Has something paranormal ever happened to you? Has anything ever confronted your sense of reality with such undeniable clarity that you have just completely and utterly lost it? I'm not talking about a cold chill on your neck, a door closing by itself or an unexplained noise in the dark. I'm talking about the cold hard stuff here. Perhaps physically capturing an apparition first hand on cctv could be an example of what I mean by that. Well, friends, I've had an occurrence in my life that I've deemed to be an impossible event and what makes it truly terrifying is I have pretty clear photographic evidence to share with you to back me up. No, no grainy ghost/Loch Ness photos here. I find these photos quite explicit. What I have to share will shock you.
I've often been embarrassed telling this story to be honest as the skeptic in me still cringes. I've told a tall tale in my time. Haven't we all down the pub or in the playground as kids? We've all enjoyed the look on someone's face whilst we draw them into some made up rubbish that makes us look really really cool. Don't deny it. But, no, this is not one of those made up tales I promise.
In and around the year 2013, an old colleague of mine from a shop I worked at took note of some of my paintings I'd made. Painting with acrylic on canvas was always something I enjoyed living in London and I shared my work with people using my phone when I could. Anyway, there must have been something this lady liked about my style as she commissioned me for twenty quid to paint her border collie, Ralph. Twenty quid at uni was kind of something I needed, so I set about the task quickly.
Back in my flat, I took out a canvas and placed it on my easel. I recall only being in my boxer shorts or pajama shorts at the time, (A useful fact for examining clues later, believe me.) I then placed the reference photo of the dog to the side and prepared shades of three colours, whites, blues and blacks - with maybe a little touch of yellow in places. As I painted the dog, the blue background and the mattress it sat upon, I got increasingly annoyed with the dogs complexion. It never looked right. I couldn't remove this sense of malevolence that I was seeing in it's eyes. So, I stopped. I needed a break. I needed a glass of water. So I went to get one. Now, pay attention reader. This is where it gets weird.
I stood up and placed my brush on the pallet. I stepped away from the painting and stared at it. I then walked past the painting to the kitchen. I was confident my other two flatmates were at work. If either of them would have gone into my room I'd have seen them walk past the kitchen door. These were strangers my landlord had contact with and I didn't really know much about them at all. Standing in the kitchen, I poured a glass of water and downed it in front of the sink. I then went back in my room, closed the door and sat back down to face the painting and bam. It had changed. Now, with every fibre of my being I promise that to this day I have no explanation for this and I'm not hiding anything from you when I say this. The painting was bleeding...
There was blood on the paw of the dog. Staring back at me with malevolence still in its in its eyes, the dog, as I had painted it moments ago was sat on the mattress with its left paw draped over the edge of it. However now, there was quite clearly what looked like blood on the inside toe running down off of it onto the mattress. This was not a messy mark, no. There was blood only on this toe and it seemed to be coagulating between that toe and the one next to it and was running down the mattress into the easel. It had all the characteristics of blood.
So, I paused. I looked in horror at my pallet, no red. I looked over my entire semi naked body, no cuts or blood. I looked at the ceiling for drips, nothing. I stood up abruptly almost kicking my chair backward into my mirror. I was being confronted by something that I, to this day, find impossible, profoundly menacing, threatening, demonic and mind numbingly unexplainable. For two hours I lost my mind trying to reconstruct my actions, find cuts or traces of blood anywhere on my person or in the room. Yet, I was always drawn back to how perfectly painted on this blood looked. I smelled the blood, at one point I even tasted it but didn't really discern much from doing so. I called friends and family on the phone and all were talking to me as if they were concerned for my mental wellbeing and didn't truly believe me. That was, until I sent them photographs. Their tone changed then. I went through so many stages of fear, panic, distrust of myself, anger and terror that I knew I had to find a conclusion to this really weird moment somehow and quick to stop myself going insane. Driving myself crazy looking for answers was starting to upset me and actually make me cry. I was so helplessly confused, angry and scared as I felt it was mocking my intelligence and sense of reality, and to some extent my sense of spirituality. I do not remember whether I tried removing the blood from the canvas entirely. I then wrapped it in a bin liner and threw it in the skip outside my house and came inside before removing any trace of artistic activity in that room. That's where my memory of that day ends!
A few days after this had taken place, I spoke to Ralph's owner who commissioned me. She oddly enough didn't fully sympathise at all, even after seeing the photo. I don't know if she thought I was crazy, lying or shirking our arrangement. She was just, for the most part, disappointed and slightly cross with me. She never spoke to me again after that and, funnily enough, I never saw the dog again either.
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