Aunt Pratt's Haunted Portrait--Shirley Plantation

Aunt 'Pratt'

Okay, so Haunted and Cursed Paintings Week on the blog hasn't gone as planned!  I've not felt well this week and with my boyfriend being out of town for work all week, I've been too busy with my son to really get much accomplished. But, here's another spooky painting to keep the ball rolling!

Shirley Plantation in Charles City, Virginia has a long, long history.  The plantation itself began in 1613 with Edward Hill I, and by 1638, it was a working farm with homestead.  However, in 1723, construction began on the Great House, a brick structure that would replace the old home and become the residence of Edward Hill I's great-granddaughter, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth married Robert Carter and the palatial home was completed by 1738.  Today, the home is still in the Hill-Carter family and is the oldest family owned business in the United States.  It was spared destruction during the Civil War by being turned into a field hospital for both Union and Confederate troops, and many of the deceased soldiers were buried in the plantation's cemetery.

With such a long history, especially one including involvement as a Civil War hospital, you'd expect the house and property to pick up a few ghost stories.  However, contrary to what one may think, the prevalent ghost tale of Shirley Plantation is NOT connected with the Civil War!  Rather, it has to do with a certain painting.

Elizabeth had a sister named Martha Hill (known to the family as Aunt Pratt) who left for England to study.  While there, she met and married a man named Hugh Gifford (also called Griffin or Griffith in various sources). She never came back to the United States to live, and died in England some years later.  Before she left, though, she left a signed portrait of herself in her second story bedroom.

By 1858, the current generation of Hill-Carters living in the home decided to remodel, and removed Aunt
Pratt's portrait to the attic.  Immediately, the family began to be plagued with horrible sounds coming from the attic each night.  The sound of shuffling and rummaging through boxes was overshadowed by severe knocking that progressively got worse. Whenever the family would investigate the source of the noises, they'd find nothing out of place in the attic.  They finally realized that Aunt Pratt, who was long deceased, was unhappy about being relegated to the attic space and wanted to return to her bedroom on the second floor.  There she remained happily until the outbreak of the Civil War, where once again she was sent to the attic.  With the home being used as a hospital and valuables being packed up out of sight, Aunt Pratt understandably kept pretty quiet and as a reward upon the end of the war, the family moved her portrait to a place of honor on the first floor.

Aunt Pratt was okay with that position for awhile, but soon longed for her own personal space and the knocking and rocking once again returned, only to stop when she was returned to her rightful spot on the second floor.  And, for over 100 years, there she stayed, with the family passing down the tales of Aunt Pratt's ghostly portrait to each new generation.

In 1974, the painting was taken to New York City for a special display in Rockefeller Center on haunted and cursed items.  Aunt Pratt made it quite clear that she was unhappy with the arrangement and her portrait began to rock and shake violently, being witnessed by many spectators.  One of those spectators was an NBC reporter on his way to lunch who happened to catch video footage of the painting rocking back and forth.  The painting would rock so violently that it was soon removed from the display and put into a locked box in storage.  Workers at the storage facility reported hearing banging and crying noises coming from the box and weren't really all that shocked to see that the painting had somehow escaped from the box and seemed to be trying to head for the door.

It was shipped back to Virginia, but before returning home to Shirley Plantation, the portrait was sent to Linden Galleries---Aunt Pratt had rocked herself so hard that she had damaged her own portrait's frame and it needed to be fixed.  She must have been pleased with the treatment received at Linden because workers there reported hearing the sounds of bells ringing in the vicinity of the painting.  Today, Aunt Pratt is right where she wants to be, and tours of Shirley Plantation are available to provide a glimpse of her.  Tour guides have been known to tell visitors not to block Aunt Pratt's view of the outdoors, and once or twice her spirit has been seen peering out the window.

Shirley Plantation Website

Article by Stacey Graham

The Japanese Suicide Girl Painting

Welcome to Day 2 of Haunted/Cursed Paintings Week!  The next 'painting'  has been floating around the internet for years and has recently made a comeback.  According to popular legend, it was a self-portrait painted by a young Japanese girl named Sonee, who then scanned the image and uploaded onto the web.  She then committed suicide.

After it was posted to a Korean forum, many members of the site claimed that the picture had eerie powers.  Some said that if you stared into the piercing blue eyes of the subject for more than five minutes, you too would go mad and commit suicide.  Others believed that if you stared at it long enough, the girl's ghost would appear and sometimes kill you, making it look like a suicide.  In another version of the tall tale, it is stated that the portrait changes as you gaze at it.  The melancholy young girl's mouth turns to an evil smirk, her brows furrow, and her eyes darken.  A dark mist then envelopes her petite frame.

Pretty cool urban legend, right?  And that's all that it is--an urban legend.

This artwork is actually by a Thai artist named Robert Chang and is of his original character creation, Princess Ruu, created for a screenplay he was working on called Tellurian Sky.  According to Chang, Princess Ruu is the only heir to the throne and is forced into a position of power at an early age, doomed never to have the chance of being with her true love.  This portrait, which was actually created using a computer program called Corel Painter, is supposed to be her last casual portrait before taking power.

Robert Chang's website

Urban Legends Online

*For another spooky Japanese Urban Legend, check out my blog on the Cursed Kleenex Commercial!*

Man Proposes, God Disposes

Welcome to Theme Week on Theresa's Haunted History of the Tri-State!  For the next seven days, I'll be blogging only about one specific topic...and the topic for January is Haunted and Cursed Paintings!  Throughout the week, you'll be reading about some pretty strange works of art---some that have enjoyed a long infamy for their spooky attributes, and some that are lesser known.  I even hope to bring you at least one haunted painting from here in the tri-state.  Hope you enjoy this week's collection of creepy, and don't forget to follow me on Facebook for a few extra haunted/cursed painting articles.

Man Proposes, God Disposes (1864) by Edwin Landseer

On 19 May 1845, Sir John Franklin led two ships carrying a total of 129 men on a doomed expedition.  The goal was to chart a Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic, a vital component for British trade.  The crew left with only three years worth of supplies, so when 1848 came and went with no word, several rescue missions were employed.  The disappearance of the Franklin expedition was a complete mystery until 1854 when a rescue mission led by John Rae discovered some disturbing information.  A local Inuit tribe he spoke to claims to have found items from the expedition as well as the bones of the deceased crew.  Disturbingly, some of the bones seemed to have the tell-tale signs of cannibalism.

Ten years later, this grisly end to what was supposed to be a crowning achievement in British expansion inspired artist Edwin Landseer to paint his infamous Man Proposes, God Disposes, showing his interpretation of the fate of the expedition. At the time, the painting wasn't exactly held in high regard in polite Victorian society.  However, it captured the attention of the wealthy Thomas Holloway.                                                                                                        

Holloway was the founder of Royal Holloway, an institution of higher learning for women.  The school officially opened on 30 June1886 with the main building on campus being the Founder's Building.  Housed within that building is the Picture Gallery, where the Landseer painting has hung for over 100 years.  It is one of 77 paintings acquired by Holloway over a period of three years, between 1880 and 1883, before the college opened.  He paid a hefty price, 6,615 pounds for it at Christie's auction, which was a record at the time. Apparently after Holloway's death in 1883, a collection of newspaper articles concerning the doomed expedition was found among his personal affects, leading many to believe he might have been a bit obsessed by the subject. 

By Mark Tollerman

In 1900, Royal Holloway became part of the University of London, but it wouldn't be until about 20-30 years later that the first inkling of a curse associated with this painting started to surface.  As the need for space increased, it was discovered that the Picture Gallery offered a wonderful venue for exams.  However, many believed that it was bad luck to sit near, or in front of Man Proposes, God Disposes.  To sit near the painting surely meant that the student was doomed to fail her exam.   

Men were finally admitted to Royal Holloway beginning with post-graduates in 1945 and undergraduates following 20 years later in 1965, and presumably it was during this post-male invasion of the school where many of the urban legends first began.  According to an article from 1984, sometime during the 1970s a popular tradition concerning the painting got its start.  A student assigned to take his exam near the painting flat out refused to participate until the creepy work of art was covered.  In a panic, the registrar grabbed the only thing big enough to cover it---a Union Jack flag.  Since then, the painting is always covered prior to exams with the Union Jack.

Therefore, the next part of the urban legend doesn't really make a lot of sense...

Some students believe that in the 1980s, the painting actually caused a student of unknown gender to commit suicide after gazing into it.  Allegedly, the student wrote "The polar bears made me do it," on his or her exam sheet (or in a diary, in some versions of the story) before committing the act in any number of ways.  But if the painting had been covered up, as it had during every exam season since the 1970s, how did the student even see it?  Did they mean 1880s, or did someone forget the Union Jack one year?  Obviously, the school has no records of any student committing suicide in connection to the painting, but that hasn't stopped class after class from taking a little extra precaution!

Sources:
Davis, Eleanor.  'Grisly 'Cursed' Painting's Story Recalled After Ship Discovery,' 7 October 2014.

MacCulloch, Laura. 'The Haunted Painting of Fabled Franklin Ship Discovered in Canadian Arctic,' 11 September 2014.

Wikipedia Article