This One Puts the PAIN In Painting

The bleak painting of an old farmhouse above, is eerily similar to the blue framed picture that used to hang unsurreptitiously at the top of our staircase landing. I'm no art aficionado, but something about the picture always creeped me out. Turns out, it was for a good reason.

My Mom uneventfully purchased it at a neighborhood garage sale, and she always claimed that she considered it "butt ugly", and a little freaky too. So, why did she buy it? My Mom told me that she felt drawn to it, and almost forced into scooping up the hideous painting, and taking it home with her. It didn't match any of the navy blue, aquatic themed decor my Mom had implemented throughout the house, so she painted the wooden frame a deep azure shade in an attempt to have it blend in better. It didn't, and would glare down at us all day from the upstairs hallway.

One night, bleary eyed from a full day of work and school, I began to trudge up the stairs for bed, when I noticed that the painting had an odd glow about it. The light wasn't flipped on in the hallway, so the illumination emanating from around the picture really stood out. As I neared it, I could see that the light was pouring out of the farmhouse windows in the painting, and it began to flicker. Everyone in the house had already gone to sleep, and so I kept to silently screaming within myself, and I elected to sleep on the sofa that night rather than down the hall from the haunted painting.

It didn't happen frequently, but the painting continued to light up periodically, sending shivers down my spine. One day, my Mom asked me if I had ever noticed anything "strange" or unsettling about the picture. Well, it seems as though, my stepdad, my Mother, and I all witnessed the same thing. Now, for the really weird part, my Mom still has the picture in her new house! She told me that she keeps it in the guest bedroom closet, but she just can't seem to bring herself to get rid of it.

Other people in our subdivision experienced problems with their pictures too. My brother's baseball coach is a Houston Police Officer, and he also works part time patrolling the area in his off hours. He reported that at his home and the homes of his neighbors on the street, it wasn't unusual for them to return to their domiciles in the evening to find their family pictures either strewn all over the floor face down on the carpet, or hanging helter skelter upside down. This continually happened even though nobody was present in the house all day long. It's not easily explainable, but pictures have long been considered dimensional gateways and sometimes ghostly portals. Makes you want to run out and read The Portrait Of Dorian Gray again, doesn't it?