The Rain Woman, The Painting That Haunts Your Dreams
Svetlana TeletsThe Rain Woman allegedly stalks the dreams of the people who own it.
Created in 1996 by Ukrainian artist Svetlana Telets, The Rain Woman is a fairly straightforward piece. It depicts, as the title suggests, a woman standing in the rain. Her features are distorted and elongated. She is dressed all in black and wears a large, wide-brimmed hat that extends to the edges of the frame.
It certainly has an eerie feeling to it, but it’s the alleged lingering effects on its owners that have led people to believe this painting may be cursed.
According to The Ghost In My Machine, there are certain people who, upon seeing The Rain Woman, feel a compulsion to purchase the painting. Those who bring the painting into their home soon begin to experience a litany of things, including insomnia, nightmares, misfortune, and the feeling of constantly being watched. In rare circumstances, owners of The Rain Woman have reported seeing or hearing someone moving about their home.
Telets herself claimed to have a strange experience with the painting. Six months before she began the painting, she told a local newspaper that she “always felt that someone was constantly watching me.” When she began work on the painting, she said she felt as if someone else were behind it, merely using her as a tool.
In total, she said it only took her “about five hours” to complete most of the work and that “it seemed like someone else was controlling my hand.”
The first buyer returned the painting to Telets, saying she could not sleep and felt like someone was in the apartment with her. The second buyer returned the painting as well, saying that the woman in the painting plagued his dreams.
“Every night, she appears and follows me like a shadow,” he said.
It was purchased in 2008 by Sergei Skachko from the band Zemlayne, who held onto it for a few years. However, his wife later got rid of the painting, as she said the two began to argue more after it came into their possession.
