Rain Woman

I was asked a curious question by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, one that intrigued me enough I thought it was worth devoting an entire post to.

Here's the relevant bit of the email (reproduced here with permission):

I know you're not superstitious, and you've written more than once about the necessity of looking for scientific (or at least logical) explanations for things that might seem paranormal.  What I'm more curious about, though, is how you actually feel.  You've probably heard about objects that are haunted or cursed or bring devastating bad luck to their owners.  Sure, your rational brain might be certain that the idea of a cursed object is stupid, but would your emotions agree? 

Let me put it this way; let's say there was something that had a wide reputation for carrying a dangerous curse with it.  Multiple people had reported scary stuff associated with it.  Would you be willing to have it in your house?  Late at night, when you were alone in the house, wouldn't you experience at least a little bit of doubt that maybe you'd put yourself in danger?

So put my money where my mouth is, eh?  No armchair skepticism allowed.  Head into the attic of the haunted house at night and see if I can still talk so blithely about rationalism.

It's an interesting question, because all my life I've felt like I had two brains -- an emotional one and a logical one -- and they are not on speaking terms.  I've sometimes wondered if I went into science as a way of dealing with the fact that my emotions are constantly picking me up by the tail and swinging me around.  And I'll admit he has a point.  All the rational skepticism in the world doesn't make it any less scary when you're in the house alone and you hear what sounds like the creak of a footstep upstairs.

I asked him if he had any particular cursed object in mind -- that it sounded like he was thinking of something specific.  He admitted that this was spot-on.  "Have you heard of Rain Woman?" he asked.

I hadn't, so he told me the story, which I checked out, and it appears to be true -- at least the non-paranormal bits.

As far as the paranormal bits, I'll leave you to decide.

In 1996, a Ukrainian painter named Svetlana Telets was sitting in front of a blank canvas, and an image appeared in her mind of a pale-faced woman wearing a broad-brimmed dark hat, eyes closed, standing in the rain.  Telets found the image strangely compelling, and she began to sketch it out -- later telling a friend, "I felt like someone was controlling my hand as I drew."  She spent the next month refining and adding color, and the result was Rain Woman.

Telets displayed the piece in a local gallery, and it attracted a lot of (positive) attention, garnering several offers of purchase.  She sold the painting to the highest bidder -- only to have the purchaser request a return and refund shortly afterward.  It had triggered waking nightmares, they said, of a figure following them around, always a little out of view, and far enough away that details weren't easily visible.  The figure, they said, never let itself get close.

Immediately put me in mind of the mysterious old woman who follows Ruby Sunday around, in one of the best and most atmospheric Doctor Who episodes ever -- the shiver-inducing "73 Yards."

Telets bought the painting back, and sold it again -- only to have the same thing happen.  It went through multiple purchasers over the next few years, always with the same result.  One terrified temporary owner even offered to pay Telets an additional half of the purchase price to take it back, saying that ever since buying the painting he'd seen white eyes suddenly opening in ordinary objects, eyes that watched his every move.

Eyes no one else was able to see.

In 2008 the painting was purchased by musician Sergei Skachkov, and he kept it, although he reported that his wife made him put the piece into storage after repeatedly seeing a ghostly figure walking around their house at night.

The Russian Orthodox priest Father Vitaly Goloskevich, who knows Telets and several of the temporary owners of the painting, said he is in no doubt that there's something supernatural going on here.  "A person has a spirit and a soul," Father Goloskevich said.  "There are truly spiritual works of art, and there are soulful ones.  And the painting you are talking about represents just such soulful art.  And it doesn't come from God...  The artist puts into the work the mood in which he was at the time of his creation.  And it is not known who led Svetlana Telets at the moment she created Rain Woman."

So, my correspondent asked; would I be willing to purchase Rain Woman and hang it on the wall in my house?

My initial reaction was, "Of course!"  First, I think the painting is kind of cool.  Second, having something with such a strange reputation would be a great conversation starter when my wife and I have guests (being diehard introverts, not a frequent occurrence, but still).  I have a nice collection of beautifully-illustrated Tarot decks, an avocation which comes from the same impulse.

But that wasn't what my correspondent asked.  How would I feel about having the painting in my house -- especially if I was alone with it on a stormy night?  Would my breezy rationalism be quite so staunch then?

If I'm being entirely honest, probably not.  It's not that I think anything real and paranormal is going on with Rain Woman; I suspect the odd occurrences reported by purchasers come from a combination of superstitiousness and suggestibility.  Once one person has claimed the painting is haunted, it makes it more likely that others will experience the same sort of thing (or at least, that they'll attribute anything odd to the painting's evil effects).

But honestly, deep down I'm as suggestible as the next guy.  It's part of being human.  Our distant ancestors' brains evolved to interpret anything out of the ordinary as being potentially dangerous; the well-worn example is that if you're a proto-hominid on the African savanna, it's better to freak out over a rustle in the grass when it's only the wind than not to freak out if it turns out to be a hungry lion.

We're all weird amalgams of logic and emotion, aren't we?  I'm reminded of the probably-apocryphal story about the brilliant physicist Niels Bohr.  Bohr was being interviewed by a reporter shortly after he won the Nobel Prize, and the reporter noticed that in Bohr's office, over the door, there was a horseshoe nailed -- with the points upward, of course, to "catch the good luck."  The reporter said, "Professor Bohr, you are not going to tell me that a scientist of your caliber believes that horseshoes bring you good luck."

"Of course not," Bohr deadpanned back.  "But I'm told that horseshoes bring you good luck whether you believe in them or not."

So yeah.  I say I'd be thrilled to own Rain Woman, but truthfully, I'd probably be just as likely to have scary dreams about her as the other owners.  But that's the benefit of having a basically rational mindset, isn't it?  Okay, I'd be scared in the moment, but skepticism is a kind of barrier that stops you from racing too far down that path.

Maybe I'd see ghosts at night just like the other owners did, I dunno.  But what I'm pretty sure of is that the next morning, when the sun was out and the skies were clear, I'd be able to laugh about it -- and leave the painting hanging on the wall.

****************************************