The Hands Resist Him

While looking up some haunted items on the vast and untrustworthy internet I came across this painting named "The Hands Resist Him" by artist Bill Stoneham in 1972. In the painting there is a small boy who Stoneham has told people is him at age 5 and a creepy eyeless porcelain doll. Behind them is a glass door which leads into blackness and all that can be seen are several ghostly hands pressed against the glass behind the boy. According to Stoneham, the door represents a line between the waking world and the world of fantasy and impossibility. He says that the doll is meant to be a sort of conduit or a guide to take him through said door. The hands are apparently representative of alternate lives or possibilities.

The painting has kind of a freaky story attached to it. So during a gallery showing Stoneham sold the painting to the actor John Marley who owned it until his death. It was then acquired by an elderly couple who owned a brewery in California. The couple ended up posting the painting up on eBay in early 2000 with a warning to any who bid. They claimed that the painting was either cursed or haunted.

They went on to say that the characters in the painting moved on their own at night, sometimes even disappearing from the painting altogether and appearing in the room where it was hanging. On the posting were also several pictures that the couple claimed were evidence that at one point the doll had threatened the boy with a gun and the boy tried to leave the painting.

The post received a ton of attention and eventually was purchased for over a grand by a gallery in Michigan. They contacted Stoneham about the painting and he was shocked to hear that the painting had such a crazy story attached to it. He apparently mentioned though that both the owner of the original gallery it was shown in and the critic who talked about it died within a year of viewing the painting.

He has since created two paintings to continue the series called Resistance at the Threshold and Threshold of Revelation has posted some neat stuff on his website which I’ll post a link to for you at the bottom here.

“Both the owner of the Gallery where 'Hands' was displayed and the Los Angeles Times art critic who reviewed my show were dead within a year of the show. I'm sure it was coincidence, but some of what I paint resonates in other people, opening the inner door. Or basement. By the way, I still have no idea what happened to the character actor who bought the painting at the show (editor note: it was John Marley, who died in 1984), or how it ended up abandoned in a building, though I could speculate. -Bill”

Link to Stoneham studios website