Woman buys $25 portrait she worries is haunted and cursed

Weird But True

By Jane Herz

August 29, 2023 | 8:11pm

This art is not for the faint of heart.

Zoe Elliott-Brown, 36, believes that a portrait she bought from a UK charity shop is haunted, and she’s convinced it has “transfixed” her 68-year-old mother, Jayne Elliott-Brown, with its power.

The portrait, of a young girl in a red dress staring into the distance, captured Jayne’s attention from the start after it was returned by its previous owners for “ruining” their life — but since buying it for $25, a series of strange things have happened to their family.

“I’ve never seen my mom want something so much,” Zoe described to Kennedy News and Media. “She was fascinated by it — but not in like a positive way.”

“She was weirdly protective over it,” she continued. “She was continually staring at it. She was running her [fingers] over its cheekbones; she polished it, even though it didn’t need polishing.”

After they brought the draw-dropping painting home and hung it in the living room, Jayne’s health took a turn for the worse.

Zoe said her mom began feeling shaky and experiencing hot flashes.

“I was overheating and not feeling quite right,” Jayne told the outlet. “I personally didn’t put it down to the picture, Zoe did. She felt odd about it ever since it’s been here.”

Jayne even collapsed in the bathroom, which prompted Zoe to call an ambulance. They ended up canceling it, and she stayed home — but that wasn’t the end of the odd occurrences.

One morning, Zoe woke up to her mom caressing the cheeks of the figure in the portrait, which she found strange.

Then, Jayne began hearing tapping at her door in the middle of the night for three consecutive days.

Two weeks later, Zoe and her partner Ben were walking about 3 miles from their home to watch a lightning storm, when suddenly, they saw a “big black figure” standing before them.

Zoe called it the “most terrifying experience” of her life, blaming the painting.

“He grabbed me, and we began running back the way we had come,” Zoe said of Ben. “He was screaming that it was right behind him.”

After that, Zoe was determined to get rid of the art and the accompanying “curse,” but on her way to the charity shop, she discovered that her brand-new tires had been deflated by a screw — in yet another weird twist of events.

In the end, she just couldn’t bear to part with it and came back to the shop to see if anyone had bought it.

“I thought knowing my luck some idiot will go and get it and try and burn it, and I don’t really want to be left with the remainder of whatever the hell has been going on,” Zoe explained.

Now, the painting is back with the family, sitting in a box outside the house, resting next to some sage.

The family’s dog, a Patterdale terrier named Cilla, “wouldn’t go anywhere near it.”

Zoe is looking for someone to cleanse the portrait, perhaps a professional who can “lift” the curse.

“[I wanted] to get it to someone who actually knows about this stuff and can do something positive with it,” she admitted.