After subsequent testing, Punt concluded that the painting had some kind of fire-retardant finish on it. He also noted that in a burning house, the string it hung from would probably snap first, dropping the portrait on its face. That, combined with the fireproof varnish, is likely what protected the images.
It’s an interesting hypothesis — one that anybody can test, actually, because you can still buy copies of The Crying Child today. Although you probably shouldn’t.
The Baleroy Chair of Death
PLACE OF ORIGIN:
FRANCE
AGE:
200 YEARS
NOTABLE OWNERS:
GEORGE MEADE EASBY, NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
LAST KNOWN LOCATION:
BALEROY MANSION, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
DEATH TOLL:
THREE
Chairs are among the most mundane items on the planet. They were invented because our legs get tired and we don’t like our butts getting dirty on the floor. Yet, under the right conditions, chairs can be terrifying. And the best condition is, of course, cursed.
The Baleroy Chair of Death is a good example of a bad chair. This stately cursed object is a 200-year-old blue upholstered wing chair. If you’ve ever toured an old mansion, you’ve probably seen a piece of furniture like it. And, in fact, its last known location was in its namesake, the Baleroy Mansion in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But those are the boring facts about it. Its legends are far more interesting, if somewhat lacking in detail.
The lore goes that a warlock made the chair sometime in the nineteenth century, although his name and reason for making the chair (other than needing a place to sit) have been lost to time. The chair is also supposed to have been owned (and presumably sat on) by Napoleon Bonaparte. Since the chair was installed at Baleroy Mansion, it’s been said that a ghost named either Amelia or Amanda manifests herself as a red mist to lure people to sit in it. However, the thing that gives this object a place at the cursed table is that its owner accused it of ending the lives of at least three people.
Baleroy Mansion looms over Mermaid Lane in the wealthy Chestnut Hill area of Philadelphia. The thirty-two-room stone structure dates to 1911 and, at least from the outside, looks sort of bland for a mansion, like a rather engorged but otherwise everyday suburban house. Inside, though, is a different story.
In 1926, Major May Stevenson Easby, his wife Henrietta, and his two young sons George and Steven moved into the house that they would dub Baleroy. They spent much of their time there stuffing it full of antiques…and ghost stories.
We can thank the elder son, George Meade Easby, for these tales. He was eight years old when his family moved into the mansion and remained a resident for three-quarters of a century, until his death in 2005 at the age of eighty-seven. He loved ghost stories, and his unceasing contributions to the Baleroy lore, as well as his passionate advertisement of it, prompted some to anoint the mansion “the most haunted house in Philadelphia” and others “the most haunted home in America.”
Easby claimed to have seen the ghost of the original owner of the mansion, a carpenter who murdered his wife inside the house. One day shortly after they moved in, while Easby and his brother Steven were playing in the fountain in the yard, Easby claimed that Steven’s reflection transformed into a skull. He died not long after, at age eleven, of an unknown disease. There were the ghostly arms that would grab Easby in his sleep. An ectoplasm sometimes floated down the hall. The kitchen cabinets opened and closed by themselves. Phantom cars would drive up to the house and disappear. The ghost of Thomas Jefferson haunted the dining room, and a woman dressed in black would sometimes appear in the house, as would a monk wearing a beige robe.
Easby once told a reporter for People magazine, “I enjoy living here, but it’s quite an adventure.” He embraced most of the ghosts in the house. He even believed that his brother and mother hung around in spirit after their deaths and that the latter had led him to secret family treasures stashed in the house. The article, which appeared in the October 1994 issue, includes a black-and-white portrait of Easby. He’s sitting in a chair (assumedly uncursed), his white hair standing on end, his mouth open in creepy glee, and a wispy presence hovering behind him. In his hand is a small portrait of his mother. It looks like a promotional still from a horror movie, and indeed Easby tried to act in and produce low-budget films for a while. In short, he seems exactly the type of person who would keep a cursed chair around for kicks.
The antiques and ghosts surrounding Easby gave his imagination ample fodder for his movies, especially the Napoleonic pieces that were a major part of the collection. His family had an interest in French artifacts, and Baleroy itself was named after a place in France. But the one object that has risen above all the other ghastly tales of the mansion is the Chair of Death.
It was believed to have been kept in the house’s Blue Room, which was styled as an eighteenth-century drawing room. It’s said that Easby strung a rope across the seat and forbade the posteriors of guests after enough people perished as a result of sitting in it. Easby told the authors of the 1989 book Haunted Houses U.S.A. that one of his housekeepers sat in the chair, collapsed, and died a few hours later. The next victim was a cousin of Easby’s, and the third a friend named Paul Kimmens. Both died within weeks, and, according to Easby, none of them believed in the curse. Whether any of them saw the red mist of Amanda/Amelia is unknown.
Easby never married nor had children, so after he died, the mansion opened to the public for a while, despite the dangers of the Chair of Death. A lucky few visitors got to tour the infamous home while the valuable antiques were on view. Some have since been donated to museums. Others were sold, and eventually, so was the house. Today it’s a private residence. And the residents might have one more ghost on their hands. Before his death, Easby was quoted in a 1984 article in the Chestnut Hill Local as saying, “When I leave here, I’m coming back to haunt them — if they don’t take good care of this place I’m going to be right back there after them.”
Whether the Chair of Death survived the estate transfer after Easby joined Amanda/Amelia, his mother, and the rest of the spirits in the house, nobody knows. But if you’re feeling brave, you can go up to the porch, ring the doorbell, and find out easily enough.
Although the last thing you might hear is, “Have a seat, and we’ll be right with you.”
The Dybbuk Box
PLACE OF ORIGIN:
SPAIN OR NEW YORK
Contents: