The Haunted History Behind The Crying Boy Painting Curse
- Cailynn Brawffe
- Jan 26
- 6 min read
He stares at you with eyes that never blink.
A tear glistens on his cheek, his face pale and solemn — the face of a boy caught forever in sorrow.
For decades, this weeping child hung quietly in living rooms across Britain and Europe. He was just another piece of sentimental decor — a mass-produced print bought for a few pounds, a symbol of modest comfort in postwar homes.
But in the autumn of 1985, that same face was suddenly everywhere — splashed across tabloids, blamed for fires, and whispered about as cursed. Homes were burning down, yet the painting always survived.
This is the strange, true story of The Crying Boy: how a cheap print became one of the most infamous cursed objects of the twentieth century — and how science and superstition collided in a blaze of fear.
The Artist and the Subject
The man behind the tears was Giovanni Bragolin, the professional name of Bruno Amadio, an Italian painter who created a series of “Crying Children” portraits in the 1950s. His works depicted solemn, wide-eyed orphans — painted with near-photographic realism and the heavy pathos of postwar Europe.
There were dozens of variations: boys, girls, dark-haired, fair-haired — all gazing out from the frame as if on the verge of speech.
As reproductions spread throughout the 1960s and 70s, The Crying Boy became one of the best-selling prints in Britain. Its melancholy innocence fit neatly above the mantelpiece or beside the family clock.
But the artist himself was elusive. Rumours swirled about his life, his politics, even his subjects. Some said he had been a war artist, painting portraits of displaced children.
Others claimed the children were orphans who met tragic ends — or worse, that one boy in particular carried something unnatural with him.
The Legend of Don Bonillo
By the time the curse took hold, a darker story had attached itself to the painting.
The most common legend named the child Don Bonillo — an orphan from Madrid whose parents had died in a fire. Wherever he went, fires followed. Some said he was cursed, others that he was an arsonist. When his portrait was painted by Bragolin, tragedy supposedly continued to haunt anyone who owned the image.
According to the myth, the boy later died himself — fittingly, in a blaze that consumed the orphanage where he lived.
There’s no record of Don Bonillo, of course — no orphanage, no obituary, no evidence. But like all good ghost stories, it didn’t matter. The legend spread not because it was true, but because it felt true. And by the 1980s, The Crying Boy was hanging in thousands of homes — waiting.
The Curse Ignites – September 1985
The match was struck on September 4, 1985, when the British tabloid The Sun published a front-page headline that burned itself into public memory:
“Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy.”
The story featured Ron and May Hall of Rotherham, whose home had been destroyed by fire. Everything inside had been reduced to ashes — except for one object: a framed copy of The Crying Boy. It hung unscorched amid the ruin, its varnished surface gleaming beneath the soot.
Firefighters on the scene allegedly told the Halls they had seen other fires where the same print survived intact.
Within days, The Sun’s switchboard was flooded. Readers wrote in, claiming their own homes had burned — and always, the painting had remained untouched. Some said firefighters refused to keep the image in their stations. Others claimed they’d been cursed after mocking it.
Panic spread through the tabloids like flame through dry timber. The painting, once sentimental, was now sinister.
The Rules of The Crying Boy Painting Curse
As the legend grew, so did its supposed “rules.”
People began sharing whispered guidelines to survive The Crying Boy Painting Curse:
🔥 Never mock the painting — disrespect invited disaster.
🕯️ Pair it with “The Crying Girl” — the two together would cancel the curse.
🚫 Do not burn it — those who tried would face worse misfortune.
🧱 If your house catches fire, the painting will survive. Always.
Like all urban myths, the story spread in fragments: half-truths, warnings, and pub chatter repeated until they became folklore.
Soon, The Crying Boy wasn’t just a decoration. It was a domestic ticking bomb — a curse hiding in plain sight.
The Great Bonfire
Fear eventually reached a fever pitch. In 1985, The Sun invited its readers to send in their cursed paintings, promising to destroy them all in one grand, cleansing fire.
Hundreds of readers obliged. Piles of identical prints arrived at the paper’s London office — packages marked “urgent,” “beware,” and “cursed.”
A few weeks later, on a damp field in Reading, a mass bonfire was held under the supervision of the local fire brigade. Reporters gathered, photographers snapped, and the public watched as the stack of paintings was set ablaze.
“hundreds of ‘crying boys’ went up in flames, but according to those present, some faces seemed to linger, glistening through the smoke as if unwilling to vanish.”
Even the act of destroying The Crying Boy seemed to confirm the curse.
The fire was meant to end the hysteria.
Instead, it became part of the legend.
The Rational Explanation
When the smoke cleared, sceptics stepped in.
Fire-Retardant Varnish:
Investigators discovered that many of the prints had been coated with a heat-resistant lacquer, a common protective finish used on inexpensive reproductions. It prevented the paint from igniting easily — which explained why the pictures often survived even when the rest of the room burned.
The Physics of Fire:
When the string holding a picture burned through, the painting often fell face-down, shielding its front surface from flames and heat. Since hot air rises, the floor — and whatever lay flat upon it — was often the last to burn.
The Fire Service Speaks:
As Skeptical Inquirer investigator Massimo Polidoro noted, the South Yorkshire Fire Service eventually dismissed any connection between the paintings and the fires. Chief Divisional
Officer Mick Riley stated plainly:
“Fires are not started by pictures or coincidence, but by careless acts and omissions. The reason why this picture has not always been destroyed in the fire is because it is printed on high-density hardboard, which is very difficult to ignite.”
Polidoro’s research revealed the simple truth: The Crying Boy survived not because it was cursed, but because it was well-made.
Still, logic doesn’t always cool fear. Once a story catches fire — literally or figuratively — it’s nearly impossible to extinguish.
The Artist’s Legacy – Fact, Fiction, and Fire
Giovanni Bragolin himself died in the 1980s, unaware that his sentimental portraits had become the stuff of nightmares. In the decades since, The Crying Boy has never quite vanished.
You can find it in secondhand shops, car boot sales, and online auctions. Some buyers seek it out precisely because of its dark reputation — while others refuse to even touch it.
Collectors say that when you see one in person, the eyes seem to follow you. The print, faded but still vivid, carries a kind of quiet melancholy. Perhaps it’s projection, or perhaps there’s something inherently unsettling about mass-produced grief — a child’s eternal sadness captured and multiplied by the thousands.
Whether cursed or not, The Crying Boy endures because it embodies something deeply human: our need to find meaning in tragedy, to give shape to coincidence, to turn randomness into story.
In the end, the real fire was never in the painting. It was in us — in our imagination, our fear, and our desperate need to believe.
A Masterclass in Urban Legend
The Crying Boy curse remains one of the best-documented modern myths — a perfect storm of tabloid sensationalism, superstition, and the science of coincidence.
It began as a small domestic story — a fire, a family, a surviving painting — and became a nationwide panic. In an era before social media, newspapers fanned the flames with sensational headlines, while local gossip turned hearsay into haunting.
It’s easy to laugh now, but the Crying Boy legend is a case study in how stories spread — how fear finds its reflection in the most ordinary things.
Even now, almost forty years later, the image reappears online every few months — a haunting relic of collective imagination.
So, tell me; would you hang The Crying Boy in your home?
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