The Stagecraft, An Allegedly Haunted Painting Based On A Photograph
Laura P.The Stagecraft was based on a photograph by James Kidd.
In 1994, commercial photographer James Kidd and an oil painter identified only as Laura P. each displayed their works at a gallery in Tombstone, Arizona. There, Kidd displayed a photograph he had taken at an old stagecoach stop in Tombstone — a double-exposure shot that bizarrely featured a figure on the left-hand side, seemingly lacking a head.
Laura was so fascinated by the photograph that she asked Kidd if she could do an oil painting of it. But as she was working on the painting, Laura began to have a strange feeling that she should not have started at all. Suddenly, odd things began to happen around her.
“I do not believe in ghosts,” she wrote for LiveAbout, “but I cannot for the life of me explain how or why these strange things have happened. I cannot attribute every one of these events directly to the painting, but they have all taken place since it has been in my house — and are totally unexplained.”
It began innocuously enough. Laura framed the painting and hung it in an office at a business location, but no matter how often the office workers straightened the painting, it would always be crooked the next morning.
Laura took the painting back, and she and her husband moved into a new home in 1995. When it rained, the roof of their garage would leak, and even though the roofers came to look at it three separate times, they could find no explanation as to why it was leaking.
That’s when Laura’s husband realized The Stagecraft had been leaning against the wall between the living room and the garage. Once they moved the painting, the leaking stopped.
Things started to ramp up, though. Objects began flying off the wall. Even people who simply looked at photographs of the painting began to experience strange things in their homes. When Laura’s neighbor borrowed the painting, he swore he saw a white, hazy figure creeping around the corners of his home.
“I still don’t actually believe in ghosts,” Laura concluded. “Yet if I had it to do over, I would not have created this painting.”
