Not many have had experiences with haunted objects or possessions that carry with it an unexpected entity. I know of a few who have. Their stories were shared with me which I compiled in a book, “Haunted Heirlooms.”
I will tell you one today as my readers have been asking me to pull one from my book which I penned shortly after my early retirement from the public school. To me, this account was one so strange and downright creepy that I chose not to look at the picture. Sam the antique dealer had a photo he took after he rid himself and his family of it. I told him it was best he keep the picture from prying eyes or even mine.
So here’s Sam’s encounter with a lithograph.
Sam was an antique dealer who owned a shop in Maine. Yes, in Maine, where the famed Stephen King penned several highly-successful horror books.
Sam, a pseudonym I used when I told his account in my book, “Haunted Heirlooms”, didn’t want to be identified just in case people went looking for him. After several months of dealing with the stress of the lithograph which while in his possession wreaked havoc on him and his family, Sam just wanted to retire and be left alone. The book is a testament to what may happen when a haunted object ends up in your possession.
You will find the book on my site here which leads you directly to Amazon to purchase should you want more of the stories in that compilation of the macabre.
I met Sam because I was enamored while I was in my twenties and thirties with collecting antiques. Even well into my forties, I still visited these shops and thus, got to know some of the antique store owners well enough. When they found out I wrote stories about hauntings, ghosts and the paranormal in general, they let me in on some terrifying experiences – as long as I guaranteed anonymity.
Sam owned a pretty successful antique store in one of the larger towns in Maine. He’s now retired from the business and I will let on that he has since moved from that area to sunnier climes. One day several years ago prior to my early retirement, Sam contacted me about purchasing some dinnerware as he was getting ready to sell his store to a younger generation of antique sellers and dealers.
I took the train up, this time to Connecticut as I was also meaning to visit with some old college friends who still lived near the university we had attended. At a coffeehouse, Sam told me his encounter and the months that followed as he attempted to rid his family and himself of a lithograph.
To protect the current collector who presently owns the cursed lithograph, I have pasted on a different photo to this blog. It’s not the lithograph. I would not do that to you, just in case it was the true original. You would be so curious that it may just do something even though it’s just an image taken by a camera.
But first, what is a lithograph?
If you think of a photo negative before cell phones were created, a lithograph is created when a metal plate is etched with a design in reverse. The metal plate is then pressed into a greasy ink base and the plate is then pressed onto a special type of paper that will then show an image where the non image areas are made water-repellent. The ink adheres to the paper and a resultant image is made. Sometimes it’s in black and white, sometimes if the inks are different colors, a multicolored image is made. This particular lithograph was multicolor in browns, blues and greens.
The lithograph I am talking about in particular has the image of a girl swinging on a swing. In the background is a castle complete with spires and battlements. I hope you haven’t seen it. If you have, I’d love to hear from you and what has happened to you since seeing the picture.
How did my friend Sam acquire this particular lithograph?
It was gifted to him, by all people, another couple would were good friends of Sam and his wife.
Yes, gentle people. It was given as a gift.
Sometimes we give gifts we don’t know have attachments. In this case, an attachment that was so evil that it may have caused the store its misfortune, almost going bankrupt and leading to some health issues for members of Sam’s family. Namely, his parents.
All that Sam’s parents did was gaze at the lithograph.
Then, his father went blind.
Then, Sam’s mother died.
By the end of the week, they were both dead.
Then the store where the lithograph was hung away from the house where Sam lived with his wife MOVED.
It moved back to the house. Or did it?
One day, Alice, Sam’s wife, came home from work early with a headache. She was going to lie down and absently strode into the living room where the lithograph was hung and taken to the store after his parents died mysteriously.
Alice looked up after feeling something looking back at her from the corner of her eye.
There was the lithograph exactly where Sam had hung it. Perturbed, Alice calls Sam at the store. Sam picks up the phone and she inquires if he had placed the picture back on the wall. No, Sam said. It’s here. I’m looking right at it.
Alice raises her phone and snaps a photo. Sam gets a text message and sure enough, there it was.
“That can’t be.” He said.
But it was.
“Don’t look at it.” Sam said.
“Well, did you forget to take it to the store as you promised?” She asked.
Now fearful of further terrifying his wife, Sam said yes. I forgot it, he said in a lie.
So this creepy encounter begins.
On the next blog I will continue with the encounter and how it ended. This time I might just look for that photograph of the lithograph. I just might post it here so you can see for yourself.
But truly, I hope you don’t look.