‘The Hands Resist Him’: The moving haunted painting that scares its owners to death
Shortly after Bill Stoneham created the The Hands Resist Him in 1972, it was handed over to a gallery owner and an art critic for their assessment. They purveyed its chilling eeriness. Within a year, both of these seemingly healthy individuals were mysteriously dead. Since then, the so-called haunted painting has only journeyed towards ever-darker depths of cursed doom.
Which is fitting given the underworld meaning of the image. “Where to begin? Well I’ve always had a connection to what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious,” Stoneham said of his work. “I think we all do. Artists, especially visual artists, are barometers for the currents which run through this collective. Dreams are a common experience people may have with this.”
He continued: “My own experience is a sensitivity to place– physical, geographical place. 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.”
That darkness and yet almost-covert relatability certainly adds an allure, which is why some have been attracted to it to such an extent that the weird magnetism has overridden the darkness and they’ve wanted to claim it as their own. It was first purchased by the actor John Morley who is known for playing Jack Woltz in The Godfather. He cast the creepy painting to an old brewery, where it was discovered after his death by a Californian couple.
Immediately they would remark on the haunting aura of the image. For years, they claim that the hands literally moved, stretching forwards to pull the boy and perhaps the viewer to some unknown fate. They decided to get rid of the artwork. Their legendary sale listing turned this long-forgotten picture into a lasting myth of horror.
That famed listing read: “When we received this painting, we thought it was really good art. A ‘Picker’ had found it abandoned behind an old brewery. At the time we wondered a little why a seemingly perfectly fine painting would be discarded like that. (Today we don’t!) One morning our four-and-a-half-year-old daughter claimed that the children in the picture were fighting, and coming into the room during the night.” Then they themselves would catch glimpses of him seemingly trying to escape the frame as the hands clawed behind him.
This had a huge impact on them, as they state: “Now, I don’t believe in UFOs or Elvis being alive, but my husband was alarmed. To my amusement, he set up a motion-triggered camera for the nights. After three nights there were pictures. The last two pictures shown are from that ‘stakeout’. After seeing the boy seemingly exiting the painting under threat, we decided, the painting has to go. Please judge for yourself.”
However, the true crowning moment for the picture’s haunted fate came from the fact that they actually decreed a legal disclaimer for any potential buyer. “Before you do, please read the following warning and disclaimer,” they urged.
Before bindingly stating: “Warning: Do not bid on this painting if you are susceptible to stress-related disease, faint of heart, or are unfamiliar with supernatural events. By bidding on this painting, you agree to release the owners of all liability in relation to the sale or any events happening after the sale that might be contributed to this painting. This painting may or may not possess supernatural powers that could impact or change your life. However, by bidding you agree to exclusively bid on the value of the artwork, with disregard to the last two photos featured in this auction, and hold the owners harmless in regard to them and their impact, expressed or implied.”
Naturally, this listing caused quite a stir. The painting was sold for $1,025.00, and the buyer soon tracked down Stoneham. He gave the aforementioned explanation for his disquieting work, discrediting claims that the girl/doll was holding a gun and explaining that it was actually a dry cell battery with a tangle of wires, but notably adding that although he had only intended the picture to represent the curious come hither of our dwelling subconscious there had been a string of surprise deaths and strange experiences related to the painting.
Stoneham has since been commissioned to create a series of sequels: Resistance at the Threshold in 2004, Threshold of Revelation in 2012, and the final work, The Hands Invent Him, several years later. All of which sound exactly like metal album titles, and all of which are wildly unsettling.
You can see the paintings below.
