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The Ghosts of St. George’s Church in the Czech Republic

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One of the more well known haunted places in the Czech Republic are the spooky ghosts sitting inside of the abandoned and decaying St. George’s Church. But for what reason did the locals make them?

For those who love exploring the supernatural and the mysterious, St. George’s Church in the Czech Republic is a must-visit destination and perhaps the most eerie and scary place in the country. 

St. George’s Church, or Sv. Jiří in Czech is located in the picturesque town of Lukova, in the Czech Republic, over two hours from Prague. The small village is found in the Manětín-regionen with its deep and somewhat dark forests. 

The church is over 700 years old, and it has a rich and complex history that is intertwined with the history of the town itself. 

The Church of Ghosts: St. George’s Church in the small village of Lukova has been left to decay for decades after an accident. There have been not enough funds to restore it and rumours about it being haunted made people stay away from it.//Source: Zdeňka Bušková/Wikimedia

The church was originally built in the early 14th century, consecrated in 1352, and it was dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of soldiers. Over the centuries, the church underwent several renovations and restorations, and it played an important role in the religious and cultural life of the town.

The Haunted and Cursed St. George’s Church

However, tragedy struck in 1968, when the roof of the church collapsed during a funeral service. This led to the locals believing that the church was haunted or possibly cursed and started to hold mass outside of the building. The congregation was devastated, and the church was left abandoned for over 30 years. 

The Praying Ghosts: The little village is today most known for being the home of many statues of ghosts as an art project. // Source: MiroRosa/Wikimedia

But it wasn’t really what was behind the haunted legends that made the church famous as it was first when they tried to raise money in a unique way that it became known as one of the most haunted places in Europe. 

The 32 Ghosts in the Church

During that time, the church fell into disrepair and decay, and it became a symbol of the town’s decline. But in the early 2000s, a group of local artists decided to take matters into their own hands, and they began a restoration project that would transform the abandoned church into a hauntingly beautiful work of art.

The artist Jakub Hadrava made 32 life-sized ghost statues that are now living inside of the haunted church as part of his bachelor in art in 2012. 

They are supposed to represent the Sudeten Germans, or German Bohemians, an ethnic group that lived in the area a long time ago. They were all expelled from the country after World War 2. 

Raising Money for Restauration: The church installed the ghosts in part to raise money to restore their old church. Many people have visited to experience the eerie sight of the statues.// Source: MiroRosa/Wikimedia

The stunt helped to get the attention of the church, and the congregation who once didn’t have money to repair the roof, have now raised more than 600 000 koruna. 

St. George’s Church is a truly unique and haunting destination, steeped in history, legend, and mystery and a place where art meet the legends and perhaps even fuels them. 

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Featured Image: MiroRosa/Wikimedia

Look Inside the Abandoned St. George’s Church Filled With Ghosts 

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The Haunted Picture of The Rain Woman

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In the 90s the Ukrainian artist Svetlana Telets painted a strange painting known as The Rain Woman. According to those seeing the painting it makes them feel uneasy as if the woman in the painting is watching them. Today the painting has become known as one of the most haunted paintings out there. 

The painting named The Rain Woman (Женщина дождя), has spurned a living legend in the later years as strange rumors about the woman in the picture has haunted the past owners according to the artist herself. 

It is a strange picture of a pale looking woman with droopy and cloudy eyes that, according to those that have seen her, follows you around. She is wearing a black hat through the rain but doesn’t really seem bothered by it. The colors are muted and dark, creating a surreal and eerie atmosphere that lingers. Where did this woman come from and why does she make the owners and those seeing her uncomfortable?

Ukrainian artist Svetlana Telets painted this picture in 1996, the same year she graduated from Odessa Art University. For six months after graduating art school, she always had this feeling of someone watching her and an uneasy anxious feeling was following her. This was the state of mind she found herself in when she painted The Rain Woman. 

It is not the only picture that are rumoured to be haunted or cursed. Read more about it here:

Read about more cursed and haunted paintings:

Cursed and Haunted Paintings

What is art is perhaps just as difficult as explaining what is a haunting. And haunted art? How can that be? Several paintings have strange occurrences, history and tragedy attached to them. From people dying to people feeling a certain way when looking at the paintings, these are some work of art that are claimed…

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Painting The Rain Woman as if Possessed

When the then unknown and young artist, Svetlana Telets one day suddenly had the image of The Rain Woman in her head, she started to paint almost without thinking. She herself claimed that something or someone took over her, like drawing through her. 

This almost possession-like feeling made her work fast and the painting was done in 5 hours according to Svetlana Telets. And thus the Rain Woman was made, or perhaps conjured is a more appropriate wording according to the legends that were made about the woman in the painting.

After Svetlana Telets had reworked the painting for about a month, she put it up for sale and some people felt drawn to the strange and mystical painting of the pale woman. The painting was bought, then returned, then sold, then resold again. 

The buyers didn’t want it in their homes. They complained that the painting was causing them to experience insomnia and anxiety. Some even claimed that the painting was giving them headaches. A thing the past owners all agreed on though was how they all had a feeling of being watched. 

The Rain Woman Haunting the Owners

The first owner that bought the painting was a businesswoman, in some sources named Larisa, that hung the painting in her bedroom. But it wasn’t before she tried to get rid of the painting as she constantly had a feeling of someone watching her and another presence in her house, despite her living alone. She even rang to Svetlana Telets and complained to her about The Rain Woman:

The Rain Woman: The painting of the the lady is a strange and eerie looking painting that have made people feel like they are being watched.

“Please pick her up. I can not sleep. It seems that there is someone in the apartment besides me. I even took it off the wall and hid it behind the closet. ”

The painting was returned and put for sale again. It was sold again to a second buyer which was a young man, in some sources named Eugene, that hung it in his living room and wasn’t really a big believer of the strange stories surrounding the painting. But also he didn’t take long before he started to experience strange things about the painting and decided to get rid of it after a month.  

“I dream of her. Every night he appears and follows me like a shadow,” he said as he was giving it back. 

For a third time the picture was sold to a third buyer that claimed that he had seen the woman depicted in The Rain Woman somewhere and thought that they would get along without any problems. But that turned out to  be a mistake as he also felt uneasy around her. He claimed that her white eyes started to appear everywhere and he got the scary feeling that he would end up drowning in them. 

So he also returned it back to the shop and the painting hung in the salon for many years without anyone willing to buy her to have in their home. And so the years went on by and the painting was patiently waiting for the owner.

The Rain Woman Found its Owner

The Rain Woman used to hang in a furniture salon in Vinnitsa trying to sell it without much luck. Customers of the shop claim to be dreaming about the woman in the picture after visiting the shop and claim to sort of know her, but are unable to place her. 

Svetlana Telets herself has claimed that she is in no hurry to get rid of the picture and that she believes that there is an owner for the painting that is meant to have her. Perhaps today the painting has found its owner? 

After 11 years of a search for an owner, it was bought in 2007 by the musician Sergei Skachko who felt strongly that the picture belonged with him. He tracked the painting down after reading an article about it and accepted the rumors the painting had. And according to this article, the painting traveled to Russia where it was hung in his office and to this day most likely remains to this day. And according to Sergei Skachko, he is not afraid of the painting or the hauntings it is said to give off and has no plan of returning it. 

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Картина одержимая злым духом преследует свою хозяйку 11 лет – Новости на KP.UA

«Женщину дождя» купила группа «Земляне» – Новости на KP.UA

Женщина дождя » Страшные истории

Загадочная Женщина дождя | DRAWINGFORALL.RU

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Georgiana Houghton and her Spirit Drawings in Watercolor

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From beyond the veil, some mediums claimed that ghosts and spirits guided them to paint and draw. One of them was Georgiana Houghton and her spirit drawings.

Now mainly referred to Spiritualist art, spirit art, mediumistic art or psychic painting, this was and to a certain extent, still is a form of painting or drawing highly influenced by spiritualism. Spiritualism was a movement where connecting with the spirit world was both a performative and at times lucrative business. And the mediums that held these seances had different ways of reaching out to the spirits. One of the ways was by the pen. 

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Although perhaps not the psychic or spiritual part of the art is put much weight in today, the movement had a huge impact on modern art as part of the abstract art department. There are perhaps more famous men behind this genre of abstract art known today, like Piet Mondrian, Vasily Kandinsku, Kasimir Malevish and František Kupka. 

Often overlooked goes the women that may have been the pioneers within this type of paintings and drawings, decades before the textbook pioneers. One of them is Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884)

The Artist and the Medium

The Spiritualist painter: Georgiana Houghton was both a medium and a trained artist.

She was a British artist and medium born on Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, but moved and lived in London. She was remembered more like an eccentric amateur artist that was more known for her medium role than of an artist. And she gave more credit to the spirits that guided her paintings than to herself as their creator. 

This is also where she produced her first abstract work, or as they called it then, spirit drawings. Many of the pieces remind more of 196 or 1970 psychedelic art then Victorian from the 1860s and 70s. In 1859 she started having these private seances where she allegedly were guided to paint by different spirits and celestial beings. 

Precipitated Paintings

Often, these particular paintings would come during a seance where the medium claimed that it was in fact spirits that guided the artist to produce the paintings. 

When spiritism was at its peak of popularity, it was very common for the mediums to sketch a portrait of the spirit they were in contact with during their seances. Another form of this was by automatic drawing where mediums and other practitioners controlled the body of the artist. 

Georgiana Houghton started her spirit art career first by drawing and then with watercolors. She was one of those relying on an automatic process where she told she was directed by spirits. First she drew flowers and fruits, and was somewhat of a floral artist. This was the one way of painting that was looked at as more of a respectable practice for Victorian artists. But then her style turned to something else entirely. 

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The floral pictures evolved to project the spiritual experience more than objects of the natural world. She had complex pictures with several layers, colors and details. She described the abstract shapes she found in her and colors as sacred symbolism

Not only was spiritualism on the edge of what was perceived as ordinary, at this time, the abstract way of painting was still not a concept, so the reception of the paintings was received more as a curious rarity than art. 

In the beginning, Houghton claimed that it was her dead family members like her sister Zilla that guided her, but as her work evolved, so did her artist spirit guides. And she would later claim that it was the likes of Renaissance artists Titian and Correggio that led her brush. 

The Frauds and the Performers

Spirit photographs: She was not only a painter that drew her seances. Here she is posing for a photograph, also used a lot within the spiritism movement.

She started gaining quite the notoriety for her paintings and even held an exhibition at the New British Gallery in Bond Street in London in 1871. Although it perplexed the visitors and was an eye opener for many of those watching the exhibition, it was not a commercial success at all. It almost bankrupted Houghton.

Despite this, she spent every day for around three months talking about her paintings to visitors and discussing the meaning behind her sacred symbols and what they could have meant. 

In 1882 she published the book: ‘Chronicles of the Photographs of Spiritual Beings and Phenomena Invisible to the Material Eye’. This book featured spirit photographs from many well known spirit photographers that were active in the 1870s like  Agnes Guppy-Volckman, Stainton Moses and spiritualists Alfred Russel Wallace and William Howitt.

There were also pictures from Frederick Hudson, well known for being the first spirit photographer in Britain, but also a well known fraudulent one that was exposed already in the 1870s. The book itself was heavily criticized for featuring dubious pictures where the pictures themselves were unconvincing and could be replicated with double exposure and . 

Her Legacy as the Artist and not the Eccentric

Now, the collection is missing many of her works. Because it is not the museums, galleries or art historians that kept her legacy intact. Most of her works were kept by the Victorian Spiritualists Union in Melbourne. Like so many other women’s achievements they are kept hidden in their diaries, botanical albums and embroideries that not often are looked at as real art. And the irony that she attributes her work to the likes of ghost men speaks echoes with a bitter aftertaste today. 

Although more known for her medium role than that of an artist, her work speaks for itself. Especially when we look at the way the art movement moved in the modern world, and her art were so ahead of its time. In 2016, the The Courtauld Gallery held an exhibition of her paintings where they acknowledged, not only the curious and peculiar origin story behind the paintings, but her craftsmanship and artistry as well. Because no matter how we feel about the spiritualism part, we cannot ignore how in modern art, the pieces we watch in a gallery, can help us see past the realism of the world and our thinking and reach a place in our sub consciousness we otherwise couldn’t see.

Some of Georgiana Houghton Spirit Drawings:

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 Image courtesy of Victorian Spiritualists’ Union Melbourne Australia

Georgiana Houghton 

Spiritualist artist Georgiana Houghton gets UK exhibition | Painting | The Guardian

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Cursed and Haunted Paintings

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What is art is perhaps just as difficult as explaining what is a haunting. And haunted art? How can that be? Several paintings have strange occurrences, history and tragedy attached to them and many people that some of them is haunted paintings. From people dying to people feeling a certain way when looking at the paintings, these are some work of art that are claimed to be haunted paintings.

The Crying Boy by Giovanni Bragolin

In 1985, there were reports in the papers in England that the firefighter claimed they kept finding undamaged paintings in burnt down ruins. The paintings were all of the crying boy series, a mass produced scenario from the 1950s and onwards.

The original idea of the paintings was from the Italian painter Giovanni Bragolin that sold over 60 of them to tourists. So many rumours surrounded the painter. Like that he painted the crying boys at an orphanage after fleeing to Spain after the war. The orphanage burnt down.

After the reports from the firefighters printed in the news by tabloid newspaper, the Sun, they organized bonfires to burn the haunted paintings.

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The Hands Resist Him by Bill Stoneham

In February in 2000, a new listing on ebay appeared of a strange haunted painting. An elderly couple in California tried to get rid of a painting from their brewery. But the painting had a disclaimer on it. It was said it carried some sort of curse or was haunted.

The characters in the paintings apparently had a habit of moving during the night. And occasionally, they completely left the picture as well, crossing the frame. It sold for so much more than what it was listed for.

The haunted picture was purchased by the Perception gallery that tracked down the artist, Bill Stoneham that painted the picture in 1972. It was originally purchased by John Marley, most known for his role in The Godfather. And the strange travels of the painting and the mystery surrounding it, still lingers, even so many decades after the paint dried.

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Man Proposes, God Disposes by Edwin Landseer

At Royal Holloway University, there hangs a haunted painting. The picture must be covered every year. Or else…

It is an 1864 oil-on-canvas painting by Edwin Landseer. The haunted painting was inspired by the search for Franklin’s lost expedition which disappeared in the Arctic after 1845.

According to an urban myth a student in the 1920 or 30s. He was taking his exam when he suddendly stabbed a pencil into his eye, writing “The polar bears made me do it” on to their exam paper. He then killed himself. From this alleged incident, another legend sprung out in the 60s, claiming that anyone sitting in front of the painting during an exam would fail.

That is why everytime an exam is on, there is a college tradition of covering the haunted painting with a Union Jack flag after a student refused to take the exam until the painting was covered.

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The Rain Woman by Svetlana Telets

Ukrainian artist, Svetlana Telets painted this haunted picture in 1996, the same year she graduated from Odessa Art University. For six months after graduating art school, she always had this feeling of someone watching her.

When Svetlana Telets one day suddenly had the image of The Rain Woman in her head, she started to paint almost without thinking. She herself claimed that something or someone took over her, like drawing through her. The haunted painting was done in five hours, and the result, well… It was this strange and surreal looking woman.

The painting was bought, then returned, then sold, then resold again. The buyers didn’t want it in their homes. They complained that the painting was causing them to experience insomnia and anxiety. And there was always a feeling of being watched. One even rang to Svetlana Telets and complained to her about The Rain Woman:

“Please pick her up. I can not sleep. It seems that there is someone in the apartment besides me. I even took it off the wall and hid it behind the closet. ”

The Rain Woman used to hang in a furniture salon in Vinnitsa trying to sell it. Customers of the shop claim to be dreaming about the woman in the picture and claim to sort of know her, but are unable to place her.

Read More: Read the full story about the The Rain Woman in MoonMausoleum.

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The Dead Mother by Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch was an artist known for his inner demons, something we can see in a lot of his paintings like Scream, The Vampire and all off his paintings depicting sickness. This is the case of The Dead Mother, depicting a little child in front of her dead mother, hands up in anguish much like in Scream.

The haunted painting that he painted is probably based on his own mother’s death. Edvard Munch’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was only 5 years old and this trauma lingered with him for all off his life together with the death of his sister as well.

The haunted painting is said to be cursed, or even haunted by some that have seen it. There are several version of the painting though, but the legend never specifies which version of the motief is the cursed one. Perhaps all of them.

The eyes of the little girl is said to follow you wherever you go, and some even go as far as to claim that she sometimes disappear from the frame altogether. There are also those that claim you can hear the sheet in the mother’s bed rustling, as if someone is moving it.

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Untitled by Laura P.

This haunted painting was based on a photograph by James Kidd from 1994. A picture believed to have a headless figure some claiming to be a ghost. According to Laura P, she started painting the painting, not knowing why she did so, as if being under some possession.

After the painting was done, she herself told of things surrounding the painting that were, strange. Incidents happening to the artist, possessions missing, and objects falling and breaking are just some of them. This has led to some people claiming the painting is haunted by the spirit from the original photo.

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Картина одержимая злым духом преследует свою хозяйку 11 лет – Новости на KP.UA