The Cursed "Chair of Death"

n 1702, a convicted murderer named Thomas Busby was about to be hanged for his crimes. His last request was to have his final meal served at his favorite pub in Thirsk, England. He finished his meal, stood up, and said, "May sudden death come to anyone who dare sit in my chair."

                                                                        

The chair remained in the pub for centuries, and patrons would often dare one another to sit in the cursed seat. During World War II, airmen from a nearby base frequented the pub, and locals noticed that the soldiers who sat in the chair would never return from war. 

In 1967, two Royal Air Force pilots sat in the chair, only to crash their truck into a tree just after they left. In 1970, a mason tested his fate in the hot seat, only to die that same afternoon by falling into a hole at his job site. A year after that, a roofer who sat in it died after the roof he was working on collapsed. When the pub's cleaning lady tripped and fell into the chair, she died shortly afterwards from a brain tumor. 

This list goes on, and finally the pub owner moved the chair into the basement. Unfortunately, even in storage the chair claimed another victim. After a delivery man took a quick rest while unloading packages in the store room, he was killed in a car accident that same day. 

Eventually, the pub owner donated the chair to the local museum in 1972. The museum displays the chair by hanging it five feet in the air so that no one can possibly sit in it by mistake again. Fortunately, no one has sat in the chair since. 

The Hands Resist Him

In 2000, an anonymous eBay seller listed a painting created by artist Bill Stoneham called "The Hands Resist Him." This painting is now largely considered to be one of the world's most haunted works of art.

The painting features a boy and a creepy doll standing in front of a glass door. The painting was created in 1972 and purchased by Hollywood actor John Marley. It was then bought by a California couple before going up for sale on eBay along with a dire warning about the problems involved with owning the object. 
                                                                    

According to the couple, the figures in the painting moved around at night, sometimes disappearing from the canvas entirely. The boy in the painting was said to actually enter the room where the painting hung, and everyone who viewed the painting reported feeling sick and weak. Small children would take one look at the painting and run from the room screaming. Adults sometimes felt like unseen hands were grabbing them, and others said that they felt a blast of hot air, as if they had opened an oven.

Even those who viewed the painting online claimed to feel a sense of unease, dread, or terror when looking at the painting. One person even claimed that their brand new printer refused to print the photo of the painting, however it worked fine on every other print job.
                                                               

The painting was purchased by an art gallery in Grand Rapids, MI. When the gallery spoke to the artist who had created it, he was surprised to hear that his work was at the center of a paranormal investigation, but he did mention that two people who originally displayed and reviewed the painting had died within a year of viewing "The Hands Resist Him.