2000, the sun printed a follow up piece on the Crying boy, which included Amadio's backstory. It's unclear whether the story was verified by Mallory, or any scholar for that matter, or if the backstory was fabricated by the son in an effort to spark new interest. Either way, their tale went something like the little boy in the painting was an orphan that Amadio had met in Madrid around 1969. The child was always quiet and shy, with a painful look of sorrow in his eyes. After Amadio painted the Orphan, he shared the work with a local priest. The priest recognized the boy as Don Bonillo, a runaway who had lost his parents in a devastating fire. This priest warned Amadio to stay away from the little boy. Wherever the child was, there would be fires without cause or reason. He was given the nickname Diablo by the people of Madrid. But the allegory doesn't end there. Supposedly, the painter went on to adopt the young boy. And at first, Diablo actually seemed to bring him good luck. After the adoption, Amadio had an unprecedented streak of success in his career. But he wasn't riding high for long. One day, Amadio's studio caught fire and the painter accused the boy of foul play. The child ran off and was never seen by the artist again. From here, Amadio's career took a dark turn. No one would hire him and he became a local pariah. Perhaps this is the reason he changed his name and relocated. In the years following, we don't know. But in 1976, just outside of Barcelona, a car exploded, killing a 19 year old boy. His name, Don Bonillo. Ironically, the Diablo may have met his fate in a fiery crash. The Sun's article in 2000 gave a history that supported the idea of a curse, whether it was true or not. Paranormal investigators clung to the anecdote and used it to take their research to the next level. In 2010, Steve Punt, a comedian and self proclaimed private investigator, decided it was time to put the cursed theory to the test. Punt brought his own the Crying Boy portrait to Sir Ralph Harvey, a pagan exorcist and a Annie Mills, a psychic medium. Punt kept the painting concealed in a large bag for the first half of their session. He wanted to see if they might receive any kind of energy from the portrait that would suggest a curse. The moment Punt walked in, Mills claimed that she sensed an immediate shift in the air. Then her hands began uncontrollably shaking. She then made a strange claim. The object was giving off a sense of impoverishment. There was a serious discomfort surrounding the piece. Punch showed the duo the portrait, and the two claimed they knew nothing of its backstory, which included the fires it caused. But Mills picked up on energy that told her the boy did not have a long life and he might have died in a fire. Harvey told Punt that he believed the image could be exorcised, meaning he was certain it possessed supernatural abilities. But there was one giant problem with the theory of the curse and its connection to Don Bonillo, the kid in the Crying Boy painting. Not all of the portraits were of the same child. In fact, Amadio actually painted an entire series with at least five known variations. And some of the portraits the sun collected were from the painter's other series, titled the Crying Girl. So there were different children. Granted, it was easy to confuse one for another. Each child was under the age of 12 and seemed to be from an impoverished background with ragged, dirty clothes. And all expressed the same haunting sadness. But that means that Don Bonillo could have been any of the children in the Crying Boy series. And if that was the case, his curse couldn't affect them all. Perhaps the son didn't want to call attention to the fact that there were different prints. If they had, their stories might not have sold as well. The mystery might have been written off. The son also didn't share another odd detail. Some of the prints weren't even from the same artist. A few were part of a project titled Childhood, a similar series of portraits painted by Scottish artist Anna Zinkuisen. So there wasn't just one portrait from one artist. There were multiple portraits from multiple artists, each one with a different subject and backstory, which makes it almost impossible to blame the curse on Don Bonillo. Which means that, more likely than not, the portraits were never cursed. In the 1980s, British tabloids were reaching a daily circulation rate of nearly 5 million copies, and they had far more influence over people than they do today. The Sun's reach could have easily caused a collective obsession. And mass hysteria can be incredibly destructive. It causes deep, irrational anxiety and fear, which can then feed into a public frenzy. It can cause rash emotional outbursts and widespread panic. Take, for example, the Salem Witch Trials, which you might be familiar with. They led to the hanging of 20 women after a population became convinced that innocent people were practicing witchcraft and cursing their neighbors. In the mid-1980s, the sun was in a heated battle with rival publications like the Daily Mirror. The Crying Boy story fell into editor McKenzie's lap at the perfect time. He was likely craving a hot story that would make waves. And he succeeded. The sun was actually the first source to associate the painting with terms like jinx, fear, curse. But the truth was that most people who submitted their paintings to be burned never suffered any harm. It was a precautionary measure, driven by irrational fear. But the power of the human mind should never be underestimated. When comedian and investigator Steve Punt arrived at the now retired McKenzie's home in 2010 to do a follow up on the story, he arrived with the portrait in tow. Years later, MacKenzie still didn't want it in his home. He never experienced the firsthand effects of the curse himself. And he knew all of the holes in the story because he created them. Not to mention, Mackenzie and the son claimed they ended the curse. And still Mackenzie managed to convince himself of his own lie. But in situations such as this, where paranoia reigns, our minds are capable of remarkable things. Exaggerating minor stimuli into massive panics or even convincing us our bodies are under attack. The Crying Boy was no exception. Fire departments and other emergency services were called to deal with a number of people trying to burn the painting on their own. But nobody paid much attention to these portraits before the sun planted the seed of fear in night 1985. Prior to that, there hadn't been any speculation of a curse, just a few firefighters who'd claimed they'd seen this portrait connected to a home fire more than once. So, no, the Crying Boy likely wasn't cursed, but it did create a sort of public contagion. When you think about it, all the sun really managed to confirm was how many people in the UK actually own the crying boy painting. In one. One variety or another. 50,000 copies of the pictures were sold, which explains the panic. But also, if they were in that many homes and they were cursed, statistically, there should have been more damage done. In almost every case, the fires could be tied back to carelessness. There were often frying pan fires, discarded cigarettes or electrical problems in the building building. Jane McCutcheon had her portrait hanging over an open fireplace. But there was one thing that the mass hysteria theory didn't explain. How have so many of these prints survived the fire when everything else in the home burned to a crisp? When the sun story broke. Firefighter Alan Wilkinson had put out around 50 crying boy fires between the years 1973 and 1985. Wilkinson claims he never believed the portrait was cursed, but even after 33 years in the department, he Couldn't explain how it always seemed to escape scot free. Once news of the curse hit, dozens of people tried burning the paintings themselves. But they all reported the same thing. The portraits would not burn. A security guard at the sun named Paul Collier was told to do a trial run before their bonfire in October of 1985. Apparently, he had to let the portrait burn for over an hour before any damage occurred. The Sun's Halloween bonfire also lasted for hours before the portraits were destroyed. During Steven Punt's 2010 quest for answers, he brought his copy of the painting to the Building Research Establishment, one of the world's leading science centers in Hertfordshire, England. Martin Shipp, the technical director of fire safety at the lab, helped Punt perform his experiment. Even a two foot flame only created a small hole in the bottom corner of the photo and the flames wouldn't spread. Shipp's assessment was that the painting was coated in some kind of fire retardant material or was created with fire retardant paint. When he applied heat to the string on the back, however, it dissolved right away. So the support would always be the first thing to collapse. That would cause the painting to fall from wherever it was being hung. And it's likely that it landed face down, protecting the image of the boy. So when you take these details into account, the portrait stood a better chance of withstanding a fire than most objects in a home. And perhaps the answer was just as simple as that. It appeared that all theories about the painting's ties to the supernatural could now be dismissed. The portraits were tucked away, sold, forgotten or hung on walls without much care. All seemed to be quiet in the world of the Crying Boy. That is, until July of 2010, when a tabloid called the Sheffield Star published their own story on the Crying Boy. A fire had overwhelmed another couple's home in the city of Rotherham, the exact town where the legend had begun. Stan Jones, the man who owned the home, said that he had purchased the painting for £2 at a flea market nearly 10 years prior. But this wasn't the first time he lost his home to a fire. In fact, it was the third time. And the portrait outlasted the home every single time. Thank you for watching Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram he conspiracypod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts or email us@conspiracy storiespotify.com for more information on the Crying Boy paintings. Amongst the many sources we used, we found the Martians have A history of media driven panics and hoaxes by Benjamin Radford and Robert E. Bartholomew and researched by David Clark. Extremely helpful to our research. Until next time. Remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written by Lori Marinelli, edited by Chelsea Wood, researched by Brian Petras, fact checked by Kara Mackerlein and video editing and sound design by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.