Original subtitles

An elaborate mansion built to ward off evil spirits.

A forbidden tomb guarded by a deadly curse.

And an amusement park that became a playground

for the souls of the dead.

You know, from time to time it feels like

there's an unseen, evil energy

that shrouds the world we live in.

Ominous tombs, abandoned amusement parks

and cursed objects

can all raise the hair on the back of our necks

and make us wonder if something sinister is at play.

But is that just a figment of our imagination?

Or is it possible that our fears are justified,

and that dark forces lurk all around us?

Well, that is what we will try and find out.

♪ ♪

Near the center of this ancient city in Central Asia,

is a mausoleum known as Gur-e-Amir.

It is also known as the Tomb of the King

because inside its magnificent dome

lie the remains of one of the most feared rulers in history:

Tamerlane the Great.

RICHARD SPENCE: Tamerlane was often credited as being the last of the great

Asiatic conquerors, in the mold of Genghis Khan.

He started off, basically, as a minor tribal leader,

and then he embarked upon a 35-year career

of constant war and conquest...

...during which he's often credited with exterminating

five percent of the world's population.

Tamerlane was very adept at psychological warfare

and putting his adversary on the wrong foot.

His most chilling battlefield signature was the erection

of large numbers of towers

around the city he'd just conquered.

And these towers were made up from the decapitated heads

of the victims of the latest conquest.

A really awful warning to anyone else who might

think about rebelling.

"This is the fate that awaits you

"if you even think about any opposition.

I will destroy you and destroy your city."

SHATNER: In 1405, Tamerlane died of a fever at the age of 69.

By that time, his empire stretched

from Siberia to the Mediterranean Sea.

But some claim that even in death,

Tamerlane wasn't finished exerting his power on the world.

Because his tomb is believed to be protected by a deadly curse.

Certain people attain that level of, you know,

absolutely terrifying, vicious person.

Something is evil in them, so when they die,

whatever it is that makes them evil,

a lot of people think it still exists.

And where would it be? It would be wherever the body is.

So, in the tomb of Tamerlane would be this evil presence

that's now still terrifying in his death.

SHATNER: For centuries, Tamerlane's tomb was untouched

by archaeologists for fear of unleashing

the dark forces inside.

But 80 years ago, his tomb was finally disturbed,

and there are those who believe

that it set off a chain of events

that changed the course of history.

Under the orders of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin,

Russian archaeologists enter

Tamerlane's mausoleum and open his tomb.

MAROZZI: Stalin was interested in the clues

behind Tamerlane's greatness.

Tamerlane was such an incredibly powerful man,

whose career had been one of bloodshed and savagery.

And Stalin wanted to send a very strong message

that he was a 20th-century equivalent.

DOMINIC STEAVU: When the expedition arrived on site, they were told

Tamerlane's tomb has remained undisturbed for centuries,

and not to open the tomb, that if they did,

something terrible would happen.

Of course, the expedition proceeded to open the tomb.

And this very powerful smell of frankincense,

of rose oil and camphor suddenly bursts forth

and envelops the expedition.

Some of the members of the expedition believe

that it was the smell of a curse.

MAROZZI: There are supposedly two inscriptions

on the tomb of Tamerlane.

The first inscription reads:

The second inscription read:

And that's an indication this is a sacred resting place.

This is not somewhere to be trifled with.

It was not something that should even be entertained.

SPENCE: The body was removed and it was taken back to Leningrad,

where the remains were being studied at that point in time.

One of the things that was in the paper was a picture of

a Soviet archaeologist holding the skull of Tamerlane.

And in the article accompanying this, there is a reference

that there were locals who were disturbed about this.

SHATNER: On June 22, 1941,

two days after Tamerlane's tomb was opened,

Russia was hit with a surprise attack

by Germany, its supposed ally.

Over three million Nazi troops marched into Russia

in the most massive invasion in history.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union

without any warning.

Up until then, there had been a pact of non-aggression.

So, this came as quite a surprise to the Soviet Union.

The Nazis called this surprise attack Operation Barbarossa,

and they were very swift and overwhelming in their attacks,

and they managed to get very far into the Soviet Union,

rather quickly, causing great devastation

and loss of life to the Soviets.

Tamerlane's body is removed from its tomb on the 20th

and the Eastern Front erupts in flames two days later.

Remember, there was a curse.

"Whosoever will disturb my tomb

will unleash an invader worse than I."

So, a lot of people would say

the synchronicity between the removal

of Tamerlane's body from his tomb

and the launching of Operation Barbarossa

isn't an accident.

SHATNER: As German troops continued to overpower Russian forces,

Stalin's advisors began to question if the curse

of Tamerlane's tomb had been unleashed.

They urged him to return Tamerlane's remains

to Uzbekistan in the desperate hope

that it would turn the tide of battle.

And to their astonishment, it worked.

Tamerlane's remains are put back in in December of 1942,

when the whole course of the war at the Eastern Front changes.

And from that point on, it's just one long nightmare

retreat for the Germans back to Berlin in April, 1945.

SHATNER: Is it possible that returning Tamerlane's remains

to his tomb broke the curse

that triggered Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union?

For many, the evidence is hard to ignore.

MAROZZI: I think for those who subscribe

to what we call the Curse of Tamerlane,

there are these two great coincidences.

Coincidence one, the tomb is opened

against all the objections of the Uzbeks,

Hitler invades the Soviet Union.

Coincidence number two, Tamerlane is reinterred

with full burial rights, Hitler is defeated.

So it comes full circle.

Two coincidences, or two proofs that the curse

was absolutely for real. Take your pick.

SHATNER: Here, on the bank of Lake Shawnee,

stands the abandoned remnants of what was once a simple,

wholesome, family amusement park.

Opened in 1926, the park thrived for decades,

until it was abruptly closed in 1966.

According to local historians, the reason for the closure

was that what started as a playground for children

became the site of numerous tragic

and disturbing incidents.

In the 1940s, a little girl was riding the swings

and a soda delivery truck delivered soda

to the concession stand.

(children laughing)

And whenever he did, he backed up into

the path of the swing, and killed the little girl.

SMITH: They tried to play it down

because it was a child getting killed.

She wasn't the only child killed here.

There were several kids that drowned.

One, it was a really sad story,

and I would hope it wouldn't happen nowadays.

A mother brought her nine-year-old here

and dropped him off to go swimming,

and she went on her merry way.

She came back when the park was closing,

-and she couldn't find her son. -WOMAN: Come on!

SMITH: And they looked for the son

until ten o'clock at night, when they found him.

His arm was stuck in the drain of the swimming pool and it had

sucked him in and he couldn't get out

and he had just drowned.

There was another incidence where there was

a family out on an outing.

They was riding a canoe in the lake.

The canoe overturned,

and a little boy drowned in the lake.

SHATNER: Before its doors were closed,

six children had died in the park.

And that might have been reason enough for the park

to remain closed, but it didn't.

In 1985, local resident Gaylord White

purchased the property with hopes of reopening it.

JEWEL WHITE: In the 1950s, Gaylord, my husband, worked here

when he was in high school.

He fell in love with it. So, that was his wish,

that someday he would own the park.

And somebody had sent us word that the heirs

had finally decided they were gonna sell it.

That's how we bought it.

We wanted to have a children's ride park.

SHATNER: For years, locals believed that the park

was haunted, maybe even cursed.

Then, in the late 1980s, the White family

made some curious discoveries.

CHRIS WHITE: We started finding a lot of pottery and Native American

tools and arrowheads, stuff like that.

So, we stopped doing the bulldozing.

We called Marshall University.

They put together an archeological team

that would come down to the park.

They started uncovering bodies.

So, that's when we knew we had a Native American

burial ground on the property.

I know that one of the burial sites

was a Native American 14-year-old girl,

and the belief is that she died from giving

childbirth because the child was buried next to her.

SHATNER: A series of tragic deaths at an amusement park

built on the site of a Native American burial ground?

A coincidence?

As far as paranormal investigators are concerned,

not a chance.

SPINKS: The first time I stepped foot on Lake Shawnee Amusement Park,

I felt like I was being watched.

It was an ominous, just negative feeling.

I don't necessarily believe that places are born bad.

I believe that things have to occur

for a place to become negative in nature.

WHITE: People said whenever they come to the park that they see

the swings move on their own or maybe they see a image

of the little girl that's riding the swings.

SMITH: Seeing only one swing move when I look at it,

no one else sees it, or it stops as soon as

someone else is looking-- that's pretty scary.

More than scary, it's unexplained.

We tend to be scientists now, all of us.

We know everything that's going on.

And when you see something that you don't understand,

it gets to be creepy.

LOYD AUERBACH: Millions of people have had these experiences.

Not just hauntings, but all sorts of ESP experiences

and related experiences.

These are questions that science should be looking at

very carefully and closely.

And to say, oh, it's mass hallucination

or it's this kind of explanation, without looking

into the experience itself, either the singular

or the general patterns, is not scientific.

It's highly unscientific.

SHATNER: Is Lake Shawnee Amusement Park home to deadly powers

that are simply beyond our understanding?

Or is it possible that just the thought

of dark forces is all that's needed to give us a fright?

Perhaps clues can be found by investigating

a vast mansion that many believe is haunted

by the souls of restless gunslingers.

SHATNER: Strange.

Macabre.

Disturbing.

In San Jose, California stands one of the largest

and most bizarre private residences in the United States.

Known as the Winchester Mystery House,

this 24,000 square foot Victorian-style mansion

contains an astonishing 160 rooms,

17 chimneys,

47 fireplaces,

two basements,

three elevators

and more than 10,000 panes of glass.

And those are just the ones we know about.

But why?

MAGNUSON: Well, the Winchester Mystery House is a very special place

that was built with no master plan,

but there are a lot of architectural oddities

that remain a mystery as to why they're here.

STEVE BURROWS: Most buildings start with some drawing,

some blueprints, some documents that say

"this is what it's gonna look like when it was finished."

That building looks like they made it up as they went.

BOEHME: There are doors that open to 12-foot drops outside.

There's doors that, if you step through them,

you'll land in a kitchen sink on the first floor.

It's almost like an Escher picture in some ways.

SHATNER: The mastermind behind this architectural jigsaw puzzle

was Sarah Winchester, the widow of the man

who manufactured the Winchester repeating rifle.

It was famously known as "the gun that won the west"

because it could kill more people faster

than any gun previously invented.

BOEHME: The Winchester rifle was special because it could fire

up to 15 rounds without being reloaded,

which was very different from most of the smooth bores

used in the Civil War, say, which were,

you loaded it, you fired one shot, and that was it.

So, you could imagine the advantage that you would have

being able to shoot round after round after round

without reloading.

SHATNER: When Sarah's husband died in 1881,

she became the heir to his massive fortune.

Three years later, she began construction

on a mansion that would take 38 years to complete.

She just added things on if she had a great idea,

so everybody had to listen and say, "Oh, okay,

you want a large ballroom up there."

And then they'd figure it out as they went.

DAVID WHITEHEAD: Even to this day, they're still finding

new rooms and new features to this house.

Was Sarah just working off of her whims?

Was she just an eccentric, crazy lady?

Or is there some other unknown explanation

that we have yet to understand?

SHATNER: It is suspected that one reason Sarah kept building

and building around the clock for 38 years

is that she was trying to protect herself from all

the dead souls the Winchester rifles had killed.

Perhaps, it was thought, if the house was built

as a giant maze, the ghosts would never be able to find her.

MAGNUSON: The story is that Sarah Winchester

went through a long period of grief.

She unfortunately lost a child,

only weeks old, and she lost her husband to tuberculosis.

And she started wondering

why are all these terrible things happening to me?

And what was common at the time was to seek out

a medium or a spiritualist, for guidance.

And that person said that the karma of this--

the gun that won the west-- and all of these terrible thing

associated with this firearm, is kind of haunting you.

BOEHME: This spiritualist medium told her that in order to pacify

these spirits, who were very offended at having been

killed by Winchester rifles, she needed to build a house.

And she should never stop building.

And the idea also was that the constant sound

of the saws and hammers would drive the bad spirits away.

MAGNUSON: Some of the design features were specifically built

to confuse evil or malicious spirits.

So, if the stairs led to the ceiling or if

a door led to the outside,

possibly, they would be confused and leave the property.

SHATNER: Did Sarah Winchester spend nearly 40 years

and the equivalent of more than $60 million

constructing a bizarre labyrinth

of stairs, halls and doors

in order to keep the vengeful dead at bay?

Perhaps.

And for further evidence, some point to the fact

that the house is filled with strange symbolism.

WHITEHEAD: An interesting symbol that you see all throughout

the house is the symbol of the sun.

In astrology and astrotheology, you have the idea of the Zodiac,

which is you have the 12 houses of the Zodiac,

and the number 13 is the sun.

At the front gates of the house,

on each gate, you have a symbol of the sun.

And the rays of the sun add up to 16 on each sun.

So, when you put the 16 and the 16 together,

you have the date that William Shakespeare died.

BOEHME: Th two most cryptic windows, stained glass windows

in the house are Sarah's ballroom windows.

They're the only ones that have any text in them.

And they're two quotes from different Shakespearian plays,

and they read, "Wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts."

And then the other one says, "These same thoughts

people this little world."

We don't know exactly what that meant to Sarah.

She took that secret with her to her grave.

MAGNUSON: Sarah Winchester passed away September, 1922.

As you can imagine, there was great excitement

to see this incredible home that everyone in the town

had seen being built up over so many years.

All the furnishings were sold anonymously at auction,

but what was left was one large safe in the grand ballroom.

WHITEHEAD: Sarah put a safe in the grand ballroom,

which is an odd place to put a safe.

And the safe itself is very odd.

It's basically, you open up the safe.

and then you find another safe, and you have to open up

another safe and it's a safe within a safe within a safe.

BOEHME: People were kind of just mystified.

Like, "What's in the safe?" They were hoping for maybe

treasure, gold bars or jewelry.

MAGNUSON: After they finally got inside, they found just two things.

No gold, no silver, no diamonds.

A lock of hair from her baby, Annie, who passed away

just a few weeks old, and the obituary of her husband,

who passed away to tuberculosis very young.

SHATNER: A lock of hair

and an obituary.

It seems Sarah Winchester's motives

for building such a strange and unsettling structure

remain safely hidden somewhere in the never-ending house.

Ultimately, it's hard to say what secrets

the Winchester Mystery House holds,

but one thing is certain.

It was built to confuse unwelcome guests,

whether they're alive or dead.

But there's another residence,

located in the state of Indiana,

that may be imbued with even darker forces.

It's a home that many believe

is the most evil place in North America.

SHATNER: February 16, 2019.

Paranormal investigator Dave Spinks

and his associate Haley Sharp

have traveled here to this small town

to investigate a house that many consider

to be the most evil place in North America.

Referred to as Willows Weep,

it has been the site of a series of gruesome deaths

since it was built in the 19th century.

Brenda Johnson owns Willows Weep.

-Hi, Brenda. -Hi, Dave.

SHATNER: She dismissed the rumors

about it being an evil place

and purchased it only a few years ago

with plans to renovate it.

-This is my assistant, Haley. -Hi.

-Hi. -It's nice to meet you.

SHATNER: But recent events have

convinced her that she may have

made a terrible mistake.

To this end, she has invited Dave and Haley

to come and investigate the house

and see if her strange experiences can be verified.

-So, how you doing? -Not good, standing here.

All night last night I was sick thinking about coming over here

around this house.

So tell us a little bit about the house,

some of your experiences here.

Well, when I bought the house, we started

working on it, and then my son was working on the ceiling,

the boards come flying off at him

and hurt him, and I've been scratched in there.

Six claw marks down my back.

Doors slamming on you. Banging underneath the floors.

I understand there's been deaths in this house. Can you kind of

-go through those a little bit? -Yeah.

The man that built the house, he died in the bathtub.

There was two suicides and then another hanging.

And I heard that three men had been poisoned.

About six months prior, before I bought it,

there was a man that, he committed suicide in there.

-He fell into the chair... -SPINKS: And that's where they found him?

They found him, what, a couple days later, right?

-JOHNSON: Week. -SPINKS: A week? Week later. Okay.

Do you think what's in that house is evil?

-Yes, I do. -Without a doubt?

Yes, I do. Without a doubt.

If it wasn't evil it wouldn't be hurting people.

I don't think there's nothing good in there.

The house was built in the late 1800s, correct?

1890. Yes.

So, regarding the shape of the house--

-it's in the shape of a cross. -Upside down cross.

SPINKS: Strange.

JOHNSON: Yes. Very strange.

SPINKS: Do you think the guy was into some weird stuff,

like occult stuff, that built it?

Why would you build a house like that

if you wasn't into something?

Absolutely.

So, we're getting ready to go into this house

and investigate it.

-Would you like to join us? -No, no way.

-Never go back in there again. Ever. -SPINKS: All right.

We're gonna get in there and investigate.

All right.

-Here we go. -All right.

Pretty heavy in here.

Definitely.

Well, where do you want to get set up?

-Right here. -Okay.

SHATNER: To see if the house might contain strange anomalies,

Dave and Haley will use a temperature sensor,

which can detect fluctuations in both temperature

and electromagnetic fields.

All right. 41, 40 degrees, and it's going down.

(device beeping)

SHARP: It really likes this area.

SPINKS: Yeah.

It's going nuts.

SHATNER: The temperature sensor has been dropping steadily

by as much as nine degrees. But why?

So, this room is appearing to be pretty active so far.

I mean, the whole house really is.

But we've got a lot of hits right here on this device.

SHARP: This is the chair that Brenda was talking about.

Yeah, look at the blood on it.

It's a really sad, heavy feeling right here, too,

in the pit of my stomach.

Almost immediately, the device started going off

in the chair where a man who killed himself

in the house several years ago was found in.

SHARP: Something there.

SHATNER: Could the strange changes in the temperature

of the house be caused by some explainable force?

a sudden drop in barometric pressure caused by

the presence of a deep underground well, perhaps?

Or could it be caused by something else?

Something that can't yet be explained?

I'm getting the sickness, the headache.

-Definitely something negative here, in my opinion. -I agree.

All right, so let's get out of here.

-Let's go. -All right.

SHATNER: Dave and Haley are beginning to suspect

that the stories of Willows Weep being an evil place

might be based on more than fear and superstition.

SHARP: The house is scary.

I wouldn't want to be in this house alone.

I'd say this house does have some evil in it.

It does not give you a good feeling.

It wants to suck the life out of you.

I've been to many locations,

and this one stands out above all of them so far.

In my personal opinion, there are

many spirits and entities in this house.

There are human spirits and possibly demonic spirits

that influenced the humans that have lived in his house,

and quite possibly have caused them to harm themselves.

SHATNER: Once outside, Dave and Haley give owner

Brenda Johnson a report on their findings,

but not before Dave makes Brenda a rather surprising offer.

I know you really don't like this place.

-No. -And I know that you want to get rid of it.

-Yeah. -Because I'd like to purchase the house from you.

(laughs)

-Mm-hmm. -Okay. Yes.

SHATNER: Dave is willing to be the next owner of Willows Weep.

-All right. -Thank you, hon. Thank you.

SPINKS: I told Brenda if I own this house,

I could investigate it much further

and much more in depth, and possibly

come to a conclusion

as to what's causing the evil that lurks within its walls.

That is, if something doesn't happen to me first.

-You too. -SPINKS: Luckily for me, she agreed.

She really couldn't wait to sell the place.

SHATNER: Is it a good idea to investigate places like Willows Weep

in order to find out whether dark forces really exist?

Perhaps. But some people believe that it's

better to simply avoid these locations at all costs.

Like in the case of an abandoned island in Mexico

whose only inhabitants are thousands of eerie dolls.

SHATNER: Just south of Mexico City.

Dotted amongst the numerous tree-filled canals

that run through this ancient city

are dozens of artificial floating islands

known as chinampas.

But one chinampa stands out

because the branches of its willow and cypress trees

appear to be growing something rather unusual.

The place is called Isla de las Muñecas,

otherwise known as the Island of the Dolls.

HOROWITZ: The island is a forest-like enclave

draped with thousands

and thousands of ordinary dolls.

Childhood playthings hanging from trees,

vines and branches.

It's very eerie.

These look like suspended living presences

that are believed to ward off evil.

It's a spooky living sculpture that some people say

um, is cursed.

And according to folklore,

you can hear whispering...

(indistinct whispers)

...and you can hear little girls' voices.

You can see the dolls' eyes blinking on their own,

which is just terrifying.

SHATNER: The only permanent residents of the island are the strange dolls

that have given the place a ghoulish reputation.

But who created this macabre spectacle?

And why?

Well, according to local lore, the story began

in the 1950s, when the island was owned

by a man named Julian Santana Barrera.

Julian Santana Barrera

came to live on the chinampa.

And according to the stories, he came across

a little girl floating in one of the canals.

Barrera is devastated that he can't save the little girl,

and pulls her out of the water

and buries her on the island.

Barrera felt, eventually, that he was seeing the ghost

of this girl walking around his little chinampa island.

To try to make her happy,

he hung some dolls in the trees.

And he hung more and more dolls up

to appease the spirit of this little girl who died tragically.

We can think about what Barrera did

as a talisman or a symbol

that is used to protect.

All across all across the globe, you see

these totems being used in this particular way.

There are stones and there are ornaments that people

hang in their houses, in their cars.

Sometimes people carry them on their physical person.

And the act is done as a kind of protective gesture.

SHATNER: Ultimately, Barrera hung thousands of dolls

all over the island,

not only to honor the memory of the young girl,

but also to guard against a dark entity

that he believed had caused her death.

An entity known as La Llorona.

La Llorona is a tragic character.

She is the first Native mother

who gave birth to children

from a Conquistador, a Spaniard.

The story says that

her community rejected her because her children

were Spaniard, and so she was shamed.

She was so ashamed of this, in fact,

that she went down to the river and she drowned her children.

She immediately regretted this.

(woman wailing)

BARNHART: And now she's this spirit that haunts lakes and rivers.

La Llorona is a well-known myth all around Mexico.

And so, a man like Barrera, who sees a child

floating in the water-- he almost certainly,

at least for a moment, thought of La Llorona

and that this is her children, floating.

SHATNER: Since Barrera's death in 2001,

the island of the dolls has remained abandoned.

But locals continue to tell the story of the drowned girl.

Many are convinced that there's an evil presence

on this island.

And as evidence, they point to the chilling circumstances

of Julian Barrera's death.

After suffering from a fatal heart attack,

his body was found in an unsettling location.

PEREZ: Barrera dies, and not only does he die on the island,

but his body is found in the exact canal

where he found the little girl.

Is there a correlation? We don't know.

But many people believe

that if you are out at night

by yourself, playing down by the river,

that La Llorona will "get you."

The British tabloid The Sun

publishes an article by journalist John Murphy

about the aftermath of a local house fire.

But, according to John Murphy, this is not

your typical human interest story.

Because, although the blaze burned the home

and nearly everything in it to the ground,

one object did manage to survive:

a copy of a painting depicting...

The Crying Boy.

I was told to go out and have a look at the fire,

speak to the homeowners and see what had happened.

I got there, and it was conventional chip pan fire.

No one, fortunately, was hurt,

but the house had been

completely gutted. But the extraordinary thing

was that the print had actually survived the blaze.

SHATNER: Initially, John thought that the painting's survival

was a mildly interesting tidbit,

but not especially newsworthy on its own.

That is, until a firefighter on the scene informed him

that this wasn't the only time that a copy

of a similar painting had survived such a massive fire.

MURPHY: When I was speaking to the fire officer outside the home

on that Monday morning, he told me about his brother-in-law,

whose house had also been destroyed by fire, and who also

had a print of The Crying Boy in the house which survived.

We had an interesting conversation, and he said,

"This is really, really strange.

"I have been on so many house fires recently

where there has been this print in the house."

DAVID CLARKE: The houses where there'd been these fires

were completely gutted. So hot, in fact,

that, say, on the ground floor of one particular house,

the plaster was stripped from the walls.

And yet this particular print was hanging on the wall,

absolutely unscathed.

I contacted my news desk, phoned through the story.

So, hence the story

of the curse of The Crying Boy print was born.

SHATNER: Dozens of homes ravaged by fire.

And in every single case, a Crying Boy print

had survived unscathed.

But how could such a thing be possible?

MURPHY: The story went viral after The Sun got hold of the story,

and next thing, they ran telephone campaigns

asking if their readers had got a print of The Crying Boy

and if so, had they experienced any disasters

like house fires?

CLARKE: So, that's where the rumor became a legend.

But at that stage, there was no story to explain

who the child was and why was he crying.

SHATNER: The Crying Boy portraits are among a series

of mass-produced artworks

that belong to a genre known as Big Eyed Art,

sold in British department stores

in the 1960s and 70s.

But in this case, who was the artist?

And why was he or she so obsessed with

with painting a crying boy?

CLARKE: In the 1950s, there was a Californian artist,

Margaret Keane, who painted a whole range

of children, and this became "Big Eyed" art.

And it was something that was very popular

in the '50s and '60s.

Lots of European painters copied Margaret Keane's art style.

Probably the best known was a series of 27 paintings

by an Italian artist called Bruno Amadio

who was born in 1911, died in the early 1980s.

And he was classically trained, but he didn't make much

in the way of money. So, in order to make money,

he painted, in the style of Margaret Keane,

lots of pictures of small children,

sort of street urchins, crying girls, crying boys,

and these sold to tourists in post-war Italy.

He didn't want to be associated with these paintings because

he just didn't think they were very good quality paintings,

so he came up with a name,

his nom de guerre as Giovanni Bragolin,

which was actually, apparently, his uncle's name.

No one knew who this Bragolin was.

He didn't have a biography in the way that

many other well-known artists did.

So, there's that element of mystery.

And one of the stories about the Crying Boy Curse

is that the child in the painting

is trapped inside the painting

and that the only way that the child or the spirit

of that child can free itself is by setting fire

to its surroundings,

and that's the way it escapes from the painting.

SHATNER: Recently, forensic investigators

studying the so-called curse of The Crying Boy

have raised a new possibility as to how the painting

has come to survive so many housefires.

And it has nothing to do with a supposed curse.

There was some investigation done on these paintings,

and they were actually coated with fire-retardant material.

And that could just be the reason that they didn't burn

and the other aspects of the locations did burn.

You plant an idea, whether it's in a newspaper,

in a book, or via Twitter or Facebook,

suggesting that there's something eerie,

or there's bad luck that's circulating around

a particular object or painting,

and you're almost guaranteed to get people saying,

"Yes, I've had bad luck."

And that's exactly what happened in the 1980s with

the Curse of the Crying Boy.

So, what do you think?

Are dark forces just a manifestation

of human fears, and nothing more?

Or are we surrounded by invisible and malevolent energy

that we don't fully understand?

Well, until we know for sure,

perhaps it's best to listen closely when our instincts

warn us about deadly powers

that remain...

Unexplained.

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