'Cursed' painting sold by Sussex charity shop which made world headlines is up for auction

Now it is being offered on eBay with bids nearing £1,000. Half of the net sale will be donated to charity.

The framed portrait was for sale at the HARC (Hastings Advice and Representation Centre) charity shop in London Road, St Leonards, with a price tag of £20.

It was bought by a woman who promptly returned it, complaining that the little girl’s eyes seemed to be following her around the room. She told staff at the shop “I never want to see the damned thing again.”

Staff at the shop displayed the picture in the window with a label saying ‘possibly’ cursed. It was bought by another woman, Zoe Elliott-Brown, from St Leonards, but she too returned it saying she could not live with it. Staff put the painting back in the window with a label saying ‘She’s back! Sold twice and returned twice. Are you brave enough?’

Zoe decided to re-buy the painting and has now put it up on auction with bids standing at £940 at the time of writing this. It was being advertised on the same page as other ‘haunted’ painting, a Stone Age rock and an Egyptian Ushabti statue.

HARC charity in Hastings will receive 50% of net profits from its sale.

The ‘cursed’ painting story made headlines across the Globe with newspapers and television companies from the USA and Australia bombarding the charity shop for more information. The story made the front page of the Star newspaper and Zoe appeared on the television show This Morning, talking about the picture.

The painting had been donated to the shop by a middle-aged man, along with some frames.

Staff at the shop told told the Hastings Observer: “It was only a bit of fun really. We said it was cursed as a sort of joke because it had been returned, we did not expect this sort of attention. The phone did not stopped ringing. At one stage we had to take it off the hook.”

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