There's more than reason not to hang this disgusting painting in your house - rumour has it the dead-eyed boy and doll come to life at night and hop out from the frame in to the room. And someone paid £650 for it!
At first glance, The Hands Resist Him is quite a boring painting - but look again and you'll see there's something pretty unsettling about it.
And if rumours are to be believed, things get even more unsettling at night when the little boy and the creepy doll come OUT of the frame and kill you!
The Hands Resist Him is believed to be one of the most haunted paintings in the world, going viral in 2000 when it was listed on eBay.
The listing claimed that the figures in the painting were trapped in an eternal battle, which would spill out of the 36" x 24" canvas and in to real life. They said it had been found in the smouldering remains of a house fire. Photos were added that showed the little girl/doll appearing to force the boy from the painting using a gun that was not usually visible to the naked eye.
It read: “THIS PAINTING MAY OR MAY NOT POSESS SUPERNATURAL POWERS, THAT COULD IMPACT OR CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
“OUR 4 AND 1/2 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER CLAIMED, THAT THE CHILDREN IN THE PICTURE WERE FIGHTING, AND COMING INTO THE ROOM DURING THE NIGHT.”
But that wasn't the only danger presented by the painting. It was claimed that it had the power to make people violently sick, affect technology and to make children scream. The negative energy of the artwork could also trigger sensations of being "violently gripped by an unseen entity".
Eventually it sold for £650 to the Perception Gallery in Michigan.
The history of the paining is undoubtedly creepy. It was painted by Bill Stoneham in 1972, and if you look closely behind the two figures, you can see several sets of hands pressed up against the glass.
Bill said of his work: "There are memories, echoes of all the life within a place. Maybe it’s what’s called channeling. When I painted the Hands Resist Him in 1972, I used an old photo of myself at age five in a Chicago apartment. The hands are the ‘other lives.’ The glass door, that thin veil between waking and dreaming. The girl/doll is the imagined companion, or guide through this realm."
He added that both the owner of the gallery where the painting was first displayed in the 1970s, and the art critic who reviewed it, died within one year of coming into contact with the painting.
One thing that enjoyed a revival from this creepy piece of art is Bill's career. He was asked to paint several more in the series, and went on to paint two sequels, Resistance at the Threshold and Threshold of Revelation, and a prequel, The Hands Invent Him.
