A little background on this story – when I was still in middle school we would take one week-long class trip a year (we called them “Spring Trip”) and we would go places that had relevance to whatever topics we were studying that year. Because class sizes were small, grades 6-8 were taught together for a majority of the classes. Spring trip took all three grades at once.
This particular Spring Trip is one I will never forget. I was in the eighth grade and we were visiting the city of San Francisco. I don’t remember the name of the hotel we were staying in, but I ended up in a room with one of my friends. Over every bed in the place was what appeared to be a painting of an elderly man in wire-rimmed glasses. In his hands was a lady’s heeled boot and he appeared to be sitting inside of a workshop, like he made boots.
On the shelves behind him were piles of leather and paper. There was a candle on his desk. Oddly, his eyes seemed to follow you around the room, and it was like, even when you closed the bathroom door you could feel him staring at you through the wall and the door. The room itself was quite small. There were two single beds pushed into one corner, and then a dresser behind the door. A television was hung over the top of the dresser and there was a coat rack next to the door going into the tiny bathroom.
At night, it felt even more crowded, and the picture was hung over the beds, making it feel like this old man was looming over you.
Due to the nature of the trip, we were almost constantly out of the hotel, visiting museums and landmarks, going to get meals and basically having a good time. The first time we noticed something was up, we had come back in early evening with an assignment to write about what we had learned about over the course of the day. Afterward we would be getting together in our student-teacher groups to discuss, and to get the detailed itinerary for the next day.
When we went back in the room my friend stopped dead in the doorway and looked at the picture. “Wasn’t the boot in his hands?” she asked quietly, pointing at it. When I looked at it, a cold chill went over the back of my neck. The boot was no longer in the man’s hands. It was now on its side on the shelf behind him. His hands were folded in front of him and he seemed to be smiling unpleasantly.
Bothered, but wondering if we had simply made a mistake when we had initially seen it we sat next to each other and worked, keeping our eyes on it the whole time. We commented on how creepy the painting in our room was when we went back to our group for discussion. When we went back for bed the painting was back to normal, and the man had his neutral expression back on his face.
However, over the course of the week the painting changed several more times- one time he was looking at something to the side of the frame, when he had previously been staring straight ahead. Another time, he was making a new boot instead of holding the finished one. The day before we left, he was standing up instead of sitting down and the boot was back on the shelf behind him again.
I don’t really know what was going on, but when we came back we both did some research on the place where we had been staying. That specific floor was supposed to be haunted by a cook that had worked there many years ago. The two of us still get cold chills when we talk about it, because we know what that painting looked like the first time we went in, and we know for sure that it had changed several times over the week we were there.
Sent in by Kxaltli, Copyright 2010 TrueGhostTales.com
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wow why didn’t you girls ask to be moved to a new room. just to know i had to go back to sleep in that room would of been enough to make me want to go back home. lol nice story
it’s a good read ;o
maybe he just wanted you to notice him.or you should of turned the picture around but you never know what would of really happened.luckly nothing happened to you or your friend.thanks for the story.
Wow I would take the picture down or something if it creeped me out like that but it would be on the wall again if you woke up in the morning I bet. But still its weird……good story though!
That was a great story..thanks for sharing, wow i always thought pictures were scary (some of them like old ones) but this is intense!! I mean this just totally proves how much pictures are alive and mean something other then bring back a memory or something like that… You should of just found a way to get a video recorder and hid it somewhere where the picture can’t see it (lol).
I am just wondering what the cook has anything to do with the painting. Does the hotel change paintings everyday? I don’t think so. You may need to ask who is the man in the painting. I think he is the one haunts the hotel instead.
very odd, but oh so cool!!
Spooky! Sounds like something was for sure going on with that picture. If both you and your friend seen these changes take place surely it wasn’t your imagination. I probably would not have stayed in that room after the first incident but I would have asked the Management if that man in the picture had any affliation with the Hotel or where they bought it from. It must have a ghost attached to it for some reason. Thankyou for sharing tho. God Bless!
Thats pretty scary. I just hate it when that happens… =[
Wow great story. I really enjoyed it. Never heard a story about a painting that changed.
Sorry to be redundant and ask, but the story really is true, right? Sorry to ask: I know there are at least a few authors on the site who write fiction. Anyways, I do believe you when u say it’s true. Amazing phenomenon I never heard of before. Great story.
Yes, this is a true story. It’s something that’s stuck with me over the years, although I think there’s finally been enough time that it doesn’t bother me quite as much as it once did, which is why I decided to submit it to this website.
Great story, You said you were rarely at the hotel room while you were there. That would have given someone plenty of time to go in and switch the pictures. They have to keep those “haunted” rumors going somehow.
Folks, remember the author says this happened some time ago, and the children were in grades 6 through 8. I don’t think a) I would have had the presence of mind at that age to find out if the place was haunted, b) ask management anything about it, c) ask who the subject was in the painting or d) found a video recorder.
I most certainly would have noted in the group session (like the author did, in fact, do) how creepy the room was. I’m sure the teacher, chaperone, whomever, would have told me it was my imagination and I probably would have left it at that (albeit still creeped out).
And yes, years later, I would probably have written about what a weird trip and room that was. In the few short travels that I had during my school years, I would never recall now what hotel, or what room or anything else, thus it would do me no good to recall with the intent of trying now to find out what the background was, if the hotel was still in business, etc. It would just be a creepy memory to share.
I have to tell you, that was one of the creepiest stories I have read on this site. Not many of them give me actual chills, but this one did. Your story telling was great.
This reminds me of the Night Gallery series with Rod Serling. (after the original Twilight Zone ended). Roddy McDowell was the main character. He has a picture of a graveyard and as the show progresses the picture changes; from this particular grave, to the dirt being tousled to the person getting out of the grave, until the person is knocking on the door. (actually his recently deceased uncle) Each time he looks at the picture, the dead uncle (in the painting) is getting closer and closer.
Christina
i remember that episode! we have a channel that plays those shows every now and then and i alway try to watch em!