BT-2026.003
The Crying Boy
Type entry
- Claim
- 3 of 5
Possessions destroyed, or animals and crops lastingly, or the mind irreversibly, or the body in a way that passes. - Evidence
- 3 of 5
One contemporaneous document by someone involved, or two independent retellings. - Production
- one of several series by different makers; more than fifty thousand copies sold in the United Kingdom alone.
These three figures are kept separate and are never combined into a single score. How grave the claim is, what it rests on, and whether the object can be traced are different questions. How the register reads them.
Asserted
Accounts attributed to a source. The register does not adopt them.
That fire or ruin comes to the place where it is kept. Houses in which the print hangs are said to burn down, while the print itself is found undamaged in the debris. Attempts to destroy or dispose of it are said to bring further misfortune. The subject is said to be an orphan whose parents died in a fire, and whose spirit remains in the image.
- C10
material misfortune
- C14
fire or destruction of property
- P25
undamaged by fire or destruction
- I12
responds to attempted destruction
- E3
a child attributed to it
index v0.8: Child attributed
- E7
bound or trapped in the object
- H9
subject of a ritual or curse
index v0.8: Subject of a ritual, curse or blessing
- H12
belonged to a named victim
reported by: twelve identifiable people since 1985
Recorded
Established by the register, or received with the object.
File
- Register number
- BT-2026.003
- Entry type
- Type entry: a series or model, not one object
- Opened
- 2026-09-16
- Last revised
- 2026-09-16
- Coded against
- Claim Index v0.8
Object
- Type
- mass-produced print
- Materials
- paper, printing ink, board, varnish
- Date
- prints sold from the 1950s onward
- Origin
- Italy, sold principally in the United Kingdom
- Maker
- after paintings by Bruno Amadio, working as Giovanni Bragolin, and by several other painters
On what grounds
Contemporaneous newspaper reporting from September 1985, including an account of a destroyed house in Rotherham in which the print was found hanging undamaged, and a fire officer from Essex who said undamaged copies were regularly found in burnt-out houses. Reported by twelve identifiable people since 1985. Evidence is capped at 3: the reporting newspaper had a commercial interest in the story.
Counter-indications
What weighs against the claim. These are never subtracted from a figure; the lowest applicable ceiling is applied instead.
- CI2
sources conflict on the event
- CI3
sources conflict on dating
- CI7
an ordinary explanation has been offered
Hundreds of prints were collected and burned under fire-service supervision at the end of 1985, which established that they burn readily under sustained heat.
- CI23
the reporting newspaper had a commercial interest in it
Register findings
- MT8
replicas and further series marketed
- MT28
has appeared in broadcast and viral posts
Note. A fire-service incident report from 1985, if one survives, would be a record made by a professional in the course of duty and would raise this entry's evidence score. The register is seeking one.