The Hands Resist Him: eBay’s Famous Haunted Painting
12 August 2007
In February 2000, an anonymous couple from California put a painting up for sale on eBay. It was called The Hands Resist Him, and the sellers alleged it was haunted.
The anonymous Californian couple who launched the auction for the “haunted” painting claimed they found it behind an old brewery. They then took the strange-looking picture home with them and hung on their daughter’s bedroom wall. She was only four at the time, and, apparently, her main problem with the picture was the children in it were keeping her awake at night by quarreling, moving around in the picture, and entering her room (a problem she would not have had, if her parents had given her a My Little Pony Poster instead).
Of course, daddy was most alarmed to hear this and, still preferring not to go with the My Little Pony idea, set up motion detecting cameras in his daughter’s bedroom instead. Some of the resulting pictures were included in the auction listing and, with a little imagination, perhaps aided by a day’s drinking behind an old brewery, the little boy might seem to look like he is trying to walk out of the frame. Worse still, the bad girl he’s been hanging with appears to be pointing a gun at him.
Seeing all of this, the couple decided that the picture had to go, and did what anyone in their right mind would do. They put the damned thing up for sale. They even added a disclaimer to the listing, pointing out that they would not be held responsible for anything that might happen after the sale went through.
And do you know what? This haunted(?) picture was an instant hit, and over 30 000 people viewed the listing. Stranger still, some of the people who viewed the webpage reported having strange experiences. With some it was strange noises, while others reported feeling ill or even that they felt like they were falling victim to mind control techniques.
Then the anonymous sellers did a quick backtrack and said:
“There are no ghosts in this world, no supernatural powers, this is just a painting, and most of these things have an explanation, in this case, probably a fluke light effect.”
Hmm… are these the same people that were so worried about the ‘fluke light effect’ that they had to post a disclaimer? Apparently so.
The couple managed to sell their much-hyped picture to an art gallery. They got $1,050 [1] for it and I bet they were very glad to see the back of the thing too.
The owner of the gallery managed to track down the man who’d painted the picture, a 55-year-old computer graphics artist called Bill Stoneham. Mr Stoneham was also the boy in the picture. He had used an old photograph of himself to work from. He was very surprised, as you can well imagine, on hearing about all the trouble he had been causing. Anway, if you want to read about the whole thing in more detail JUST CLICK HERE.
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1. The exact figure the couple got for The Hands Resist Him is unclear. Some sources state it was $1,050, others say $1,025.