A lot of mysterious and mysterious things are constantly happening in the world. But this story is remarkable in that the number of eyewitnesses and witnesses was estimated in hundreds. She received the name "Crying Boy" after one of the paintings of the Spanish artist Bruno Amadio (1911-1981), also known as Giovanni Bragolin. At one time, he painted a whole series of paintings, each of which depicted a crying child. Knowledgeable people said that these are the faces of children from an orphanage, which burned down during the war.
Bragolin's creations were liked by connoisseurs of painting. There were 65 paintings. Reproductions were made from them and sold all over the world. With the money raised, the artist was able to live in peace in Venice, and images of crying children ended up in the houses and apartments of thousands of people. And everything would have been fine, but in the summer of 1985 a strange incident occurred in Great Britain.
Bruno Amadio
In the county of South Yorkshire, in the northern part of England, lived the venerable couple Ron and May Hallowe. In early June of that year, a fire broke out in their house. Everything burned down, even the roof collapsed, only the walls remained. And on one of them hung a completely intact and not even covered in soot reproduction of The Crying Boy. The family bought it back in 1972 while in Italy.
The family members were not heartbroken, as the property and property were insured, but the very fact that the painting had survived among the ashes was surprising. After some time, there were a number of fires in the city of Rotherham. All of them were of great power and mercilessly destroyed people's homes. They were united by the fact that in all houses and apartments a whole picture remained, depicting an unhappy boy with a face filled with tears. Moreover, it was the same child, and the artist, as mentioned above, depicted 65 crying faces of boys and girls.
Firefighter Peter Hull noticed this strange pattern. His words were confirmed by another firefighter named Alan Wilkinson. This statement aroused the interest of the journalists of The Sun, a tabloid with a daily circulation of 2 million 800 thousand copies.
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Newspaper editor Calvin Mackenzie felt the sensation and decided to study more thoroughly the issue of the Crying Boy reproductions. On his instructions, journalists visited several cities in Northern England and found out that similar fires have been observed for several months. They are of serious concern to insurance companies, as they regularly have to pay huge sums of money to victims.
One and the same tear-stained face of a child is found in all the ashes. Reproductions with other persons do not pose any threat to people and their homes. Hence the conclusion: the inhabitants of England were faced with an amazing mystical phenomenon.
On September 4, 1985, another morning episode of "The Sun" was released. The front page featured an article titled "The Curse of the Crying Boy." More than 7 million people read it per day. And the next day, a stream of letters went to the editorial office, and the phones were ringing incessantly. People from different parts of England were eager to tell their stories. All of them at different times acquired a reproduction "Crying Boy" and subsequently suffered from a fire.
So, a resident of Doncaster Sandra Krasko said that she, her brother and mother suffered from a fire after they acquired one copy of the ill-fated reproduction. In the city of Leeds, a house completely burned down, and the reproduction of the child remained intact. Exactly the same messages came from other cities and counties. The fire destroyed everything to the ground, and the tear-stained face was not even covered with soot.
These facts led the British into a state of extreme excitement. The mass destruction of all the reproductions of the crying boy began. True, there were quite a few people who were rather skeptical about all this excitement. They believed that newspapermen had found a new way of getting rich and shamelessly siphoning money from gullible citizens.
Those who burned the reproductions were seized with panic. There was a rumor that the spirit of the crying child would now take revenge. One woman from Leeds reported that the painting was to blame for the deaths of her husband and two sons. And an elderly man from London said that his son and wife had died due to the reproduction.
In November 1985, The Sun decided to stage a massive demonstration burning of the remaining images of the crying baby.
The newspapermen wanted to make a huge fire right on the flat roof of the editorial office, but the firefighters categorically forbade it to do so. Then they chose a vacant lot outside the city. There they made a huge bonfire. All the remaining copies burned in it.
England froze in anticipation of something bad. But days went by, weeks after weeks, and there were no more massive fires. The “crying boy”, having died in the fire, stopped bothering people and poisoning their lives. Over time, the unpleasant story was forgotten. There are only old newspaper filings left, reminding of her.
Nikita Chepkin