The Curse of the Crying Boy
The Curse of the Crying Boy, reality or one media outlet's attempt to raise sales? 
The story that followed told how, after a fire burnt their South Yorkshire home to the ground, a married couple, Ron and May Hall put the blame squarely on a picture of a crying boy they had hung in their home.
A fire broke out from oil in an overheated chip pan and devastated the home they had lived in for 27 years. The house was a mess, and one of the only things unscathed in the fire was a picture of a crying toddler, hanging on a wall.
Ron's brother, Peter, was a local fire-fighter, his Fire station leader, Mr Alan Wilkinson said he had heard of numerous cases of fires where prints of “crying boys” would be undamaged in devastating house fires, this of course turned a mundane chip fire story into a leading headline and propelled the “Crying Boy” curse into the world spotlight.
The story went viral after it was published in The Sun newspaper. After the following day's edition, The Sun reported that readers had been phoning in with their own horrifying stories of bad luck related to The Crying Boy paintings.
Quotes were printed in the newspaper such as this one from Dora Mann in Surrey “All my paintings were destroyed – except the one of The Crying Boy”.
Mr Parks claimed he had destroyed his copy after returning from the hospital from smoke inhalation from his house burning down, to find the only thing untouched in the scorched ruins was a crying boy painting.
More stories circulated about misadventures occurring to residents in houses where the prints hung. One lady speculated that the painting may have been the cause for her husband and three sons dying over a span of a few years. A security guard named Paul Collier threw one of his two prints on a bonfire to test the theory that the paintings and prints would not burn. He claimed that after an hour in the flames, the painting was not even scorched. This of course led to even more sales for The Sun newspaper!
Strangely, not all the prints and paintings were of the same crying boy. Paintings by Giovanni Bragolin and Scottish artist Anna Zinkeisen became associated with the Curse. Zinkeisen had released her crying boy paintings as part of a study titled 'childhood,' which had nothing to do with the alleged curse.
After some time, and a lot of newspaper sales, it emerged that Alan Wilkinson had personally logged about 50 Crying Boy fires dating back to 1973. He had dismissed any supernatural connection between the fires and the paintings, finding that in almost every case, it was human error or human carelessness that had started the fire. He could not explain though, why the paintings would survive the fires unscathed.
As the original Sun newspaper story began to fade from readers' minds, the story of the Crying Boy paintings morphed into an urban legend and spread across the world. Along the way, new information was added to the original legend. Psychics claimed a spirit was trapped in the original painting and the fires were an attempt to free itself. Other stories told how the artist's bad luck cursed the painting, and that’s why so many bad things happened in its presence.
The Crying Boy legend is still very much alive today, recently shown on the new TV series 'Cursed.' If one looks hard enough one can find enough evidence to suggest that this whole urban legend is an exaggerated coincidence designed by The Sun Newspaper back in 1985 to sell newspapers, which has become part of urban legend and pop-culture in modern times.
Written & Researched
By
Allen Tiller
first published: 17 December 2012
© 2012 Eidolon Paranormal
www.eidolonparanormal.com.au
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