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The Anguished Man
A haunted portrait, painted in the blood of a tortured artist.
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Years ago, in a small home in Cumbria an artist sat down to paint a self-portrait.
The man was disturbed, his life filled up with depression and pills, suffering from debilitating mental disorders which had him wailing at night. Drawing inspiration from this life, he decided to paint his portrait to reflect his anguish. To ensure he was imbued into the painting, he then mixed his own blood into the paint and painted the rough terrifying painting today only known as 'The Anguished Man'.
After he finished it he sent it to the grandmother of Owen Sean Robinson. She had requested a painting from the artist, and he'd decided to give her his self-portrait. A few days after he sent her the painting he committed suicide.
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The new owner had taken one look at the ghastly thing and had no wish to hang it up in her house. So, she hid it away in the attic to keep it out of sight and try and forget it was even there. But shortly after the painting was taken into her home, a visitor started wandering the halls.
Shadowy shapes moved and twitched just at the edge of her vision. When she would turn to look, it would be gone.
At night she would hear the faint moans and cries of someone in distress. Living alone, she had no explanation for the sounds, and would sometimes get up to inspect, only to find her house completely empty. Yet the sounds persisted. But thankfully, whatever wandered through the house, had no ill intent towards the elderly lady - so she let it be.
A few years after she'd acquired the horrid painting, her grandson, Sean spotted it on one of his excursions into the cluttered attic and he became fascinated by the ghastly visage. He asked if he could inherit it, and she was only too glad to finally gift the painting to someone else.
After his grandmother passed away, Sean brought the painting home, only to have it immediately moved to the basement. His wife had no wish to have the thing in her house.
But in 2010, after a flood, he rediscovered the painting and brought it out of the dark, and hung it up in one of the spare rooms. Although unhappy, his wife let it be. The thing was, at least, out of sight. But shortly after the move, their nightmare started.
Footsteps in the hallway, doors banging shut for no reason, items going missing and reappearing somewhere else. Overall, the Robinson family chalked it up to imagination, to basic issues with plumbing or drafts in the house. There was nothing to worry about, nothing at all.
They would see figures wandering the house at night,
But it got worse.
His children began suffering from night terrors - screaming their heads off in complete terror. Sean would wake up in the middle of the night to find a faceless figure standing at the foot of the bed. Moaning and crying would be heard at night, and when either he or his wife would check on the children, they were both asleep.
One evening, while Sean was out of town, his wife woke up to a man lying next to her in the bed, an incident that she says traumatized her. But the worst incident came when the visitor turned its attentions on their son, Kenan.
He was on his way to the kitchen and had just reached the top of the landing when a hand suddenly pressed against his back and shoved him down the stairs. Kenan took a hard tumble, bruised and battered, but thankfully, unhurt. He was, rightfully, completely freaked out by the incident and it would take some time to calm him down.
Fed-up, Sean wanted to see if this damned thing was really the cause of their misery. If it really was haunted. So, he set up a camera in a room and recorded the painting for eight hours. And the painting didn't exactly disappoint.
Strange noises, doors opening and closing, and a ghostly figure rushing past in a buzz of sound are all caught on camera and there for the world to see. Skeptics have, of course, raised their voices, deeming it all to be an elaborate hoax, but thus far more believe in The Anguished Painting than damn it.
Sean has made his own comments on the matter; "A lot of people are skeptical and I can understand that because I was a skeptic myself and I still am. But, the footage is there for you to see, it wasn’t faked. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation but I haven’t found one yet."
Most of the problems do stem from the many sites with different facts and stories. There is no proof that this artist ever existed, no evidence as to where this painting originated from. The ghostly evidence on the tape can, unfortunately, be easily faked if given time and patience.
So, what is real? That is difficult to say, Sean himself seems to be a bit of a skeptic, which does give credence to his claims, but whether this is only part of an act, is also difficult to tell.
In the end, it all, really, comes down to how open-minded we are to the possibility of those ghostly specters actually wandering the living world. But whether The Anguished Man is truly haunted or not, that twisted visage of terror and agony is enough to give anyone night terrors.
Copyrighted© to the Absurd and Fantastical - use of material prohibited
Sources:
The Anguished Man: A Look into the World’s Most Haunted Painting | HNN (horrornews.net)
The Anguished Man, the most haunted painting in the world (yahoo.com)
Does this footage prove The Anguished Man is the world’s most haunted painting? - Daily Star
The Anguished Man, the World's Most Haunted Painting, Is Not for Sale (dreadcentral.com)
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