The Ghost in the Painting
An accomplished painter, wanting to remain anonymous and calling herself Laura here, shared her story about a very haunted painting she created. Laura has had a lot of success in the art world and has sold her paintings all over the world, except one.
The Haunted Painting
In 1994, James Kidd, a commercial photographer, placed one of his photos on display at a gallery in Tombstone, Arizona where I was showing some of my oil paintings. The photo was the old stagecoach stop at Tombstone. He first took a photo of the stagecoach stop and an old stagecoach, and then he didn’t wind his camera so he could get a double exposure photo with another old wagon in the foreground.
The headless man
The photo above was taken and developed as an accidental double exposure by a photographer, James Kidd. One of the photos was of an old wagon with a barn in the background, and the other one of a modern day Tombstone stagecoach. Just to the left of the front of the wagon appears a completely headless man who was not in either of the original images!
When the picture was developed, however, it revealed something unexpected. Standing on a log to the left of the wagon is a figure that the photographer did not see when he took the picture. Upon close inspection, the figure appears to be a headless man! The figure’s coat, pants, and boots are quite plain and easy to see. But he has no head. The photographer says the photo has been examined by Kodak and other experts to prove that he did not doctor it in any way.
I couldn’t get over that photo and asked him if I could do an oil painting of it. (I do most of my paintings from photos I’ve taken.) He said I could. Back home in Sierra Vista, Arizona, I began work on a 16 x 20-inch oil painting based on the photo.
When I was about halfway through completing the painting, I started getting a strange feeling. I began to ask myself: Why on earth did I want to paint this picture? And maybe I should never have started it. But I did finish it. And then some very strange, unexplained things began to happen around my home — seemingly centered around that painting.
I do not believe in ghosts, but I cannot for the life of me explain how or why these strange things have happened. I cannot attribute every one of these events directly to the painting, but they have all taken place since it has been in my house — and are totally unexplained.
The Haunting Begins
Office havoc. I took the framed painting with some others for a display in a business location. We hung the ghost painting on the wall behind an office desk. Three days later, people from the office called and asked me to come pick up the ghost painting. Every morning, they claimed, the painting was crooked. They would straighten it, and the next morning it would be crooked again. Also, appointments were inexplicably messed up and papers went missing. They were actually afraid of it. I took the painting back.
Mysterious leak. In 1995, my husband and I moved into a brand new home in Tennessee. We wondered if this ghostly goings-on would stop. But they didn’t. Oddly, the roof on the garage of this new home had a leak when it rained. The roofers came out three times to repair it, and although they worked on it they said they could not find the cause of the leak. It didn’t make any sense. Nothing they did stopped the darn leak. Finally, my husband asked me where the ghost painting was. It was leaning against the wall between the living room and garage. We moved the painting… and the garage roof never leaked again.
Spilled salt. One evening I was preparing dinner. We had an island bar and that is where I set the table. I picked up the salt and pepper shakers, which were two little canning jars with handles, and set them on the bar. I went to the door and called to my husband that dinner was ready. When I got back to the bar, salt was spilled all over it and on the floor. The salt shaker, standing upright, was still where I had set it down. We have no animals or children in the house to blame for the spill. It is completely unexplained.
Telekinetic starfish. My husband and I were sitting in the garage talking to the little neighbor girl who had come over to visit. On the garage wall were three large dried starfish. They were hanging securely on roofing nails. The garage door was open, but there was no wind blowing or air movement. Suddenly, the largest starfish came sailing off the wall and landed on the concrete floor. It sailed across the floor about six to seven feet.
Broken gate. A heavy gate that would have been hard to remove, came off its post for no apparent reason. All the hardware was completely intact.
The chipped glass. This event really scared me because it could have injured me. We had been doing some yard work and went into the garage to rest where it was cool. My husband said he would mix us some drinks. He returned with the drinks in thick gold-colored glasses with ice cubes. We finished our drinks, and he said he was going to have another and I said I would too. So he mixed them in the house and brought them out. I had taken one or two sips from my drink when I looked down to see that a large chunk of glass had been broken off the top of the glass.
It was perfectly fine the first time I drank from it. Right away I thought my husband had knocked it on something, but he swore he hadn’t. We looked all over the garage floor for the piece of glass, but found nothing. We went into the house where my husband fixed the drinks and got down on the floor with flashlights and looked. Nothing. I poured the rest of the drink through a strainer to see if the chunk of glass had fallen in, but there was nothing. The missing piece was too large to swallow without me noticing it, but I still had this sick feeling in my stomach. We never found the missing piece of glass.
The disbeliever. I have always taken photos of the paintings I have done. People ask to see the photos of my paintings and most always say they don’t want to touch the photo of the ghost painting. The gals at the beauty shop wanted me to bring my pictures in, and one woman started bragging that she did not believe in ghosts and that it was silly of them to avoid touching the picture. “Just let me see it,” she said. She took the photo, looked at it closely and just laughed. That night at her house, a clock that had been on the wall for 40 years, fell down and broke into a hundred pieces.
The hazy figure plays a hand. Our neighbor wanted to show his mother-in-law the photos of my paintings and took them home with him. They left the pictures laying on the table and started playing a three-handed card game in which a dummy hand must be dealt. When they picked up the dummy hand, every card of the dummy hand was in one suit. That scared them to death, he told me. He got up and went outside to move his water sprinkler, and to this day he still swears that he could see a white hazy figure of a person come around the corner. He came running back to my house with the pictures and said he never wanted to touch them again.
Knock knock. The last thing this ghost did was knock on our front door. My husband and I both heard it at the same time. But our two German Shepherds did not hear the knock. Nobody was at the door.
Currently, the painting is hanging in our house. A few people have asked to buy the painting, but I am afraid to sell it. What would an unhappy ghost do in their lives?
I still don’t actually believe in ghosts… Yet if I had it to do over, I would not have created this painting.
~ Laura
Sovereign Abilities was created to help advance our understanding of important transcendental experiences that provide spiritual growth. The website was developed to explore the fundamental nature of reality through the sharing of experiences, experiments, and knowledge gained through the exploration of consciousness in all its forms. Although I created and maintain this website, it is not a website all about me. I invite all readers to become authors and share their own experiences, opinions and knowledge about all things in the metaphysical realm. A little about me
... I am a level two QHHT hypnotist trained by Dolores Cannon shortly before her death. I used Dolores’ method because I could go straight to our Oversoul which is our connection to this Universe. There is so much to learn there. I could help people under hypnosis by allowing them to see their past lives so that they could better understand their current life. Connecting to the Universe along with another consciousness doing the same thing in the room is a powerful experience. We felt such an electric feeling in the room and in ourselves. Those sessions opened my subconscious and my intuition became even stronger as did the people that had the sessions with me. They experienced a lot of changes in their lives. I came to know a very special man that was a Buddhist Guru in Texas. He had come from China as a young man and started a Buddhist temple. He had the ability of being very intuitive. When I walked into the room, he first rang a small brass bell to clear the room. Then he quickly began shuffling ordinary playing cards and told me many things about myself. He taught me to find my answers within myself and not to seek them elsewhere. I have been blessed by, The Dali Lama when he made his visit to the temple where I attended. I’m not Buddhist but I felt the need to study their ways at that time in my life. The temple was bright and colorful and filled with people. People made pilgrimages to see the Guru and he gave them his time seven days a week. I have taken sound healing with Tom Kenyon and studied his work with the Hathors. Kenyon is the best sound healer on the planet. Through sound one can achieve deep states where answers can be found inside of each of us. I had an out of body experience while listening to a world meditation that Tom Kenyon gave through the Hathors. It was a visual lesson. I had been stumbling along trying to understand something and the meditation sent me right into the Universe where I experienced my lesson in full color. What Tom Kenyon gives to the world through the Hathors and his incredible voice is an experience I am honored to have had. I came to this life already knowing other life existed off this planet. As an adult I had a full blown contact experience. I had a lifetime interest in ET’s but after my contact experience, I knew I needed to get a camera and take images and videos of spacecraft in our day and night skies so others could see what I knew was out there. I used a camera technique and intuitive photography to capture some interesting images and some beautiful craft. I got the knowing to do this kind of photography from my contact experience. I lived close to a family of Sasquatch for five years that made me welcome. I am honored to know them and even though I no longer live close to them I still feel their connection. It’s been a lifetime of learning, and I continue to learn every single day. If asked what was the most important lesson that I have ever learned in my lifetime, it would be this; our bodies are just bodies. Our bodies are not who we really are. Inside of each of us there is an energy body. Our energy bodies are all knowing, eternal beings. Even though we don’t all remember that, it’s true. When our bodies physically die, we don’t even lose consciousness. We simply “blink” to a new reality, one we are very familiar with. What many have forgotten in this lifetime is that as an, All Knowing, Eternal Being, we are Sovereign. I have fully embraced that in myself. I am the sole owner of my body, my mind, and my energy. I am not ruled by the confinements of our physical life on earth. I choose to awaken all of my Sovereign Abilities! ~ Vickie Definition of Sovereign Dictionary sov·er·eign/ˈsäv(ə)rən 1. a supreme ruler, especially a monarch. Similar: ruler monarch supreme, ruler crowned, head of state, lord adjective: possessing supreme or ultimate power.”in modern democracies the people’s will is in theory sovereign.
I have taken classes and studies at The Monroe Institute in Virginia, USA (TMI). I took the, Gateway Voyage and then returned to TMI to study, Out of Body Advanced with William Buhlman. The institute was developed by Robert Monroe to study and teach about our natural ability to leave our physical body. We can explore, and we do this naturally, almost every time we sleep. TMI is a place setup for learning to go out of body consciously. Not while you sleep, but while you’re awake.
This reminds me of my own ghostly adventure.