ANTIQUE REVERSE PAINTING SILOUETTE FROM FORMER 1920s HAUNTED HOME 

I've been investigating for more than 50 years and have worked with numerous police departments and agencies across the United States and abroad.  With my children grown, we moved to a smaller home.  Due to space limitations, I began selling off some of my extensive collection from my years of investigating.  Friends suggested that Ebay would provide a venue for these items.  I have an entire storage facility that houses my collection.  You can check my feedback since I've only sold articles in this category.   I am not an antique expert and am describing this item from what I see and with the information provided to me and learned in our investigation.  I have this item in my collection, and all other items I list, strictly due to their association with paranormal activity.

The item up for auction is a beautiful old reverse painting on convex glass.  This silouette shows a wonderful scene from a long-ago era.  A woman with a hoop-skirt dress that has ruffles along the bottom and surrounding an apron type of front that serves as an overlay tot he dress underneath.  The bodice has a criss-cross lace that is visible and the woman holds sheet music in her hands as she looks toward the man in front of her who is seated while playing music.  The man sits on a bench and wears stockings on his legs and high healed, buckled shoes.  He wears a long coat that's very elaborate with brocade around the entire edge of the coat and three layers on the sleeves.  His ruffled shirt sleeves show from the edge of his coat.  He looks like he's playing a piccolo or flute.  The pair are placed on an oval rug that lays on the floor of the room they're in.  On the wall behind them is a clock with a bird perched on the top.  The clockl is also very elaborate with leaves accenting it.  The two weights dangle from chains below the clock with a center pendulum hangs down from the center bottom of the clock.  There's an arched window to the left in the background.  A vase with flowers sits on the window ledge.  The glass has criss-cross panes and it's a double window.  Short curtains hang on a since rod and there's are black dots that accent the folds of the curtain.  This curtain matches a long drape that's on another large, floor-to-ceiling window on the right in the background.  That drape has a valance and both the drape and the valance have the hand-painted dots on it to show the print.  The window has large square panes, as opposed to the criss-cross style on the smaller window shown.  The view through the window is tree branches filled with small leaves.  There is a background material inside the frame that is visible through the domed glass and the hand-painted scene.  The material looks like leather to me.  It has a textured surface and not a flat surface and is beige in color.   The frame on the painting looks like copper and there's a hook on the back that is material with a circular eyelet type of piece inside the top tab on the material that would be used to place over a nail or picture hook.  The painting measures 8 inches by 6 inches.  The domed glass is in excellent condition, as is the painting over-all.  I see no paint loss and the glass isn't chipped, scratched or cracked anywhere.  Let me tell you the bizarre story about the structure this once hung in.

A woman named Dorothea Waddingham was hanged in April of 1936 in a prison in Birmingham.  The reverse painting up for auction came from the house that Dorothea lived in and used to take in elderly, sick patients for her own monetary gain.  Dorothea led people to believe that she was a nurse but she wasn't.  The 36 year old began to take in elderly patients and transformed her little home into a nursing home.  But the patients didn't last long in Dorothea's care.  Once inside her home, she would use morphine to poison the patients and then take their money.  By the time someone became suspicious of Dorothea, she had gained a lot of money and had killed quite a few patients.  It's not surprising that her former home isn't still haunted by the spirits of those that died inside and even the evil woman that once "took care of her patients" in the most frightening way!

The painting up for auction hung in that structure but it must have been too peaceful of a scene because the old painting would often go flying off the wall it was on.  Mind you, the glass never broke even though it landed feet away from the wall.  The painting was never found damaged but would fly across the room as if someone threw it.  We were called to the house while on an investigation in England to give our opinion. 

While we visited the site, the beautiful old painting would often go from complete rest to swaying on it's hook.  We didn't observe it being tossed across the room, but it definitely had some energy going on around it.  It would sway to the point that a semi-circular mark was left on the wall behind it.  It seemed to me that there was something about that space that I was being shown.  There was a seven degree drop in temperature in that room and I continued to hear an elderly woman say, "She hid it here!"   One afternoon, when I was standing and facing the painting, I heard the woman's voice again and I felt compelled to remove the painting.  Something was telling me that the piece didn't belong there.  I walked around the room and got no similar feelings anywhere else in the room.  I became certain that the painting was hiding something in that place and the spirit of someone continued to try and get that painting off the wall to reveal something.  Yet, when I removed the painting, I saw nothing.  Finally, I asked if I could make a small hole in the wall behind where the painting hung.  I made a hole large enough to shine a flashlight into and be able to take a peak.  I saw something behind the wall and was so excited that I hadn't ruined the wall for no reason.  We enlarged the hole and found a wad of money tied together with a hair ribbon.  The money must've been hidden inside the wall for safe keeping when the room on the other side was used as a utility room.  The wall had been replaced after that, but there was a box that the money was in, that looked like a small home-made safe of sorts.  That wooden box sat between the beams with the back of the box facing the utility room so the money wasn't visible from the opposite side of the wall.  Whoever replaced the wall never questioned the box and assumed it was accessed from the bedroom on the other side of the wall.  Unfortunately, Dorothea hanged before she could go back to the house and re-claim that money so it sat for over fifty years, safely tucked away inside the wall.  Thanks to the spirit of an elderly patient that I believe died in that room, they led us to the hidden money.  Maybe it was their way of getting even with Dorothea for trying to steal their money!

The home that Dorothea once lived and killed in is filled with paranormal activity.  She seemed to favor reverse paintings to decorate with.  I will have one other, larger reverse painting that also hung inside the home offered separately.  I believe that some of these were the only things that the elderly patients had to look at while they lay dying in their rooms.  The patient that has been connected to this painting is a very kind, gentle spirit who died at the hands of an evil woman.  Thank you for looking at this beautiful old piece.