“The Hands Resist Him” Haunted Painting | Ep. 86
Welcome to another episode of Believing the Bizarre. Let me paint you a picture – this week, we discuss one of the most haunted paints of all time, The Hands Resist Him.
Painted by Bill Stoneham in 1972, The Hands Resist Him was originally just intended to pay the bills and was inspired by a poem written by his first wife and a photograph he found of himself.
However, the painting seems to negatively impact everyone it touches, including a few celebrities, and famously terrified the masses when it was listed on eBay in 2000.
But, is the painting truly haunted? Listen now!
The Haunted Painting: The Hands Resist Him
Can a picture harm you? What if it was a haunted painting?
What’s up Bizarro’s? This week we dive into the story of the haunted painting The Hands Resist Him.
What is “The Hands Resist Him?“
‘The Hands Resist Him’, is an oil on canvas painting that is 36 by 24 and displays a young boy in a tee-shirt, shorts, and crew socks along with a creepy, black-eyed, life-size doll girl, who is holding a broken dry cell battery in her hand. Many have claimed that it is not at all a battery, but a gun pointed at the young boy.
They are standing in front of a paneled glass door, that is separated into different sections of glass, and at the bottom half of the door – on the other side of the glass – are what appears to be disembodied hands, pressing against the glass.
The Hands Resist Him is known as one of the most haunted artworks of all time and was painted by Bill Stoneham in 1972.
The artist claims that the boy in the picture is a younger version of himself.
Bill says that the doorway represents the line dividing the real world and fantasy. The black-eyed doll standing next to the artist is meant to be his guide to the other side.
The hands are representations of the possibilities that existence can hold.
About Bill Stoneham
The artist behind the haunted painting was born in 1947 and never knew his biological parents. At 9 months old he was adopted from an orphanage.
He moved from Chicago to California and bounced from job to job growing up. He struggled to make a living as an independent artist, but that all changed in 1972.
The Charles Feingarten Gallery reached out to Stoneham offering him a two-year contract to create two pieces of artwork a month at $200 a painting.
Bill searched everywhere for inspiration for his paintings. His wife, Rhoann, wrote a poem in 1971 based on the fact that Bill never met his biological family.
Here is the poem:
He is of the seeing visions, His strokes reveal them
In a rush of color, of madness, of mystics
And his head is the highest center, it must confront its enemy
The hands resist him, like the secret of his birth
His presence is the sanctum heartbeat, felt in darkness and in passion
It’s sound the sole gift to that silence
Finding inspiration from the line “the hands resist him” Bill found a self-portrait for visual inspiration. He chose a picture from a photo book of him with his adopted grandmother in Chicago.
Bill had multiple paintings hanging in the Charles Feingarten Gallery, but the only one that sold was, The Hands Resist Him. The well-known actor, John Marley, known for his role in The Godfather, bought the painting in 1974. It is said that Marley paid a hefty price for the painting.
While this created what should have been good luck, the opposite happened.
All of the people who had contact with the painting, outside of Bill and his first wife, started having bad experiences, that some believed were related to the painting.
Between 1978 and 1984, all three men that had close interaction with the painting died.
The art critic, Seldis, who reviewed the painting shortly after it sold, died in 1978 from what was reported as a potential suicide on the night before his 53rd birthday.
The gallery owner Feingarten died in 1981 from unknown causes at the age of 60
John Marley, the actor, and owner of the painting died in 1984 following open-heart surgery.
For about 25 or so years, the painting was out of the public eye.
The next time “The Hands Resist Him” painting made news was thanks to the internet in 2000 when it was listed on eBay.
A Seemingly Haunted Painting For Sale
In 2000 the supernatural painting was found by a California woman named Lucy in a brewery.
She was sad to see the abandoned condition it was in since she considered it a nice piece of artwork. She decided that she would take it home.
All was well for a little while, but soon, paranormal things started happening.
Her four-year-old daughter told her that people in the painting would not let her sleep at night. Lucy was confused and asked her daughter what she meant.
She said that the boy and the girl doll would come to life at night in her room.
Naturally, Lucy was a bit freaked out, but she was willing to shrug it off. But, the more she thought about it, the more it nagged at her and, to be honest, freaked her out.
Lucy asked her husband to set up a motion-triggered camera in their daughter’s room just to be sure and hopefully get some peace of mind.
Unfortunately, they were shocked to find the motion-triggered camera confirmed their daughter’s story perfectly.
The pictures showed the young boy crawling, trying to escape the painting.
In a separate photo it caught the originally expressionless doll, now appearing angry, no longer holding a battery in her hand, but a gun pointed directly at the boy’s back.
Lucy and her family found this terrifying. But, instead of burning, burying, or shredding the painting, she decided to do the responsible thing: list it on eBay.
When Lucy, put the picture up for sale she included a warning that went along with it. Here is the original description and warning:
Description
“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. 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. Before you do, please read the following warning and disclaimer.
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.
The news of this eerie and supernatural painting’s listing on eBay spread throughout the internet, with people forwarding links and writing their own pages about the creepy painting.
It got so much widespread attention, that the potentially haunted painting wasn’t just affecting the owners of it now.
The mysterious item began affecting those who viewed it. Some reported feeling nauseous, while others claimed that children who saw the eBay listing became uncontrollable and would run away screaming in fright.
Some people claimed that simply viewing the photos of the painting made them feel ill. Others would completely blackout or lose hours at a time, regaining consciousness, confused about what had happened.
Some people said they started hearing whispered, hushed voices in their house after viewing the painting.
Other’s claimed when they stopped looking at the painting they were touched by an invisible force. A lady said she felt a powerful grip around her throat, choking her while viewing the painting.
One potential buyer saw the listing on his computer and said that the moment he saw the painting on the monitor, it turned white and a blast of heat began to emit out of it. He even began crying for no reason.
The painting became so popular that its site was viewed by over 30,000 people. The original bid for the painting was $199, but thanks to the surging popularity the painting sold for $1025. More than 5 times the original listing.
Who Bought The Painting?
The buyer, Kim Smith of Perception Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan, eventually contacted Bill Stoneham telling him about all of the craziness being attributed to the painting, the eBay listing, and what people were claiming.
Bill was surprised by all of the stories and paranormal experiences people were claiming to have due to his painting.
About a month after purchasing The Hands Resist Him, Kim Smith was approached by the paranormal website “surfingtheapocalypse.com,” and asked about how things were going with regards to the allegedly haunted painting. Smith told them:
“I wish I could report a bizarre happening or mind possession type of thing, but the unusual things started happening with the first email and counting. Prayers and quotes from the scriptures from a man of faith. Advice as to how to cleanse my residence of this evil thing from a Native American Shaman in Mississippi. Reports of people being repulsed, made physically ill or suffering from a blackout/mind control experiences.”
The Hands Resist Him, Where is it Today?
Kim Smith is still the owner to this day and claims that she has not witnessed any paranormal activity of the painting. She has no plans to sell it despite her sons not wanting to keep “the most haunted painting in the world.”
Kim keeps the painting in the back of her Gallery, and it only comes out for special occasions.
Darren K O’Neill owns copyright properties and web publishing rights to the painting and in 2016 published “a dramatized account of the notoriously haunted artwork” called The Hands Resist Him: Be Careful What you Bid For. O’Neil’s book introduces a young fictional family as the winning bidders as well as a detective who finds a connection between the haunted painting and his investigation into a 28-year-old open case of a serial killer known as “The Life Swapper.”
O’Neil also had a supernatural experience with the painting:
“I first saw it online when I was living in Dubai. I printed it out and left it on a side table next to some other documents printed on the same printer with the same paper. Anyway, I went to Italy for a month. When I came back, the air conditioning had gone awry, everything was green mold. The TV, bed sheets, my daughter’s cot and clothing, all of my suits in the closet, and the documents I had printed all green. But right next to them, the only thing that was perfectly untouched was the printout of the painting.
What Do You Think About The Hands Resist Him?
What do you think Bizarros? Is the legend of The Hands Resist Him true? Do people who print images, or view the painting have paranormal experiences?
Or is it all overactive imaginations at the suggestion of subjects of a painting haunting people in real life?
Special thanks to Darren O’Neill for giving us permission to use the image of the painting on social and on this web page. Check out the book he wrote, “The Hands Resist Him: Be Care What You Bid For” on Amazon.